Report on U.S. POWs Unsealed by Pentagon

After weeks of refusing public release, the Pentagon on Friday made available copies of a report alleging that the Soviet Union forcibly moved U.S. Korean War prisoners to its territory and never released them.

The report, written by U.S. government analysts in August and presented to Russian government officials in Moscow in early September, is Washington’s most comprehensive effort since the 1950-53 war to link Moscow to missing U.S. servicemen.

It states that several hundred U.S. prisoners in Korea were secretly taken to various places in the Soviet Union, mostly by rail, and in some cases through China. It makes no attempt to assess how long the American servicemen might have survived. The Russian government, and the Soviet Union before it, denied that any Americans were taken from the Korean battlefield to the Soviet Union.

About 8,140 American servicemen are officially unaccounted for from the Korean War. The report does not claim knowledge that any specific Americans were taken to the Soviet Union, but strongly asserts that some transfers were undertaken.

The Clinton Administration initially suppressed the report after presenting it to the Russians at a meeting of the U.S.-Russian Joint Commission on POWs-MIAs. After the Associated Press obtained a copy and published a story about its allegations in September, the Pentagon stamped the report an internal document and said it was not for release to the American public.

Last month, in denying the wire service’s request for release of the report under the Freedom of Information Act, Col. Joseph A. Schlatter Jr. of the Defense POW-MIA Office asserted that its release “could have a chilling effect” on U.S. government deliberations and would give a “skewed picture” of his office’s work.

Asked why the Pentagon had apparently changed its mind about releasing the report, spokeswoman Beverly Baker said, “It’s already out there anyway.” She said she was unaware that a Freedom of Information request had been filed and denied.

Attached to the report is a statement, dated Nov. 3, by Malcolm Toon, head of the U.S. delegation to the U.S.-Russian Joint Commission on POWs-MIAs. Toon, a former ambassador to Moscow, wrote that the report “contains subjective opinions” and is “not an official conclusion” of the Joint Commission.

Although the report states firmly that American prisoners of war were taken by the Soviets, Toon said it indicates only that the U.S. government believes they might have been taken.

“There is no doubt that further research in essential,” Toon wrote.

Another session of the Joint Commission is scheduled to be held in Moscow in early December.

The report does not purport to provide proof that Americans were sent to the Soviet Union from Korea. Rather, it is a collection of anecdotal, circumstantial and documentary evidence based on interviews with Russian intelligence officials, repatriated U.S. Korean War POWs and others, as well as historical documents in Moscow and Washington, and numerous eyewitness accounts.