                                                    [watm0831.txt]

                  POWS SENT FROM HANOI TO SOVIETS, MAN SAYS
              Associated Press Seattle Times August 31, 1991

   At least 22 U.S. prisoners of war were sent from North Vietnam to the
   Soviet Union in 1977 and 1978, a retired intelligence official told a
   Seattle television station last night.

   KIRO-TV also quoted a Soviet Embassy spokesman, George Oganov, as saying
   his country's prisons were being checked for any American POWs. So fat
   none has been found, he said.

   POW movements were revealed in intercepted radio transmissions, said
   retired Air Force Tech. Sgt. Terry Minarcin, a Vietnamese language
   specialist and intelligence expert.  He served with Air Force
   intelligence and National Security Agency units, KIRO said.

   "Beginning in late '77, around mid-December of '77, we started noticing
   flights from various parts of the country carrying specific types of
   POWs into Hanoi to be handed over the the Russians to be flown out of
   Hanoi into Moscow," Minarcin said.

   He said the prisoners were escorted by KGB agents on Soviet planes and
   included all those then in Vietnam with communications and
   signals-intelligence expertise.

   At least 22 prisoners were flown to Moscow in December 1977 and January
   1978, and other intelligence officials told him that shipments continued
   at least through the next fall and perhaps into 1983, Minarcin said.

   Minarcin's account was supported by Jerry Mooney, another former Air
   Force and NSA employee, but was denied in a written statement issued
   yesterday by the Pentagon.

   "No information from U.S. intelligence sources indicates that a movement
   of POWs from Vietnam to the U.S.S.R. occurred," the statement said.

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