[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE DEFENSE POW/MIA
ACCOUNTING AGENCY:
BRINGING OUR NATION'S HEROES HOME
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 19, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-73
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
http://www.house.oversight.gov
http://www.docs.house.gov
___________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
38-55 PDF WASHINGTON : 2020
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Acting Chairwoman
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Jim Jordan, Ohio, Ranking Minority
Columbia Member
Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri Paul A. Gosar, Arizona
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Jim Cooper, Tennessee Thomas Massie, Kentucky
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Mark Meadows, North Carolina
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Harley Rouda, California James Comer, Kentucky
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Michael Cloud, Texas
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Peter Welch, Vermont Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Jackie Speier, California Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois Chip Roy, Texas
Mark DeSaulnier, California Carol D. Miller, West Virginia
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan Mark E. Green, Tennessee
Stacey E. Plaskett, Virgin Islands Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota
Ro Khanna, California W. Gregory Steube, Florida
Jimmy Gomez, California Frank Keller, Pennsylvania
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
David Rapallo, Staff Director
Dan Rebnord, Subcommittee Staff Director
Amy Stratton, Clerk
Christopher Hixon, Minority Staff Director
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
Subcommittee on National Security
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts, Chairman
Jim Cooper, Tennesse Jody B. Hice, Georgia, Ranking
Peter Welch, Vermont Minority Member
Harley Rouda, California Paul A. Gosar, Arizona
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois Mark Meadows, North Carolina
Mark DeSaulnier, California Michael Cloud, Texas
Stacey E. Plaskett, Virgin Islands Mark E. Green, Tennessee
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan Clay Higgins, Louisiana
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on November 19, 2019................................ 1
Witnesses
Panel One
Mark Noah, Chief Excutive Officer, History Flight
Oral statement............................................... 5
Vincent "B.J." Lawrence, Washington Office Executive Director,
Veterans of Foreign Wars
Oral statement............................................... 7
Jo Anne Shirley, Former Chair, National League of POW/MIA
Families
Oral statement............................................... 9
Panel Two
Kelly McKeague, Director, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
Oral statement............................................... 20
*Written opening statements, and the written statements for
witnesses are available at the U.S. House Repository: https://
docs.house.gov.
Index of Documents
The document listed below is available at: https://
docs.house.gov.
* DPAA List of Active Partnerships from Mr. McKeague; submitted
by Rep. Lynch.
THE DEFENSE POW/MIA
ACCOUNTING AGENCY
BRINGING OUR NATION'S HEROES HOME
----------
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
House of Representatives
Subcommittee on National Security
Committee on Oversight and Reform
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:05 p.m., in
room 2203, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Stephen Lynch
presiding.
Present: Representatives Lynch, Desaulnier, Kelly,
Lawrence, Hice, Cloud, Green, and Higgins.
Mr. Lynch. The committee will come to order. Without
objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the
committee at any time.
This hearing is entitled ``The Defense POW/MIA Accounting
Agency: Bringing Our Nation's Heroes Home,'' and I will
recognize myself for five minutes to give an opening statement.
Good afternoon, everyone. Today we will examine the
progress of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, or the DPAA,
in fulfilling its historic mission to provide the fullest
possible accounting of our missing military personnel to their
families and the Nation. This will mark the first congressional
hearing to exclusively focus on the oversight of the DPAA since
the agency's creation in 2015.
At the outset, I would like to commend Ranking Member Jody
Hice of Georgia for his leadership in supporting the POW/MIA
identification and recovery efforts. On a bipartisan basis, Mr.
Hice and I have been working to address the outstanding
budgetary, operational, and management challenges facing the
DPAA in order to maximize the agency's ability to account for
more than 82,000 missing servicemembers from World War II, the
Korean War, the Vietnam War, and other conflicts.
In September, Mr. Hice's staff joined me on a congressional
delegation to visit the DPAA headquarters and Skeletal
Identification Laboratory located on Joint Base Pearl Harbor
Hickam Airfield, to receive a mission update from Deputy
Director Rear Admiral John Crites.
The streamlining of POW/MIA tracking and recovery efforts
into a single agency, now the Defense Department POW/MIA
Accounting Agency, followed extensive audits conducted by the
Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General, the
Government Accountability Office, and other Federal agencies.
These reports highlighted critical mission gaps arising from
the fragmentation of accounting operations across three
entities, each reporting through separate chains of command.
In response to bipartisan concerns over the lack of a
clearly defined mission, inconsistent policies, indeterminate
resources and other obstacles facing the accounting community,
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Congress mandated the
creation of a single organization to lead a renewed effort to
identify and recover the remains of missing American military
personnel.
