DOWNEY, JOHN T.
Name: John T. Downey
Branch/Rank: CIV
Unit: CIA
Date of Birth:
Home City of Record:
Date of Loss: 29 November 1952
Country of Loss: China
Loss Coordinates:
Status (in 1973): Returnee
Category:
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: Acft
Missions:
Other Personnel in Incident: Ricahrd Fecteau, returnee
Refno:
Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw
data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA
families, published sources, interviews and CACCF = Combined Action
Combat Casualty File. Notes below are "sourced" and taken from numerous
articles. Updated 2000.
REMARKS: 730312 RELEASED BY CHINA
This article appeard in an unknown newspaper in March of 1973.
China releases U.S. fliers John T. Downey. a CIA agent shot down over
China in 1952, arrived in New Britain, Conn. March 12 after he had been
released by Chinese authorities that day.
Three days later, two U.S. airmen imprisoned in China after being shot
down during missions in the Indochina war were released. They were Lt.
Cmdr. Robert J. Flynn, 35, of Colorado Springs, Colo., shot down Aug.
21, 1967 aboard an A-6 in southern China and Major Philip E. Smith. 38,
of Roodhouse, Ill., shot down Sept. 20, 1965 over Hainan Island near the
Gulf of Tonkin when his F-104 veered off course. Flynn and Smith
crossed the border into Hong Kong and were flown to Clark Air Force.
Downey had been flown via Clark Air Force in the Philippines and
Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska in order to be with his mother, who
was suffering from a stroke in a New Britain hospital. His impending
release had been announced March 9 by Ronald L. Ziegler, White House
press Secretary, who said Premier Chou En-lai had agreed to free Downey
earlier than planned after being informed by the U.S. of his mothers
illness. Ziegler also said China would Flynn and Smith March 15.
At a March 13 news conference in New Britain, Downey said he looked on
his 20- year imprisonment as "to a large extent wasted," adding: "I
don't see that it benefited anybody."
Downey noted that during his first eight or nine months in jail he was
questioned closely by his captors and that he "revealed about every bit
of information I had."
Asked about the Chinese people, be said be felt sympathy for them in
some respects" and they were "more behind their government than I
dreamed would be possible."
==============================
[adamsck1.txt 08/01/91]
"POLITICS PREVENT POWS RETURN"
by Dennis Adamscheck
... Americans were also held in China after the Korean War, as bargaining
chips to gain political favors. Joseph King and Walter Enbom were returned
in 1957. Steve Kiba, a 1955 returnee, stated "While a prisoner of the Red
Chinese after the Korean War, I saw over fifteen Caucasian prisoners. These
fifteen men are in addition to John T. Downey and Richard Fecteau, with whom
our B-29 crew spent three weeks. (December 7 to 28, 1954). I reported
these sightings to our Air Force Intelligence, the CIA and the State
Department upon my return to freedom. Their reaction was one of
indifference and I was admonished to forget not only the fifteen, but also,
Downey and Fecteau. It was suggested that perhaps I had imagined that i had
seen these men."
Richard Fecteau was returned in 1971 and John Downey in 1973, over 19 years
after Steve Kiba had reported seeing them in captivity in 1954....
==============================
[ADAMSCK3.TXT 08/05/92]
A CONSPIRACY TO COVER UP
by Dennis Adamscheck
... The government's idea of "good politics" is playing a game with the
lives of captive U.S. servicemen and the emotions of family members. What is
frightening is a conspiracy of this nature among governmental offices would
have had to originate from the top. Five U.S. Presidents, Nixon, Ford,
Carter, Reagan and Bush, knew that American citizens had been left behind in
communist captivity. President Bush, having been in charge of the CIA,
would have been most knowledgeable. Consider the following: CIA agents
Richard Fecteau and John Downey were seen in a Chinese prison camp by Steve
Kiba, and airman shot down during the Korean War. When Kiba was released by
the Chinese in 1955, he told the CIA, the State Department and Air Force
Intelligence about Fecteau, Downey and many other Americans he had seen in
the nine prison camps he had been held captive in, in China. Kiba said
their reaction was one of indifference and he was admonished to forget the
many he had seen, especially Fecteau and Downey.
