Was An Unknown Soldier Identified?

Next week, Defense Secretary William Cohen receives the recommendation of senior Pentagon officials that the military open the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington Cemetery so that the Vietnam-era serviceman buried there can exhumed for DNA testing.

A CBS News investigation determined the serviceman was most likely Michael Blassie, an air force pilot. Now, CBS News Correspondent Eric Engberg and reporter Vince Gonzales have found evidence that senior officials had advance information they might be burying a "known" not an "unknown soldier."

The mystery began to be uncovered in 1983, when the Reagan Administration was pressing the military to find an unidentified American casualty of Vietnam who could be buried at the hallowed Tomb of the Unknowns.

The prime candidate - a set of partial remains - had sat for 11 years in an army center where army scientists struggled to identify the victim, then known only as X-26.

The military opened a far-reaching inquiry to see if X-26 could ever be buried as a soldier "known but to God."

That's when Rogers Woolfolk - an army helicopter pilot who was an expert on aircraft equipment - was asked to do some detective work. Woolfolk's help was sought to look at remnants of a plane crash, to see what he could say about the pilot.

"We had things like a portion of a life raft, portion of a flight suit. There was part of a survival vest. There was a shoulder harness and a holster in there," Woolfolk recalled.

He was never told the equipment was found near the X-26 remains, which were soon to be interred at the tomb. Woolfolk also was not told that Blassie's I.D. card was found with the remains.

Sifting the equipment for clues, Woolfolk paid a lot of attention to the one-man life raft.

"The army didn't have anything flying with life rafts in them. And that led us to be looking at the Air Force," Woolfolk said.

The Air Force told him it sounded like equipment from a plane like the A-37 attack fighter. The pieces of flight suit were gray, and also were emblazoned with an Air Force label.

The inspection stickers on some of the survival gear gave Woolfolk the clue that the crash probably had happened in 1972.

In the time period Woolfolk laid out, there had been only one A-37 crash where the body had not been recovered. The pilot of that plane was Michael Blassie.

Woolfolk sent his findings - pointing to Blassie - to his superiors. But there is no record of Woolfolk's research in the army casualty center, or anywhere else.

Why his work, which would have warned officials the "unknown" candidate likely was known, was ignored is itself another unknown of a sad story.