Korean War remembered. (Cover Story: Korea).

After America's fighting men won a hard-earned victory, treacherous forces inside the U.S. government effectively ordered them to return North Korea to the Communists.

On June 25, 1950, Communist North Korean forces backed by the Soviet Union and Red China swept across the 38th Parallel in a massive invasion of South Korea. The lightly armed South Korean defenders and their American advisers quickly fell back before the much larger, better equipped Red Army. All of the Korean Peninsula would soon have fallen to Stalin's Korean troops, except for the intervention of U.S.-led Allied forces. Americans, the majority of whom probably could not locate Korea on a world map, were soon to pay a terrible price in blood, treasure, national sovereignty, and world standing for this Asian venture.

That still mounting price could escalate astronomically should the current totalitarian regime in Pyongyang launch a concerted attack on South Korea. A massive attack by the heavily armed North Korean forces--whether using conventional, nuclear, or biochemical weapons--would prove disastrous not only to the people of South Korea, but to the nearly 40,000 U.s. troops stationed there. In such an event, these American servicemen would face mass annihilation or capture.

The Korean War has been presented to three generations of Americans as an event that proved the necessity and effectiveness of the newly founded United Nations for stopping international aggression and opposing Communist expansion. Nothing could be further from the truth. As we shall show, the Korean War was an affair carefully scripted by the Kremlin strategists and their agents and allies in the U.S. government. Their aim was to expand and consolidate Communist objectives worldwide, while simultaneously building the UN's power, authority, and prestige. It was a continuation of the treason, deception, and betrayal at the top levels of U.S. leadership that had aided "Uncle Joe" Stalin's brutal subjugation of Central and Eastern Europe and China during, and following, World War II. The seeds of treachery and treason came to full flower in Korea.

No Substitute for Victory

In his famous speech before a joint session of Congress, General Douglas MacArthur reminded America that "once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory--not prolonged indecision. In war, indeed, there can be no substitute for victory." The manifest truth of those immortal words, uttered on April 19, 1951, was prophetically and tragically proven as the war continued. It was proven even more profoundly at the "conclusion" of the war, when the UN and U.S. leaders accepted a substitute that conceded to Communist demands on virtually every important point.

The Korean War was the first U.S. war with a foreign power that didn't end with a U.S. military victory. It did not even end in a draw, as the ongoing Korean "truce" is often described. It ended in an ignominious defeat for the U.S., not because America's fighting men failed. They performed brilliantly and heroically against incredible odds. The loss occurred because our political leaders betrayed us.

How was the Korean War a defeat? It was a defeat by every criterion worth considering. The UN resolutions used as the basis for launching our military actions in Korea called for bringing about "a united, independent and democratic Korea." Was Korea united, independent, and democratic when the 1953 cease-fire was signed? Is it so today? At a terrible sacrifice, American fighting men liberated all of Korea and made that goal a possibility. But political decisions turned victory to defeat; our forces were made to give North Korea back to the Communists.

The 1953 cease-fire agreement was not a peace treaty, as it is frequently, erroneously called. It was (and is) a temporary truce; we are still technically at war. North Korea, as a vassal state and a "deniable asset" of both Russia and China, was given a safe sanctuary to build its military forces and prepare for its next attack on the South. As such, North Korea has been given every military advantage. With the cease-fire, the Communists handed us a time bomb - but they held on to the remote detonating device. They can still detonate it at the moment of their choosing.

The Korean War was a stinging defeat in terms of its impact on our military. The morale of the U.S. Armed Forces was devastated by unprecedented, absurd, and immoral rules of engagement that handcuffed and endangered our men, stripped them of hard-won victories, and constantly favored the enemy. Our global prestige plummeted, while that of the Communists soared. What our politicians and press called a victory was recognized around the world as a signal defeat for the mighty U.S. military. It set terrible precedents for subjecting our military to UN controls and psychologically conditioned Americans to accept incursions on our national sovereignty and independence in the name of UN-defined "peace" and "collective security." It brought the firing of General MacArthur, one of the greatest military leaders and statesmen our country has produced, by President Truman and the pack of subversives guiding him. Congress' failure to impeach Truman for the unconstitutional and unconscionable policies and orders of his ad ministration relative to Korea added another catastrophic, defeatist blow to America.

