Russians and POWs

Medical experiments on U.S. POWs

Soviet leaders authorized cruel, nazi-like medical experimentation on U.S. Prisoners of War from two conflicts, Korea and Vietnam. The authenticity of this was revealed by the late GEN MAJ jan Sejna, a former high ranking communist official. What will be described may explain the demise of hundreds, if not thousands, of GIs abandoned because the most powerful nation on earth was paralyzed morally. The moral compass of this nation was so askew that moral midgets have raised no voice against this slaughter. Moral midgets work to hide this ugly truth today.

Soviets authored the system

To understand what happened, one fact has to be known. The Soviets designed a political apparatus designed to protect party officials; rule through party officials; and enrich party officials. All actions which accomplished the foregoing were legal. As John Barron wrote in KGB, and Sejna affirmed in his testimony in 1996 vice the American POWs, "Consonant with the Leninist precept that whatever serves to advance communism is moral by definition, the Soviet Union murdered and kidnapped foreigners as early as 1926, when Stalin fully consolidated his powers..." (Barron, KGB, pg. 415) Sejna was part of that system. Being a member of the Czech Communist Party Central Committee, the Presidium, Czech Defense Council, and First Secretary of the Communist Party, made him of the top 10 officials in the communist government. Barron described him thusly on another subject. "As the Party Secretary assigned to oversee the Czechoslovak Defense Ministry, Sejna regularly attended Warsaw Pact Command conferences, where he came into possession of the kind of information he divulged. Nothing he said was inconsistent with what Western Security Services already knew from other sources... his statements were difficult to accept... so contravented the spirit of detente that few Westerners wanted to accept it."

What did Sejna warn us about that fit this description. As I wrote in Trails of Deceit, Sejna testified to this horror, beginning with the Korean War and extending into the Vietnam War. "The top-secret purpose... was to experiment on Americans and South Koreans... to test the effects of chemical and biological warfare agents... and atomic radiation. The Soviets also used the American... to test the pyschological and psysiological endurance of American soldiers... to test various mind-control drugs..." (Trails of Deceit, pg. 251)

Is Sejna Credible?

The government denies the claims of Sejna. While testifying about this subject, Sejna acknowledged this denial. In talking about the former Ambassador to Russia, Malcolm Toon, Sejna claimed, "Some people... call me liar, and even ask the Defense Department to fire me..." (Trails of Deceit pg. 251) (At this time, Sejna had been a trusted DIA analyst for fifteen years). Former government analysts like COL Joe Schlatter have called Sejna's story compelling "-- it is also phony in the extreme." (www.miafacts.org article on Sejna)�With a former Ambassador and DIA "MIA cult buster" attacking Sejna, who are we to trust?

Let's examine what Schlatter does not want you to know and what Toon should have known about this remarkable transplant from Soviet repression to American freedom. There is support for Sejna's claim. In 1970, a Vietnamese was captured who had access to one of the centers where "Chemical Interrogation" was done on POWs. He saw "three of them undergoing, interrogation, 'softening,' in the 'Chemical Interrogation Room' of the Headquarters Building. All... looked ill and tired, and appeared to have been severely beaten... had plastic tubes running into their nasal passages, leading from bottles of unknown chemicals. The chemicals were reportedly made at the nearby dairy farms... and were... refined from the urine of cattle..." (Trails of Deceit pg. 149) He was a cousin to the camp commander and passed a polygraph. The location of the prison has been known to DIA analysts as a probable part of the "second tier" of prisons from which Americans were not released. We also know from returned remains that the Vietnamese used the skeletons of US pilots in the same way we use plastic skeletons today, in medical laboratories and teaching facilities.

