The Fate Of 88,000 Americans Still Unknown
The US-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs concluded a series of
meetings Wednesday in Moscow as part of a worldwide effort to
account for more than 88,000 Americans missing from past
conflicts.
The commission, established in 1992 by Presidents Bush and
Yeltsin, held its 19th plenary session Tuesday and Wednesday.
Chaired by Commissioner A. Denis Clift on the US side and Gen. Maj.
(Ret.) Vladimir Antonovich Zolotarev on the Russian side, the
commission explored open questions in working groups that focused
on the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Korean War, and World War II.
Clift, president of the Joint Military Intelligence College, served
as US chairman for this plenum.
In the two days of discussions, the US queried the Russian side
for assistance on four Cold War shoot downs in the Russian Far
East. The Vietnam War group discussed ways in which the Russians
could facilitate interviews with former KGB officials and other
military and diplomatic personnel who served in Southeast Asia
during that war. This group also discussed US access to documents
now classified that are believed to hold information about
Americans who were held prisoners of war and who did not return
from Vietnam.
During the plenum, Clift also met with Gen. Maj. Aleksandr V.
Kirilin, chief of the Memorial Center of the Russian Federation
Armed Forces. Kirilin, who represented Gen. Lt. (Ret.) Vladimir A.
Shamanov, the new chairman of Russia's newly-established
Interagency Commission for Prisoners of War, Internees, and Missing
in Action, assured Clift that the Joint Commission's work will go
forward, and Kirilin's organization will provide the staff to
support the work of the Russian side.
The US participants, including the
senior staff of the Joint Commission Support Directorate (JCSD)
from the Defense Department's POW/Missing Personnel Office, also
asked for Russian assistance in arranging expeditions to the Far
East in search of WWII downed aircraft.
The US side cited the value of continuing archival access
granted by the Russians to DoD researchers in the military archives
at Podolsk. Since 1997, JCSD researchers have retrieved more than
45,000 pages from that archive, clarifying the fates of more than
250 US airmen who were shot down during the Korean War. Soviet
pilots flew more than 75 percent of the MiG-15 missions against US
pilots during that war.
Outside the working groups, the attendees also discussed with
Russian archivists a US initiative to expand archival research in
Russia through contracted personnel.
Klyde Morris (05.02.25)
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