Stay safe Piasa !
Posted on 07/02/2004 3:38:50 PM PDT by aculeus
WASHINGTON (AP) - An American search team has located what its believes are human remains at a site in China where a CIA plane crash-landed on a secret mission nearly 52 years ago, a Pentagon official said Friday. The plane's two pilots, Robert C. Snoddy of Roseburg, Ore., and Norman A. Schwartz of Louisville, Ky., are believed to have been killed in the crash but their bodies were never recovered.
An initial visit to the crash site in July 2002 by a team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii found wreckage of the downed plane but no human remains. They concluded that the probability of finding remains was "quite low."
A search team returned last month to the site, near the town of Antu in the northeastern province of Jilin, and recovered what are believed to be human remains, as well as unspecified debris, according to Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Defense POW/MIA Office.
Greer said it was too early to know for sure whether they were the remains of Snoddy and Schwartz.
Snoddy and Schwartz were accompanied on the flight by two CIA officers and were about to pick up an anti-communist Chinese spy in the Manchurian foothills when their C-47 was shot down on Nov. 29, 1952. The CIA operatives, John Downey and Richard Fecteau, were captured alive, imprisoned by China for two decades and released only after Washington acknowledged they were spies.
The U.S. government initially told family members the men went down in the Sea of Japan on a routine flight to Tokyo, maintaining a cover story in order to keep a lid on the CIA's covert actions in China.
At the time, China and the United States were fighting on opposing sides in the Korean War and the CIA was trying to undermine the fledgling communist regime on its home territory.
Snoddy's daughter, Roberta Cox, who was born less than one month after his plane went down, said in a telephone interview Friday from San Jose, Calif., that she was hoping for confirmation that the remains are her father's.
"This would be a wonderful discovery," she said.
Snoddy's sister, Ruth Boss, 80, said in a telephone interview from Creswell, Ore., that the government has told her nothing about the result of the latest search mission in China, but she hopes the recovered remains turn out to be those of her older brother.
"I'd like to bring him home," she said.
Snoddy and Schwartz were pilots for Civil Air Transport, a CIA proprietary airline that supported clandestine missions in the Far East. They were considered contract employees rather than CIA staff officers, but in December 1998 their names were added to the Book of Honor at CIA headquarters. That marked the government's first public acknowledgment of the men's agency connection.
Through the ups and downs in U.S.-China relations in recent years, the Beijing government has cooperated with Washington on several projects to recover remains of World War II-era airmen on its soil. In 1999, for example, a U.S.-China team recovered remains of two Americans whose B-24 bomber crashed into a mountain in Guangxi province in 1944 while returning from an attack mission.
Hi Im new here.
thanks
Welcome aboard!
Welcome to the ranks of the unwashed conservatives.
WOW! ping
This is the CIA that predicted the collapse of Iran, the invasion of Afghanistan and the 9/11 bombings.
Although the Chinese shot the plane down and captured the agents - alive - the CIA thought they could keep a lid on the fact that they were conducting "clandestine" operations? I wonder if they signal each other with their Captain Marvel decoder rings too?
Other debris meaning the missile that shot the plane out of the sky?
Covert operations, not clandestine operations. There's a difference, and the article used the correct word. Your use of quote marks makes it look like you're quoting the article.
Welcome!
While you are focused on whether I correctly used quotes, "covert," or "clandestine" I was amused by the irony in trying to maintain the appearance of any of these in the face of the obvious fact that the cover had been blown.
"I wonder if they signal each other with their Captain Marvel decoder rings too?"
It would do you wonders to do some research on the intelligence services of the U.S., incl. the DIA, NSA, CIA, etc. You are obviously uninformed and have a low opinion of these groups.
This is what an uncle of mine used to do... first time I have ever seen a news article on the topic. He must have had some big brass ones. I'm glad he was never caught!
It's done because sometimes 'the obvious' isn't so obvious to everyone else. The intentional uncertaintly and confusion around an already confused event may very well save lives and/or time. Certainly the alternative, running to a soapbox and announcing to your enemies that your personnel are spies and have 'obviously' crashed in enemy territory, is not a good idea.
In May of 1998, the NETWORK had a long conversation with CDR Flynn. He related, in great detail, time in captivity with civilian John T. Downey, captured 11/29/52 and held until 03/12/73. He also spent time with civilian Richard Fecteau, captured 11/29/52 and released from China 12/12/71. He said Richard was a Yale Football player who spent his time in captivity jumping rope. Flynn never understood where the energy came from! One day he said, he noticed him eating the "meal of the day," rice gruel. "I had all I could do to eat one bowl," and he was eating SIX! Fecteau went on, he says, to Harvard, married, and became a lawyer. All three speak about once a year. Flynn is still searching the Guinness Book of World Records for the jump rope record Fecteau should have, he says. John Downey has a book relating his story, on the market.
Bump.
Stay safe Piasa !
The Commies have a history of these things. German prisoners taken at Stalingrad (those that survived captivity) where "returned" in the 60's.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.