FECTEAU, RICHARD
Name: Richard Fecteau
Branch/Rank: CIV
Unit:
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: John T. Downey, 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 clipped from various
articles. Updated 2005.
REMARKS: 711212 RELEASED
[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
--------------
Yankee
November 82
by Glenn Rifkin
My Nineteen Years
in a Chinese Prison
Thirty years ago this month, Richard Fecteau of Lynn,
Massachusetts, along with John Downey of Wallingford, Connecticut,
began an incredible ordeal. Neither has talked or written much
about it, but in this article Dick tells exactly what happened and
how it was. . .
It WAS A COLD NOVEMBER night in 1952 as the unmarked C-47 swooped in over
the snow-blanketed landscape of Manchuria, China. Suddenly, as the plane
reached 50 feet, large white sheets were pulled aside on the ground to
reveal two 50-caliber antiaircraft guns. At point-blank range the guns
began to fire and the plane plunged into it bank of trees, the wings and
body torn asunder. Both pilots were killed.
Thrown from that wreckage, bruised but alive. were two young CIA operatives.
They had been sent into China to pick up a fellow agent who had been dropped
in earlier during the still-raging Korean War. The espionage mission had
failed. The captured agent told the Red Chinese of the rendezvous plans, and
the Communists had lain in wait for the rescue plane.
Richard Fecteau from Lynn, Massachusetts, was one of the CIA agents shot
from the sky that night. It is 30 years this month since that doomed
mission and Fecteau, now the assistant athletic director at Boston
University, remembers vividly the first words he heard while lying in the
snow amid the wreckage.
"One of the Chinese spoke English," Fecteau recalls, "and he said to me,
'You are very lucky to survive a crash like this. but your future is very
dark.' "
Neither Fecteau nor his fellow agent John Downey, a native of Wallingford,
Connecticut, could have had any idea just how dark their futures were.
Fecteau was to spend the next 19 years in a Chinese prison cell. living out
a nightmare of deprivation, mental and emotional torture, and nine years of
solitary confinement. John Downey, a lawyer and former candidate for the
U.S. Senate from Connecticut, spent 20 years in the same prison as Fecteau.
They saw each other only occasionally during their entire captivity.
For Fecteau. the 19 years proved to be an endurance test of his will, a
challenge to a human spirit that was pushed to the limit but would not
break.
Dick Fecteau was recruited off the Boston University campus by the CIA in
1951. He had transferred to the university after two years at the Merchant
Marine Academy and became a "not very good" guard on a B.U. football team
that featured the legendary college and later professional athlete Harry
Agganis.
Married and divorced with twin baby daughters. Fecteau signed up with the
CIA "because it was the patriotic thing to do." He was 25 when he left for
his fateful mission. He would not be free again until he was 44 years old.
He hesitates to talk about his long ordeal today, not because it is painful,
but because, he says,"it was boring." In the retelling. however. the amazing
tale is anything but boring.
After their capture. Downey and Fecteau were taken to Shenyang, the largest
city in Manchuria, where they were held for five months in solitary
confinement. From Shenyang they were moved to Peking's infamous Green Basket
Prison built during the Ching Dynasty. The prison was known throughout
China as a hellhole with no heat and no running water.
Although Fecteau hardly saw Downey during the next 19 years, the pair
communicated secretly throughout their imprisonment by way of a system that
took years to set up. To this day Fecteau will not reveal how the
communication was accomplished.
It was at Green Basket that Fecteau's ordeal really began. His captors,
saying he was still "an active enemy who had not surrendered," kept him in
leg chains for a full year. His new home was a 5x8-foot cell with one heavy
door, no windows, and a 15-watt light bulb in the ceiling,
"They never beat me." Fecteau says. "They threatened me all the time. but
they never touched me. It was all mental. They removed all external
stimuli from my cell. There was nothing but a wooden pallet for me to sleep
on. They told me to sit on the floor and they painted a small black circle
on the wall.
I was told to stare at that circle and consider my crime."
It was the beginning. Fecteau recalls, that was the most difficult time to
endure. "I couldn't hear anything and soon I started to have mental
aberrations. The walls started moving in on me. I would put my foot out in
front of me and measure the distance to be sure the wall wasn't really
moving.
"I exercised a lot and I played mental games with myself to keep from going
crazy. I remembered every kid in my sixth-grade class and where each one
set. I pictured myself leaving my house in Lynn and driving to Gloucester
and every sight I'd see on the way. I became an expert daydreamer. I could
lose four hours just like that. It became a real test just to be able to
bring myself back."
For the first two years, Fecteau was interrogated daily. The Chinese would
allow him to fall asleep at night and an hour later would wake him and
interrogate him for from four hours to three days at a time. The
interrogators changed shifts every four hours.
"They wanted to know where we had crossed the border, who were the people I
worked with. what missions were being planned by the CIA," Fecteau claims.