To the credit of the agency leadership, since 2015, the
DPAA has taken meaningful steps toward refining its mission,
unifying agency functions and personnel, and augmenting its
accounting and recovery operations. With 218 recorded
identifications in Fiscal Year 2019, DPAA reports that it
exceeded the previous high annual total recorded by the agency
or its predecessor organizations.
In order to further improve its mission, person
identifications, DPAA is developing a strategy with an end goal
of making at least 350 identifications annually by 2025. To
this end, the agency plans to continue expanding its
disinterment operations. In December of last year, the DPAA
commenced a large-scale, multi-phased, disinterment project for
652 sets of remains of American servicemen buried as unknown
soldiers at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also
known as the Punchbowl.
DPAA is also reinforcing its mission through diplomatic
partnerships, with 46 host nations, and collaborating with
veteran service organizations, nonprofit institutions, and
other private sector entities.
Investigations and recovery team operations are ongoing in
Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia, South Korea, Guam, Palau, and other
host nationsites. Moreover, the agency reports that its
strategic public-private partnerships in field, investigatory,
and excavation work, historical research analysis, and data
collection have augmented recovery operations and helped to
maximize scarce resources.
However, gaps in our POW/MIA accounting process and
recovery efforts remain. The Office of the Inspector General
reports that while DPAA allocates the majority of its
operational budget to Vietnam War-related cases in Southeast
Asia, the agency has not effectively communicated its rationale
to accounting community stakeholders.
In certain cases, the prioritization of Southeast Asia has
distracted DPAA from pursuing viable missions related to
previous conflicts outside of the Pacific theater. The Office
of Inspector General also found gaps in information sharing
between the agency and the families of unaccounted-for service
personnel. The communication of timely and accurate information
to our POW/MIA families is at the heart of the responsibility
of DPAA, and we must make every effort to improve this process.
We must also examine other personnel and operational
challenges. For example, mandatory furloughs of Department of
Defense civilian employees in previous years have suspended the
search and recovery missions of DPAA's predecessor agencies and
brought them to a virtual halt. Given that agency
anthropologists, life support analysts, and other civilian
workers were forced to take monthly furlough days, they could
not participate in operations that typically last over a month.
Delays are also problematic because the extreme conditions
during the rainy seasons in places like Vietnam and Laos
provide a limited window of opportunity to conduct recovery
operations.
So in order to ensure the continuation of DPAA missions in
the event of future budgetary uncertainty, earlier this month I
introduced H.R. 4879, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
Support Act, to exempt DPAA civilian employees who are deployed
on recovery missions from furloughs.
Back in 2011, I led a bipartisan congressional delegation
to Vietnam and the Philippines to examine search and recovery
operations conducted by one of DPAA's predecessor agencies,
JPAC, which is the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. I recall
that our counterparts from the Vietnam Office for Seeking
Missing Persons and the Philippine government repeatedly
expressed their great admiration for the United States for its
unwavering national commitment to leaving no servicemember
behind. It is our collective determination as a nation to bring
America's heroes home that guide this subcommittee's oversight
in this area.
I would like to thank our witnesses for their willingness
to appear and to help this committee with its work, and at this
point I would like to yield to the ranking member from Georgia,
Mr. Hice, for five minutes.
Mr. Hice. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I just
want to say thank you for calling this important hearing. You
and your staff have been great to work with and we appreciate
you working with us and our staff as well.
We all are here to owe an enormous debt of gratitude to our
service men and women who maintained for us the freedoms and
liberties that we enjoy here in this country, and in
particular, those who have given the greatest sacrifice of all,
and that is what brings us here.
I want to thank Dr. McKeague, or Director McKeague for
being here, and all of you for your flexibility, due to
scheduling and plane flights, to be able to make adjustments.
We appreciate that a great deal and we welcome all of you here.
It is estimated that about 82,000 American servicemembers
remain unaccounted for from past conflicts, and we need to do
everything we can to bring them home. These families deserve so
much from their fellow Americans, including providing closure
for their loved ones having served this country.
The DPAA was formed through a consolidation of three
organizations in 2015, to lead a national effort to account for
missing servicemembers and to be a resource for families
regarding their missing servicemembers' loss and recovery
efforts. This is, frankly, one of those organizations we all
hope and pray no one ever needs, but when it is needed we want
it to function effectively and properly. And I know Chairman
Lynch and myself and both sides want to see excellence in the
DPAA in every way, both to honor our servicemembers and their
families.
