Shareware Supreme Volume 6 #1/swsii.zip/swsii/016/WAPHOTO4.ZIP/WAPHOTO4.TXT

Text File | 1991-07-30 | 6KB | 114 lines

                                               [waphoto4.txt 07/20/91]

                    FAMILY INSISTS PHOTO IS OF MIA!
                   SEATTLE NATIVE'S RELATIVES CHARGE
                    PENTAGON IS DRAGGING ITS FEET!!!

                  Seattle Post-Intelligencer  07/20/91
                   By Ed Offley P-I military reporter

  This report includes material from P-I news services.

  Bellevue---Relatives of a Seattle native shot down over North Vietnam
  25 years ago offered new details yesterday to show why they are
  convinced he is alive in captivity in Cambodia. They also charged the
  Pentagon with foot-dragging in the case. Air Force Maj. John Leighton
  Robertson was piloting an F-4C Phantom II over western North Vietnam
  when his plane came under fire and crashed on Sept. 16, 1966. The 1948
  Garfield High School graduate and University of Wash. graduate was
  declared missing in action. Robertson was pro moted to colonel after
  the 1973 repatriation of U.S. prisoners of war, and later the Pentagon
  said he was presumed dead.

  An international furor erupted over Robertson and two other Ameri can
  MIAs this week with the release of a black-and-white photo graph of
  three men whom family members have identified as Robert son; Air Force
  Maj. Albro Lynn Lundy Jr. of Sherman Oaks, Calif; and Navy Lt.j.g.
  Larry Stevens of Canoga Park, California.

  "I am convinced that picture is a picture of my brother, John Leighton
  Robertson," said Doug Robertson, a Maui college professor who was
  visiting a third brother, Bellevue musician Bruce Robertson, this
  week.

  Bruce Robertson agreed. "From that picture, I do believe he's alive."

  "This is a breakthrough" on the MIA issue, said Dolores Alfond, a
  Bellevue resident and sister of a Vietnam MIA who leads the National
  Alliance of Families.

  Vietnam's Communist government said yesterday that it had excavat ed
  Robertson's crash site, and it cited witnesses who said the pilot had
  perished in the fireball crash. Vietnam said it returned the remains
  to the United States in April 1990. But after some initial confusion
  yesterday, the Pentagon said U.S. forensic experts had concluded no
  human remains were found in the material.

  "There were nothing but airplane parts and a rock" in the coffin sent
  to Hawaii, Bruce Robertson said.

  Former Capt. Hugh Buchanan, who flew with Robertson and was cap tured
  after ejecting from the stricken jet, told the Post-Intelli gencer
  Tuesday that interrogators had shown him Robertson's mili tary ID
  card, supporting the theory that Robertson had ejected from the plane.

  In a telephone interview from Los Angeles yesterday, the pilot's 29
  year old daughter, Shelby Robertson Quast, provided new background on
  the photograph. She said it was obtained by the Defense Intelli gence
  Agency (DIA) from a source in Cambodia last August but that the agency

  did not inform the families until November that new material had been
  obtained. At that time, the DIA case officer sent a copy of the photo
  to the Stevens family, who then contacted Robertson's wife, Barbara.
  Quast said the photograph contained written names of only two of the
  three men on the back--- Robertson and Stevens. "We had no idea who
  the third guy in the photo was," Quast said.

  POW/MIA  activist Ted Sampley, director of the Homecoming II Project,
  confirmed that little was known of Lundy, who was declared killed in
  action shortly after his plane was shot down in 1970.

  Robertson and Stevens are high- profile MIAs whose names adorn many
  POW/MIA posters, Sampley said. "Lundy isn't on anything. We don't even
  have a biography of him."

  The source of the photograph was a Cambodian- American who had been
  contacted by unnamed parties while he was on a visit to Cambodia,
  Quast said. "The source said it was extremely timely information" on
  the three American, she said. But she said the DIA did not send an
  agent to Los Angeles upon his return to interview him. "He called them
  up and tried to give them the information, and they (the DIA) didn't
  want the information," Quast said.

  She told ABC's "Nightline" Wednesday that she begged a DIA agent on
  her knees to reveal the source's name so that she could inter view him
  herself.

  Quast met with the source, who confirmed what he had told the
  government. She caught a plane the next day for Cambodia but failed to
  find the person who had given the photograph to the Cambodian-
  American.

  She subsequently located a man who was aware of the American's
  presence, who told her, "We waited for a long time, why are you so
  late?" Quast said.

  Then, in January 1991, the DIA provided Quast, her mother and the
  other families with a new report. "We had a specific sighting (report)
  in January that Robertson, Lundy, and Stevens were being held together
  and were alive," she said. "The information comes to DIA, which sends
  it to the (Pentagon) casualty (assistance) )officer, and he wrote a
  cover letter and sends it to us."

  Normally, the DIA would delete any other names in a reference report,
  but the name "Lundy" appeared. Quast found Lundy's son, Albro Lundy
  III, and sent him a copy of the photograph.

  The report from the DIA included a message from the man identify ing
  himself as John Leighton Robertson. He was quoted as saying:"I am
  being held." The Cambodian government denied it had any information on
  missing Americans.

                [distributed through the P.O.W. NETWORK]