Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 18, 1994                   TAG: 9401180092
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

STUDY: SOVIETS TOOK 50 U.S. POWS

The Rand Corp. study's findings parallel an assertion the U.S. government made to Moscow in September that it had developed broad and compelling evidence of such transfers.

However, the study discounts the possibility that the Soviets took more than 50 Americans. The U.S. government claim was of several hundred transfers, although officials since have lowered that estimate.

Charles Freeman Jr., the assistant secretary of defense for regional security affairs, stated in a Nov. 4 letter that "perhaps a dozen may have been transferred" and noted the Russian government has not admitted to any transfers.

About 8,100 American servicemen are listed as unaccounted for from the Korean War, but Rand estimates that the true number for which there is no direct evidence of death is 2,195, and some of those probably died on the battlefield.

The Rand study says there is little doubt that the Soviets took Americans during the 1950-53 war in which Moscow's forces in North Korea and China secretly fought air battles against U.S. planes and interrogated American prisoners. The main uncertainty is how many were taken, the study said.

The Soviet 64th Air Corps was based during the war at Mukden, China, and an air defense unit organized under the 64th was based at Andong, China, near the Korean border. Also, Soviet military intelligence during the war was organized under the 64th, although the KGB operated independently, the study said.

"There is no doubt, and there is ample direct eyewitness testimony to support the conclusion that Soviet intelligence organs exploited U.S. servicemen in Korea, in China and on the USSR territory," the study concluded.

The report's author, Paul Cole, said Monday he believes one of the estimated 50 Americans taken to the Soviet Union and not returned may have been Air Force Capt. Ara Mooradian of Fresno, Calif., the bombardier in a B-29 bomber shot down over Korea on Oct. 23, 1951. Cole said he tried unsuccessfully to locate surviving relatives of Mooradian to alert them to his findings.

Cole, in an interview, said he cannot prove Mooradian was taken by the Soviets. But he cited circumstantial evidence, including a Soviet citizen who claimed to have seen Mooradian at Zimka, a Gulag labor camp, in late 1952 or early 1953.

Cole said he sees a strong possibility that two other crewmen from the B-29 were taken by the Soviets.

The Rand study said the Soviets' main interest in American servicemen was to learn about U.S. aircraft, particularly the F-86 jet fighter and the B-29 strategic bomber, and their technical systems such as radar-directed gun sights and bomb sights.

"There is no doubt that Soviet intelligence services were on the ground prepared to interrogate and recruit POWs from the very beginning of the Korean War," the study said.