Dropping the Flag: an Inside View of DPMO.

Dropping the Flag: an Inside View of DPMO.

By CDR Chip Beck, USNR (ret.)
Special to the U.S. Veteran Dispatch
January-February 1997 Issue

Two years ago, I did not believe what I now know from firsthand experience to be true. The Defense POW/MIA Office (DPMO) has failed miserably to honor its most important mission: To resolve the mystery and facts surrounding America's unrepatriated POWs, living or dead. Furthermore, some individuals within DPMO actively work against that mission, which is a sacred trust. From May 1995 until October 1996, I was recalled to active duty as an analyst and investigator with DPMO. After military and intelligence service stretching from Indochina to Desert Storm, I anticipated this assignment to be my last and perhaps most rewarding. Those expectations were partially correct. It did turn out to be my last assignment before retirement. It was also one of the most disappointing glimpses of avarice, career-building and self-serving propaganda I have experienced in my 33 year career. During 18 months with DPMO, I worked both in the Research and Analysis Directorate (RA) under Mr. Chuck Trowbridge and later as a Special Assistant to Mr. Norm Kass, Director of the Joint Commission Support Directorate. These two men were as different as night and day. Darkness, duplicity and deceit surrounded Chuck Trowbridge, while Norm Kass is a lone beacon of integrity in DPMO's upper management ranks. DPMO's goal should be to work itself out of a job. While lip service is given to that objective, the reality is that a cadre of bureaucrats long ago placed a proprietary strangle hold on the POW mission and milk it for all it is worth. DPMO's management attitude tends more toward prolonging the job, without doing the real work needed or expected by the families and Congress who commissioned them. To DPMO managers, the POWs represent a sacred cow, not a sacred trust. Since the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA) and the Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaiian Islands, (CILHI) actually direct the recovery and examination of remains, DPMO's efforts are primarily aimed at perpetuating its bureaucratic framework as an end unto itself. Not ones to miss an opportunity, however, DPMO managers do get involved in field work when a "photo opportunity for career enhancement" presents itself. By portraying themselves as managers (the word is not inter-changeable with leaders) of bone-hunters and archaeologists, Director James Wold and his Deputy, J. Alan Liotta, justify their paychecks and prolong their feeding at the public trough. The view from the inside makes it clear their strategy studiously avoids confronting our erstwhile adversaries (who may not be as erstwhile as depicted) with the truly hard and embarrassing question: What happened to the POWs who survived WWII, Korea, the Cold War and Indochina and did not come home? To give credit where credit is due, the question was asked once or twice over the decades -- meekly, rhetorically and without force of conviction. The answer -- vague, evasive, deceptively planned and chock full of false conviction -- was invariably received and gratefully accepted, virtually without question and naively without suspicion. Any citizen or official who thinks DPMO is pushing for resolution to the mystery of unaccounted POWs or that DPMO even admits that unrepatriated POWs ever existed, has fallen victim to a carefully manipulated morass of willful deception. The reality of DPMO thinking was evident in one meeting Kass and I convened in General Wold's office in May 1996 with "the cabal." DPMO lawyer Frances O'Brien defended the communist regimes as heartily as O.J. Simpson's lawyers do their client. "There is no evidence that any transfers took place, therefore, no transfers took place," he intoned at the outset of the meeting. (Actually, there is plenty of evidence, and even if there were not, that just means the other side conducted its clandestine operations professionally -- with plausible deniability). At the same meeting, Liotta became highly indignant, agitated, and nearly convulsive at a comment I made referring to the communist conspiracy regarding our POWs. Shrieking at an octave that was damaging to one's hearing, Liotta warned that I should "be careful about using terms such as conspiracy." (I had looked the term up in the dictionary. It is one of the simpler ones in the English language to understand and apply. It only takes two people to engage in one and I'm almost certain the communists allocated at least that many to deal with our POWs in ways they successfully hid from us, the Americans). Although the families are periodically and perfunctorily assured that hard questions about "live" Americans are raised with the Koreans, Vietnamese and Russians, they rarely are, with the exception of the JCSD element under Norm Kass. Even then, deceptive answers are all too readily accepted as a matter of politeness by General Wold and policy design by Liotta. When forced by circumstances, and only when forced, DPMO is careful to ask about "live Americans" and "last known alive POWs" in a vague context that begs the issue of clandestine operations and skirts the broader, more fundamental topic of "unrepatriated prisoners." Trip reports by the DPMO front office managers (nicknamed "tourists") and the RA Directorate chiefs (called "statutes") indicate discussions about unrepatriated POWs do not take place with any seriousness or regularity. DPMO would be hard-pressed to produce any documentation (made at the time of the trips) that substantiates that any discussions at all took place on the matter. J. Alan Liotta tells reporters and families he has raised the issue of live prisoners, but that claim was never supported internally and is disputed by other DPMO officials in a manner that raises the possibility that Liotta may be telling outright falsehoods. During the Spring 1996 talks in New York with the North Koreans for example, Insung Lee, the only Korean linguist-analyst in DPMO, was not allowed to bring up the issue of unrepatriated