Re: Intell

[<RonaldS842@aol.com>]

In a message dated 4/22/01 8:28:17 PM, Jhk789@aol.com writes:

<< Thanks Ron & Cookie!

But wasn't this incident reported in the media at the time?
What was the US reaction at the time?

Did the plane belong to Air Force or NSA?

John
 >>

Hi John-

   Well, you've got to put yourself in context of 30-50 years ago and I know 
that is very hard because I hope things are  different today. We think 
differently. Can you imagine that spy mission reported in those days. If it 
hit the news at all it was reported as a weather plane. They all were ... 
except for Gary Powers and he was never forgiven for being "taken down". 
   And there was no accurate search and rescue missions for downed planes and 
crews. Where there was evidence of survivors from planes that had been shot 
down State Department lawyers were often prevented by superiors and 
intelligence officials from pursuing it.,"We had no illusions, we were 
expendable". And that's the way it was.
    And there is evidence that a lot of guys didn't died when their unarmed 
plane was shot down but were captured and tortured. In the spring of 1953 a 
Japanese prisoner in the Soviet labor camp at Khabarovsk reported the "12 or 
13" U.S. airmen were in the camp with him. U.S. intelligence officials later 
received another report that an officer from the RB-29 was "observed in 
October 1953 in a Soviet hospital north of Magadan near the crossing of the 
Kolyma River between the villages of Elgin and Debin".
   Those planes were all Air Force and the crew were airmen. To my knowledge 
NSA didn't have any aircraft for these purposes. As a matter of fact, it was 
hard to determine that there even was a NSA in those days. Their budget 
didn't show up so there were no questions. But these operations were all 
controled by NSA.
   Another thing you must keep in mind is that the rules in those days were 
"need to know". I saw a Far East Commander Air Force almost come to blows one 
day in 1952 because he wanted to see what we were up to and orders were to 
keep him out. He wasn't on the list. I can't imagine something like that 
happening today but, maybe so. 
   But hey, we won the cold war... and with all the abuses maybe it is 
necessary.
   But if Cookie is right I would like to know what the NAVY is doing 
monitoring Low Frequency signals off the coast of Southern China in April 
2001. Hmmm... the Shadow knows.

Ron