PURPOSE

The purpose of the outreach program is to contact persons authorized to direct the disposition of remains and acquire reference blood specimens from the families of Americans whose remains were not recovered from the Vietnam, Korean, and Cold Wars.

ASSUMPTIONS

Every family of an American service member whose remains were not recovered from Southeast Asia, Korea, or the Cold Wars that can be contacted will be offered an opportunity to contribute a blood sample from two different maternal relatives.

The government will take maximum advantage of having family donor blood samples drawn at government facilities proximate to the location of the donor at no additional direct cost to the government.

The organization dedicated to performing the outreach function will be quartered in government owned facilities or premises already under government contract.

DISCUSSION

Background.

There are approximately 8 1 00 American Korean War casualties whose remains were not recovered or identified. Fewer than 500 Korean War families from this group are immediately contactable by their respective Service. Additionally, a significant portion of the personnel records covering this period were destroyed in a 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Even when these personnel records are available, there is a dearth of medical and dental records that can be used to identify remains.

There are approximately 2200 Americans listed as unaccounted for from the war in Southeast Asia. Approximately ninety percent of the families of the servicemen and civilians in this group are contactable by their respective Service.

There are approximately 132 Cold War losses. Most of these losses are Navy and Air Force servicemen. About 95 percent of the family members of these Cold War losses can be contacted by the Navy/Air Force.

The poor condition of remains recovered from Korea, the paucity of records necessary to make an identification, and the increasing lack of identifiable portions from Southeast Asia, have reduced the effectiveness of the traditional anthropological and dental techniques to identify these fallen Americans. DNA technology is the best available technology to offer any prospect of identifying these remains.

Using DNA techniques on remains from the wars in Southeast Asia, Korea, and the Cold War will require identifying and contacting prospective DNA donors from relatives of the service member. A substantial effort will be needed to identify eligible DNA donors and concurrently contact persons authorized to direct the disposition of remains that may be recovered. The Outreach

Program is intended to support this effort.

The consensus within the forensic community is that two blood samples from maternal relatives of the person to be identified are adequate to conduct mtDNA analysis for the purpose of making a comparison for identification. Although nuclear DNA technology is not currently a viable technology to identify old remains, this technology may become feasible in the future. Should nuclear DNA technology prove to be a feasible future technology, identifications could be made using samples from relatives other than maternal kin, in particular, siblings. An outreach sampling strategy of collecting not more than two MTDNA and two nuclear DNA samples per family would allow samples for current and future technology to be collected as a part of the same program.

Of the 8,100 servicemen not recovered or identified from the Korean War, an early assessment was that 5000 remains might be recovered from North Korea. Subsequent analysis opined that up to 3000 American remains may be forthcoming should the North Koreans allow optimum access to recover and repatriate American remains. (See enclosure 1). Korean War losses (bodies not recovered) represent the bulk of the population toward which the outreach effort will be focused.

It is unlikely that the government will be able to contact and acquire DNA samples from all of the families of service members not recovered from Vietnam, Korea, and the Cold War. The Defense Nuclear Agency has had experience in attempting to contact persons exposed to radiation during the Korean-era. Their effort, although not identical to the prospective DNA outreach effort, has many of the same impediments: client unawareness, poor records availability, aging population, etc.

The Defense Nuclear Agency's experts best guess estimate is that a concerted DNA outreach effort may net contacting 40-70 percent of the target population (DNA donors/person authorized to make disposition decisions). A working rate of 70 percent contactability was used for costing purposes.

Concept of the Outreach Program.

An outreach program for Vietnam War, Korean War, and Cold War families of Americans whose remains were not recovered would have three principal purposes:

• to identify and contact persons authorized to direct the disposition of remains;

• to identify and contact prospective DNA donors;

• to raise public awareness of government efforts to repatriate, identify, and bury with honor the remains of Americans lost in Southeast Asia, Korea, and the Cold War.

An organization will be needed to accomplish the goals of the outreach program. An organization specifically designed for and dedicated to the outreach mission has the best prospect for successfully accomplishing this mission. With Department of Defense downsizing, military personnel resources are at a premium. As a result, contractual resources may be more available than military personnel to address the outreach effort. Military presence in the effort to contact the family members of servicemen killed during war is critical to reinforcing the Services' continuing commitment to its fallen comrades and their families. Given the military personnel constraints, a military-supervised, contractor-operated operation would be the most effective approach to address a program like DNA outreach.

The program would be accomplished by a dedicated cell. The contractor will be co-located with the military supervisors. The contractor will proactively contact persons authorized to direct the disposition of remains as well as appropriate DNA donors for a period of 2 years or when 70% of the donors/persons authorized to direct the disposition of remains are contacted, whichever occurs first. This latter condition will ensure that the outreach effort does not inordinately continue when diminishing returns would indicate reduced effectiveness.

There are five cost components to the outreach program:

• Contractor development, automated database operation, and client information input cost (enclosure 2).

• DNA blood sample collection cost (enclosure 3):

• DNA blood sample collection kit cost.

• DNA blood sample collection kit mailing cost.

• DNA blood sample draw cost.

• Travel cost to participate in various veteran and advocacy group activities, conventions, media events, and advertising (enclosure 4).

