News-Info-Alerts

Re: First Ever Korean War Era Case in China

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: July 11, 2002

"China to Allow U.S. to Search for Pilots' Remains
2 Americans Were Shot Down While on CIA Mission in 1952

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 10, 2002; Page A11


BEIJING, July 9 -- The Chinese government announced today that it will allow the Pentagon to search in northeastern China for the remains of two American pilots who died 50 years ago when their unmarked plane crashed during a spy mission for the CIA.

The decision represented a breakthrough in U.S. efforts to win Beijing's cooperation in accounting for Americans lost during the 1950-53 Korean War. The Chinese government has allowed U.S. teams to search for the remains of dozens of soldiers who died in China during World War II and the Vietnam War, but this is the first time it has approved a search in a Korean War-era case.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, said at a news conference that China agreed to the search to promote "friendship between the two peoples and in a humanitarian spirit."

Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Pentagon's POW/MIA office, said an eight-member team from the Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii is scheduled to depart Monday for the rolling hills of Jilin province, where the two pilots crashed Nov. 29, 1952.

The pair, Robert C. Snoddy of Eugene, Ore., and Norman A. Schwartz of Louisville, Ky., were attempting to pick up an anti-Communist Chinese agent when their C-47 was shot down. The pilots were killed in the crash, but two CIA officers on board survived and were imprisoned in China for two decades. One was released only after the U.S. government acknowledged their espionage mission.

U.S. officials have for years asked China for help in recovering the pilots' remains, with little luck. Then, in May, the Chinese government reported it had located a 78-year-old peasant who may have witnessed the crash, and subsequently opened talks about a possible visit by a U.S. search team, Greer said.

Recovery of the pilots' bodies, believed to have been buried at the crash site, would bring to a close one of the few remaining missing-in-action cases from the Cold War involving China that is not directly related to the Vietnam or Korean wars. At the time, the CIA was trying to undermine China's Communist government and U.S. and Chinese forces were fighting on the Korean Peninsula.

Greer said the United States has requested Chinese help with only one other similar Cold War case, involving a Navy reconnaissance plane carrying a 12-member crew that crashed in waters near Shanghai in 1956. China says it has no information about the incident.

The Chinese government also has rejected repeated U.S. requests for access to military archives that might provide information about U.S. troops captured during the Korean War. It recently agreed, though, to permit U.S. investigators to examine other records and interview POW camp workers.

About 8,100 U.S. servicemen remain unaccounted for from the Korean War.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company"