AI Powers New Push for Answers on U.S. POW/MIAs Captured but Never Returned or Accounted For
On National POW/MIA Recognition Day, the Project announced it has expanded its search for evidence on Americans held after the Korean, Cold and Vietnam Wars using artificial intelligence — and the work is already producing results.
On this page
- General POW/MIA news — outside reporting on the accounting effort, litigation, foreign archives and the family organizations.
- Reports mentioning PIP and the team — coverage that names the project or one of our investigators and advisers.
- PIP reports and analysis — the project’s own published work.
General POW/MIA News
Developments on the POW/MIA issue — official accounting, legislation, litigation, foreign archives and the work of the family organizations — including the project’s own reporting.
Capt. Eugene “Red” McDaniel: A Hanoi POW who went to Pyongyang
By PIP’s president and founder · The abused Hanoi POW who volunteered to go to Pyongyang, and who never stopped believing his bombardier-navigator, Lt. James “Kelly” Patterson, survived.
Vietnam charging millions for info on missing American soldiers, providing few answers
By Bill Gertz · “$86 million spent but only 25 cases of MIA remains identified since 2016”
“Hanoi has never cooperated fully on providing the U.S. with all its information on missing Americans, and the U.S. government has always known this despite claiming the contrary to the American people and Congress.”
Kim Jong Un Must Tell Us What Happened to American POWs
By Gordon G. Chang. “Mark Sauter, president of the POW Investigative Project, told The Daily Beast.”
Trump must press for remains, news about American POWs from Korean War at summit, families say
The first national outlet to name the POW Investigative Project.
Secret Casualties of the Cold War
“Several family members interviewed for this article refer to Sauter as a trusted resource.”
America’s Missing Korean War Veterans Could Be in Russia, Family Says
By Tom O’Connor.
Forgotten War, Forgotten Soldiers
By Bill Gertz. The 1989 Eisenhower Library memo that began the work.
Study calls Pentagon effort to recover MIA Americans ‘acutely dysfunctional’
By Robert Burns. The AP investigation that forced a Pentagon review, built in part on a 1955 intelligence report found in the archives.
Eight Thousand Mysteries
“This is a big opening after all these years. They have information on a lot of guys.”
China Admits Taking, Burying U.S. POW
“The case of Sgt. Desautels has been a focal point of a six-decade cover-up by the Chinese government. This is the first crack in the dike.”
Yeltsin Describes a List of Missing
“… has found letters and memos in public records that show repeated efforts to limit or block the circulation of information on United States servicemen or women taken into custody.”
MIA
By Marilyn Elkins. Independent corroboration of the FOIA record.
Do Soviets Still Hold U.S. POWs?
By Doyle McManus. The Army’s secret sightings archive, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
From the project
- Capt. Eugene “Red” McDaniel, prisoner of Hanoi and advocate for the missing, has died · 7 August 2026 — he went to Pyongyang with PIP in the 1990s to record POW material North Korea holds on Americans never accounted for, and never stopped looking for his own missing crewman.
- “The families have waited long enough” · May 2016 — the Cold War reconnaissance families, and the declassified files that say some of the men were captured alive.
- Families sue the National Archives — the fight to force release of the government’s own POW/MIA records.
Litigation
Freedom of Information Act suits against the CIA and the National Archives. PIP has been a plaintiff in three suits seeking records classified for more than 70 years on American prisoners shipped to the Soviet Union and East Bloc and held in secret camps. Two, brought with the family of Capt. Harry C. Moore, USAF, before Judge Royce C. Lamberth, are closed: the CIA case was dismissed on April 24, 2023, and the National Archives case was dismissed by agreement after a settlement on May 14, 2026. The third, Driggs v. CIA, ended when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit affirmed judgment for the agency on Aug. 4, 2026. See FOIA Lawsuits.
- Why POW Families are Suing the Pentagon — Commentary, Michael Rubin, Aug. 9, 2017
Official accounting
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is the Pentagon organization responsible for accounting for missing Americans. Its published work concentrates on recovering and identifying remains. PIP regards that work as important, and as separate from the question this project investigates — Americans reported captured alive and never returned. DPAA’s public resources are at dpaa.mil.
Still-classified reporting. DPAA’s stated policy is that “all firsthand live sightings are classified while they undergo the investigative process.” Reports dating to 1979 remain classified on that basis. In 2017 the Defense Intelligence Agency confirmed to PIP that it holds classified information on U.S. prisoners reported in North Korea; the National Security Agency told PIP it holds classified material relating to Korean War prisoners.