Currently, DPAA has a team of over 600 military and
civilian employees conducting missions across 42 partner
nations, working toward this goal, and we want to thank all of
them for their dedication to the mission before them. In the
past two years, DPAA has recovered and identified over 400
missing servicemembers. Under President Trump's leadership, the
DPAA received 55 contains of U.S. servicemembers' remains from
North Korea, and from that so far, 41 individuals have been
identified. But obviously there is still a lot of work to day.
Today we have the honor of hearing from each of you. Jo
Anne Shirley, former chair of the National League of POW/MIA
Families, an organization dedicated to securing the release of
all prisoners of war and the fullest possible accounting of
those lost during the Vietnam War. Ms. Shirley not only led the
National League for many years but her brother is one of those
brave men who is still unaccounted for after his plane went
down during the Vietnam War. Jo Anne, I want to thank you for
your tireless efforts and for the multiple meetings that we
have had personally. I want to thank you for that.
By Fiscal Year 2025, by working with organizations like the
National League, the VFW, History Flight, and host nations,
DPAA hopes to make 350 new identifications each year. I look
forward to hearing from Dr. McKeague and each of you. Director
McKeague, you may be a doctor. I know you are from Georgia
Tech. It kind of rolls off. But I look forward to hearing from
you and each of you on our panel today as we try to move toward
that goal of 350 a year.
So this hearing will also be a chance for us to receive an
update on the process the DPAA uses to recover and identify
servicemembers as well as how they keep families apprised of
the developments.
Additionally, we are looking forward to hearing from Mark
Noah from History Flight. I look forward to hearing more about
the important role that this nonprofit plays in the effort to
bring our servicemembers home. And also Mr. Vincent ``B.J.''
Lawrence of Veterans of Foreign Wars, or VFW.
Again, I want to thank each of you for being here today.
Thank you for your dedication to this important task, not only
to those whose lives were lost and to their families but to our
Nation. We want to bring these people home.
And again, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for your
leadership in this, and I look forward to this hearing, and I
yield back.
Mr. Lynch. The gentleman yields back. It is an honor to
have this hearing, and I want to thank the witnesses for your
willingness to come before the committee and help us with our
work, our collective work.
The committee would like to welcome Mark Noah, the Chief
Executive Officer of History Flight, Vincent ``B.J.'' Lawrence,
Washington Office Executive Director, Veterans of Foreign Wars,
and Jo Anne Shirley, Former Chair, National League of POW/MIA
Families.
Would you all please rise and raise your right hand.
I will begin by swearing you in.
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
[Chorus of ayes.]
Mr. Lynch. Let the record show that the witnesses have all
answered in the affirmative. Thank you, and please be seated.
The microphones are sensitive so please speak directly into
them. Without objection, your written statements will be made
part of the record.
With that, Mr. Noah, you are now recognized to give an oral
presentation of your testimony for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF MARK NOAH, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, HISTORY FLIGHT
Mr. Noah. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, it is
my humble honor to be here as a representative of History
Flight and to share my 15 years of volunteer experience in the
mission to repatriate the missing in action servicemen from
past conflicts. Thank you for this opportunity.
Noted author, David Colley, wrote in the prologue of his
book, Safely Rest, ``We have lost touch with the immense pain
and suffering suffered by those in the war and the ripples of
sorrow that still flow across the country from that devastating
conflict. We know little of the men who gave their lives and
nothing of the struggles of their families.''
So these are very prescient words and in that context I
would like to read a letter that I found in the National
Archives about 15 years ago from a Mrs. Irene Rogers to General
``Hap'' Arnold, regarding her son was missing in a plane crash
from World War II.
She said, ``Dear General Arnold, we appreciate your kind
words and sympathy and also the nice things you say about our
son, Lieutenant M.G. Rogers. I would appreciate it so much if
you could tell me what evidence you have that all the boys died
that day. Every branch of the service has been very kind, his
six-month gratuity pay is coming, and his insurance papers have
been taken care of, but the thing I want to know is, where is
my boy?''
Today, 81,864 families of America's missing service men and
women still ask the same question: Where is my boy? Since 1952
to today, the search for America's 72,661 World War II missing,
our 7,616 Korean War missing, our 1587 Vietnam War missing, and
our 200 missing from the cold war and beyond, have been
chronically underfunded.
Since 1952, the mortal remains of America's missing have
been lost in the passage of time, discarded as trash, covered
up by infrastructure and development, and accidentally
disinterred in construction and agricultural cultivation of
former battlefields. The first two Marines History Flight
recovered on Tarawa, for example, were garishly displayed on a
battlefield tour guide's front porch in April 2010.
