For years, we've suspected that the Vietnamese are salting recovery sites. Now, we have evidence. When remains are recovered from Vietnam, they are usually in a very poor and fragmented condition. In most cases they are little more that shards of bone or fragments. Sometimes, nothing more than a tooth is recovered. We are told the poor condition of the remains is due to the highly acidic Vietnamese soil.
If the soil is so acidic as to almost complete destroy human remains, logic would follow that anything less sturdy, buried with the remains, would be destroyed in a much shorter time.
In early 1996, rumors began to circulate that remains had been recovered in Quang Tri Province, of a pilot a full flight suit. Soon after the Borah family was notified that Joint Task Force Full Accounting had, indeed, recovered remains in a full flight suit, they believed to be Dan Borah.
According to the Vietnamese witness, Mr. Toan, who led JTF-FA investigators to the burial site, the pilot was found dead, in his parachute. He was buried nearby and all identification media was removed. According to Mr. Toan, Daniel Borah was buried, in his flight suit, on September 24th, 1972.
It would be 24 years, before Mr. Toan led JTF-FA investigators back to the alleged burial site. During the 40th Joint Field Activity, (March 23rd - 31st, 1996) the grave site was excavated. Just as Mr. Toan stated, investigators found remains in a full flight suit. The remains consisted of three long bones, and various chips, shards and nineteen teeth. Due to their poor condition, none of the bones could be used for anthropological analysis.
The Central Identification Laboratory - Hawaii, (CIL-HI) determined that the nineteen teeth matched the records of Daniel Borah. Based on this dental "match" CIL-HI recommended the identification of the remains found, as those of Daniel Borah. CIL-HI ignored the fact that the dental match was successful only if the teeth were moved to the the other side of the mouth. The resolution of this case was pointed to with pride, as evidence of Vietnamese cooperation to resolve the fate of our Prisoners and Missing.
Now, the rest of the story!
The Vietnamese planned to end the Borah case a full 19 months prior to the actual excavation. In November 1994, the head of the Defense POW/MIA Office, James Wold visited Vietnam. During his meeting with Mr. Cong, of the Vietnam Office Seeking Missing Persons (VNOSMP), Mr. Wold was told information on 5 cases would be provided by the end of the year. One of those cases was Daniel V. Borah.
Eight months after that promise, on August 14, 1995, Mr. Toan appeared. ready to led U.S. investigators to the purported burial site.
The Discrepancies.....
Borah's last radio transmission came from the ground. His last words to American forces.... "Gomer, all around..."
What happened to Dan Borah after that, we can't say. We can say without a doubt that the full flight suit purported to hold the remains of Dan Borah did not rest in the acidic Vietnamese soil for 24 years.
The grave site was salted. Our proof is the full flight suit. While little is left of the the bones, the flight suit is in near perfect condition. In the words of Kathy Borah Duez, sister of Dan Borah, "you could put that flight suit on and wear it on the street. The pants would barely fit me. They are too small to be Dan's. Dan tended to gain weight and we joked about him fitting into the cockpit. These pants would never fit him."
Kathy confirmed that all unit designations, patches, and the American flag had been carefully cut from the flight suit. Just as there is no evidence to prove the bone shards are Dan Borah's, there is no evidence to prove the flight suit, is Dan's.
The acidic soil of Vietnam, which destroys bones, should have left nothing of the flight suit, except perhaps the zippers. Instead, after 24 years in this highly acidic soil, this flight suit looks no worse than if it had been attacked by angry moths, in the back of a closet.
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