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Updated: Key DoD Official Who Argued for Unit 731 Amnesty Figures at Inception of U.S. Germ Warfare Campaign in Korea
In July 2021, I posted lengthy sections of the germ warfare “confessions,” or “depositions” of four high-ranking U.S. POWs captured during the Korean War. One of them was from Colonel Andrew J. Evans, Jr., who had served with Air Force Joint Staff.
From July 1950 to July 1951, Evans was assistant to the Executive to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Evans seemed well-placed to know what was going on, if anything, with biological warfare (BW) preparations concerning the Air Force.
In Korea, he served as Deputy Commanding Officer of the 48th Wing, Fifth Air Force from November 1952 to March 15, 1953, then briefly as Deputy Commanding Officer of the 58th Fighter-Bomber Wing until his plane was shot down on March 26, 1953.
Evans wrote in a statement to his China captors six months later:
…my first contact with germ warfare and the fact that it might be used in Korea, was in January 1951. At that time I was assistant to B/Gen. Grussendorf, the Executive Officer to Gen. Vandenberg, Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force. As the Executive officer, Gen. Grussendorf, was in charge of the administrative handling of the office of the Chief of Staff. Naturally he came into contact with some matters of a highly classified nature. One day we were talking of events in Korea. We were speaking of the reversal of events there since the Chinese forces entered the war, when he informed me, “This is so, but last month [Dec. 1950] the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the preparation for, and possible use of, germ warfare in Korea. The Research and Development Command was directed to complete this project by the end of 1951. It may be that this program will have some effect on the future course of the war.”
This aspect of Col. Evans’ statement deserves further examination, as it is corroborated by another document from December 1950 mentioned in Nicholson Baker’s 2020 book, Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act.
Baker mentions (pages 40–41) a December 5, 1950 set of recommendations concerning the BW program from the Pentagon’s Research and Development Board’s (RDB) Committee…
