“The U.S. government has approached the investigation of its missing cases in a most ineffective way,” says Dr. Beverly Deane Shaver, 83. She learned decades after the 1956 loss of her husband Jim Deane that classified intelligence reports indicated he and a fellow crewman had been captured alive and tracked in Chinese captivity for at least two years after their plane was downed.

A more blunt appraisal comes from Charlotte Busch Mitnik, whose brother Sam was part of a crew shot down by the Soviets in 1952 (she had earlier lost a brother in World War II). The State Department informed Moscow that America was "compelled to believe" some of Sam's crew had survived and been imprisoned in Siberia (a Russian later reported Sam and another crewman by name as captives). Sam's wife Ruth died last week at the age of 92 without learning the truth about his fate, which Mitnik blames in large part on a lackadaisical U.S. government. “There has been nothing new for years (from the Pentagon)," she says. "Every year the same b.s.”

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is the newest incarnation of the oft scandal-plagued Pentagon POW/MIA bureaucracy and is now led by retired general Michael Linnington.

Family members and long-time observers of the POW/MIA issue uniformly praise the work of Pentagon field investigators who sacrifice their comfort, and sometimes risk their safety, in the painstaking process of recovering POW/MIA remains and interviewing potential sources abroad. They also appreciate the efforts of certain staffers and members of the US-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs, including Cold War expert Dr. James Connell and Rep. Sam Johnson, a Korean and Vietnam War aviator and hero for his conduct as a POW in Hanoi.

But there is much less good will for the rotating heads of the POW office and their policy staff, who often lack historical knowledge of the complex historical issue and the time or inclination to acquire it. Linnington has assumed command after congressional and media pressure to streamline and accelerate the process of accounting for America's missing, including 126 aviators lost during Cold War reconnaissance flights. But progress remains elusive. 

DPAA appears far from achieving the capability to account for 200 missing Americans annually, which Congress mandated several years ago. Many family members remain convinced they'll be long dead before DPAA accounts for their missing loved ones (including the almost 8,000 POW/MIA from the Korean War).

Linnington has recently been forced to admit the Pentagon's much-publicized agreement to pay China for research in Beijing’s archives has failed to resolve the case of even a single one of the many missing Americans last known or suspected to have been in Chinese hands during the Korean and Cold Wars. Beijing in effect pulled a “bait and switch” on the U.S., admitting years after signing the archives agreement that it considered files on Americans in its prisons “classified” and not part of the deal. 

Meantime, the US-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs has essentially ground to a halt due to the tense relationship between Washington and Moscow and lack of focus by the Pentagon and White House. Former insiders say Moscow has played a “shell game” with U.S. investigators, providing access to some (often very useful) documents and sources that provide important clues, but denying access to files from the KGB/GRU (military intelligence) that could quickly solve the fate of many Americans.

A Russian team from the Commission has been visiting Washington in recent days in an attempt to regain momentum. But the Pentagon did not supply advance notification, or offer meetings with the Russians, to POW/MIA families now at an annual convention near Washington, mere miles from Russian officials who might be able to account for their loved ones. “It’s just another way they (Pentagon POW/MIA officials) do things, not including family members,” says Janella Rose, sister of a Vietnam War POW/MIA and chairperson of the National Alliance for the Return of America’s Missing Servicemen (NAF). “It’s a pretty sad situation that the government keeps stonewalling families.”

“It’s scandalous,” asserts Norm Kass, the former executive director of the U.S. side of the Commission, who notes the Pentagon has even removed from its web site large volumes of information Kass and his investigators obtained in the former Soviet Union. Kass, a Russian linguist and Vietnam veteran, compares the removal of the information and Pentagon failures to follow up on its leads to “Soviet revisionist history.” He attributes the situation to persistent bureaucratic infighting at the Pentagon that has impeded efforts to account for the missing, including those reported by former senior Soviet officers and other first-hand witnesses to have been shipped to Siberia.

Kass is even more alarmed by Mr. Linnington's new pronouncement that: “We have no conclusive proof that remains of POWs from the above wars were imprisoned in those countries. It follows that no cases of Americans held in the Soviet Union, FSU (former Soviet Union), or Warsaw Pact have been resolved by the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission.” This in a response to questions posed to Michael Linnington by NAF, obtained through the assistance of Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and his indefatigable staffer Lillian Cruz. See more below.]

This assertion amazes and infuriates Kass, the former Commission senior executive. “I don’t know who’s writing Linnington’s scripts, but they should be fired,” he said, citing multiple cases in which the Commission has helped lead to the recovery of U.S. remains in the former Soviet Union and even Vietnam. These include celebrated cases such as the recovery of the remains of Capt. John Dunham, a downed Cold War aviator secretly buried on Soviet territory in 1952; six members of a U.S. reconnaissance plane downed over then Soviet-Armenia in 1958 and other cases not widely publicized.

 “I cannot fathom why this is still happening, other than there is still so much we are not being told,” says Terri Mumley, whose grandfather Lloyd Smith was reportedly captured by the Chinese in early 1953 after he and fellow crewmen William McClure were seen in a raft drifting to shore near Shantou, China, after a chaotic effort by U.S. forces to rescue the crew of their downed plane.