Perhaps the most bitter of Korea's many bitter defeats was the 1953 truce agreement abandoning over 8,000 U.S. POWs and as many as 100,000 South Korean civilian and military prisoners to the Communists. Many of these individuals suffered horrible fates, including serving as guinea pigs in torture experiments using chemical and biological weapons. Thousands were shipped to the Soviet Union and Red China. (See the article on page 15.)

The "stalemate" in Korea not only consolidated Communist control over North Korea, but over China as well, and set the stage for Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Because of our failure to heed MacArthur's call to victory, and our failure to clean out of government those who had sabotaged our victory, we were destined to a grim repetition in Vietnam, and an even costlier, bloodier defeat.

The "Blunder" That Wasn't

On June 27, 1950, two days after the Communist invasion of South Korea, the United Nations adopted a resolution calling on all UN members to "furnish such assistance to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack and to restore international peace and security...." President Truman later cited this UN resolution as the basis for his ordering of U.S. troops to Korea, without a congressional declaration of war, a practice that would become commonplace under Presidents George Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

That the Russians had stormed out of the UN Security Council prior to the invasion and were not on hand to veto the Council's resolution was, according to conventional wisdom, a happy twist of fate. President Truman told Congress: "Only fortuitous circumstances had enabled the United Nations to take swift action against the North Korean aggression ... the Soviet delegate had boycotted the Security Council and therefore was not able to veto its recommendations." Future U.S. Secretary of State Christian Herter would later echo and reinforce this myth, stating that "by one of those curious accidents which can play such a large part in the world's history, the Russians were absent from the Security Council, and that Council voted without a veto to oppose the aggression of the North Koreans." Was it really due to "fortuitous circumstances" or an "accident" that the Soviets were "boycotting" the Security Council when the crucial vote came? It was about as accidental as Hitler's invasion of Poland or Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor!

Stalin and the Kremlin chess masters had planned their Korea move long in advance. A key part of the gambit involved one General Vasilev, who carried out the final preparations for the North Korean invasion of the South and actually directed the Communist forces in the field. This same General Vasilev, just six months before the invasion, had chaired the UN's Military Staff Committee. This committee, along with the office of the under-secretary-general for political and security council affairs, was responsible for UN military action under the Security Council. On January 19, 1950, General Vasilev stormed out of the Military Staff Committee, ostensibly because he found it intolerable that a representative of Nationalist China (Taiwan) was seated on the same committee. After hostilities had begun, another Soviet Communist, General Ivan A. Skliaro, assumed Vasilev's UN post as head of the Military Staff Committee (MSC).

Working hand in glove with Skliaro was the top Russian at the UN, Konstantin Zinchenko, head of the UN's Department of Security Council Affairs. Zinchenko was also an assistant secretary-general who often sat in for Secretary-General Trygvie Lie when Lie was away from the UN. The U.S. forces in Korea were placed under UN authority and the military orders, dispositions, intelligence, and logistic reports were routed from U.S./UN commanders in Korea to the MSC and the Security Council. Zinchenko became notorious for his verbal attacks on General MacArthur's prosecution of the war effort. Finally, in 1952, Zinchenko and his aide, Nikolai Skvortsov, fled the country as the FBI and U.S. Senate investigators zeroed in on a massive espionage network they directed at the UN. Zinchenko was replaced at the UN by another Stalinist agent, Ilya S. Chernyshev. With Vasilev, Zinchenko, and Chernyshev in these key posts, the Communists were effectively directing both sides of the Korean War! And this trio was just the tip of the iceberg. A huge Fifth Column of U.S. Communists were assisting the Soviets. Senator James 0. Eastland noted in 1952 that "there is today in the UN among the American employees there, the greatest concentration of Communists that this Committee has ever encountered.... These people occupy high positions."

