DOWNEY, JOHN T.
Name: John T. Downey
Branch/Rank: CIV
Unit: CIA
Date of Birth:
Home City of Record:
Date of Loss: 29 November 1952
Country of Loss: China
Loss Coordinates:
Status (in 1973): Returnee
Category:
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: Acft
Missions:
Other Personnel in Incident: Richard Fecteau, returnee - see updates
Refno:
Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw
data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA
families, published sources, interviews and CACCF = Combined Action
Combat Casualty File. Notes below are "sourced" and taken from numerous
articles. Updated 2005.
REMARKS: 730312 RELEASED BY CHINA
This article appeard in an unknown newspaper in March of 1973.
China releases U.S. fliers John T. Downey. a CIA agent shot down over
China in 1952, arrived in New Britain, Conn. March 12 after he had been
released by Chinese authorities that day.
Three days later, two U.S. airmen imprisoned in China after being shot
down during missions in the Indochina war were released. They were Lt.
Cmdr. Robert J. Flynn, 35, of Colorado Springs, Colo., shot down Aug.
21, 1967 aboard an A-6 in southern China and Major Philip E. Smith. 38,
of Roodhouse, Ill., shot down Sept. 20, 1965 over Hainan Island near the
Gulf of Tonkin when his F-104 veered off course. Flynn and Smith
crossed the border into Hong Kong and were flown to Clark Air Force.
Downey had been flown via Clark Air Force in the Philippines and
Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska in order to be with his mother, who
was suffering from a stroke in a New Britain hospital. His impending
release had been announced March 9 by Ronald L. Ziegler, White House
press Secretary, who said Premier Chou En-lai had agreed to free Downey
earlier than planned after being informed by the U.S. of his mothers
illness. Ziegler also said China would Flynn and Smith March 15.
At a March 13 news conference in New Britain, Downey said he looked on
his 20- year imprisonment as "to a large extent wasted," adding: "I
don't see that it benefited anybody."
Downey noted that during his first eight or nine months in jail he was
questioned closely by his captors and that he "revealed about every bit
of information I had."
Asked about the Chinese people, be said be felt sympathy for them in
some respects" and they were "more behind their government than I
dreamed would be possible."
==============================
[adamsck1.txt 08/01/91]
"POLITICS PREVENT POWS RETURN"
by Dennis Adamscheck
... Americans were also held in China after the Korean War, as bargaining
chips to gain political favors. Joseph King and Walter Enbom were returned
in 1957. Steve Kiba, a 1955 returnee, stated "While a prisoner of the Red
Chinese after the Korean War, I saw over fifteen Caucasian prisoners. These
fifteen men are in addition to John T. Downey and Richard Fecteau, with whom
our B-29 crew spent three weeks. (December 7 to 28, 1954). I reported
these sightings to our Air Force Intelligence, the CIA and the State
Department upon my return to freedom. Their reaction was one of
indifference and I was admonished to forget not only the fifteen, but also,
Downey and Fecteau. It was suggested that perhaps I had imagined that i had
seen these men."
Richard Fecteau was returned in 1971 and John Downey in 1973, over 19 years
after Steve Kiba had reported seeing them in captivity in 1954....
==============================
[ADAMSCK3.TXT 08/05/92]
A CONSPIRACY TO COVER UP
by Dennis Adamscheck
... The government's idea of "good politics" is playing a game with the
lives of captive U.S. servicemen and the emotions of family members. What is
frightening is a conspiracy of this nature among governmental offices would
have had to originate from the top. Five U.S. Presidents, Nixon, Ford,
Carter, Reagan and Bush, knew that American citizens had been left behind in
communist captivity. President Bush, having been in charge of the CIA,
would have been most knowledgeable. Consider the following: CIA agents
Richard Fecteau and John Downey were seen in a Chinese prison camp by Steve
Kiba, and airman shot down during the Korean War. When Kiba was released by
the Chinese in 1955, he told the CIA, the State Department and Air Force
Intelligence about Fecteau, Downey and many other Americans he had seen in
the nine prison camps he had been held captive in, in China. Kiba said
their reaction was one of indifference and he was admonished to forget the
many he had seen, especially Fecteau and Downey.
Fecteau was released to freedom in 1971 and Downey in 1973. Downey secretly
appeared from his captivity in China with the second to last group of
American POWs who were returned from captivity in Viet Nam on March 12,
1973. Secret negotiations between China and the U.S. had surely taken place
to accomplish this release. The DIA and State Department could not have
been part of the negotiations without Presidential knowledge. Their success
in gaining the release of U.S. government agents is to be applauded. But
are the many other soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen of no
consequence?...
