U.S. wants access to KGB archives

In an effort to determine if U.S. POWs from the Korean and Vietnam wars were held in the Soviet Union, the American in charge of searching for missing GIs says his researchers need access to the still-classified KGB archives.

"It's likely that the answers are in the KGB files; it's likely that they [the KGB] would hold these special prisoners if they were brought in the country; said Jerry D. Jennings, deputy, assistant secretary, of the Pentagon's POW/MIA Office. "I think if there were high-value prisoners, they would have taken them out [to the Soviet Union]. There have been clues; the problem is there is no hard evidence."

Jennings, who served as a CIA officer in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, said one solution is using retired Russian officers to search the classified files for information on missing Americans. It's a method that has been used in Vietnam with former NVA officers.

The Russian Defense Ministry's Central Archives, which have been made available to American researchers, has helped resolve the fate of 264 Americans missing from the Korean War and provided information on U.S. aircraft losses in Vietnam and the Cold War. The U.S. has helped Russia shed light on some 450,000 Soviets displaced in World War II and the Cold War and 163 Soviet soldiers missing from the 1979-1988 war in Afghanistan.

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