In from Jay Veith:



Here is the latest from JCSD:



The Wringer Database and the GULAG Study Support Document Database pages are

up and

running on the Library of Congress FRD website:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/tfr/tfrhome.html



Hundreds of declassified U.S. documents relating to Americans in the Gulag

are databased in the Gulag

Study Support Document Database. The WRINGER collection contains WRINGER

debriefs of Japanese and

German POWs from the Gulag who had contact or heard of Americans in the

Gulag. These should be invaluable

tools for independent researchers. We are adding more documents as they

become available.



>From the LOC Wringer page:

The WRINGER Collection

The term "WRINGER" identifies the past effort of the United States Air Force

to obtain intelligence information on the Soviet Union and communist Eastern

European nations from overt interviews with former prisoners of war of the

Soviet Union.

Following World War II, thousands of German and Japanese prisoners of war

(POWs) were incarcerated in the forced labor camps of the Soviet Union.

These POWs were forced to help rebuild the Soviet Union following the Second

World War. Beginning in 1946, the Soviet Union began releasing thousands of

these German and Japanese POWs to their homeland. U.S. Air Force officers

quickly realized the tremendous political and military information these

ex-POWs possessed, and initiated an intensive interview program. From 1947

through 1956, U.S. Air Force personnel in the U.S. Zone of Germany

interviewed over 300,000 ex-POWs. A similar program was initiated by the

U.S. Air Force in Japan upon the return of thousands of Japanese POWs.

WRINGER sources ranged from common laborers to highly skilled technicians.

These men were detained in forced labor camps throughout the former Soviet

Union. The fact that an ex-POW had no particular knowledge did not make the

individual valueless. Almost all German and Japanese ex-POWs had the ability

to remember at least the broad details of the places where they had worked.

Most importantly, some of them remembered meeting, seeing, or hearing about

U.S. and allied servicemen who were also detained in the forced labor camps.



Researchers from the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Persons Office (DPMO),

Joint Commission Support Directorate (JCSD) have initiated a concerted

effort to review the WRINGER reports. They are specifically searching for

reports that may shed light on the numerous eyewitness sightings of U.S.

servicemen reportedly held in Soviet forced labor camps. The WRINGER reports

are now declassified and stored in 1,350 boxes at the National Archives'

College Park repository.

In addition, the WRINGER reports have triggered considerable interest among

many outside researchers. Scholars of the Soviet period have commented on

the detail and accuracy contained in the reports, indicating the importance

they have for their own inquiries into those individuals unaccounted-for in

the Gulag.