============================
[insi12.95 01/16/96]
THE INSIDER
DECEMBER 1995
... 10. On 10/15/90 Insight Magazine published a story by Susan Katz
Keating, about the Korean war downing on 1/12/53 of Air Force radio operator
Steve Kiba who was not released until August 1955, along with 10 others held
in China. The story also shows a photo of Fecteau who was not freed until
1971....
============================
The Bamboo Cage, by Nigel Cawthorn
The Full Story of the American Servicemen still held hostage in South-East
Asia.
...The CIA were also dealing in drugs to fund some of their operations in
Laos, but the corruption involved in running that war might run so deep that
the CIA and others might be determined that the truth never comes out. And
that means leaving the American PoWs, many of whom knew what was going on,
where they are. Many CIA men are among the missing and the Agency often
seems quite content to leave their agents in enemy hands when their return
might be inconvenient. CIA agents John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau
languished in a Chinese jail for nearly 20 years after being shot down while
dropping guerrilla units into the country in November, 1952. Fecteau was
released in December, 1971, in the run-up to Richard Nixon's historic trip
to China. Downey was held until March, 1973, when Nixon finally admitted
publicly that Fecteau worked for the CIA. (3)...
Page 287
=========================
St. Joseph (MO) New Press
07/03/98
CIA honors 2 spies who survived imprisonment in China for 20 years
By ROBERT BURNS
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - On the same day President Clinton arrived to a red carpet
welcome in China last week, two men stood to applause in a banquet room
at CIA headquarters and accepted awards for a very different experience
in China.
In a private ceremony not announced by the CIA, retired spies John
"Jack" T Downey and Richard G. Fecteau received a prestigious Director's
Medal for surviving two "dark decades" in Chinese prisons - the longest
any CIA officers have been held captive abroad and lived to tell about
it.
"True legends," CIA Director George Tenet called them at last Thursday's
ceremony, which was not open to the public. A transcript of Tenet's
remarks was made available this week by the CIA pub- lic affairs office.
"You demonstrated heroism of a whole other magnitude during those dark
decades of captivity. "
"Your story, simply put, is one of the most remarkable in the 50-year
history of the Central Intelligence Agency," he said in presenting the
medals in recognition of "extraordinary fidelity and essential service."
Fecteau and Downey actually returned more than 25 years ago, and Tenet
did not say why the CIA presented the awards now. Spokesman Tom
Crispell said the idea evolved as part of the agency's 50th anniversary
celebrations.
With the Korean War raging, Fecteau, of Lynn, Mass., and Downey of New
Britain, Conn., were in a CIA-operated aircraft trying to pick up an
anti-communist Chinese agent when they were shot out of the sky over
Manchuria on Nov. 29,1952.
China, which fought on North Korea's side against the US.backed South
Koreans, captured the two CIA men and convicted them of spying two years
later at a trial that drew strong protests from President Eisenhower's
administration.
Downey was 22, Fecteau was 25.
For years, while Fecteau and Downey sat in prison in Beijing, the U.S.
government stuck to its story: The two were civilian Army employees lost
on a "routine flight" from Seoul, South Korea, to Japan.
"Utterly false," the State Department said of China's espionage charge.
By the early 1970s, as President Nixon made his historic opening to
China, the men's long nightmare came to an end. Fecteau was released in
December 1971 after serving 19 years of his 20-year sen- tence. Downey
who got a life sentence, was set free in March 1973.
===========================
The Honorable John Downey resides in Connecticut where his is a Superior
Court Judge.
============================
US Seeks Chinese Help on Korea MIAs -- April 8, 1999
By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Clinton administration wants China to open its
Korean War-era records in search of clues to the fate of several missing
Americans, including two pilots apparently killed when their unmarked
plane was shot down on a CIA covert mission in Manchuria in November
1952.
The administration also has requested information on three missing
corporals -- Roger Dumas, William Glasser and Richard Desautels -- who
were held in a Chinese-run POW camp in North Korea. Several repatriated
American prisoners reported seeing the three alive and well at the close
of the war in 1953.
In the face of China's reluctance to pursue the matter, Sen. Bob
Smith, R-N.H., wrote to President Clinton this week urging that he push
the issue in White House meetings Thursday with Chinese Prime Minister
Zhu Rongji. Smith said U.S. diplomatic and defense officials had made no
headway.
Mike Hammer, a National Security Council spokesman, said after the
Clinton-Zhu meeting that the president did raise the matter and it was
discussed at length. He said Clinton urged more cooperation from the
Chinese government in searching official records. Hammer said he did not
know how Zhu responded.
