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Sejna testified that the Czechs, on orders from Moscow, built a military hospital in North Korea during the war. The "secret purpose of the hospital," he said, "was to experiment on American and South Korean POWs." Prisoners were used to test the effects of "chemical- and biological-warfare agents," atomic radiation and "various mind-control drugs." At the end of the war, Sejna said, about 100 of the prisoners at the hospital were shipped to the Soviet Union. There they were pumped for intelligence information and tested for reactions to "mind-control drugs." McCain questions Sejna's credibility, saying Senate POW investigators "viewed him not to be reliable."
Pentagon officials have insisted for years that there was no firm proof Americans had been secretly held by the Soviets and their allies. The officials now say they are avidly reviewing 900 classified documents from the Korean War era that they have tracked down in the Eisenhower Library archives after giving up on the maze of Pentagon records. A question they will have to face with particular urgency is whether any of the Americans who did not return from North Korea or the Soviet Union might still be alive. Corso has not abandoned hope. "A lot of them were younger than me," he says. "I'm 81, and I'm still here." But in light of the criminal uses the Soviets allegedly had for those lost Americans, it is unlikely.
--By Bruce W. Nelan. Reported by K.C. Hwang/Seoul and Mark Thompson/Washington