• Staffing:

Civilian: Temporary government civilian word processor cost: 1 - GS/4 Wordprocessor (enclosure 5).

Military: 3 - Officers (Army) 4 - enlisted (1/Service)

Contractor: See enclosure 2.

• Facilities and space will be provided at no additional expense by using currently available space.

The aggregate cost of each of the outreach program components is summarized in enclosure 6.

TAPC-PED-P

19 January 1995

SUBJECT: Potential for Remains Recovery from North Korea

1. Purpose. To provide an estimate of the potential number of remains that may be recovered through joint United States/North Korean Peoples Army recovery operations and investigations in North Korea.

2. Facts.

a. Based on the available records and information, the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii (CIL-HI), Casualty Data Section, established preliminary figures for the number of recoveries as indicated below.

b. The available information can be categorized into two areas:

(1) Incidents or areas where there is sufficient information to establish a known location where the recovery of remains is possible, i.e. known prisoner of war (POW) camps, temporary cemeteries, and known aircraft loss sites.

Reported burials in former POW camps with known locations 1612

Known burials in cemeteries north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) 181

Known aircraft general loss sites north of the DMZ 633

Total number losses with documented loss sites 2426

(2) Incidents or losses which May lead to remains recovery:

Reported POW camp burials with no known location 535

Reported interments in cemeteries with no location 1

Aircraft losses without fixed or general location 32

Total number of individuals without a fixed or known loss site 568

c. The sum of the two categories (2994) above represents the upper limit of the reasonable prospect for the number of individuals that may be recovered through joint investigations and recoveries.

Mr. Webb/(808) 448-8903

Approved by COL M. T. Spinello

Enclosure I

Contractor development and automated database operation for a DNA outreach program was designed based on the following assumptions:

a. The system will contain up to 33,000 records associated with Americans whose remains were not recovered from the Korean and Cold Wars or who remain unaccounted for from Southeast Asia including information on persons authorized to direct the disposition of remains and DNA blood donors.

b. The Outreach database will be compatible with and capable of transmitting data to the Army Casualty Information Processing System (ACIPS).

The specifications of the contract would provide for the following terms of work:

a. The contractor will provide all computer hardware and software.

b. The contractor will provide outreach data operators.

c. An interactive voice response (IVR) system will answer initial calls and record the pertinent information (i.e., caller name, the unrecovered Americans' name and service number, relationship to the unrecovered soldier, etc.).

d. The contractor's operators will return valid calls and manually key pertinent information into the database.

e. The contractor's operators will validate the information captured from the initial calls against the database.

f. The contractor will develop a custom database package that will allow for storage and retrieval of outreach information and enhance ACIPS by providing a subsystem that directly accesses outreach information.

g. The contractor will preload the database with the names and social security numbers and/or service numbers of unrecovered Americans from the Vietnam, Korean, and Cold Wars.

h. The contractor will develop up to ten management reports to Army specifications.

i. The contractor will provide training on the use of the system to military staff.

j. The contractor will verify familial relationships.

System Configuration

• Staff.- Five operators

Enclosure 2/1

Equipment:

Five IBM compatible 486 PC workstations (40 megabyte of RAM and 80 megabytes of disk storage and an ethernet local network card).

One 486 IBM compatible PC complete with the IVR hardware and software.

Local Area Network software and hardware capable of sustaining 5 workstations.

Multi-user database management system.

Cost

System setup $214,000

Staffing cost/year $250,000

Total cost for 2 years $714,000

Enclosure 2/2

In 1994, the Defense Nuclear Agency was tasked to locate servicemen exposed to nuclear radiation as a result of experiments conducted during the Cold War. Their empirical results in locating Korean-era Department of Defense affiliated personnel were used to estimate the number of families that may be contacted as a result of an outreach effort. They were able to locate about sixty percent of the estimated population.

Collection Cost:

DNA blood sample collection kit cost: $10

Mailing the DNA blood sample collection kit cost: $14

Drawing DNA blood sample cost: $40

Total Collection Cost: $64 each

Sample Population:

Number of Southeast Asia Unrecovered servicemen: 2,211

Number of Korea War Unrecovered servicemen: 8,100

Number of Cold War Unrecovered: 132

Approximate Sample Population: 11,000

Maximum Number of Kits at an average Three per Family: 11,000 x 3 = 33,000

Maximum Total Collection Cost: $64 x 33,000 x .7 = 985,600

Enclosure 3

TEMPORARY DUTY TRAVEL COST - Estimated cost to attend veterans conventions, media events, and advertising.

1st year $20,000

2nd year $20,000

ADVERTISING - Estimated cost to propagate the outreach message in various media.

1st year $10,000

2nd year $10,000

Total estimated publicity cost for two years $60,000

Enclosure 4

GRADE GS

JOB TITLE Office Automation Operator

ANNUAL COST $21,000

Total cost for two years operation: $42,000

Enclosure 5

CONTRACTOR DEVELOPMENT AND

OPERATIONS COST ESTIMATE $ 714K

DNA BLOOD SAMPLE COLLECTION COST $986K

OUTREACH PROGRAM PUBLICITY COST $ 60K

TEMPORARY GOVERNMENT CIVILIAN

WORD PROCESSOR COST $ 42K

TOTAL COST $1802K

Enclosure 6