Pentagon officials have been pressing the Chinese communist
government for more than a year to open its wartime records, but with
little result. The People's Liberation Army has insisted that war losses
are a closed issue, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has declared
wartime records to be classified.
Chinese soldiers intervened in the Korean War in October 1950 after
the American-led U.N. force, propelled by the Marines' famous Inchon
landing the month before, fought their way to the Yalu River on China's
border. Later, the Chinese army ran the prisoner of war camps in North
Korea, and it moved some American prisoners into China to be
interrogated, according to declassified U.S. records.
Defense Secretary William Cohen raised the matter in general terms
when he visited Beijing in January 1998, but it has not moved higher on
the administration's policy agenda because other matters such as alleged
Chinese stealing of U.S. nuclear weapons secrets have complicated
relations.
Among the Americans the Clinton administration has asked China for
information about are Robert Snoddy and Norman Schwartz, pilots of an
unmarked C-47 aircraft knocked out of the sky over Manchuria on Nov. 29,
1952, while attempting to pick up an anti-communist Chinese agent. On
board were two CIA officers, John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau, who
were captured, imprisoned in Beijing and held until President Nixon
publicly acknowledged they were CIA officers.
It had been generally believed that Downey and Fecteau were the only
Americans aboard the plane. But a June 1998 Defense Department document
-- a cable to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing -- released by Smith's office
this week identified Snoddy and Schwartz as Americans. It said they were
killed and presumed buried at the crash site. The Pentagon wants China
to provide any information it might have about the pilots' remains.
A Chinese government memo presented to President Ford in December
1975 mentioned Schwartz and Snoddy, without explicitly saying they were
Americans. It said their bodies were buried at the crash site. "Owing to
the passage of time, it is impossible to locate them now," the memo
said..
Tom Crispell, a CIA spokesman, said Thursday that the agency would
not say whether Schwartz or Snoddy had a CIA affiliation. Last summer
the CIA publicly feted Downey and Fecteau as heroes and "true legends."
Regarding the three unaccounted for American corporals -- Dumas,
Glasser and Desautels -- the June 1998 cable to the U.S. Embassy in
Beijing said China must be pushed to provide answers, saying, "We
believe the Chinese should be able to account for these individuals."
===========================
China OKs US Search For Cold War Remains
July 08, 2002
"BBC - Search for 'spy' pilots in China
The US Pentagon is sending a team to north-eastern China to investigate the
possibility of recovering the remains of two pilots who died during a spy
mission 50 years ago.
An eight-member search team from the Army's Central Identification
Laboratory in Hawaii is scheduled to leave on 15 July for the crash site
near the town of Antu in China's Jilin province.
China says that the bodies of the pilots - Robert Snoddy and Norman Schwartz
- were buried where their C-47 crash-landed on 29 November 1952.
It is the first time China has permitted a search for remains linked to a
Cold War case.
Dig considered
The initial search team will investigate whether there is enough evidence at
the crash site to merit a full excavation, Larry Greer from the US Defence
Department's Prisoner of War and Missing in Action (POW/MIA) office told BBC
News Online.
Snoddy: Shot down over China in 1952
He said he was pleased that - during the numerous discussions with China
over the US MIA dating from World War II, the Vietnam War and the Cold War -
Beijing had offered to accommodate an inquiry into this particular 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.
Snoddy and Schwartz were pilots for Civil Air Transport, a CIA proprietary
airline that supported clandestine missions in the Far East.
Accompanied by two CIA officers, they were shot down as they were preparing
to pick up an anti-Communist Chinese spy in the Manchurian foothills.
The CIA officers, John Downey and Richard Fecteau, survived, and were taken
prisoner for two decades - they were only released after Washington
acknowledged their spy mission.
Cover story
The families of the pilots were originally told that they crashed into the
East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, on a routine flight to Tokyo, in
order to keep secret the CIA's covert actions in China at the time.
Erik Kirzinger, a nephew of Schwartz, said his family is glad that China is
allowing the search.
"They recognise this was a humanitarian request that really is
boundary-less." "
==============================
SEARCHERS will seek CIA pilot's remains
Louisville Courier Journal - Louisville,KY,USA
<http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2004/06/06ky/B1-cia06060-5544.html>
Searchers will seek CIA pilot's remains
Louisville man's plane shot down in China over 50 years ago
By CHRIS KENNING
ckenning@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal
American investigators will search in northeastern China for the remains of
a Louisville pilot killed during a secret CIA mission more than 50 years
ago.