In a forthright effort to help solve the issue of America's
81,864 missing service personnel, we founded History Flight, a
501(c)(3) nonprofit organization capable of deploying multiple
transdisciplinary recovery teams to any part of the world to
recovery U.S. service personnel. For the last 15 years, we have
merged multiple professional skill sets into a holistic,
winning combination of search and recovery methodologies.
To date, History Flight has accomplished the three largest
recoveries of American missing service personnel since the
Korean War and has recovered a minimum number of individuals
associated with American loss incidents, totally 309 from
Tarawa and 16 from Europe, totaling 325 recoveries to date.
History Flight has recovered a minimum number of individuals in
Fiscal Year 2019 that equals 79.
History Flight has been a steadfast partner and supporter
in the public-private partnership program with DPAA and the
Department of Defense and our recoveries now constitute 20
percent of the DoD's annual identifications.
Last Friday, I was honored to be able to attend the funeral
of PFC Joseph Livermore in Bakersfield, California. PFC
Livermore was a Tarawa Marine that History Flight had recovered
in March of this year, and he was recovered and identified in
record time by the DPAA Central Identification Lab, who did an
outstanding job to bring him to identified status in a very
short period of time.
The outpouring of public support for PFC Livermore was
inspiring, as more than 1,000 people lined the streets in
Bakersfield to welcome him home. His primary next- of-kin told
me, ``Today is the best day of my life.''
Today I was also fortunate to be able to attend the funeral
of another Tarawa Marine that was recovered and identified as
part of the Unknown Project, as well as in concert with work
that History Flight had done with DPAA, Edwin Benson, of
Boston, Massachusetts, at the Arlington National Cemetery.
The meaning of a deceased family member returning to
America for a hero's welcome is of infinite value to his family
and to the missing, as they regain their dignity and their
identity. Our experience has shown that more than 50 percent of
the missing men that we have recovered have had living
brothers, sisters, and children at their funeral.
The recovery of America's missing servicemen is a vital
endeavor for their families and for our country. What we are
accomplishing in recovering the missing is putting a little bit
of America back into America across this great country, from
Bakersfield to Boston, and these two funerals that I just
attended are a prime example of the success of the public-
private partnership that has thrived under the new Defense POW/
MIA Accounting Agency.
History Flight operates offices in Virginia, Belgium,
Tarawa, and the Philippines. History Flight employs
transdisciplinary teams of forensic archaeologists, historians,
genealogists, geophysical scientists, and combat wounded
warriors who know what it means to shed blood for their
country. Synthesizing our team's skills and life experiences
have resulted in a business-like and passionate approach to the
recovery of the mission where the objective is success and the
team will stop at nothing to fulfill our Nation's promise of
never leaving a fallen comrade behind.
To date, History Flight enjoys a 93 percent success rate at
every search and recovery operation that we were involved in, a
result that is unmatched in this milieu. To achieve that,
History Flight members have raised and contributed more than
3.5 million private dollars and countless thousands of
volunteer hours in an effort that has been not reimbursed by
the Department of Defense.
Land of the free, home of the brave, yet 81,864 missing
Americans are buried in unmarked graves.
Every government building, state capitol, post office flies
the POW/MIA flag, yet our great country has yet to allocate
resources equal to the need to recover our missing from
America's wars of the 20th century. Resources remain the only
major impediment to America being able to recover the men and
women who lost their lives in the service of this country.
Despite the fact that History Flight recovered 325 missing
individuals, including 79 in Fiscal Year 2019 alone, and has
recovered 200 individuals for the cost of a single recovery in
Southeast Asia, History Flight recently received a 66 percent
funding cut for Fiscal Year 2020. How does the legislature, who
are responsible for funding the recoveries of America's
missing, expect the missing to be recovered if they don't
adequately fund the operation?
And thank you very much for your time.
Mr. Lynch. Mr. Lawrence, you are now recognized for five
minutes for an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF VINCENT ``B.J.'' LAWRENCE, WASHINGTON OFFICE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS
Mr. Lawrence. Chairman Lynch, Ranking Member Hice, and
members of the subcommittee, on behalf of the men and women of
the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States and its
auxiliary thank you for the opportunity to provide remarks
regarding our partnership with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting
Agency. I would also like to personally thank DPAA's director,
Mr. Kelly McKeague, and the National League of POW/MIA Families
CEO, Ann Mills-Griffiths, who are both with us today, for their
partnerships and support of the VFW and our shared POW/MIA
accounting mission.
