American Notes: Saving Virtue

It could almost be the title for an Allen Drury novel: Apologize and Repudiate. The U.S. used that transparent device last week to free Captain David Crawford, Warrant Officer Malcolm Loepke and SP4 Herman Hofstatter, the three helicopter crewmen shot down over North Korea in August. The American representative at Panmunjom, a Marine major general, signed a Communist-drafted document, confessing to a "criminal act" and to infringing upon North Korean sovereignty. The general then announced that "there was no criminal act or intentional infiltration." He acted, he said, "in the humanitarian interest of securing the release of these men."

The...

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