U.S.

Update: 'Unknown' No Longer

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

April 7, 1998 / 8:51 PM EDT / CBS

In January, CBS's Vince Gonzales and Correspondent Eric Engberg reported shocking evidence that the Vietnam soldier interred in Arlington Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknowns isn't unknown, but is almost certainly Air Force Lt. Michael Blassie.

The Pentagon instantly launched an investigation in response to our report. Engberg has an important update about this controversy surrounding our most hallowed War Memorial.

Key Pentagon investigators now believe the remains of the Vietnam serviceman in the Tomb of the Unknowns must be exhumed for DNA testing because of "strong" evidence the remains are not unknown, but are those of Blassie as CBS first reported.

There's no final decision but the Pentagon is already discussing an appropriate ceremony for disinterment.

Blassie's fighter plane was shot down in 1972. Partial remains were recovered near the crash site months later and tentatively identified as the pilot.

A ten-month CBS investigation has found strong circumstantial evidence that Blassie's remains were buried at the Tomb of the Unknowns, the nation's most sacred military shrine, as the Unknown representing those who fell in Vietnam.

CBS News took the evidence we gathered to the Blassie family. And they asked the Defense Department to exhume the remains for DNA testing which was not available in 1984.
CBS News established the link between Blassie and the Tomb by obtaining key documents like 1972 radio logs which show a patrol found remains of a dead pilot with Blassie's I.D. papers.

Then we found Chris Calhoon the leader of that patrol whose members risked their lives to get to Blassie's crash site. Now retired from the Army, he clearly remembered his troops bringing back remains and a wallet with an I.D. card.

The picture on the I.D. was Michael Blassie's, said Calhoon.

His belief was confirmed by several officers contacted by CBS.

But the I.D. card and the wallet with a small amount of money in it disappeared when the remains were sent to the Saigon mortuary. Army morgue officials ultimately listed the remains as unidentified.

It was those remains, which were buried at the Tomb in 1984 in a ceremony that was supposed to bind up the wounds of Vietnam by admitting a soldier from that war to the nation's most hallowed ground.

DNA experts tell CBS News the prospects are good that testing can determine if the "Unknown Remains" are in fact Mike Blassie's. That will still leave unanswered another question: Why, in the face of strong evidence to the contrary, did U.S. officials declare him unknown.