Soldiers of Misfortune is the outrageous and compelling story of thousands of American POWs held captive by the Soviet Union and of the U.S. government officials who lied about their fate for half-a-century, keeping a lid on the most disgraceful cover-up in American history. Soldiers of Misfortune reveals for the first time that top U.S. officials, from Roosevelt to Bush, made the determination to write off America's missing sons, secretly held hostage in the Soviet Union. In an explosive revelation, Colonel Philip Corso, an intelligence aide to President Dwight Eisenhower, revealed exclusively to the authors that the president personally made the decision to abandon hundreds, perhaps thousands, of U.S. POWs from the Korean War. More than six years ago, Jim Sanders began his lonely quest for the truth about American POWs "liberated" by Soviet troops in Germany and Eastern Europe near the end of World War II. Then Mark Sauter and R.Cort Kirkwood joined in the search -- sifting through thousands of formerly classified documents, interviewing military brass and escapees from Russia, and evaluating chilling eyewitness accounts. As the authors neared the truth, top level Pentagon officials attempted to "neutralize" and silence them in a desperate attempt to bury the truth from the public. At the same time a newspaper office and Sanders's car were surreptitiously entered, his apartment ransacked and crucial documents stolen. A secret covenant of the 1945 Yalta agreement provided that the U.S. and Britain would return Soviet citizens residing in the West. In exchange, Stalin promised to return Western soldiers who had been liberated by the Red Army. After the war, American and British authorities breached that agreement by secretly permitting Soviets to remain in the West. Stalin learned about the deception and retaliated by holding 23,500 American and 30,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers captive in the vast Soviet gulag system. The authors trace the fate of American POWs from the Korean, Vietnam and Cold wars. In the early years of the Cold War, American soldiers and civilians were kidnapped off the streets of Europe and taken to the Soviet Union where they were interrogated and brainwashed, later disappearing into the gulag. Hundreds of Korean War POWs were transferred to China and the Soviet Union during that war. Despite countless denials by American officials, the authors provide new evidence that Vietnam War MIAs were smuggled out of the Asian jungles and taken to live out their lives in Siberian exile. Soldiers of Misfortune turns history upside down -- it documents that every president since World War II has lied to the American people about the fate of its fighting men. This book leaves only one unanswered question: How many Americans are still alive in Russia, China and North Korea?

The changing of the guard -- Prelude to Yalta -- The Yalta Agreement -- From Yalta to Odessa -- The hostage swap at Odessa -- The Halle negotiations -- Austria and the bitter fruits of Halle -- Historical myth -- World War II GIs in the Gulag -- Life in the Gulag -- The first POW activist -- Secret prisoners of the forgotten war -- China and North Korea -- Cold War in the air -- Cold War on the ground -- Indochina -- Cover-up in the Cold War years -- Cover-up in the Reagan-Bush years.