POWs in formal discussions. "Team leader" Liotta elected not to, but subsequently claims he did when the issue was raised by the League of Families. However, ignoring the formal ban on serious questions, Lee challenged his North Korean counterparts to tell the truth in private. He told them he knew they were not being honest and implored them to tell the truth. He was reprimanded for the "affront" by Liotta, after the Pyongyang delegates cried foul. Small surprise then, that Insung Lee was not invited by DPMO to be a part of the team on a follow-on trip to North Korea. The North Koreans returned home to write a series of nasty public press releases about Insung Lee, using standard communist rhetoric that, when translated, means "you bastards are on to us, but we never admit it in a thousand years." The North Koreans did not want to interrupt their gifts of money by talking about the clandestine POW programs they ran with the help of the Soviets and Bloc allies. Liotta was terrified that he might not be able to advance his career by leading the "historic, first DOD delegation to visit North Korea." (A man much wiser than I put it all in perspective. When asked to balance the fate of thousands of POWs against their own country and his own career choices, it was easy, he said, to understand why the Koreans and Liotta made the decisions they did. "They're liars and he's an idiot," I was told). Liotta even disputes himself, by the absence of any supporting documents (transcripts) demonstrating that the issue of unaccounted POWs was forcefully raised and discussed. Instead, a typical Liotta report is replete with glorious, Leninesque self-portrayals, carefully worded to evoke images of a diminutive young bureaucrat, steeped in five years of college and no life experience of significance, standing on the brink of history. Instead of substantive briefings, DPMO employees are routinely gathered to smile appreciatively and applaud accounts of infantile actions that are frankly an embarrassment to professionals and veterans. Examples included: -Accounts of J. Alan Liotta, hiding behind a Landrover on the Jordanian side of the Iraqi border, waiting breathlessly for the results of an unsuccessful search for remains of a Desert Storm loss. -Accounts of J. Alan Liotta bringing a shoe box of bones across the Korean DMZ for the cameras and his personnel file. (CILHI has yet to determine if these remains are American, Korean or pork chops, but the true objective, personal publicity for J. Alan was achieved immediately). -Film clips of J. Alan Liotta, wearing his Redskins knit hat with tassel, standing in the fog (appropriate), thanking his Chinese communist hosts (who had the sense to remain somewhere dry) for discovering a WWII crash site by accident. (Does anyone want to take bets on whether he ever asked the Chinese about the unresolved C-123 they shot down on purpose over North Laos in December 1972? That was no accident, so DPMO cannot expect them to know where that crash site is located). After a quarter-century in the clandestine service, I tended to look at the POW issues from a different operational background and perspective than most DPMO'ers. On five continents, I experienced firsthand the wars of intrigue and deception practiced by both Superpowers. (All Liotta ever did was read the Fluff Reports from the safety of a desk, and then for not all that long). When it comes to the realities of the Cold War and the hot conflicts it spawned, it appeared that most DPMO managers and many analysts were living either in dreamland or a state of constant denial. The words "naive" and "ridiculous" are much too refined to describe some of the statements and viewpoints that DPMO information managers attempt to pass off as "wisdom" or "facts." In the RA Directorate, viewpoints, analyses, intelligence community contacts and discoveries that challenge DPMO's corporate positions (called "fantasies") were regularly and bureaucratically suppressed by Chuck Trowbridge and company. Now, I've spent 3 decades sifting out fabrications from facts and I know there are many scam artists at work in Indochina. But, I read, heard and discussed enough credible information from other sources to know that they cannot all be dismissed out of hand. DPMO claims they "investigate" all leads, but their definition of "investigation" is at times simply synonymous with uttering, "It ain't true." Few reports were allowed to exit RA to be shared, reviewed or God forbid, questioned by the JCSD experts with more appropriate knowledge and experience. I was actually told that "all the questions have been answered" and informed that "the Vietnamese could never have fooled us -- what we didn't know during the war, we have learned since then." It was that kind of bigoted thinking that lost Indochina Wars Numbers One and Two for the French and the Americans. It is also the kind of self-deception that DPMO management uses to prevent investigators from circling the globe in search for the truth about our POWs who transited China, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Manchuria, perhaps Poland and Hungary and any one of a dozen Soviet Republics en route route to the Gulag Archipelago from 1945 to the 1970s. Oh yes, I am aware that General Wold, Ambassador Malcom Toon and the DPMO front office managers have visited Hawaii and as many capitals as possible. Their agenda is clearly more directed at tourism than fact-finding. It is an in-house DPMO joke that Ambassador Toon will not retire until he gets to visit that last former Soviet Republic on the list, so he can claim to have visited all "14." (And what did he learn? Another number comes to mind: Zero). On the subject of ridiculous travels at taxpayer (and POW) expense, Alan Liotta's first trip to North Korean ranks as a classic. At the first DPMO staff meeting following his return, J. Alan was all a-twitter and breathless at his monumental accomplishments. He seriously claimed the Western record for the number of rooms visited in the Pyongyang War Museum - "39 out of 80." (Most of us, as you can expect, were simply giddy at the news).