Foreign archives
Russia. The U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs has produced real results — including the recovery of the remains of Capt. John Dunham, and of crew from a reconnaissance aircraft downed over Soviet Armenia — but has been largely stalled. Files held by the successor services to the KGB and GRU remain closed.
China. As of 2016, DPAA said its paid archival agreement with Beijing had not resolved a single case of an American last known or suspected to have been in Chinese hands. Beijing subsequently took the position that files on Americans in its prisons are classified and outside the agreement.
Eastern Europe. Institutions such as Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance hold material from the period that has not been systematically searched for POW/MIA content.
Family organizations
PIP works alongside, and draws on the research of, the family and veteran organizations that have carried this issue for decades — among them the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America’s Missing Servicemen and the Coalition of Families of Korean and Cold War POW/MIAs.
Reports mentioning PIP and the team
Stories that name the POW Investigative Project or one of our investigators. Links go to the original reporting; PIP is not responsible for the content of external sites.
On the record before the press. The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations thanked PIP by name in An Examination of U.S. Policy Toward POW/MIAs, 23 May 1991 — 10 weeks before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs was created on Aug. 2, 1991.
Three outlets have named the POW Investigative Project by name — Fox News in 2018, The Daily Beast in 2018, and NK News in 2025. PIP was incorporated in 2017, so earlier coverage credits the reporting to KIRO-TV or to our investigators personally. This is PIP’s work, and the project describes it that way throughout. Quotations below are reproduced exactly as each outlet published them, including where an outlet names an individual rather than the project.
What follows is the outside record: reporting by other people, about the investigation this project grew out of.
From the project
- PIP expands its search with artificial intelligence · Sept. 18, 2026 — machine research now reads the whole record at once, in the languages it was written in, and lets us appeal for witnesses in a new language the same day we need one.
2017–2025
NK News · names the POW Investigative Project · 11 September 2025 · North Korea News Podcast
What to make of the reported US Navy SEAL mission into North Korea
“Sauter is the founder and president of the POW Investigative Project and author of American Trophies. He has been investigating American POWs for almost 30 years and previously served as a soldier in the U.S. Army, including as a guard post commander at the Demilitarized Zone.”
The Washington Times · 3 July 2025 · Bill Gertz
Vietnam charging millions for info on missing American soldiers, providing few answers
“Hanoi has never ‘cooperated fully’ on providing the U.S. with all its information on missing Americans, and the U.S. government has always known this despite claiming the contrary to the American people and Congress.”
HISTORY · April–May 2024 ·
The Proof Is Out There: Military Mysteries
A PIP investigator appeared in the first season, including the episode “Curious Case of Major Logan.”
The Daily Beast · names the POW Investigative Project · 27 July 2018 · Gordon G. Chang
Kim Jong Un Must Tell Us What Happened to American POWs
“Approximately a thousand Americans were kept in North Korea or the Soviet Union after the war, mostly in the latter… Among the worst things about the case of Major Sam Logan is that there are many more like him.”
Washington Free Beacon · 12 June 2018 · Bill Gertz
No Breakthrough in Summit Between Trump and Kim
“A critical issue between America and North Korea that has received scant media attention involves the fate of Americans last known alive in North Korean hands and never returned at the end of the Korean War.”
Fox News · names the POW Investigative Project · 1 June 2018 · Alex Diaz
Trump must press for remains, news about American POWs from Korean War at summit, families say
“…to this day he devotes much of his time to tracking down missing Americans around the world with the POW Investigative Project.”
Smithsonian / Air & Space · December 2017 · Paul Glenshaw
Secret Casualties of the Cold War
“Several family members interviewed for this article refer to Sauter as a trusted resource.”
Newsweek · 11 August 2017 · Tom O’Connor
America’s Missing Korean War Veterans Could Be in Russia, Family Says
“In 1989, investigative reporter and historian Mark Sauter began his own lengthy endeavor to find out what happened to the U.S. soldiers who simply disappeared throughout the war.”
2008–2016
Washington Free Beacon · 14 November 2016 · Morgan Chalfant
Pentagon Officials Told Russians ‘No Evidence’ U.S. Korean War POWs Taken to Soviet Union
“It’s bad enough Pentagon officials on the Joint Commission are condescending to POW/MIA families and clueless about the extensive evidence on POW transfers produced by U.S. intelligence and Pentagon investigators in the past.”
