Word: ridgway
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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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...
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...
...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...
...more than four months of U.N.-Communist truce parleys in Korea, the Pentagon and the State Department looked avidly over Matt Ridgway's shoulder, but allowed the Supreme Commander free tactical management of the negotiations, so long as he stayed within broad lines of policy laid down in July. Recently, however, Washington has had a queasy feeling that Ridgway was being too stubborn, and Washington decided to intervene. Somewhere between Foggy Bottom and the thick-carpeted rookeries of Pentagonia, a plan to break the deadlock over a ceasefire line was cooked up and handed to Ridgway. Last week Ridgway...