Of course, nothing was said about the content of what was seen in those rooms (how much can you take in on a jog?) or what difference it made in the slightest to resolving POW issues. But it was a record and that was important to Alan.

Of equal importance was the fact that the North Koreans allowed Alan and his team to "roam" (his word) around a two acre field, alleged to be a possible crash site, without restraint. Nothing was found (perhaps because it had been tilled for 44 years), but the very significance of "roaming free" was hailed as a great victory. (No one bothered to remind J. Alan that herds of cows have been doing the same thing, with equal results for the POW saga, for years).

Grownups in the audience were torn between cheering wildly --or booing-- at the news, so most remained silent or looked bewildered.

By the end of 1995, it was clear that RA was mainly concerned with "scrubbing" (and "rescrubbing") old reports and using recycled, incomplete information to spew out an infinite variety of tired cliches about the POWs.

Not only was there a lack of professional competence and a failure to exhaust leads (that have gone unexplored for decades), but there exists within the management majority and an unfortunate number of dog-loyal subordinates, an absence of intellectual curiosity about how and why this nation was deceived about the POWs.

In December 1995, I transferred to Norm Kass's JCSD as his special assistant. The move came after a former GRU (Soviet military intelligence) officer with 20 years' experience told me that the Soviets had indeed exploited American POWs in Korea and Vietnam. Sitting in my Arlington living room in October 1995 he said, "We had a program, and we were successful."

My GRU friend, who is "reliable," went into some detail about the Soviet exploitation program and Soviet Special Operations in South Vietnam. He gave what insights he had learned during his career with regard to the transfer of POWs to the USSR from Vietnam. One eyewitness personally told him of five American POWs being loaded on a transport plane from Vietnam, en route to the southern Soviet Republics and undisclosed points beyond.

The amazing thing is, I was not the first American official to whom he had told this story, although I probed for and received additional details. He first surfaced his information in 1992, a fact that I confirmed through my Intelligence Community contacts. A report was disseminated to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in 1992, where it inevitably had to have gone to the POW/MIA people working there at that time.

However, when I obtained a copy of the 1992 report and added it to my own unclassified debriefing of the GRU colonel, no one in DPMO admitted to having ever seen it before. Curiously, but characteristically, Chuck Trowbridge refused to pass the recovered copy of the 1992 report or my new 1995 contact debrief along to the Joint Commission Support Directorate for more expert analysis. I waited two weeks, then hand-carried both items the 50 yards required and delivered them to Norm Kass.

On the basis of on that action and subsequent discussions, Mr. Kass requested my transfer to his section as a special investigator, focusing specifically on the transfer of POWs to the Soviet Union from WWII onward. In February 1996, General Wold approved a special initiative proposed by Kass and myself to investigate quietly and more creatively the transfer issue, mechanisms and options for acquiring substantive information.

Unfortunately, Wold negated any benefit of this promising option by abdicating his own leadership responsibilities almost immediately. (Wold appears as a nice, well-meaning gentleman who is all too easily manipulated by the more sinister DPMO scions).

Soon after we received Wold's approval, Trowbridge, Liotta and "the cabal of old-timers" conspired against the initiative we were undertaking on behalf of the POWs. (Unknown to the conspirators, an employee with integrity intercepted a very revealing internal memorandum -- one that JCSD Director Kass and I were not intended to see).

In the furtive memo, the Special Initiative, which General Wold wanted to keep "close hold" until Mr. Kass and I had time to evaluate the options, was admittedly revealed and discussed by the DPMO Finance Officer, Dick Conoboy, with Chuck Trowbridge and other RA cadre who were not then authorized to be briefed.

The Conoboy memo, which was a combination of self-serving evil and ignorance, announced to J. Alan Liotta that "We've discussed CDR Beck's operation [among ourselves] . . . and agree...that it ...should not see the light of day."

Liotta's support in squashing the investigations was implicitly solicited, if not previously granted already. Subsequent developments confirmed that he not only willingly joined in, but directed the sabotage to the point of possibly crossing the boundary of legality. (These actions were described in seven hours of closed hearings before the Dornan Subcommittee on 1 OCT 96, during which representatives of the DOD and CIA Inspector General Staff were present).