This crucial information about Communist control of key UN posts affecting the war and Soviet direction of the North Koreans was almost completely blacked out by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations and their co-conspirators in Congress and the media. After it was too late, the Eisenhower Defense Department confirmed what U.S. military leaders and conservative congressmen had been charging about this Soviet-UN duplicity. In a May 15, 1954 press release the Pentagon described in detail how high-ranking Russian military officers were actually on the scene in North Korea directing military operations. The release stated:

They wore civilian clothing and it was forbidden to address them by rank. They were introduced as "newspaper reporters," but they had supreme authority.... A North Korean Major identified two of these Russian "advisors" as General Vasilev and Colonel Dolgin. Vasilev, he said, was in charge of all movements across the 38th Parallel. Another prisoner said he actually heard General Vasilev give the order to attack on June 25th.

Many years later, former Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev acknowledged in his memoirs, Khrushchev Remembers, that the North Korean offensive had been totally a Soviet operation. He wrote: "We had already been giving arms to North Korea for some time. It was obvious that they would receive the requisite quantity of tanks, artillery, rifles, machine guns...." At one point Khrushchev asked his boss, Joe Stalin, why he had pulled back the Soviet advisers. Khrushchev recalled that Stalin "snapped back at me, 'It's too dangerous to keep our advisers there. They might get taken prisoner. We don't want there to be evidence for accusing us of taking part in this business.'"

In short, Moscow ordered the 1950 invasion of South Korea, and the Soviet and Chinese military leaders completely directed the Communist Korean forces throughout the conflict. The Soviets did not "blunder" by walking out of the UN before the Security Council vote on repelling North Korea's aggression, as common wisdom holds. The Soviets did not want to veto the UN resolution because they wanted to trap the U.S. in an Asian quagmire under conditions they controlled, while advancing their long-term operational goals for the UN.

Treason Is the Reason

Stalin was understandably confident of ultimate triumph because Soviet agents and pro-Soviet collaborators not only permeated the UN but also occupied key posts in the U.S. government. They would (and, in fact, did) hobble U.S. military commanders and reverse Communist losses on the battlefield. Our military commanders realized full well that something was terribly wrong, not only at the UN but at our own government's top levels.

The treachery and sabotage began with Day One. With U.S. forces hopelessly outnumbered, General MacArthur was eager to accept Nationalist Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek's immediate offer of 30,000 troops from Formosa (Taiwan). Truman not only refused but ordered the U.S. 7th Fleet into the Formosa Straits to protect Red China. Years later, MacArthur noted in his autobiography Reminiscenses that this incredible order aimed "to neutralize Formosa, which in effect protected the Red China mainland from attack by Chiang Kai-shek's force of half a million men. This released the two great Red Chinese armies assigned to the coastal defense of central China and made them available for transfer elsewhere." That "elsewhere" happened to be Korea, where those Red Chinese slaughtered Americans.

In a May 1951 interview with U.S.A. Magazine, shortly after he was relieved of command in Korea, MacArthur stated: "I am convinced I was restrained in Korea by some secret Administration policy directive or strategy about which I was not informed." He was not alone in reaching this conclusion. Brigadier General Walton Walker, commander of the U.S. 8th Army in Korea, saw it too.

In Reminiscences, MacArthur wrote:

That there was some leak in intelligence was evident to everyone. Walker continually complained to me that his operations were known to the enemy in advance through sources in Washington.... [I]nformation must have been relayed to them, assuring that the Yalu bridges would continue to enjoy sanctuary and that their bases would be left intact. They knew they could swarm down across the Yalu River without having to worry about bombers hitting their Manchurian supply lines.

MacArthur also cited an official leaflet published by the Red Chinese government in which General Lin Piao bluntly acknowledged: "I would never have made the attack and risked my men and military reputation if I had not been assured that Washington would restrain General MacArthur from taking adequate retaliatory measures against my lines of supply and communication." Incredible! Yet that is precisely what happened, over and over again, to MacArthur and successive commanders.