Washington Free Beacon · 19 September 2014 · Caroline Lee Smith
Pentagon ‘Seeking Answers’ on POW/MIA Day While Withholding Answers on Korean War POWs
“POW research specialist Mark Sauter sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense concerning missing U.S. personnel captured during the Korean War that continued to live in the DPRK, PRC and Soviet Union Bloc countries. When the DoD responded, they provided little information.”
Washington Free Beacon · 3 December 2013 · Bill Gertz
American Veteran Held in North Korea Highlights Plight of Missing U.S. POWs
“It’s a terrible irony that America’s newest Korean War POW is linked to some of the best-known unreturned U.S. prisoners from the war — the so-called Ashley Five.”
Washington Free Beacon · 26 July 2013 · Bill Gertz
Forgotten War, Forgotten Soldiers
“Sauter is a veteran journalist who has spent more than two decades researching POW issues. He was an Army officer once stationed on the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas. Sauter’s investigation of missing prisoners began in 1989 when he uncovered a classified memo at the Eisenhower Presidential Library stating U.S. prisoners were sent to the Soviet Union.”
Associated Press · 7 July 2013 · Robert Burns, AP National Security Writer
AP IMPACT: MIA Work ‘Acutely Dysfunctional’
“Mark Sauter, a private researcher… found in government archives a U.S. intelligence report from August 1955, two years after the war, calling for a bigger intelligence effort to learn about such POW transfers.”
The American Legion Magazine · 28 October 2011 · David Fisher
Eight Thousand Mysteries
“This is a big opening after all these years… They have information on a lot of guys. The question is, will the U.S. government get that information?”
Associated Press · 19 June 2008 · AP Military Writer
China Admits Taking, Burying U.S. POW
“The case of Sgt. Desautels has been a focal point of a six-decade cover-up by the Chinese government. This is the first crack in the dike. From what we can tell, the Pentagon has not aggressively followed up, either on the Desautels case or those of hundreds of other Americans for whom the Chinese should be able to account.”
1991–1992
The New York Times · 18 June 1992 · Barbara Crossette
Yeltsin Describes a List of Missing
“A Seattle journalist, Mark Sauter, who has just completed a book on the issue of half a century of missing Americans, has found letters and memos in public records that show repeated efforts to limit or block the circulation of information on United States servicemen or women taken into custody and thought to be in Soviet hands after several wars.”
MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History · Spring 1992 · Marilyn Elkins
MIA
“Mark Sauter, an investigative reporter based in Seattle, obtained these records under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.”
Los Angeles Times · 30 July 1991 · Doyle McManus
Do Soviets Still Hold U.S. POWs?
“The Army has kept a secret archive of alleged sightings under the title: ‘American Citizens Detained in the U.S.S.R.’ Its summaries — obtained from the Pentagon under the Freedom of Information Act by Mark Sauter, a reporter at KIRO television — are spare, but chilling.”
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Minority Staff · 23 May 1991 · Transmittal signed by Sen. Jesse Helms
An Examination of U.S. Policy Toward POW/MIAs
“I would be especially remiss were I not to mention Dr. Harvey Andrews, Thomas Ashworth, John M.G. Brown, and Mark Sauter of CBS affiliate, KIRO-TV, Seattle, Washington.”
Other coverage
- American Thinker · September 2015
President Xi Jinping: What Happened to the US POWs China Has Never Returned? - Current Time TV
Kelly Patterson and PIP, broadcast across Russia (video)
On American Trophies (2013), with a foreword by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Sydney Schanberg, who called it a “fascinating, disturbing and important book… America has to read it.”
If you have news, a document, or a development this page should carry, please contact us.
PIP Reports & Analysis
The project’s own published work. The full index, with the documents behind each report, is on Reports & Analysis.
- How we know the communists kept American prisoners — the core evidence, in the government’s own words.
- What happened to the men who were kept? — the flagship report.
- Why would the communists keep American prisoners? — intelligence value, labor and leverage.
- The Soviets — Soviet control of the prisoner system in Korea.
- Classified! — what is still withheld, and by which agency.
- The generic live-sighting files — the Pentagon’s own lists, and the reports it can no longer find.
- Pentagon forensic identifications — most are sound; the documented minority that is not.
- Cover-ups, corrections and criticism — what officials said, what the files showed.
- Groundhog Day at the Pentagon — the same answers, decade after decade.
- “The families have waited long enough” — the Cold War reconnaissance families.
- Cuba and U.S. POWs in Vietnam — the Cuban program.