Viet Cong soldier in South Vietnam. The letter was addressed to the serviceman's and talked of life in a Viet Cong prison camp. Based on this information, the Marine Corps changed the corporal's status to POW and promoted him in absentia to sergeant. At the conclusion of OPERATION HOMECOMING in 1973 he was not repatriated. Since then, based on a lack of evidence that he is alive, the serviceman has been found, presumptively, to be dead.

Part of DOD's solution to "resolve" POW/MIA or KIA-BNR cases is to identify recovered remains of individuals from Southeast Asia, and match those remains with unaccounted-for or missing Americans on the Vietnam-era casualty lists. However, the Committee has reviewed numerous cases that pieces of bone, or bone fragments were the basis for the identification of the remains of POW/MIA or KIA-BNR cases. These cases, if measured against court room body identification and death evidence criteria, would not be acceptable in court proceedings, except to infer, or to provide circumstantial evidence that something happened to a human being(s) at that location. Furthermore, a scientific evaluation of remains identification methodology used by DOD can be most politely described as not being based on any known and accepted forensic procedures.

In many cases, remains identified by DOD show that there is a probability that such remains are likely of the persons thought to have perished at a particular place. This determination is further complicated since individual skeletal were consumed by natural or in some cases, manmade forces. However, proof that bone fragments belonging to an individual were recovered is sorely lacking in many instances.

In some cases, DOD has made "identifications" of individual servicemen based on less than a handful of bone FRAGMENTS. Further, in some cases, this finding was made by DOD, despite live-sighting reports that some of the individuals declared dead, and their remains "identified" at a crash site, were seen in captivity after the supposed date of death.

For example, on October 5, 1990, at Arlington National Cemetery, DOD buried the "remains" (bone fragments) of four U.S. servicemen presumed to have died when a helicopter crashed in Laos during the war. These remains were buried with full-military honors. Then, their names were taken from the unaccounted-for list, and added to the list of those accounted for from the Second Indochina War. However, according to family members, and admitted by DOD, two of the caskets of "remains" contained no bones at all- no physical matter, whatsoever. The two coffins were empty.

The burial charade was based on specious deductive DOD procedures. The aircraft manifest for that flight listed four American military personnel and nine South Vietnamese troops on board the helicopter when it crashed in Laos. Based upon the flight manifest documentation, identification of a ring belonging to one of the Americans on the flight, and supposed positive identification of two teeth (one each allegedly identified for the two persons whose caskets had bone fragments in them), each of these cases were closed with everyone accounted for and buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

Scientifically, these remains buried October 5, 1990 were not identifiable by any known or accepted forensic analysis. In the statements released to the press at the time of these "burials," DOD referred to "remains" and new cases "accounted for." Clearly, the implication in these statements is that physical remains had been recovered and restored to the families of the servicemen. Yet that is not what DOD means. DOD obviously has its own language, its own definitions of ordinary words, and its own purposes--mainly "resolving" cases--to be served.

Furthermore, there is some information that a least one of the four Americans may have survived the helicopter crash in Laos, but his actual death took place much later and he was buried at the Pathet Lao prison camp in which he was being held. In 1986, a Laotian eyewitness, a member of the Royal Laotian Army, reported that he had been imprisoned with Captain Nelson--one of the four "buried" at Arlington National Cemetery. The Laotian stated that he nursed Captain Nelson until he died, and that he was the one who buried Nelson. The Laotian identified a photograph of Captain Nelson, and provided DOD specific locations, geographical details as well as a hand-drawn map of the camp, with Nelson's grave site marked. Although the Laotian's report did indeed confirm the death, the death was not the result of being killed in action. Moreover, the alternate explanation of his death revealed the flaws in DOD methodology. Despite this evidence, DOD made a determination that the Laotian was not credible, and closed the case.[3]

Another problem in identification arises from the Vietnamese practice of warehousing remains of U.S. POWs for purposes of barter. In 1979, a former North Vietnamese government official, commonly referred to as "The Mortician," defected to the United States. The Mortician testified before the United States Congress that he was personally responsible for preserving and storing in excess of 400 remains of American servicemen. The United States Defense Intelligence Agency, uncharacteristically, has publicly vouched for The Mortician's credibility with regard to his statement that he cared for the U.S. remains. These remains are warehoused in Hanoi.