The Associated Press soon reported a Chinese manhunt for the survivors and U.S. intelligence received multiple reports they had survived and been captured, including one from a foreign missionary. Within a month, Hong Kong newspapers reported American prisoners had been marched through the streets of Swatow (now spelled Shantou) “as an object of public ridicule,” summarized a previously secret Navy file. The Americans had tried to persuade three local fishermen to take them to Hong Kong, the reports said, but one of the natives had turned them in. The fishermen were executed and the Americans imprisoned, then taken into the interior of China. Sources disagreed on whether the men were ultimately sent for long-term imprisonment or simply killed.

The Navy also appeared to have additional, perhaps still-classified information on the men’s fate. A classified Navy report concluded: “It is the opinion of this command that Smith and his companion survived the ditching without injury and were probably taken prisoner by the Chinese Communists.” 

But Smith -- remembered by his family as a loving dad and ardent baseball player --  and McClure were declared dead anyway. “Why did they ever consider him dead?” asks Mumley.

Just a month later, Lt. j.g. Jim Deane took off on a classified surveillance flight from his base in Japan, leaving behind Beverly, his new wife and fellow Cornell graduate. Navy Plane No. 124363, a Navy P4M “Mercator” reconnaissance aircraft, was lumbering off the Chinese coast on the moonlit night of Aug. 22, 1956, when attacked by Chinese MIG fighters. It managed to issue a distress signal before disappearing. American search and rescue efforts, under fighter cover, recovered the remains of two crewmen off Shanghai, along with at least two life rafts. Two more of the dead were returned shortly after by the Chinese. That left 12 men missing. the Navy soon declared that no one could have survived the incident and declared the men dead as the incident faded from the headlines. 

Then, in the early 1990s, Dr. Beverly Deane Shaver (remarried in 1960) ran across declassified intelligence reports on the incident discovered by the author of this article, plus the disturbing revelation that America had not asked China to return survivors from the shoot down. 

The intelligence reports – not shared after the incident with Dr. Shaver, or any other families as far as we know – began coming in weeks after the downing and continued for around two years. They described how three Americans from the downed plane had been captured by a Chinese patrol boat. One died just hours later, but the other two were taken to the Baoding Army Hospital in Shanghai, where they soon recovered. By November 1956 the prisoners had been moved to the residence of one “Tsai Mao,” Chief of Public Information, Ministry of Social Welfare. The reports included physical descriptions, which according to Navy analysts appeared to fit James Deane and either AO2 Warren Caron or AT2 Leonard Strykowsky. 

Dr. Shaver was struck by one odd descriptor – the man who seemed to fit Deane’s description, said the source, was “not hairy.” Neither was her former husband.

Intelligence reports continued to follow the fate of the men. They reported the captive Americans would face a hearing in April 1957; according to normal Chinese practices, the men would likely have to confess to their “crimes” and apologize. One of the aviators, apparently under pressure from his captors, was said to have promised “he will reside permanently in Communist China if given livelihood (sic) guarantees.”

The story ended with the man alleged to be Deane living outside Beijing under the control of Ch'en Lung, assistant chief of the Public Security Department in Beijing (Ch’en was later confirmed to be a real person), and the other American working at the “Sheng-Lung Corporation" in Shanghai.

Shaver wonders what reports came in next and suspects more documents on the case remain classified. Did Deane and his fellow crewman actually survive their incident? Or were the reports simply fake? According to a Pentagon report produced after Dr. Shaver resuscitated the case, “the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) concluded that these live sightings were inconclusive due to the lack of additional reports to establish their validity.”  We hope this does not surprise the Navy; given the danger of intelligence collection in China, it is remarkable agents in China could get even the information they provided to America.

Responding to pressure from Shaver, the United States government asked China to investigate, but in 1992, Beijing announced it could find “no information to support” the reports. Still she pressed on. In 1995, an American official suggested Chinese records on the case might have been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. This did not dissuade her. She even received assistance from two-time Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a friend of Deane’s from flight school, and members of his high-powered network such as President Ford and Henry Kissinger.

Dr. Shaver journeyed to Beijing herself several times, first in 2000, and what she found there only deepened the mystery. A senior official with ties to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told her Beijing still considered records on Deane "highly classified," which made no sense if he had really been killed in the crash. A former senior Chinese Air Defense officer admitted “two pilots” had been captured from the incident, she learned, but he claimed a poor memory when questioned later 

The Chinese ultimately claimed they had no records the men had been captured, and were joined by some former US officials in claiming the crash could not have been survived (although many US POWs have returned alive from incidents where survival was discounted). A document Beijing handed over in 2006 did nothing to resolve the fate of the missing men. As with so many cases from the Korean War, there seems no question the Chinese have information they still refuse to share with the US. [The family of Deane's fellow crewman Carl Edwin Messinger also continues to seek answers and express deep frustration with the Pentagon's accounting efforts.]

[Some of the facts above are from an excellent article by Beverly's daughter Katie, a Washington Post reporter. See the story here.]