"Ironically, in the CIA you don't know that much at all. But I told them
some things and made up others. I gave them names of guys I'd played
football with. If I refused to answer, they made me stand until I fell. It
got very tough not to give in. But sometimes it seemed like an old
Hollywood movie. They'd scream at me. Someday we are going to march into
the Pentagon and the American people will bow down to us.' That kind of
stuff used to make me so angry that it kept me going. I hated them enough
to be bound and determined not to tell them anything."
Fecteau also realized that the Chinese would not believe him regardless of
what he told them. "They had caught me red-handed and they were going, to
make an example out of me, no matter what I did." he says.
At the beginning Fecteau thought of the possibility of suicide, but the
Chinese made any attempt impossible. He was watched constantly and there
was no device at hand to accomplish the task. When he ate, he was given two
chopsticks and two bowls, utensils he had to return after each meal.
For 19 years Fecteau's meals consisted of a bowl of gruel each morning and a
bowl of soup and two pieces of bread in the afternoon and evening. On
holidays and Sundays he was given rice. After two years he weighed just 115
pounds. Then his captors began the "Whipsaw" game. He would be given better
food for a period of time and such luxuries as soap. With no explanation,
the better treatment would stop. The Chinese hoped to break his spirit, but
Fecteau remained defiant.
"Your body and mind can take a lot." he says. "I disciplined myself and
soon I could take anything they dished out."
After two years Fecteau and Downey were brought together for one of the few
times during their captivity. They were put on trial in Peking as spies,
and were told that they could be shot for any of the charges against them.
Fecteau's "lawyer" did not argue the charges: he merely pleaded for mercy.
The judge, upon hearing that Downey had attended Yale, declared that he must
be the leader. The Chinese had heard of Yale, but not of Boston University.
Downey was sentenced to life. Fecteau was sentenced to 20 years without
mercy. He was left in solitary confinement for another year after his
sentencing, and then he was given a Chinese call mate for the next 10 years.
After three full years in solitaire Fecteau was given reading material for
the first time. At the beginning there were works by Dickens and Hardy;
then books by Marx and Lenin and MaoTsetung were mixed in. After a short
time Fecteau saw only Communist literature. "I didn't care." he says,
smiling. "it was something to read. I read all of it." At the same time, a
political instructor began to appear once a month to discuss the Communist
way of life with Fecteau. It was the beginning of his "reeducation" period.
In 1955, after much negotiation, the U.S. State Department arranged for
Fecteau's and Downey's mothers to be flown to China to see their sons, who
were warned by the Chinese not to discuss prison life. Fecteau was worried
about his mother and what she might say upon seeing his condition.
"We met for one hour per day for five days," Fecteau remembers. "She sat on
one side of the table, I on the other. They had guards surrounding us
completely and bright lights were on in the room. It was very tough for
both of us and very awkward."
As the Chinese realized, the visit was more torturous than pleasurable for
Fecteau, serving as a reminder of what he had lost. During that visit
Fecteau's mother snapped the only photograph taken of him during his
imprisonment. The padded coat he wears in the snapshot hides his emaciated
physique.
Fecteau had three different cell mates during the next 10 years. Each spoke
English and each reported to the warden of the prison what was said during
every conversation. Fecteau was forced to consider every statement he made
during conversation.
Maos "Cultural Revolution" was in full swing during much of Fecteau's
imprisonment. His political instructor prodded him to become more
knowledgeable about the "new" China, and Fecteau experienced first-hand the
all-encompassing, cruel touch of Madame Mao. She sent her young followers
to the prison to report on conditions. One confronted Fecteau in his cell.
"This kid, about 17 and wearing a red arm band, asked me. 'How is your
life?' I said, 'Fine.' Later, I heard that he told Madame Mao that
prisoners were living too well, so they cut back our food and everything
became much worse."
During his 10 years with a cell mate, Fecteau was actually being set up for
the ultimate "whipsaw." One day, without explanation, he was sent back to
solitary confinement. For one full year, he could speak to no one. One
year to the day after being put back in solitary, the guards brought him to
the interrogation room and asked. "How is your life? Are you lonely now?"
"They told me, 'It doesn't have to be this way,' and then began to ask me
the same questions they'd been asking for the last 13 years. When I didn't
answer, they told me to think it over and put me away again for six months."
Fecteau was to spend the next six years in solitary confinement. His
spirit, however, remained strong. "My last cell mate was such a pain in the
neck that I almost welcomed it." Fecteau says, smiling. "By then I had
disciplined myself to the point where it didn't faze me."
Although he couldn't know it at the time, Fecteau had seen the last of
Downey for the remainder of their imprisonment. In fact, their treatment
during captivity was virtually identical. When Fecteau was sent to
solitary, Downey went to solitary. They were both subjected to the same
political propaganda and felt the same effects of the Cultural Revolution.
Although the pair continued to "communicate" with their secret system, they
were not to meet face to face again until both were back in the United
States.
