Reports

Long-form reporting from the POW Investigative Project on what happened to American prisoners who were not returned.

These are the project’s standing reports — the documentary case, the arguments, and the record of what the U.S. government knew and when.

Where a report is the author’s argument rather than a documented finding, the page says so at the top. That distinction is the point of this section.

The documentary case

How we know the communists kept American prisoners — the core evidence, from wartime intelligence to the 1954 U.S. note to Moscow.
What happened to the men who were kept? — where prisoners went and what became of them.
Why would the communists keep American prisoners? — intelligence value, propaganda, labor, and the use of prisoners for espionage.
The Soviets — Soviet control of the POW system in Korea.

Pentagon forensic identifications — most are sound; a documented minority are not. The Pakse thirteen, the Vietnam Unknown, Baron 52, mitochondrial DNA, the salting of recovery sites, and the families who refused an identification.
Cover-ups, corrections and criticism — what officials said, what the files showed, and where this project has corrected its own earlier work.
Groundhog Day at the Pentagon — the same answers, decade after decade.
“The families have waited long enough” — the Cold War reconnaissance families, from the 1950 Privateer to the 1956 Mercator, and the declassified files that say some of the men were captured alive.
Cuba and U.S. POWs in Vietnam — the Cuban program and American prisoners.
Vietnam POW: declassified — the declassified record on Hanoi’s retention of prisoners.
Americans abducted during the Cold War — servicemen seized in Berlin and Vienna and sent into the Soviet camp system, and what the declassified files say about them.

Individual servicemen and country-by-country leads are under Cases & Investigations. Dated news and analysis is under News & Analysis. Our evidence standard is set out under Research & Sources.