Shocking Blunder

The news came with brutal suddenness. From Korea, Colonel James M. Hanley, chief of the Eighth Army's war crimes section, announced that the Communists in cold blood had slaughtered some 5,500 U.S. prisoners. Up to Nov. 1, 1950, he said, the North Koreans had killed about 3,000 U.S. prisoners. Since the Chinese entered the war, said Hanley, they "have committed most of the Communist atrocity killings." With the air of a man who had detailed records on every case, Hanley declared the Chinese had killed 2,513 U.S. prisoners, ten British, 40 Turkish, and five Belgian,

The nation reacted with shock, outrage and bewilderment. The Pentagon was deluged with telegrams from agonized relatives. President Truman said that the report disclosed the most uncivilized thing that has happened in the last century--if it was true. The cease-fire talks had reached a critical stage, and the U.S. negotiators were beginning to come under some criticism for apparent stalling after the Communists had made major concessions. Critics and Communists promptly seized on the atrocity report as another attempt to delay negotiations.

Some Were Hearsay. The fact was that the Hanley report was neither the carefully documented truth nor a deliberate propaganda maneuver. It was an Army blunder of appalling proportions. Under urgent prodding from Washington, Far Eastern Commander Matt Ridgway hastily dispatched two officers to Pusan to check Hanley's facts. The officers found that Hanley had thrown together reports from Korean refugees, captured enemy soldiers and hearsay to get his totals. He had only a handful of documented cases (the Pentagon, which eventually gets all such atrocity reports, had been able to establish only about 180).

Hanley, a 46-year-old North Dakota lawyer turned Army officer, was guilelessly astonished at the fuss. In his months of collecting reports of atrocities, he had become convinced that the U.S. did not realize the kind of enemy it was fighting in Korea. He had got permission from Ridgway's headquarters to publish his findings, but Ridgway's men apparently did not realize what they were doing.

Basic Facts. After three days of silence, General Ridgway issued an apologetic statement, deploring "the anguish which this most regrettable incident has inflicted upon relatives and friends" of the 12,582 U.S. fighting men still listed as missing in action. He backed away from Hanley's figures, but insisted: "The basic facts have long been known." He explained that in every case where the death of a soldier was established and his body identified, the next of kin had been notified. Ridgway added: "It may perhaps be well to note that in His inscrutable wisdom, God chose to bring home to our people and to the conscience of the world the moral principles of the leaders of the forces against which we fight in Korea."

God could scarcely be held responsible for Hanley's exaggerations, or the blunder at Ridgway's headquarters. The Chinese, like other Communists, have committed atrocities, and the U.S. was justified in insisting that exchange of prisoners be made part of any final cease-fire agreement. But by supplying suspect material for an emotional propaganda attack, Hanley damaged the real case against the free world's enemy.

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