The story of American heroes kept by our country's enemies and Washington's failure to recover them reads like a cross between "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Foreign Affairs." It uncovers decades of secrets and incompetence, right up to the Obama Administration, and reveals how Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang continue to thwart America today. Filled with previously secret documents and photos. Based on years of research around the world by an investigative historian and former Special Forces officer teamed with the POW/MIA expert son of a missing Korean War flyer, it is by turns both enthralling and upsetting. This book rips the lid off the one of the most disturbing scandals in modern US history. As you read the book, join our community to help with investigations the Pentagon and CIA can't -- or won't -- do themselves. Decipher names on declassified documents, track down Chinese and Russian officials and identify POWs in captured enemy film: cynicalattitude.com A "fascinating, disturbing and important book...America has to read it: " Sydney Schanberg, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and inspiration for the Academy Award-winning film "The Killing Fields." Wall Street Journal: "Independent researcher Mark Sauter and John Zimmerlee, the son of a missing-in-action U.S. Air Force serviceman, argue in a new e-book, that U.S. incompetence, combined with a desire to downplay the issue amid on-again-off-again negotiations with North Korea, have trumped the military's 'no man left behind' imperative. The two men also say that there is some evidence that American soldiers may still be alive in North Korea today..." Associated Press: "Mark Sauter, a private researcher and co-author with John Zimmerlee of 'American Trophies and Washington's Cynical Attitude, ' an e-book about POWs to be published this month, found in government archives a U.S. intelligence report from August 1955, two years after the war, calling for a bigger intelligence effort to learn about such POW transfers." Drudge Report: "Book: USA left POWs behind in NKorea, China, Russia..." The Washington Free Beacon: "The book, American Trophies: How American POWs Were Surrendered to North Korea, China, and Russia by Washington's 'Cynical Attitude, ' includes numerous cases of missing Americans from the Korean War, along with several from the Cold War and Vietnam War. It is based on years of research, interviews, and documents by the authors, Sauter and John Zimmerlee. Declassified intelligence reports obtained by the authors reveal that Americans were being held captive in China, North Korea, and the Soviet Union at least through the 1990s." Includes information on Korean War POWs in North Korean, Chinese and Soviet prisons; Vietnam War POWs reportedly taken to North Korea; Chinese espionage; North Korean/DPRK "salting" of American remains; KGB exploitation of US POWs; North Korea human rights/DPRK human rights; communist torture and brainwashing; Cold War history; covert action (requested by the Air Force Chief of Staff to rescue American POWs the year after the war ended); Korean War special operations; Cold War spy flights; Korean War history; Truman Administration; F-86; US-China conflicts; Soviet prison system, the Gulag; World War II prisoners of war, including German and Japanese POWs who reported Americans in Siberia; North Korean prison camps; North Korean military and government; Freedom of Information Act; North Korean agents; escapes; espionage; real-life adventures; real-life mysteries; B-29; new information on the Eisenhower Administration; F-51; Obama Administration mismanagement; National Archives; declassification and secrecy; the Punch Bowl; JPAC; 2nd ID; DPMO; Pentagon secrets; CIA operations; military intelligence collection; Korean DMZ; North Korean abductions; Stalin; Chou En-lai; US defectors; surveillance flights; and untold US diplomatic history.
About the Author: Mark Sauter, investigative historian, and John Zimmerlee, POW case expert: The latter's involvement with POW/MIA issues started with the 1952 disappearance of his father, Air Force officer John Henry Zimmerlee, during the Korean War. Years later, frustrated at the government's failure to declassify and correlate huge numbers of files in the National Archives and other locations, Zimmerlee took it upon himself as a volunteer, analyzing more than 100,000 pages and creating a unique database of Korean War cases. It includes everything from debriefings of returned Americans to interrogations of captured enemy soldiers. Family members from across the country come to Zimmerlee when the Pentagon has no answers. In many cases, he provides witness evidence on the capture, or death, of servicemen based on information the Pentagon POW office has never collected. In some cases, such as where the death of a loved one was observed by his comrades-in-arms, this information satisfies the family's questions, providing answers that have eluded them for decades. In others, the information may raise new issues and suggest next steps in the search. John Zimmerlee has provided information to more than 1,000 family members. He is now the volunteer Executive Director of the Korean & Cold War POW/MIA Network and board member of other POW/MIA groups. To this expertise is added almost 25 years of research by former investigative correspondent Mark Sauter, who earlier served as an Army officer in the DMZ between North and South Korea. As a young reporter he became hooked on the issue in 1989, when he discovered the infamous and then classified "RE US PWs in USSR" memo at the Eisenhower Presidential Library. The memo, five years older than Sauter, contradicted government denials that any evidence existed of US prisoners in the Soviet Union. It was kept classified, at one point by direction of the White House, for years after. You can read it later in this book. Aside from extensive archival work, Sauter's investigation has included interviews with dozens of sources, from a sitting Vice President of the United States to Pentagon insiders and Russian and North Korean defectors; scores of Freedom of Information Act requests; and travel across the United States and to North Korea and Russia. Finally, we retained speakers of Mandarin, Korean, Russian, German, Hungarian, Romanian, Japanese and Polish to conduct research and contact sources around the world.