U.S.

Search For MIAs Continues

April 26, 2000 / 12:38 PM EDT / CBS/AP

Lining the shelves of a military laboratory near Pearl Harbor are about 150 boxes of human remains - bits of bone and teeth mostly - each awaiting information that could provide links to one of the more than 2,000 Americans still missing from the Vietnam War.

Periodically, a box is pulled out as forensic experts at the U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii, tucked into a quiet corner of Hickam Air Force Base, identify yet another missing man. Just as regularly, a new box fills the space.

The boxes, some 900 in all, also include remains from Korea and World War II. But CILHI, as the lab is known, is descended from the Saigon Army Mortuary that handled battle dead in Vietnam and that still focuses on Indochina.

While MIA recovery officials say they will continue their work indefinitely, time and the tropics reduce prospects for finding identifiable remains.

Of 2,583 Americans listed as missing in action when the war ended a quarter century ago, 555 have been recovered and identified. Still unaccounted for are 1,518 in Vietnam; 428 in Laos, mostly aviators shot down over some of the world's toughest terrain; 74 in Cambodia and eight in southern China or off its coast.

The goal is to identify at least one a week, said Johnie E. Webb Jr., CILHI's civilian deputy commander. Among the 80 identified last year were about 28 from Vietnam. Webb predicted about 40 more Indochina cases would be resolved this year.

Officials hesitate to concede that some cases are hopeless.

"We don't want to say we'll never be able to identify them," Webb said. "Five or six years ago, the numbers were much greater. There were those...we couldn't identify until DNA technology came into existence."

Bulletin Board

For the U.S., the Vietnam War was a watershed event. But even now, 25 years after U.S. Marines and embassy personnel evacuated Saigon, bitter feelings still flow through the veins of American society. Did the U.S. learn its lessons from the decade-long war it lost?

Go to the CBSnews.com Bulletin Board and join the discussion.

New technologies might solve other mysteries, he said, adding "but we do understand there are some we won't be able to identify."

Although unrecovered MIAs from Indochina fficially total 2,028, the actual number is lower. The U.S. Joint Task Force-Full Accounting, a Pentagon unit created in 1992, lists 633 as "unrecoverable," mostly airmen lost over water or in explosions.

On Tuesday six sets of remains, believed to be Americans, were repatriated in ceremonies as part of Vietnam's commemoration of what it calls the "American war." Tests at CILHI may either confirm the identity quickly or add them to the boxes on the shelves.

CILHI also is close to identifying several of 18 Americans lost in the abortive May 1975 raid to rescue the crew of the cargo ship Mayaguez, seized by Khmer Rouge guerrillas at Cambodia's Koh Tang Island. The remains were recovered in November 1995, one of the largest single Joint Task Force operations to date.

The task force teams of military volunteers, most born after the war ended, mix technology such as global positioning satellites and ground-penetrating radar with old-fashioned archaeology. Each team is headed by a civilian anthropologist and includes mortuary specialists from CILHI.

Search sites must be swept for unexploded bombs, and no deaths or injuries have been reported among search parties. "We've been very lucky," said Raymond Spock, the task force's intelligence director.

The search has been assisted by Vietnam, and in return, the United States is helping its former enemy account for its 300,000 MIAs by opening up its battlefield records.

Early controversy leading to lawsuits helped establish strict standards that CILHI is now one of the world's top forensic labs. Its experts assume nothing about bones and other artifacts. A military dog tag is not proof of identity. Even when "data plates" provide aircraft serial numbers and the pilot was known, remains must be verified scientifically. The anthropologist involved on a case in the field is not allowed to perform the lab work.

Beneath the dry details of meticulous case reports lie tales of adventure, heroism and heartbreak. In July 1967, two Air Force B-52 bombers collided off South Vietnam, killing six of 13 men aboard including Maj. Gen. William J. Crum, the war's highest-ranking U.S. casualty. After fishermen brought up debris in the early 1990s, task force divers located both wrecks - but no remains - in 100 feet of water. The case remains open.

In 1999, task force analyst William Forsyth applied 20 years of expertise in reading aerial photos to pinpoint the makeshift graves of three U.S. scouts who fell to their deaths during a helicopter rescue and who were buried by enemy troops.

Forsyth also revived a bit of Indochinese history, locating the crash site of James "Earthquake McGoon" McGovern, a legendary, 250-pound soldier-of-fortune and ex-Flying Tiger, shot down while dropping supplies to beleaguered French troops at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. "McGoon" and co-pilot Wally Buford died a day before the fortress fell, ending France's clonial role in Indochina.

Most MIAs are Air Force, Navy and Marine pilots shot down between 1965 and 1973. The MIA lobby, a loose coalition of family and veterans groups, works hard to keep official interest alive, in Washington and within the former enemy capitals. Congress continues to fund the two agencies, whose combined annual budgets exceed $30 million.

The most difficult issue is also the most highly charged - whether any Americans remained captives after 591 known POWs returned home in 1973.

Speculation and rumor about the "last known alive" - Americans seen or heard by witnesses to have survived crashes - have been fed over the years by reported sightings of "Caucasians" in Indochina, by Hollywood movies and even by a few real-life, would-be Rambos claiming to mount rescue missions.

Stony Beach, a Defense Intelligence Agency unit set up to pursue such reports, has found "no credible evidence" of Americans left behind. Vietnam and Laos deny holding any prisoners, but Spock said every report is given "highest priority."