Later on, Liotta and his associate managers (which he officially formed into a "Corporate Board" to act as a collective challenge to Wold's vested authority) cajoled the General into letting them manage the "diversion and destruction" of the initiative. (Despite their efforts, more progress was achieved than Trowbridge or Liotta knew or expected. Unfortunately, a lack of DPMO support created an inability to exploit leads on behalf of the POWs. Internal bureaucratic sabotage made it nearly impossible. The only way to keep faith with the POWs was to challenge "the cabal" head-on internally).

Why was an initiative, designed to seek more independent information about the transfer of American POWs to the Soviet Union, such a threat to the managers of the office Congress tasked with this very mission? This is a question I have been asked, and asked myself, many times.

While I shy away from any "grand conspiracy" affecting the POW issue, I do subscribe to the "conspiracy of bureaucrats" and petty people. For too many decades, the POW/MIA office (and its predecessors) have naively, incorrectly, or perhaps willfully misstated the role of the Soviets and their allies with respect to both imprisoned and unrepatriated POWs.

To expose the truth at any time or find new proof to add to the mountain of circumstantial evidence that already exists runs the risk of embarrassing or damaging personal reputations. (In Washington, that is a deadly sin). Worse, disclosures might threaten perks, paychecks and pensions in Washington and Moscow. As 81-year old LTCOL Phil Corso, Eisenhower's POW Working Group chief told me last summer, "When you expose what the Soviets did to our men, you have to expose the American policies that allowed it to happen."

That, Corso went on to say, is why the bureaucrats have hidden the truth, or at least the suspicions, about our POWs since 1945. There is always "another policy" that is greater than that of recovering information on the POWs. This is despite official pronouncements to the contrary. (Remember, actions or rather inactions, speak louder than words).

-In WWII, Eisenhower would not let Generals George Patton or Mark Clark pursue the POWs into Soviet-held territory, for "fear of setting off WWIII the week after WWII ended."

-In Korea, Eisenhower again did not want to risk a wider ground war with China, an "atomic war" with the USSR or the potential loss of "8 million Americans" to retrieve a couple thousand taken to the Chinese and Siberian gulags. Mark Clark, as we learned from the Eisenhower Library documents, was beside himself with anguish at having to abandon his POW comrades for the second time in his career. He was told to "shut up." ("Censored" is what the kids called it then). In the Cold War, we could not admit the Soviets killed or captured our airmen without admitting that the U.S. violated Soviet airspace.

-In more modern times, the POWs are placed a distant last among policies (ignore the "priority" label tacked on for soothing comfort) in which economic exploitation (of Vietnam and the new democratic Russia) is king of the policy hill. ("We have bigger fish to fry" has been uttered more than once, relative to the POWs).

Toward the end of my tour with DPMO, I attended the 1996 POW/MIA Recognition Day at the Pentagon. Speeches given by lesser officials (Secretary Perry was elsewhere) were drafted by DPMO, which in itself shows the lack of concern, interest or knowledge about the POW issues by the Pentagon management. Due homage was given to the POWs who died in camps, to POWs who returned and to MIAs that we fully expect died on the field of battle.

Nowhere in the day of recognition was it even hinted that there might have existed another group of POWs -- the unrepatriated ones who survived the wars, were alive for years, but never returned home, certainly not to their loved ones and not even in spirit, to their rightful place in history. In January 1997, President Clinton corrected an injustice by finally recognizing seven African-American WWII soldiers as Medal of Honor recipients. Just as the U.S. Colored Troops (Civil War), Buffalo Soldiers and Tuskeogee Airmen had to wait 50-100 years for their rightful places in our military history, so were these WWII veterans forced to wait their turn for recognition. The POWs are still waiting.

Those who really care about the POWs and the MIAs and who do not view them as mere statistics or career stepping-stones, know that the unrepatriated POWs have not been recognized for their sacrifices or their unique place in our history. Not only has America failed to honor these men, DPMO denies they ever existed. That is a dishonor. (In DPMO mindset, how can you honor or investigate an entity that never was)?

Unrepatriated POWs did exist. To deny that fundamental fact is an act of political cowardice. The battle flag long ago fell into the mud and the reaction of too many of my former DPMO colleagues was to smile. Once on the Inside, I am now Out. But I remain with the ranks of those who give a damn.

Editor's note: CDR Beck is a former CIA Station Chief and Commanding Officer of two Navy Reserve Intelligence Units. He retired honorably from the CIA (1993) and the Navy (1996). He is a veteran of 11 wars, revolutions or conflict areas. He is currently a combat artist, editorial cartoonist and freelance writer/journalist living in Arlington, VA.

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