Posted on 06/19/2005 5:23:56 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
EUGENE, Ore. (AP) - A CIA pilot killed in an ambush by Chinese communists 53 years ago has been buried in his mother's grave, a year after military investigators found his remains and identified them.
Robert Snoddy was 31 when he was shot down on a clandestine mission in Manchuria in 1952.
A last wish of Snoddy's mother was that no marker be placed on her grave until her son came home. A stone with the names of both mother and son will mark the long-delayed reunion.
"He's home, and it's not a time to be sad anymore," Roberta Lee Cox, Snoddy's daughter and only child, said following a funeral Friday.
Snoddy worked for the CIA, helping forces trying to unseat China's communist government. On his last mission, Snoddy and fellow pilot Norman Schwartz were leading a night flight to pick up what they thought was an anti-communist operative in what was then Manchuria, near the North Korean border.
But the operative apparently was a double agent and alerted communist forces. They opened fire as Snoddy and Schwartz came in low over the pickup spot, and the two pilots died when the plane burst into flames and crashed.
Two CIA agents aboard as passengers survived and were held more than 20 years in Chinese prisons before being released. One of them, John Downey, attended the funeral.
"It's been a long time," Downey said. "He was a great man and an outstanding flier."
DOWNEY, JOHN T. Compiled by Task Force Omega Inc
http://taskforceomegainc.org/d602.html
On 13 December 1971, the Chinese unexpectedly released Richard Fecteau to US control. During his extensive debriefing, he told US intelligence personnel that other Americans, including John Downey and Philip Smith, a US Air Force pilot shot down over China during the Vietnam War, were alive. Further, he provided specific and detailed information about their confinement as well as his nearly 20 years in captivity. For the first time, the US Air Force had positive proof that Capt. Smith was in fact alive and they immediately upgraded his status to Prisoner of War
RIP AND THANKYOU AGENT!
PRAYER FOR HIS DAUGHTER!
If the people in the CIA and FBI now were like Robert Snoddy was then, there would have been no 9/11.
Why not? Your post is so incredibly insulting to the men and women who have died in service to the CIA in the last decade or so.
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