Pentagon to Search Plane Site in China

AP ^ | Mon Jul 8, 2:34 AM ET | ROBERT BURNS

[Lake]

Pentagon to Search Plane Site in China
Mon Jul 8, 2:34 AM ET

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon ( news - web sites) is preparing to send a search team to northeastern China in hopes of recovering the remains of two American pilots believed to have been buried 50 years ago where their unmarked plane crash-landed during a failed spy mission for the CIA ( news - web sites).

Norman A. Schwartz, one of two pilots shot down over China Nov. 29, 1952, is seen in this undated Pentagon photo. 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 Central Intelligence Agency's covert actions in China. The Pentagon is sending a search team to northeastern China in hopes of recovering the remains believed to have been buried 50 years ago on the remote spot where their plane crash-landed on a failed spy mission for the CIA. (AP Photo/The Pentagon)

The search is an important milestone in the U.S. government's push to win China's cooperation in accounting for Americans lost not only in the Cold War but also the Korean War and World War II. It is the first time China has permitted a search for remains linked to a Cold War case.

"What we're all hopeful of is that a successful result from this mission will prompt more cooperation from the People's Republic of China in other areas," said Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia.

An eight-member search team from the Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii is scheduled to leave July 15 and investigate the crash site near the town of Antu in China's Jilin province.

Robert C. Snoddy and Norman A. Schwartz, accompanied by two CIA officers, 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 their spy mission.

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.

China says the charred bodies of Snoddy and Schwartz were buried at the snow-covered crash site. It is not certain that, five decades later, the remains can be found, recovered and identified.

The two 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.

Snotty, of Eugene, Ore., and Stewart, of Louisville, Ky., both flew in World War II — Snotty for the Navy and Stewart for the Marine Corps.

"These two boys were excellent pilots," said Bob Rousselot of Okay, Okla., who was Civil Air Transport's chief pilot and its liaison with the CIA. He recalled that Snoddy and Schwartz had trained hard for their mission but were "sitting ducks" because the Chinese had been tipped off and laid an ambush.

"We were aware of what could happen" on such missions, "so it was not a big shock," said Eddie Sims of Melbourne, Fla., a former Civil Air Transport pilot who knew Schwartz and Snoddy well — so well, in fact, that he later named his son Robert Norman Sims after the lost pilots.

Recovery of the pilots' remains would bring to a close one of the more sensitive Cold War-era espionage cases involving China, whose then-fledgling communist government was under covert assault from the CIA at the same time its army was fighting a war against U.S. forces in Korea.

Erik Kirzinger, a nephew of Schwartz, said his family is gratified that China is permitting the search.

"They recognize this was a humanitarian request that really is boundary-less," he said in a recent interview.

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.

Ginger Couden, a spokeswoman at the Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, said China also has agreed to allow the lab to send a team to the Himalayan Mountains of Tibet to attempt to recover remains of Americans who went down in two World War II crashes of C-46 aircraft. The team members, who underwent extensive high-altititude training, are to begin the mission Aug. 9.

Pentagon officials hope these cooperative efforts lead to more openness by China on lingering questions about the fate of U.S. troops captured in North Korea ( news - web sites) during the 1950-53 war and never accounted for. China has not approved repeated requests for access to wartime military files.

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[kennyo]

They ought to look for the body of John Birch while they're at it.