Mystery of Fliers : Santa Ana Wife of One Says She Couldn't Mistake His Look in Photo

By SCOTT HARRIS and CARLA RIVERA

July 18, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

LOS ANGELES — Air Force Col. John Leighton Robertson was a man of many talents, said his wife of 15 years. He was a capable mountain climber, loved the challenge of skiing the most ruggedslopes and was just as determined on water skis.

It is that look of concentration and determination that Barbara Robertson had seen so many times that convinced her that her husband, missing in action in Vietnam since 1966, is still alive.

“His expression, his hairline, how he holds his head. . . , “ said Robertson of Santa Ana, looking intently at a reproduction of a grainy photograph purported to be that of three downed American pilots. “I’ve seen that expression a thousand times, I’ve seen that look of determination when he was getting himself up on the water skis.”

In an emotional press conference Wednesday at a West Los Angeles church, Robertson and her daughter, Deborah, joined the families of the two other pilots to proclaim their belief that the mysterious photo widely circulated in the media on Tuesday proves that their loved ones are still alive.

The Pentagon has had the grainy photo showing three men in strange clothing, holding a sign with a cryptic message and odd lettering, since September, 1990, a Pentagon source said.

“Analysis of the photo continues,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “At no time were we able to conclude” that the men in the photo were missing American servicemen.

Many similar photos have surfaced over the years and all have proven to be unsubstantiated, or downright hoaxes, officials say.

Whatever its validity, the photo purporting to show Robertson, Air Force Maj. Albro Lundy Jr. and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Larry Stevens as middle-aged men--along with a sign indicating the date as May 25, 1990--has reintensified the nation’s long, drawn-out controversy over the Vietnam War’s missing.

Reacting to an onslaught of media inquiries, the Pentagon disclosed Wednesday that it had received an unconfirmed report from one source that Robertson and Stevens were being held for ransom with 60 other Americans by a Cambodian businessman somewhere in that country.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Gregg Hartung, a Department of Defense spokesman, emphasized the report was “thirdhand” and that further investigation has failed to turn up firsthand eyewitness accounts. Lundy was not mentioned by that source, Hartung said.

Meanwhile, U.S. Sens. John Kerry (D-Neb.) and Hank Brown (R-Colo.) joined other members of Congress pushing for a more thorough investigation of MIAs.

“I don’t know whether it (the photo) was doctored, fabricated, where it comes from, who produced it, how it got here, nor does anyone else really.” Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, told a news conference Wednesday. “But this keeps the issue alive. We have got to get the answers.”

Other relatives of the more than 2,200 Americans who vanished in the war have had their hopes raised and dashed before. But seated inside a meeting hall at St. Paul the Apostle Church on Wednesday, representatives of the Lundy, Robertson and Stevens families insisted they have at least part of the answer.

In addition to the photo, the families said that they have corroborating evidence that the three men are still alive, but they declined to elaborate. Complying with a State Department request, they also declined to discuss talks reportedly under way between the State Department and the Vietnamese government concerning the photo.

Albro Lundy III, an attorney, stressed that the families had been content to work through diplomatic channels but decided to hold a press conference only after the photo had been leaked to the media.

“These men’s lives hang in the balance, and other men’s lives--all the prisoners of war,” he said. “We want to do nothing to endanger those lives.”

Stevens’ mother, Gladys Fleckenstein, said “the miracle happened” last Nov. 2, when an officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency’s special POW-MIA office wrote her that he had received an intelligence report mentioning her son and Robertson.

Fleckenstein, who lives with her husband at Big Bear Lake, alerted Robertson’s wife, whom she had known through POW-MIA activism.

Barbara Robertson said she promptly flew to Washington, visited the DIA and immediately identified her husband.

“This was completely out of the blue,” she said.

Robertson, who met her husband while both attended the University of Washington, said his original intent was to enter law school. But a four-year stint in the Air Force changed those plans.

“We loved the Air Force and the people so much that we sat down and made a list of the pluses and minuses and we decided we wanted to make it a career.”

Robertson, remembering the husband who called himself the best pilot in the world, said: “He was extremely confident, had a photographic memory, but he was a little conceited. Any endeavor he took on, he always finished first. He had real strength of character, he was a survivor.”

The memories of her father are no less vivid for Deborah Robertson Bardsley, 37, of Chatsworth. One memory stands out: It is of her father trooping into her grade school classroom on parents’ day in full flight gear.

“He came and gave a lecture and showed us how survival gear worked,” Bardsley said. “The other kids had fathers that were from a number of professions, but I don’t think there was anyone as proud as I was.”

Another daughter, Shelby Robertson Quast, 29, of Virginia, arrived from Washington after the news conference ended. The other children are John Bernard Robertson, 36, of Canyon Lake in Riverside County and Stacey Robertson Bershof, 34, of Denver.

Barbara Robertson says that she dreams of her husband coming home, but she insists that she is ready to deal with reality.

“Everyone says he would be so different. . . . But I’m not the Donna Reed I was when he left either. Nobody stays the same, and I recognize there would be a lot of adjustments.”

What matters most now is that her husband is alive, Robertson said.

“My husband’s (dog tags) and all of his records refer to him as John L. Robertson. . . . But when this information came to us it was with reference to John Leighton Robertson. For anyone to have said Leighton meant that Johnny wanted to get the message out to us that it’s him.”

“We just want to let him know that we’re coming to get him.”

The families expressed hope that public pressure will force full airing of the POW-MIA issue.

The government’s official position since 1981 has been that all reports are investigated, but no proof has been uncovered that any Americans were being held against their will after American forces withdrew from Vietnam and more than 500 POWs were returned in 1973.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if what came out of it is that we do know there are men over there?” Johanna Lundy asked Wednesday.

The solution, she said, rests in “finally getting our government to talk to those governments . . . some kind of negotiations, out in the open.”