Fecteau was released to freedom in 1971 and Downey in 1973. Downey secretly
appeared from his captivity in China with the second to last group of
American POWs who were returned from captivity in Viet Nam on March 12,
1973. Secret negotiations between China and the U.S. had surely taken place
to accomplish this release. The DIA and State Department could not have
been part of the negotiations without Presidential knowledge. Their success
in gaining the release of U.S. government agents is to be applauded. But
are the many other soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen of no
consequence?...
============================
[insi12.95 01/16/96]
THE INSIDER
DECEMBER 1995
... 10. On 10/15/90 Insight Magazine published a story by Susan Katz
Keating, about the Korean war downing on 1/12/53 of Air Force radio operator
Steve Kiba who was not released until August 1955, along with 10 others held
in China. The story also shows a photo of Fecteau who was not freed until
1971....
============================
The Bamboo Cage, by Nigel Cawthorn
The Full Story of the American Servicemen still held hostage in South-East
Asia.
...The CIA were also dealing in drugs to fund some of their operations in
Laos, but the corruption involved in running that war might run so deep that
the CIA and others might be determined that the truth never comes out. And
that means leaving the American PoWs, many of whom knew what was going on,
where they are. Many CIA men are among the missing and the Agency often
seems quite content to leave their agents in enemy hands when their return
might be inconvenient. CIA agents John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau
languished in a Chinese jail for nearly 20 years after being shot down while
dropping guerrilla units into the country in November, 1952. Fecteau was
released in December, 1971, in the run-up to Richard Nixon's historic trip
to China. Downey was held until March, 1973, when Nixon finally admitted
publicly that Fecteau worked for the CIA. (3)...
Page 287
=========================
St. Joseph (MO) New Press
07/03/98
CIA honors 2 spies who survived imprisonment in China for 20 years
By ROBERT BURNS
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - On the same day President Clinton arrived to a red carpet
welcome in China last week, two men stood to applause in a banquet room
at CIA headquarters and accepted awards for a very different experience
in China.
In a private ceremony not announced by the CIA, retired spies John
"Jack" T Downey and Richard G. Fecteau received a prestigious Director's
Medal for surviving two "dark decades" in Chinese prisons - the longest
any CIA officers have been held captive abroad and lived to tell about
it.
"True legends," CIA Director George Tenet called them at last Thursday's
ceremony, which was not open to the public. A transcript of Tenet's
remarks was made available this week by the CIA pub- lic affairs office.
"You demonstrated heroism of a whole other magnitude during those dark
decades of captivity. "
"Your story, simply put, is one of the most remarkable in the 50-year
history of the Central Intelligence Agency," he said in presenting the
medals in recognition of "extraordinary fidelity and essential service."
Fecteau and Downey actually returned more than 25 years ago, and Tenet
did not say why the CIA presented the awards now. Spokesman Tom
Crispell said the idea evolved as part of the agency's 50th anniversary
celebrations.
With the Korean War raging, Fecteau, of Lynn, Mass., and Downey of New
Britain, Conn., were in a CIA-operated aircraft trying to pick up an
anti-communist Chinese agent when they were shot out of the sky over
Manchuria on Nov. 29,1952.
China, which fought on North Korea's side against the US.backed South
Koreans, captured the two CIA men and convicted them of spying two years
later at a trial that drew strong protests from President Eisenhower's
administration.
Downey was 22, Fecteau was 25.
For years, while Fecteau and Downey sat in prison in Beijing, the U.S.
government stuck to its story: The two were civilian Army employees lost
on a "routine flight" from Seoul, South Korea, to Japan.
"Utterly false," the State Department said of China's espionage charge.
By the early 1970s, as President Nixon made his historic opening to
China, the men's long nightmare came to an end. Fecteau was released in
December 1971 after serving 19 years of his 20-year sen- tence. Downey
who got a life sentence, was set free in March 1973.
===========================
The Honorable John Downey resides in Connecticut where his is a Superior
Court Judge.
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