American Missing In Action serviceman identified

American Missing In Action serviceman identified

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. Navy pilot, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors.

The Pentagon has confirmed that human remains unearthed in China last summer at a remote site where a CIA-sponsored spy plane was shot down in 1952 are those of Robert Snoddy of Roseburg, Ore., a civilian pilot whose CIA connection was kept secret for decades.

“It’s nice to finally bring him home,” said Ruth Boss of Creswell, Ore., who will bury her brother at the cemetery where their mother and father are buried.

Boss said in a telephone interview yesterday that she received the news earlier this week from a CIA official who expressed some concern that, after all these years, Boss might take it badly.

“Any news is good. The bad had already happened,” Boss said.

Also informed of the results of DNA testing of the recovered bone fragments and teeth were relatives of the other pilot aboard the ill-fated C-47, Norman Schwartz of Louisville, Ky. None of the remains could be confirmed as those of Schwartz, family members said.

Schwartz was at the controls when the plane encountered a Chinese air defense ambush while trying to retrieve a spy near the town of Antu in the northeastern province of Jilin.

Snoddy and Schwartz were pilots for Civil Air Transport, a CIA proprietary airline that supported covert missions in the Far East and southeast Asia.

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.

They flew their mission during a time when China and the United States were fighting on opposing sides in the Korean War and the CIA was trying to undermine the fledgling communist regime on its home territory.

When the Chinese guns opened up, the unmarked, twin-engine C-47 was making a low approach to a site where a CIA agent was waiting to be snatched and reeled aboard with a cable strung from the belly of the plane.

The cockpit was riddled with bullets, and the plane apparently made a belly landing on frozen ground, with Schwartz and Snoddy caught in an intense cockpit fire.

In response to a 1975 U.S. government inquiry about the missing pilots, the Chinese government wrote to President Gerald Ford that “it is impossible to locate them now.”

An initial visit to the crash site in July 2002 by a team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii found wreckage of the downed plane but no human remains.

In its post-mission report, the team concluded that the probability of finding remains was “quite low.” But a search team returned last July and found a few remains. DNA testing confirmed they were Snoddy’s, but none of the remains have been confirmed to be those of Schwartz, family members said.

Also aboard the plane were two CIA officers, Richard Fecteau and John Downey.

They were captured alive and spent two decades in Chinese prisons, gaining their freedom only after President Richard Nixon acknowledged they were spies. Washington originally claimed Fecteau and Downey were Army civilians.

The CIA initially went to considerable lengths to cover up the failed mission.

A false flight plan was produced, dated four days after the actual flight and indicating a Korea-to-Japan route. The cover story was that the plane disappeared in the Sea of Japan – far from the actual crash site.

Betty Kirzinger, the sister of Schwartz, said in a telephone interview yesterday from her home in Madison, N.C., that her family was misled by the U.S. government for years but that she understands why.

“That’s the way it is” when you sign up to do the CIA’s business, she said.