ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 28, 1997 TAG: 9701280054
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DOCUMENTS long kept secret reveal that U.S. airmen captured in the Korean War were interrogated by Soviets.
Some U.S. fliers captured during the Korean War gave Soviet interrogators valuable information on everything from troop sleeping times to battle tactics, according to newly released documents held for decades in Russian secret files.
The Soviets saw Korea as a window on the future - a future that officials in both Moscow and Washington feared might include World War III. ``We feared a Russian attack, just as they must fear a U.S. attack,'' one U.S. pilot told his interrogators.
Some American airmen who fell into communist hands after being shot down over North Korea and China resisted cooperating with their interrogators. Others provided reams of military data as well as personal observations on morale in the U.S. ranks. Some said they saw little sense in the war.
``So the killing continues, and I simply tried to finish my 100 flights so that I could get back to my wife and family faster,'' one fighter pilot is quoted as saying.
Another called the 1950-53 war - in which hundreds of thousands of Koreans and Chinese and more than 50,000 Americans were killed - a ``completely useless affair.''
It certainly was not useless to Soviet intelligence, however. Well over 200 captured airmen apparently were pumped about the latest weaponry. The Soviets, who carefully hid their role in Korea, were looking for clues to how their potential U.S. enemy would fight in an all-out war.
The Russian government has acknowledged holding interrogation records on only about 30 American POWs from Korea. Records surfaced as part of a joint U.S.-Russian investigation into the fate of unaccounted for American POWs.
There is no indication the POWs were tortured. To cloak Soviet involvement, the questions were posed by either North Korean or Chinese officers. The Soviets orchestrated it and sometimes put their eavesdroppers out of view.
The Pentagon classified the reports after receiving them from Moscow in 1992. An Associated Press request for them in 1993 under the Freedom of Information Act was denied. After considering an AP appeal for three years, the Pentagon released the material with some parts blacked out.
It is clear from the reports that the Soviets were eager to learn details of the Air Force's most advanced fighter, the F-86 Sabre, especially its radar gun sight. They also wanted names of U.S. pilots and crews in Korea, locations of bases, flight routes, combat tactics, air rescue plans, details of radar systems and information about development plans for new U.S. combat aircraft.
``The Russians were convinced this was just a dress rehearsal for the real thing'' - a global, possibly nuclear, conflict with the West, said Paul Cole, a private analyst who uncovered the first Soviet interrogation reports in Moscow several years ago. ``We know they interrogated hundreds of our pilots.''
A question raised, and not yet fully answered, is whether the interrogations were the first step in a Soviet scheme to take some of the most valuable POWs to Soviet camps. If that did happen - and the U.S. government is increasingly convinced it did - none returned to tell about it.
In a recent report based on more than four years of investigation, a Pentagon team said it had found indications the Soviet MGB - predecessor to the KGB - had a hand in interrogating U.S. POWs in Korea and in transferring them to Soviet territory.
``The evidence is not conclusive but it is highly suggestive,'' the report said.
The Pentagon report also cited a 1954 telegram from the top commander of Soviet forces in Korea stating that 262 American fliers had been through interrogation. They were among the airmen whose interrogation reports were provided to the AP.
In releasing the documents, the Pentagon cautioned that the information passed to the Soviets ``may not be factual'' and that some of the Americans may have lied to their interrogators to avoid giving up useful information.
The Pentagon blacked out the names of the Americans, citing privacy considerations.
The AP was able to identify some of the men through other means. One is Michael DeArmond, a retired Air Force brigadier general who was a 23-year-old first lieutenant when he was shot down in an F-86 fighter over North Korea on April 21, 1952.
DeArmond of Clifton, Va., recalls being questioned intensely by his North Korean captors - with what he assumed was a Soviet intelligence officer observing - during the first two months of his confinement. He said he refused to confess to germ warfare but answered some other questions about U.S. activities.
``There was absolutely no guidance'' from Air Force higher-ups on what kinds of information could be divulged in captivity, DeArmond said in an interview.
``We lived in fear of ending up in the Gulag,'' DeArmond said, referring to the far-flung Soviet network of labor camps and prisons where millions disappeared.
Edwin Heller, of Grass Valley, Calif., was an Air Force lieutenant colonel when he was shot down Jan. 23, 1953, by a Soviet MiG-15 on the Chinese side of the Yalu River, which borders North Korea. Suffering from a broken arm and a compound fracture of his leg, he withstood two years of ceaseless questioning.
In an interview, Heller said he does not recall seeing any Russians during his captivity, but among the Russian interrogation reports are 12 pages of material Heller acknowledges describe him, his shootdown and some of the things he said in captivity, including an admission of flying over Chinese territory.
The Russian documents include two separate reports on interrogations of Roland W. Parks, who abandoned his malfunctioning and fuel-starved F-86 fighter over Chinese territory on Sept. 4, 1952, after a dogfight with MiG-15s.
Parks told Pentagon investigators in 1993 that he was interrogated first by Russians and later by Chinese, and that one Russian told him he would be taken to Siberia to ``be with other Americans like you.'' Parks figured they changed their minds because he had little useful information.
LENGTH: Long : 114 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP Retired Brig. Gen. Michael DeArmond, a fighter pilotby CNBshot down over North Korea, walks outside his Clifton, Va., home.