| Dear Representative
Please co sponsor H.Res. 111,
introduced by Congressman Peter King of New York,
calling for the formation of a Select Committee on
POW/MIA Affairs. According to the legislation; "The
select committee shall conduct a full investigation of
all unresolved matters relating to any United States
personnel unaccounted for from the Vietnam era, the
Korean conflict, World War II, Cold War Missions,
Persian Gulf War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, or Operation
Enduring Freedom, including MIA's and POW's missing and
captured."
We are aware of past investigations
and hearings conducted in both the House and Senate.
Those investigations left many unresolved matters.@
Additionally, much new information has surfaced since
the Senate published its findings in January 1993. Here
are several examples;
In 1996, a Background Paper prepared
by I.O. Lee, an analyst with the Defense POW/MIA Office
(DPMO) stated: "There are too many live sighting
reports, specifically observations of several Caucasians
in a collective farm by Romanians and the North Korean
defectors' eyewitness of Americans in DPRK to dismiss
that there are no American POW's in North Korea."
Another former analyst with the
Defense POW/MIA Office provided this information along
with many other disturbing details requiring
Congressional attention. Specifically, he detailed a
report referred to, in house, as the "185 Report," This
report discussed the possibility that as many as 185
American POWs were alive as late as 1976. During the
same time frame the Joint Casualty Resolution Center (JCRC)
concluded their own study. They found the possibility
existed that as many as 57 American servicemen might be
alive.
In February of 2005, the Joint
Commission Support Directorate, the investigative arm of
the U.S./Russian Joint POW/MIA Commission concluded;
Americans, including American servicemen, were
imprisoned in the Soviet Union."
In March 2006, memos written by a
former Defense Intelligence analyst while serving as an
investigator with the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA
Affairs were discovered. These memos detailed the
Vietnamese admission that some 19 servicemen listed as
died while missing were in fact captured. These
servicemen survived for varying lengths of time. The
committee never addressed this matter. In an interesting
side note, 10 of the nineteen servicemen Vietnamese
official acknowledged "survived into captivity" are
among the 57 our own (JCRC) concluded might still be
alive.
Then in September of 2008, a
memorandum, again written by the same investigator for
the Senate committee, based on a consensus of the
investigators, stated; "Today, Defense Department files
contain evidence that at least 59 Americans were -- or
may have been -- taken prisoner and their precise fate
is still unclear. This includes the 20-30 not officially
acknowledged by Vietnam in 1973. This represents the
minimum number of possible live POWs today…. U.S. field
teams in Vietnam since 1989 have uncovered evidence that
more Americans were in fact taken captive than
officially recorded."
This is but the tip of the iceberg,
requiring congressional attention. It is time to address
the volumes of new information available on POW/MIA
matters from World War II, Korea, Cold War, Vietnam and
the Gulf.
Please add your name as a co sponsor
for H.Res 111, as introduced by Congressman King.
Very truly yours,
|