To date, since the end of hostilities with North Vietnam, only 255 sets of remains of U.S. servicemen have been returned to the United States. Many of these remains have been recovered as the result of "joint- excavations" of plane and helicopter crash sites by United States and Vietnamese government personnel. Characteristic of the complete lack of cooperation the Minority Staff of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has received from the Executive branch throughout in this inquiry, DOD has consistently refused to give the Committee the number of U.S. remains, out of the total 255, that have been excavated, despite the Committee's repeated requests for this information.

--------
[3]Statement by Senator Helms (R-NC) printed in the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, Friday, October 5, 1990, "The Mock Burial of MIAs," pp.S14625-S14627.

Given the statement of The Mortician, it is apparent that the Vietnamese have not returned many of the remains of U.S. servicemen in their possession. Even assuming that every one of the 255 remains returned to the United States was from the Vietnamese warehoused stock--which the Committee knows is not the case--they would still have 145 remains stored in Hanoi.

While this policy of doling out remains of U.S. servicemen, one set at a time, in an on-again, off-again fashion, may be repugnant to Americans, it accurately reflects the Vietnamese government's ideology, history, and the repatriation policies of its Communist allies.

The responsibility for forensic identification of remains of U.S. Armed Forces personnel in the Pacific theatre rests with the Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii (CIL-HI). According to DOD, by early 1990 CIL-HI had identified 255 sets of repatriated remains from Indochina as the remains of U.S. personnel unaccounted for from the Second Indochina War. For a number of years, CIL-HI has been identifying remains of missing U.S. Personnel from the Korean War and World War II's Pacific Theater still being discovered or, in a recent case, returned by foreign governments.[4]

A prominent physical anthropologist, Dr. Michael Charney, Professor Emeritus, at the University of Colorado and an internationally recognized expert in the science of forensics has conducted an extensive review of physical remains "identified" as missing Americans from Southeast Asia by CIL-HI. He concluded that it was scientifically impossible to have identified the cases he reviewed from the bone fragments returned to the next of kin.

In fact, according to Charney, the misidentification of these individuals had to be intentional, since there was no scientific basis to make any type of identification. Dr. Charney has reviewed CIL-HI's identification of remains in many other cases. According to Dr. Charney, CIL-HI has falsely identified as many as eighty separate sets of remains of U.S. servicemen previously listed as MIA or KIA-BNR.

Dr. Charney has levied these serious charges against CIL-HI both publicly and to Committee staff. Dr. Charney states,

This facility [CIL-HI], entrusted with the analysis of mostly skeletonized remains of our servicemen and women in the identification process, is guilty of unscientific, unprofessional work. The administrative and technical personnel have engaged knowingly in deliberate distortion of details deduced from the bones to give credibility to otherwise impossible identification.

Dr. Charney also went on to say that CIL-HI has blatantly and deliberately lied about a large number of remains CILl-HI has identified. Dr. Charney states that, in his professional opinion, CIL-HI technicians have in some instances made identifications of remains based on human

--------
[4]In May 1990, North Korea returned five sets of remains of U.S. servicemen from the Korean War.

remains or other material not capable of providing such an identification. He further states that many of the technicians who performed the identifications lacked advanced training in the field of forensic anthropology. Prior to 1986, CIL-HI's technicians referred to themselves as "doctors," when, in fact, they had never been awarded doctorates in medicine or any other recognized academic or medical discipline.