Additionally, our intelligence agencies have known for years of collateral information supporting the claims of Sejna. For example, they have received information about "high security" hospitals in Vietnam and Laos. Native specialists have received training in specialized forms of medicine including chemical and biological warfare. Besides the eyewitness to the "chemical interrogation" of POWs in Vietnam, cited above, a Vietnamese doctor was surfaced in South Vietnam in 1971 who also knew about the medical experimentation on our POWs. No ordinary doctor, Dang Tan was a high ranking defector from the North Vietnamese side with impeccable medical credentials and often cited as a source by DIA personnel. Reports from Vietnam have indicated that cemeteries exist at Tan Lap, Quyet Tien, Yen Bai, Ha Son Bin, and Thanh Hoa for American POWs who died, and maybe were murdered, in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Sejna's claim is he personally handled the paperwork and saw POWs as they were being transferred from Vietnam to the then Soviet Union. He was there in the beginning when the programs for Korea and Vietnam were being discussed and planned. No one entered the country without him knowing about it. Yet, at "other sites," (like that of Schlatter) Sejna is described as tired, out of sorts, unreliable, and all other types of adjectives usually reserved for people on the other side, rather than the top analyst that he was for our own Defense Intelligence Agency. Prior to going into the question of why our own intelligence people would debunk one of their own, let's look at his credibility on other issues.

The government denies the claims of Sejna. The inevitable question is why? He has been corroborated, as seen above. The answer probably lies in the innerworkings of programs like MKULTRA, Pegasus, Amadeus, and Watchtower. I will explain one, MKULTRA, because I believe in that program lies the real reason for the attempted denial of the claims of Sejna.

Sejna's Credibility is Proven

Earlier, we saw what the distinguished writer John Barron, wrote about Sejna. This had to do with Sejna's August 14, 1971, Paris Match interview. At that time, Sejna told the world that Warsaw Pact Nations, under Soviet direction, planted in Western Europe and North America, dormant networks of saboteurs who were waiting to destroy vital installations in the case of war. He also indicated that the Soviet Union might use these persons in circumstances short of war also. Barron acknowledged that the spector of serious and deliberate communist preparations to sabotage Western cities in peacetime so contravented the spirit of detente that few Westerners wanted to accept it. Our security agencies knew that Sejna had access to these facts. What they wanted was "independent corroboration."

This is one reason to debunk Sejna on the experimentation on our POWs. No one wants to believe it. We have the clear word of the Russians and Vietnamese that no POWs were left behind and we have the word of our agencies responsible for accounting for our MIAs that no POWs were transferred to the Soviet Union. (Not to mention sites like Schlatter's who continue the government line) Well, let's look just a little further. A month after Sejna gave his interview, a Russian, 34 year old Oleg Adolfovich Lyalin, came forward with the same information. Barron described this KGB officer as one who occupied an "official post of importance" in the KGB division whose mission "included the organization of sabotage within the United Kingdom... the elimination of individuals judged to be enemies of the USSR..." Lyalin brought with him "certain information and documents, including plans for infiltration of agents for the purpose of sabotage..." These last words were those of the British Foreign Office and the Attorney General For Great Britain, Sir Peter Rawlinson. As a result of the information Lyalin gave, and of course was verified earlier by Sejna, an extraoridnary meeting of the Soviet Politburo took place between Party Secretary Lenoid (Leonid) Brezhnev, KGB Chief Yuri Andropov, and other members at the dignitaries lounge of the Moscow airport on September 27, 1971. Brezhnev had to tell his Poliburo accomplices that 105 intelligence agents had been kicked out of Great Britain. Rawlinson told his countrymen, "After Mr. Lyalin sought asylum, there were substantial grounds for anxiety over his personal safety, enhanced by the fact that the duties of his department of the KGB also included the elimination of individuals judged to be enemies of the USSR. These anxieties remain." (KGB pg. 433) Would a system with this foreign policy, so exposed officially, also experiment on American POWs? I believe so! Let's see why the "official liner" of our government want to trash Sejna.

Why does the government trash Sejna?

