Forced Confession

While the United Nations was carrying on diplomatic negotiations for the release of eleven U.S. fliers sentenced by Red China as spies (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), the last Canadian war prisoner held by the Chinese Communists was free to shed gloomy light on how his fellow captives were faring in the so-called People's Republic. Squadron Leader Andrew MacKenzie, 34, who was released at the Hong Kong border Dec. 5, told Ottawa newsmen that under stress of 16 months of solitary confinement he had been forced to sign a phony confession that he had flown his U.S. Air Force F-86 over Red China. MacKenzie also brought fresh news of four other U.S. fliers still held by the Reds.

MacKenzie, assigned to fly with the U.S. Air Force in Korea, was shot down over North Korea on Dec. 5, 1952, and taken to a jail in Mukden. There the Chinese held three U.S. fliers (none of them listed among the eleven convicted airmen): Captain Harold Fischer of Swea City, Iowa, Lieut. Lyle Cameron of Lincoln, Neb. and Lieut. Roland Parks of Omaha. MacKenzie said that he corresponded later with a fourth U.S. pilot, Colonel Edwin Heller of Philadelphia, who was in a Chinese hospital recovering from leg wounds.

Last March, after 16 months of solitary broken only by endless interrogations, MacKenzie numbly signed a completely false statement saying that he had been shot down while invading Chinese air space under orders.

After confessing, MacKenzie was permitted to take daily exercise with the three captured U.S. fliers. Although MacKenzie refused to say whether the U.S. prisoners had also been driven to sign confessions, he clearly implied that they had. Despite MacKenzie's release, the outlook for his former U.S. comrades is still bleak. The Chinese told them that they would be held until U.S. policy toward Red China is "right," MacKenzie said. "The Chinese are not too pleased about Formosa and not too pleased about the U.S."

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