'Manchurian Candidate' Was No Mere Fiction
The Korean War created a windfall of both U.S. and allied prisoners to feed the voracious appetite of the Soviets and their Chinese partners for information and agents from Western adversaries. Some prisoners, according to a report from an elite U.S. unit, were quickly dispatched to “be specifically trained at Moscow for intelligence work. PWs transferred to Moscow are grouped as follows: British 5, Americans 10, Canadians 3, and 50 more from various countries.” This report, if true, seems to involve different Englishmen than the notorious British intelligence officer George Blake, whose case does not fit these details. Blake, serving in Korea when captured, responded to indoctrination by becoming an enthusiastic communist. Released at the end of the war, Blake began to spy for the Soviets, becoming one of Britain’s most infamous double agents.
The case of Gerald W. Glasser, a soldier from Pennsylvania, represents the level of intrigue and tragedy in the communist prison system. At the end of the war Glasser was healthy and living in POW Camp Number 1, at Chang-Song, North Korea. One day Chinese officers in a jeep showed up and took him away. “(T)here was nothing to indicate his removal from camp was in the nature of an arrest as he and his camp companions were given candy and cigarettes before leaving,” according to Army intelligence. Glasser was not repatriated at the end of the war.
But was the man removed from Camp Number 1 actually Gerald Glasser? Another record we obtained includes information from one of Glasser’s fellow prisoners. A US intelligence official, said the former prisoner, told him: “He (Glasser) as we knew him was not really Gerald Glasser.” The official claimed Glasser was killed when captured and a Russian agent took his identify to spy on American prisoners.
The infiltration of prison populations and use of false identifies were common enough for Russian intelligence. But Glasser’s family reported getting friendly letters home from him during the war. Were the letters fake? Or was Glasser alive in a separate camp from his doppelganger, perhaps never knowing his identify was in use? Or was the whole impersonation story false? Only the Chinese and Russians know for sure, and they still refuse to tell. All we know for sure is that Gerald Glasser has never come home.
“The (U.S.) POW’s will be screened by the Soviets and trained to be illegal residents (spies) in U.S. or other countries where they can live as Americans,” reported a White House document based on information from a controversial KGB defector (see this original document and others at: www.koreanconfidential.com). Biographies of dead Americans would be used to create “legends” (cover stories) for Soviet spies, said the memo, and “selected POW’s” will be used for propaganda work.
“It follows that the Communists would neither wish to return these men to U.S. control nor admit to their existence at this time,” concluded the military intelligence report about high-level propaganda mentioned above. Such fears appeared to be realized at the end of the war, when the State Department alerted U.S. embassies across the world that some American prisoners would likely be kept by the enemy. A year later, according to a newly revealed 1954 document, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Nathan Twining requested covert C.I.A. assistance to recover “an unknown but apparently substantial number of U. S. military personnel captured in the course of the Korean War (who) are still being held prisoners by the Communist Forces.”
Soon after, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow delivered a note to the Soviet government asking it “to arrange their (U.S. POWs taken from Korea to the Soviet Union) repatriation at the earliest possible time.” The Soviets responded by denying they had the prisoners. By 1955, the Pentagon had apparently given up hope of recovering the men, according to a then-classified memo: “The problem becomes almost a philosophical one. If we are ‘at war,’ cold, hot or otherwise, casualties and losses must be expected and perhaps we must learn to live with this sort of thing. If we are in for 50 years of peripheral ‘fire fights’ we may be forced to adopt a rather cynical attitude on this (the POWs) for the political reasons.”
In the decades since, most U.S. efforts to trace these lost Americans have been blocked by the Russian, Chinese and North Korean regimes, along - say many POW/MIA family members - with U.S. government bureaucratic indifference and secrecy. Some important exceptions, such as a now-stopped US investigation in the former Soviet-bloc, have uncovered more evidence the Americans were kept, and prove Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang are still hiding the truth about these lost American heroes.
Open questions also include communist exploitation of American prisoners in other conflicts. During the Cold War, Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine back in America after defecting to the Soviet Union, killed President Kennedy – just a year after The Manchurian Candidate was released. Investigators ultimately excluded Soviet involvement in that crime. Scores of active-duty U.S. servicemen ended up in communist hands during the Cold War; RECAP-WW and other files on many of them have now been released. But a full account from the Vietnam War will likely prove impossible, since 1990s legislation, popularly known as the “McCain Truth Bill,” actually bars researchers from certain types of information available on earlier conflicts.
From our most recent wars, the only US POW now confirmed alive in enemy hands is Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, held in Afghanistan since 2009. Public accounts, video of his captivity and the historic behavior of Afghan hostage takers suggest it unlikely Sgt. Bergdahl is being prepared for the high intrigue of Homeland, The Manchurian Candidate, or the Chinese intelligence service. Despite the grim history described above, one wonders if a heated Chinese propaganda classroom might look almost tolerable to Sgt. Bergdahl about now.