MKULTRA and POWs

With this proven record of reliability, why would the government and it's former minions describe a valued informant as incompetent, tired, and other various words describing usually persons other than friends? One possible reason is that they have their own reputations to think about and don't care who or how they trash others who are closing in on the truth. This is possibly true. I believe another reason to be credible and probably closer to the truth. We do not want to expose the fact that we conducted our own experiments parallel to what the Soviets did, albeit with "volunteers" from prisons and other places rather than POWs. Acknowledging the Soviet experimentation on our POWs ran the risk of exposing our own programs. One, MKULTRA, was written about in the book, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control. Although the author swallowed the words of the CIA that the Russians and Chinese did not have their own version of our program, he missed several things from his own book which back Sejna up on his contentions.

John Marks wrote several small paragraphs about what the CIA knew of Soviet experiments. Our POWs from Korea, who came back through Manchuria, from Russia, had "blank period(s) of disorientation." A Russian defector, KGB Captain Nikhokhlov, described secret laboratories, off limits to all but those in on the program, variously described as Spets Byuro #1 or the Kamera. Our name for MKULTRA, one at least that CIA used, was Manufacturing Killers Utilizing Lethal Tradecraft Requiring Assassinations. Keeping the CIA name in mind, here is what John Barron wrote about the Kamera, or as the KGB knew it, the Chamber. It was a "laboratory that conducted experiments to invent even better and more undetectable means of exterminating human beings. The Chamber specialized in poisons for which there is no known antidote and devices that kill while making death appear to be the result of natural causes. Planning an assassinaion in 1953, Sudoplatov's (the head chief) deputy, Colonel Lev Alexsandrovich Studnikov, remarked: 'The fellows from the Twelfth (The Chamber) say that they themselves are afraid to walk in their own laboratory. I can understand it. A fearful business. You just touch something by chance - and there's your funeral.'" (KGB pg. 419) Like all CIA and KGB activities, the Directorates change names and designations often to throw opposing intelligence services off who attempted to keep track of what each section was supposed to do. It was probably the Chamber that developed the program that Sejna talked about and that our CIA, DIA, and other intelligence agencies deny ever existed - as they leak information to writers like Barron, Seth, and others, to let some information out.

One project I believe to be associated with MKULTRA was Project Cherry whose mission included the working with Cambodians to assassinate Prince Norodom Sihanouk. It was a "rogue operation", but that is a subject of collateral importance. More importantly, the title "Manchurian Candidate," as used by Marks, has to do with the producing a killer. Although Marks wrote of the 1954 defector, Nikolai Khokhlov, who told the CIA of his responsibility for "executive actions" which included assassinations for the KGB, he missed the whole import of what he wrote, either through ignorance, or overlooking who Khokhlov actually was and why he defected. Barron likewise, did not tell that Studinov was the chief of the Smersh executioners.

As related by Roland Seth, a British Royal Air Force and Special Operations Executive Intelligence Officer, Captain Khokhlov was personally picked in 1953 to carry out an assassination orchestrated by LTG Alexander Panyushkin, a former Ambassador to the United States and KGB operative, and personally approved by Georgy Malenkov, then Prime Minister and Nikita Khruschev, First Secretary of the Communist Party. The target was Georgi Sergeevich, "the feared NTS leader whom the Russians had tried unsuccessfully to kidnap three years before." (Description from John Barron in KGB pg. 420) Khokhlov defected because, as he told his intended victim, Georgi Sergeevich, "I can't let his murder happen." Khokhlov, a terrorist and gurerilla during World War II, could not commit cold blooded murder. As Seth recounted in his book, Khokhlov had become a Christian. It almost cost him his life; "Eventually, Khokhlov's own name appeared on the list of men doomed by the Kremlin." On September 15, 1957, Khokhlov was poisoned with thallium subjected to intense atomic radiation and ingested with his food or drink at a convention in Frankfurt. Only through the battle of "American scientists" versus the "Soviet scientists" - was his life spared. Unfortunately, Khokhlov's wife, young baby and the wife's 14 year old sister were incarcerated into the Gulags, never to be heard of again. The laboratories he described in classified testimony before the Warren Commission above, were part of these "executive actions" of the then Russian Department 13 or Spets Byuro 1 as it used to be called.

