News Header
Home Page : News:
Newspaper Articles
Last Updated March 26, 2005
This article first appeared in the AP World Politics on Mon. July 8, 2002
AP
World Politics
Pentagon will search site in
China where US pilots crashed on failed spy-recovery mission
Mon
Jul 8, 2:59 AM ET By
ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer WASHINGTON - The Pentagon 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.
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.
Snoddy, of Eugene, Oregon, and Schwartz, of Louisville, Kentucky, both flew in
World War II — Snoddy for the Navy and Schwartz for the Marine Corps.
"These two boys were excellent pilots," said Bob Rousselot of Okay,
Oklahoma, 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, Florida, 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-altitude 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
during the 1950-53 war and never accounted for. China has not approved repeated
requests for access to wartime military files.
The Air America Association suggests letters of support be sent to: Citizens
Stamp Advisory Committee, c/o Stamp Management, U.S. Postal Service, 475
L'Enfant Plaza SW, Room 4474E, Washington, D.C. 20260-2437. Air America
Association, Inc. is located at P.O. Box 1522, Castorville, Texas 78009.
This article first appeared in the AP
World Politics on Mon. July 8, 2002