After 1986 U.S. House of Representatives hearings on the CIL-HI facility[5] in which Dr. Charney and Dr. George W. Gill, another expert in the field of forensic anthropology, both testified about CIL-HI, the Army attempted to correct the deficiencies in procedure and staffing identified by Drs. Charney and Gill, as well as other witnesses. The Army hired recognized experts with doctoral credentials for the staff, even though the senior anthropologist--who had the final authority to make identifications at CIL-HI--was a person with questionable academic credentials.

The senior anthropologist, a longtime employee of CIL-HI, did not hold a doctorate in the field of anthropology but, had worked in the field of forensic anthropology since the end of World War II. To accomplish his tasks at CIL-HI he insisted on using a theory he developed for the identification of human remains, a theory that was rejected by the anthropological scientific community.

Between 1985 and 1987, Dr. Charney reviewed CIL-HI's identification of thirty sets of repatriated remains from North Vietnam and he concluded that CIL-HI had wrongly identified these remains as those of individual U.S. servicemen from the MIA or KIA-BNR lists. In each of these cases, the material matter available to the CIL-HI forensic examiners (bone parts and fragments) was not sufficient to identify a specific individual by sex, race, height, weight, physical peculiarities, etc. CIL-HI technicians responsible for identifying remains, in some instances, employed forensic methods and procedures not recognized by the international community of professional forensic anthropologists.

According to Dr. Charney, the CIL-HI technicians deliberately misidentified remains as individual U.S. servicemen off the list of unaccounted for during the U.S. war in outheast Asia. He believes the only conceivable reason for this demonstrable pattern of misidentification was a desire to clear the lists of MIA while deceiving the MIA families through the return of misidentified remains.

Dr. Gill, former secretary of the physical anthropology section, American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and a member of the board of directors of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, substantiates Dr. Charney's statements concerning CIL-HI. Dr. Gill has publicly stated

It is clear from the bones that the problem in the CIL-HI reports results either from extreme carelessness, incompetence, fabrication of data, or some combination of these things.

These charges levied by Dr. Charney and Dr. Gill against CIL-Hi have not been refuted by DOD, and this inquiry has found no evidence that contradict Dr. Charney or Dr. Gill.

--------
[5]U.S. Congress, House, "Activities of the Central Identification Laboratory," Hearing Before the Investigations Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Service, House of Representatives, 99th Cong., 2nd Session, 1986.

The problem of accountability for individual American casualties has been addressed by every administration since the 1973 conclusion of the Second Indochina War. During the Carter Administration, for example, a DOD commission--politically sensitive questions are best handled by Commissions, especially if the object is to show the government is taking action to resolve the issue of unaccounted for servicemen--was established to review the status of individual MIA cases.

In these cases, for purposes of compensation to the next-of-kin, the commission issued the following directive:

The Commission has used the date of April 1, 1973 as the last date of entitlement to prisoner of war compensation in cases where the actual date of death is not known and where a finding of death has been issued after that date...[because]...the last known prisoner of war was returned to the control of the United States.[6] The commission further stated:

There have been reports of sightings of Americans in Southeast Asia after that date [April 1, 1973], but neither the identities or status of those persons nor the reliability of the reports are known to be established....Therefore, the Commission finds that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, April 1, 1973 is the last date when members of the U.S. Armed Forces were held prisoners of war by a hostile force in Southeast Asia.[7]

After a presumptive finding of death has been issued, surviving spouses, next of kin, or children are entitled to government-sponsored death benefits, e.g., six-months pay for spouses of deceased military members, government life insurance, etc. The individual is then removed from the active roles of the military service or agency responsible for him/her.

Among the issues yet to be determined by this inquiry are the following:

1) Was all intelligence reviewed pertaining to each individual who was presumptively found to be dead?

2) Have any cases ever been reopened and the presumptive finding withdrawn based upon live-sighting information, or any cases where the date of presumptive death was not changed to match information received well after the initial finding?

--------
[6]As declared in the legal presumptive finding of deaths that were issued by the Commission.
[7]ibid.

Next Page

Vietnam Index