In Reminiscences, MacArthur described how he became "worried by a series of directives from Washington which were greatly decreasing the potential of my air force. First I was forbidden 'hot' pursuit of enemy planes that attacked our own. Manchuria and Siberia were sanctuaries of inviolate protection for all enemy forces and for all enemy purposes, no matter what depredations or assaults might come from there. Then I was denied the right to bomb the hydroelectric plants along the Yalu. The order was broadened to include every plant in North Korea which was capable of furnishing electric power to Manchuria and Siberia. Most incomprehensible of all was the refusal to let me bomb the important supply center at Racin, which was not in Manchuria or Siberia, but many miles from the border, in northeast Korea. Racin was a depot to which the Soviet Union forwarded supplies from Vladivostok for the North Korean Army. I felt that step-by-step my weapons were being taken away from me."

When four Red Chinese armies began storming across the Yalu River into North Korea, MacArthur ordered that the bridges across the river be bombed. But Washington countermanded his order. He was astounded. In Reminiscences, he recalled: "I realized for the first time that I had actually been denied the use of my full military power to safeguard the lives of my soldiers and the safety of my army. To me, it clearly foreshadowed a tragic situation in Korea and left me with a sense of inexpressible shock."

General Mark Clark, who was named UN Commander in Korea in 1953, likewise, found himself surrounded by enemies both on the battlefield and in Washington. In his 1954 book, From the Danube to the Yalu, General Clark speculated:

... perhaps Communists had wormed their way so deeply into our government on both the working and planning levels that they were able to exercise an inordinate degree of power in shaping the course of America in the dangerous postwar era. I could not help wondering and worrying whether we were faced with open enemies across the conference table and hidden enemies who sat with us in our most secret councils.

Turning Victory to Defeat

On March 26, 1955, General James A. Van Fleet all but charged treason in the White House in a speech spiked by most of the major media. General Van Fleet had commanded the 8th Army in Korea in the spring of 1953 and insisted in his speech: "Victory was denied us back in April and May of 1953, when we had the enemy on the run. We could have won here and we should have won."

Generals MacArthur, Walker, Clark, and Van Fleet were not in the least bit delusional or paranoid, as subsequent congressional investigations--and revelations from declassified Soviet and American intelligence archives--have shown. They were indeed restrained by "some secret Administration policy directive or strategy" and faced "hidden enemies in their most secret councils. As the Hiss-Chambers case, the Igor Gouzenko case, the "Atom Bomb" spy cases, and many others were proving, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, that Soviet agents had honeycombed the federal government.

Of particular relevance to the Korean situation were the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) investigations into the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR). The IPR, a prestigious center for Asian-Pacific scholarship, had become the quasi-official brain and voice of the U.S. State Department on foreign policy concerning China and all of Asia. It also proved a veritable nest of Soviet agents. The SISS investigations identified over 45 IPR operatives who were members of the Communist Party. These and other fellow travelers, said the subcommittee, had made the IPR into "a vehicle used by Communists to orientate American Far Eastern policy toward Communist objectives." A key IPR member was Owen Lattimore, a top State Department adviser and influential author and journalist whom the SISS investigation found to be a "conscious, articulate instrument of the Soviet Conspiracy."

Dean Acheson and George C. Marshall were heading the conspiratorial clique in our State Department determined to turn China over to Stalin's minions. In June 1947, a Senate subcommittee addressed a secret memorandum to Secretary of State George Marshall, calling to his attention "a condition that developed and still flourishes in the State Department under the administration of Dean Acheson. It is evident that there is a deliberate, calculated program being carried out not only to protect Communist personnel in high places but to reduce security and intelligence protection to a nullity." Marshall ignored the warning and continued Acheson's policies of supporting the Communists.

Consequently, by the end of 1949, mainland China had been pushed into Communist hands, and Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist (anti-Communist) government had been forced to flee to the island of Formosa. And China most certainly was pushed, as Owen Lattimore gloatingly affirmed. "There is logic to the course of action advocated by Secretary Acheson," Lattimore wrote in the July 17, 1949 issue of the Sunday Compass of New York. "It is, moreover, a perfectly convincing logic." Acheson, Lattimore, and company had faced a difficult problem in disposing of Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalists. "The problem was how to allow them to fall without making it look as if the United States had pushed them," said Lattimore. The same "problem," he told his Compass readers, was now confronting us in Korea. "The thing to do, therefore," said Lattimore, "is to let South Korea fall--but not to let it look as though we pushed it."