The usual rule is that we do something in order to counter what the other guys were doing. There must be something from our experiments that parallel the Soviet ones. Well, we've just seen the name for both - manufacturing assassins. Marks wrote that our CIA did experimentation including a "drug program" for human control, radiation, electro-shock, and harassment substances. Another project, OFTEN, helped develop a drug to simulate a "heart attack or stroke." One has to wonder if the records might also reflect experiments on inducing heart attacks, like what Sejna testified the Soviets were doing to our POWs. These experimentations lend credibility to Sejna's 1996 sworn testimony on POWs. One would have to be naive to believe only our CIA did this type of experimentation and nothing was done of a similar nature by the Soviets. Either naive or have a mindset to debunk.

Facing the truth on POWs

From LTG Tighe on, everyone showing POWs alive has been trashed. Are they all mad or delusional? Of course not! They have been unsettling, however to the purveyors of the myth that all the POWs died. Barron proved Sejna was credible in one area. The book on MKULTRA shows he is credible on the other area. However, to accept the fact that this experimentation took place on our POWs would require that something be done by our government to avenge the war crimes perpetrated by the Vietnamese and Soviets, and probably Chinese and Koreans. This government, to date, does not have the moral courage to proceed. Thus, our intelligence agencies officially have to find ways to discredit sources so that our "political" aims can go forward unimpeded. Our "military," described by Kissinger and others as mere appendages of political policy, must then be sacrificed. Thus, we have the government minions who day in and day out say the Soviets never did all this. Sejna was wrong.

Well, let's see what Barron, Seth, and others said. "Thus, the Soviet murders and kidnappings perpetrated under Khruschev cannot be considered errant offenses by the KGB or its individual officers. They were carefully considered acts of the Soviet leadership. And during their first full year in power, the successors of Stalin resorted to assassination and abduction operations with undiminished ferocity." (KGB pg. 420) Seth said "They were all part of an intensified campaign ordered by Khruschev and Lalenkov towards the end of 1953. The most active emigre leaders and defectors were sentenced to death, their executions to be carried out by SMERSH. Other prominent anti-Communists were to be kidnapped so that they might be brainwashed - a SMERSH activity of which the West so far had no knowledge or conception - and so tricked into making false confessions of voluntary return to the Communist fold... The campaign of murder and kidnapping opened on the night of 13 April 1954..." (Seth, The Executioners, pg. 161) Seth and Barron have been backed up by Peter Deriabin, a Soviet defector used by the CIA to let out selected secrets to the public like the Penkovsky papers, and Bogdan Stashinsky, another SMERSH hit man.

As Barron wrote, and Sejna affirmed in his testimony in 1996 vice the American POWs, "Consonant with the Leninist precept that whatever serves to advance communism is moral by definition, the Soviet Union murdered and kidnapped foreigners as early as 1926, when Stalin fully consolidated his powers..." (Barron, KGB, pg. 415) As Sejna testified, the experimentation on American POWs was authenticated and authorized by Khruschev and later the top leadership of the Kremlin. "The Americans... were very important to the Soviet plans because... the United States was their worst enemy... they want to be sure they understand the mental and physical condition of American soldiers. The Soviets were deadly serious in... their development of various drugs and chemicals... detailed tests on the people (POWS) from the United States... I learned about all this from the Czech doctors... Czech military intelligence officers in charge... Soviet advisors, and from official documentation... I also reviewed frports... results of autopsies of the POWs and received briefings on various aspects of the experimentations..." (Trails of Deceit, pg. 251)

How would mere Colonels and below in DIA know for sure what Sejna knew when they never took the time to debrief him? They don't even try to answer the proof just given. Why? The answer is simple. When you make a policy decision that no POWs were shipped to the USSR or survived, you have to come up with cover stories to counter those who know different. Sejna called the Soviet plan part of a deception against the United States. Our intelligence agencies have their own deception. From it comes the campaign to discredit Sejna, a trusted DIA analyst until he decided to tell the truth.

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