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In 1973 Congress directed the Secretary of Defense to select an unknown Vietnam serviceman to represent all the dead of the war that had divided the country more than any other since the Civil War. In 1975 a crypt was built at Arlington's Tomb of the Unknowns to contain these remains, but for years it stayed empty. In 1921 when the first unknown soldier a casualty from the First World War was buried at Arlington, there were more than 1600 unidentified remains to choose from. On May 30, 1958, when an unknown soldier from the Second World War was honored, there were over 8500 to choose from. The same

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day, an unknown soldier from Korea was also interred, and there were over 800 to choose from. Because of the prompt evacuation of the dead and wounded by helicopter, improved military record-keeping, and scientific advances in identification techniques, there had never been more than four Vietnam unknowns at the CIL at any one time. Groups like the National League of Families had successfully fought the selection of a Vietnam unknown, because they feared that it would lead to a slackening of govemment efforts to search for the individuals still unaccounted for. In the spring of 1984, however, the pressure from groups like the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion combined with the Administration's eagerness to make a controversial war more respectable by honoring those who had fought in it resulted in a Defense Department decision to choose a Vietnam unknown from the four remains then at the CIL.

In choosing an unknown from earlier wars, an administrative procedure of forgotten origin was followed: only remains that were as much as 80 percent complete were selected. These so-called "best" remains of the 1920s and 1950s were the worst choices in the 1980s, because of the progress in identification techniques, so the criterion of 80 percent was waived for the Vietnam unknown soldier. X-15 was 26 percent complete but had been identified once the right record was found.

One of the four remains at the CIL in early 1984 was ruled out because it was 95 percent complete. A second remains, which had been turned over by the Vietnamese in 1983, was not a candidate, because Furue had successfully superimposed a scapula from the remains over a chest X-ray from the record of one of the unaccounted-for, and in the CIL'S opinion there was an excellent likelihood of identifying him if the Vietnamese turned over additional

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remains. The third remains at the CIL had been part of a 1978 turnover of four from Laos. One of the four had been identified as an American Air Force pilot, but two others had proved to be Southeast Asian Mongoloids. The bones of the fourth were those of a Caucasoid, but there was no evidence that he had been a soldier.

The fourth remains at the CIL at the beginning of 1984 had been found by a South Vietnamese Army reconnaissance team in late 1972 near a town about 60 miles north of Saigon. The remains were eventually given the number X-26. They consisted of six bones. Along with the remains, which were only 3 percent complete, the reconnaissance team had brought in a few objects such as remnants of a flight suit, of a pistol holster, and of a parachute, and a one-man inflatable raft. Furue determined that X-26 was a Caucasoid man of average muscularity, whose height had been approximately 68.4 inches and who had been between twenty-six and thirty-three years old. The only men in the killed-in-action body-not-retumed category within a 2500-square-mile area of where X-26 had been found were two men in a helicopter and the pilot of a fighter plane; both aircraft had crashed, as it happened, on May 11, 1972. Several sergeants at the CIL were convinced that X-26 was one of the two men from the helicopter, but Furue was not certain. The Vietnamese reconnaissance team's report had been disturbingly vague, and the condition of the six bones - they showed no evidence of trauma - was at variance with accounts of both crashes. Furue was asked to go to Washington and recommend to the National League of Families that X-26 be chosen as the Unknown Soldier of the Vietnam War. He declined to go. He believed that if additional remains of X-26 were ever found he could identify him. On April 13, 1984, Caspar

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Weinberger designated X-26 as the remains that would be buried at Arlington.

Johnie Webb and Tadao Furue refuse to discuss the Vietnam Unknown. "Putting X-26 in the Tomb of the Unknowns was politically expedient," a former CIL sergeant says. "At best, it was premature. I'll bet Doc considered him unidentified but not unidentifiable. Perhaps it was appropriate to the Vietnam War. So much else about it was political. Everything connected with X-26 has been ordered shredded, but you can't shred what's in men's minds. If we ever get into South Vietnam, the way we got into Laos, and find additional remains that match those in Arlington, there could be a problem."