Cold War Veterans Blog

Russia Agrees to Restart POW MIA Commission

The Washington Times

July 9, 2009



POW commission restarts

Russia agreed this week to reactivate a U.S.-Russian commission on prisoners of war and missing in action (POW-MIA) issues that Moscow backed away from in 2004 amid worsening ties with Washington.

The White House announced that the U.S. and Russian governments reached "a common understanding on a framework" on the commission after exchanging diplomatic notes.

Specifically, the two sides are renewing talks at the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on Prisoners of War and Missing in Action set up in the early 1990s to resolve issues of missing servicemen.

The commission first rose to prominence in 1994 when the Russian head, Col. Gen. Dmitri Volkogonov, announced that he had discovered a KGB document from the 1960s stating that Russian intelligence had been assigned the task of delivering knowledgeable Americans to the then-Soviet Union for intelligence purposes. The general's claims were never verified, and Russian intelligence later claimed no such plan was implemented.

If American POWs were shipped from Vietnam to Russia, it would be contrary to official U.S. claims that all Americans were accounted for from the Vietnam War.

Longtime POW researcher Mark Sauter, who has 20 years' experience probing the fate of Korean War POW-MIAs, including research in Russia and North Korea, said Russia halted the commission work five years ago.

"Restoring the Joint Commission is overdue and necessary, but not sufficient, to resolve the fate of many missing American heroes," Mr. Sauter said.

Mr. Sauter said the commission helped the Russians resolve the fate of dozens to scores of Russian soldiers lost in Afghanistan after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

Several U.S. cases, including the recovery of the remains of an American aviator killed in Russia during the Cold War, also were resolved by the panel.

However, Mr. Sauter said the problem with the commission is that Moscow has been withholding secret files it has on American POWs shipped to Siberia from Korea.

"We know and they know they have files that would resolve cases of Americans shipped from Korea to China, to Siberia," he said. "But all the U.S. side has been allowed to do is pick around the edges of those files."

Mr. Sauter said Moscow has refused to release files from the KGB intelligence service, GRU military intelligence, and Central Committee documents on U.S. prisoners.

A Russian Embassy spokesman could not be reached for comment about the issue.

President Bush first requested in 2006 that the commission be reactivated and returned to its position under the Kremlin after it was downgraded and put under the Russian Defense Ministry in 2004.

"This exchange restores in full the important work of the Joint Commission and demonstrates the unwavering commitment both our countries have toward our servicemen and -women," the White House said in a July 6 statement.

The U.S. side is headed by retired Air Force Gen. Robert H. "Doc" Foglesong, and commission members include Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Georgia Republican, and Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat; former Vietnam War POW Rep. Sam Johnson, Republican of Texas; Ambassador Charles Ray, deputy assistant defense secretary for POW/MIA Affairs; A. Denis Clift, president of the Joint Military Intelligence College; Timothy Nenninger of the National Archives; and Pentagon official Norman Kass, who serves as the executive secretary.

The commission will include four working groups on missing from World War II; the Korean War; the Vietnam War, and the Cold War, including Soviet military personnel unaccounted for in Afghanistan.

It is not clear why Russia agreed to renew the Commission's work, but Mr. Sauter suggested it may have been a way for the Russian government to show a desire to improve relations with Washington while President Obama visited Moscow this week.