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5 July 1998: Add Wash Post background story

4 July 1998

    Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 04:56:50 -0700 (PDT)
    Subject: CIA's China Spies Honored
    To: jy@jya.com
    From: nobody@shinobi.alias.net (Anonymous)

    Associated Press, Friday 03 July 1998, 2:24 AM EDT

    CIA Honors Its China Spies
    By Robert Burns, Associated Press Writer

    WASHINGTON (AP) - The same day President Clinton began his nine-day
    journey through China, two retired CIA spies returned to the spy
    agency's headquarters for a rousing reminder of their very different
    experience in China.

    In a private ceremony not announced by the CIA, John "Jack" T. Downey
    and Richard G. Fecteau each 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 provided by the CIA this week when asked by The
    Associated Press.

    "You demonstrated heroism of a whole other magnitude during those dark
    decades of captivity," Tenet told an audience that included members of
    the two men's families.

    "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 in full swing, 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 U.S.-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.

    The government said it presumed the men had perished in a crash. For
    years, their personnel files at CIA headquarters listed Fecteau and
    Downey as serving on "special detail" abroad at "official station
    undetermined."

    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 sentence.
    Downey, who got a life sentence, was set free in March 1973, the year
    after Nixon's visit to Beijing.

    James Lilley, a retired CIA officer and Yale classmate of Downey's who
    served as U.S. ambassador in both Seoul and Beijing, said Downey was
    released after Nixon publicly admitted he had been on a CIA operation.
    Lilley was among the speakers at last week's ceremony.

    "It's a good idea to tell the younger generation (at CIA) that some of
    the older guys who worked in that agency were heroes," Lilley said in
    an interview Thursday.

    Both Fecteau and Downey retired from the CIA after their return.
    Fecteau, who was released first, became assistant director of
    athletics at his alma mater, Boston University.

    Downey, who once called his 20 years in prison "a crashing bore,"
    entered Harvard Law School at age 43 and since 1987 has been a judge
    in Connecticut.

    Downey readily acknowledged that his Chinese tormentors succeeded in
    forcing him to tell all. "I would say I revealed about every bit of
    information I had," he told reporters the day after he returned home,
    according to a New York Times account.

    Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 07:16:28 -0700 (PDT)
    Subject: Interrupted Mission
    To: jy@jya.com
    From: nobody@shinobi.alias.net (Anonymous)

    The Washington Post, Wednesday, 24 June 1998, Page A17

    An Interrupted Mission
    By Donald P. Gregg

    At dawn on Nov. 29, 1952, an unmarked CIA transport plane clawed its
    way into a gray and hostile sky. Taking off from a base in Korea, the
    aircraft was on a mission to drop supplies to a team of Chinese
    agents in Manchuria who had radioed for help, saying that they had
    lost most of their food when they had been parachuted into hostile
    territory a few days earlier.

    Aboard the rescue plane were Jack Downey and Dick Fecteau. They were
    helping to run a CIA agent-infiltration program, designed to report
    on the flow of Chinese Communist men and material into the Korean
    peninsula, where furious fighting still raged along what later became
    the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea.

    The mission was doomed from the outset. The agent team had been
    captured by the Chinese and forced to send the SOS message. The drop
    zone was ringed by Chinese antiaircraft guns, and the plane was
    quickly shot down. The American pilots were killed, but Downey and
    Fecteau survived the crash and struggled free from the wreckage, to
    be tried and convicted by the Chinese for espionage. Downey, judged
    by the Chinese to be the senior survivor, was sentenced to life
    imprisonment. He was 22 years old, 18 months out of Yale. Fecteau,
    newly arrived from the United States, received a 20-year sentence.

    I did not know Fecteau at all, but I knew Downey well, having gone
    through a six-month paramilitary training program with him. He was
    one of the most popular and respected members of our 40-man group.
    Another CIA colleague and I had dinner with Downey the night before
    his ill-fated mission. We both remember his excitement and enthusiasm
    about what lay ahead. For the next 20 years, as my life progressed
    normally, I thought often of Downey and Fecteau, trapped like flies
    in amber.

    The American dialogue with China was extremely limited in those days,
    even after an armistice agreement ended the fighting in Korea.
    Periodic meetings in Warsaw were the only chance for direct contacts
    with Chinese officials. Downey and Fecteau were always on the agenda
    for these meetings, but the years dragged on and the men remained in
    captivity. Fecteau eventually was set free after serving 19 years of
    his 20-year sentence. Finally, in March 1973, Downey was released by
    Beijing. This followed President Nixon's 1972 visit to China and an
    American admission that Downey had been on a CIA operation when shot
    down. Downey had served 20 years and four months in prison.

    A fine athlete in college, Downey had kept himself in strong physical
    and mental shape. Walking to freedom in Hong Kong, he was asked how
    he felt. He is reported to have said that he did not wish to sound
    like a male chauvinist, but he had noticed that women's skirts were
    shorter than when he had been captured. Downey credits his reading of
    Sports Illustrated with keeping him basically abreast of world
    developments.

    Nevertheless, he had much to catch up with. He wasted no time in
    putting his life back together. He was admitted to Harvard Law School
    in the fall of 1973. He met and married a Chinese textile designer
    studying in America, and they have a son. In 1983, on the 10th
    anniversary of his release, Downey and his family were invited back
    to China by the Beijing regime, a measure of the great respect the
    Chinese had developed for the man they held captive for more than two
    decades. He, his wife and his young son all accepted the invitation,
    and Downey speaks positively of the trip.

    Downey has served for many years as a judge of the Superior Court in
    the state of Connecticut. He remains rather laconic about his
    incarceration, saying that it taught him patience, and that it gives
    him added sympathy and concern for those he has to sentence to
    prison. He shows no bitterness toward life, and in his quiet way
    serves as an inspiration to his friends and CIA comrades.

    Whenever I address a high school or college audience of my CIA years,
    I am moved to speak of Downey. In this era of celebrity worship and
    instant self-gratification, his life is a shining example of how to
    deal gracefully with those unexpected tragedies that fate may hold in
    store for any of us.

    Tomorrow the CIA will honor Downey and Fecteau at a special ceremony
    at its Langley headquarters. (Fecteau's is also an admirable story.
    He went on to became assistant director of athletics at Boston
    University.)

    The CIA today is an embattled agency, struggling to right itself
    after shattering betrayals and seeking to redefine its mission in the
    post-Cold War era. It can hardly do better than to honor two men
    whose resilience, courage and integrity are hallmarks of their lives.
    It is these same virtues the CIA must seek to reclaim for itself.

    The writer was U.S. ambassador to Korea from 1989 to 1993.

    Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

    [Note: Donald Gregg is also chairman of the board of The Korea Society
    in the US.]

    More on POWs:

    http://www.eos.net/rrva/nampow/powfacts.html

    http://www.bravo.org/francis.htm