During these last six years, his captors painted a distorted world picture
for Fecteau. He was told only bad news about the United States - the
assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, the riots in the streets of
America's cities, Kent State, and America's "imperialistic" war in Vietnam.
"I really wondered what was going on out there," he says.
In December 1971, 19 years and one month after he was shot down. Fecteau
was able to find out. His jailers told him. "You should have been shot. We
had many reasons to do it. Go now and tell the American people that we are
merciful in letting you go before your sentence is over."
Taken by train to Shumchun, the border town between China and Hong Kong.
Fecteau was wary that this was another whipsaw episode and that he would end
up back in his cell. Instead, two armed guards led him to a wooden
footbridge and told him to cross On the other side, they said, he would be
free.
Unlike other political prisoners or hostages, Fecteau met no bright lights
or television cameras. There was no one on the other side of the bridge
except a Hong Kong policeman. Fecteau convinced him to take him to the
nearest military post, and there the Arnerican consul was contacted. "The
first thing they brought me was a cigarette and a beer," he remembers. "It
was incrededible."
Things moved swiftly as the startled American authorities flew Fecteau back
to the United States via the Philippines. After nearly two full days in the
air, Fecteau was brought to the Valley Forge Army Hospital in Pennsylvania.
"I was numb," he recalls. "I didn't think back and I didn't plan ahead."
For Fecteau, the nightmare had ended as swiftly as it began. He now faced a
now ordeal. He had to begin a new life as a free man in a home he had not
seen in more than 19 years. It was an ordeal he met with incredible
strength and spirit. During two months in the military hospital, Fecteau
went through extensive debriefing. Psychiatrists gave him batteries of
tests and told him to be prepared for trauma and violent night- mares, but
they underestimated the resiliency of their patient.
"They were amazed," he says. "I've never had a nightmare to this day. I
managed to put it out of my mind completely. The only time I had a problem
was when I saw the movie Papillon. Whoever set up the solitary confinement
scene in the prison cell knew just what he was doing. Seeing it upset me so
much I had to leave the theater."
At the beginning Fecteau had problems following conversations and con-
centrating. He had also lost confidence in himself and his ability to make
deci- sions. "I wanted to stay in that hospital," he recalls, "but they
know it was no good and forced me to get out and reasimilate." The 19 years
of confinement had had a Rip Van Winkle effect on Fecteau. He had missed
nearly four full presidential terms, landings on the moon, the birth of rock
and roll, and revolutions in technology, medicine, science, and social
behavior. It was a new world.
"It was all shocking," he says. "I expected things would be different, but
it was still difficult to adjust. I just took each day as it came."
The reunion with his family was the hardest part. "My twin daughters were
22 years old. I hadn't seen them since they were two. They had me on a
pedestal. 'Superman' was coming home. I had to show them I was just an
ordinary guy. But the toughest thing was seeing my parents. They were
middle-aged when I left. They had become old, in their 70s. and seeing them
shook me."
He rekindled his relationship with his ex-wife Peg, who had waited and
prayed for him for 19 years. and they remarried in 1976.
Slowly, Fecteau began to readjust. He continued to work with the CIA until
1976, when he retired ironically, as a 25-year man. "There wasn't much I
could do for them," he says. "I had blown my cover." In 1977, after a
lengthy vacation, Fecteau met John Simpson, a former teammate at B.U. who
had recently been named athletic director of the University. Simpson
offered Fecteau the job of assistant athletic director, and he jumped at it.
"It was the best thing that ever happened to me," Fecteau says.
A free man for more than a decade now, Fecteau reflects calmly on his
ordeal. He harbors little bitterness, although he calls the 19 years
"wasted." He has refused offers for books and movies about his life, he
explains. "because I don't want to make a career out of being an
ex-prisoner. Besides, if I had to describe the whole experience in one
word, it would boring.' Downey was asked to write a book and he said it
would be 500 blank pages. "Every day was exactly like the day before."
Political pressure to release John Downey had mounted as President Nixon
prepared for his historic visit to China, and he was released one year after
Fecteau. The Chinese made a grandiose announcement of Downey's release and
a large press contingent was on hand to greet him as he arrived in Hong
Kong. Downey began to rebuild his life by returning to school. He attended
summer school at Yale and met his future wife Audrey, a native of China, who
was born in Shenyang, the city in Manchuria where Fecteau and Downey were
first imprisoned. Downey entered Harvard Law School in 1973 and is now a
member of a New Haven law firm. He and Fecteau have remained close friends
to this day.
"I believe I'm a better person for the experience." Fecteau says. "I'm more
politically oriented now and less of a wise guy than I used to be. And I
don't hate the Chinese people. I hated my interrogators and the prison
guards, but not the people.
"It was self-pity that I had to avoid, then and now. That's what can kill
you."
[sjnp0703.98 07/04/98]
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.
============================
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....