The U.S. military announced in 2002 that it had found wreckage at a site
where an aging villager said he'd seen Norman A. Schwartz's C-47 go down
from enemy fire as he tried to pick up a Chinese nationalist agent.
An eight-member team will return to the site to excavate for the remains of
Schwartz and another CIA pilot, officials said.
Schwartz's relatives, some of whom live in Louisville, say it's probably
their last chance to end their decades-long quest to find and return his
remains to the United States.
"If there are remains to be found, they'll be found," said Erik Kirzinger,
Schwartz's 52-year-old nephew who lives in Madison, N.C.
Among the Louisville relatives are brother Gene Schwarz, who could not be
reached yesterday. Kirzinger said the doctor at Norman's birth added a "T"
to the baby's last name, resulting in the different spelling.
At the time of Schwartz's death, he was flying for Civil Air Transport, an
organization that used surplus military aircraft in secret anti-communist
missions in Asia. He flew passenger and cargo missions by day and
clandestine CIA missions by night, Kirzinger said.
In November 1952, Schwartz was flying near the North Korean border in the
region formerly known as Manchuria in an attempt to pick up a Chinese agent
believed to be in peril.
The plan was for Schwartz, another pilot and two CIA officers to fly low to
the ground. The Chinese agent was to don a harness connected to a rope that
was strung between two 20-foot-high poles. The plane was to swoop down and,
using a hook, grab the agent and hoist him in, Kirzinger said.
But Schwartz and the other pilot, Robert C. Snoddy of Eugene, Ore., were
killed after the plane drew enemy fire and crash-landed. It was apparently
an ambush, Kirzinger said.
The two CIA officers aboard, Richard Fecteau and Jack Downey, survived and
were captured. In a 1998 speech, CIA director George Tenet said the men were
presumed dead "only to reappear very much alive two years later for a Red
Chinese `show trial.'"
They were convicted of spying and spent two decades in Chinese prisons. It
wasn't until they were released that Washington acknowledged the U.S. had
carried out spy missions in China.
Schwartz's family initially was told the plane crashed in the Sea of Japan,
but soon doubted it after hearing foreign news reports. Erik Kirzinger has
worked for decades to get U.S. and Chinese support for recovering the
remains, meeting repeatedly with officials from both countries.
Two years ago, after finally getting Chinese permission, a villager led U.S.
investigators to a spot where he said he'd helped bury two men from a downed
plane in shallow graves. The group found airplane parts and decided to
investigate further.
The Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command, located in Hawaii, is sending the
excavation team to the site near the town of Antu, China, in the Jilin
province. Work should begin this week and take about 30 days, said Ginger
Couden, a spokeswoman for the group.
The team will include an anthropologist who will oversee the work, and a
forensic photographer. The team, working as if on an archaeological dig,
will sift through dirt using quarter-inch screens, searching for skeletal
remains, dental fragments, DNA and personal effects, Couden said.
Kirzinger said the remains may have been scattered and might not be found.
If so, the relatives will likely end their efforts after the excavation, he
said.
"We had a memorial service last spring" for Schwartz, Kirzinger said. "I
think the family has come to terms that the odds of (finding) remains is a
long shot. But everyone is still hoping."
====================
Remains are not pilot's in China spy mission
Louisvillian Schwartz shot down in 1952
March 23, 2005
By Sheryl Edelen
sedelen@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal
U.S. military investigators analyzing materials from the site of a plane
crash in China that killed a Louisville pilot on a CIA mission in 1952 have
identified remains found there as those of his co-pilot.
The family of pilot Norman Schwartz, who grew up in the Camp Taylor area,
had thought the remains might be his.
Erik Kirzinger, Schwartz's nephew who lives in North Carolina, said by
telephone last night that he was notified by a CIA casualty officer that the
remains were those of Robert Snoddy of Roseburg, Ore.
The news has left Schwartz's family feeling the loss, but they are happy for
the Snoddy family.
"I'm sitting here now, kinda shaking," said 74-year-old Gene Schwarz,
Norman's younger brother who lives in Louisville. (The doctor at Norman's
birth added a "t" to the baby's last name, resulting in the different
spelling.)
"I'm very pleased they found something. There's closure, but the pain's
still there," Schwarz said. "Finally, finally. ."
Schwartz and Snoddy were killed when Chinese soldiers shot down the C-47
transport they were flying on a covert CIA reconnaissance mission near the
North Korean border.
Two CIA officers on board, Richard Fecteau and Jack Downey, served 20 years
in Chinese prison. They were freed when President Richard Nixon admitted in
the 1970s that the CIA had carried out spy missions in China...