Since 1929, the VFW has been intimately involved in the
accounting mission. Our nation's ability to bring home our
fallen heroes is a national commitment, but it is extremely
limited by the lack of funding and the dwindling numbers of
eyewitnesses who can provide information useful in identifying
possible incident sites, among other factors. That is why the
VFW has been partnering with DPAA and its predecessor
organizations to work with foreign governments to help American
researchers gain access to foreign military official archives
and past battlefields.
Since 1991, the VFW is the only veteran service
organization to return to Southeast Asia, Russia, and China,
and has made it our goal to not rest until we achieve the
fullest possible accounting of all missing American military
and civilian personnel from all past wars.
Due to DPAA's efforts, 218 Americans were identified and
accounted for in Fiscal Year 2018. However, government
budgetary uncertainty prevented DPAA from identifying more
fallen heroes. During a government shutdown, DPAA personnel are
furloughed and forced to leave an incident site, which results
in delays. The VFW thanks Chairman Lynch for introducing H.R.
4879, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Support Act, which
would exempt DPAA employees who are conducting accounting
missions from being furloughed in the event of a government
shutdown. The VFW urges Congress to consider and pass this
important legislation as soon as possible.
The VFW urges Congress to also provide DPAA the necessary
resources to expand recovery operations into North Korea and to
support the remains recovery mission in the DPRK.
Locating, identifying, and recovering the remains of those
who paid the ultimate sacrifice in the service of our country,
from conflicts spanning nearly 80 years, is a difficult and
hazardous mission, but it is one of the most important
obligations that we have as a grateful nation. It is a promise
to those serving in uniform today that no matter what, we will
travel to the ends of the earth to return you home to your
families. As a veteran who served in Korea, I am honored to
have played a role in reuniting fallen veterans whose remains
were left behind enemy lines in North Korea with their loved
ones.
The VFW has played a vital role in advancing the POW/MIA
missions. Last July, during the 120th VFW National Convention
in Orlando, Florida, I asked Vietnam veterans to send in
documents that might help the government of Vietnam to
determine the locations of burial sites in order to find their
estimated 300,000 missing soldiers and personal effects that
might help bring comfort to their families.
Our VFW members and their families answered the call. On
October 25, 2019, the VFW provided documents, artifacts, and
personal effects to DPAA, which had the locations of
battlefields and gravesites of Vietnamese soldiers. Returning
these items to the Vietnamese government has helped improve the
relationships with the United States. This display of diplomacy
will not only help in our efforts to reach our true goal and
promise to our families affected by the Vietnam War but help us
gain access to future recovery sites.
With more than 82,000 U.S. servicemembers still unaccounted
for globally, Congress must support full mission funding and
personnel staffing for DPAA, as well as its supporting agencies
such as the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory and the
Military Service Casualty Offices. The fullest possible
accounting mission remains a top priority for the VFW, and we
will not rest until it is accomplished.
The VFW knows supporting this mission is something we can
all agree on, and it is why we urge Congress to ensure this
important mission can continue in perpetuity. Regardless of any
lapse in government funding, it is insufferable that recovery
missions or joint field activities which take an enormous
amount of time, energy, and resources to plan, and must be
conducted during certain times of the year, are suspended
simply because Congress cannot do its job.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, I personally know you and this
committee agree with me when I say, as a nation we must always
honor our solemn promise to never forget and to leave no one
behind.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement and I am happy to
answer any questions you or the members of your subcommittee
may have.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Lawrence. Ms. Shirley, you are
now recognized for a five-minute opening statement.
STATEMENT OF JO ANNE SHIRLEY, FORMER CHAIR, NATIONAL LEAGUE OF
POW/MIA FAMILIES
Ms. Shirley. I am very grateful to Chairman Lynch and to
Jody Hice for the opportunity to share my brother's history
with you and our efforts to reach the fullest possible
accounting.
My brother, Major Bobby Marvin Jones, United States Air
Force flight surgeon, was two years older than me, and we had a
very close relationship. He graduated from the University of
Georgia, finished the Medical College of Georgia, and did his
internship in Dallas, Texas, at Baylor Hospital.
The Vietnam War was raging. Bobby had a very low draft
number, so he decided to join the Air Force for two years and
then return home to do his medical residency. So in September
1972, he entered the Air Force and was assigned to Udorn,
Thailand. He took care of the servicemen there at Udorn, and he
actually reached out to help some of the local residents as
well.
On November 28 of 1972, Bobby was flying Bacsi in an F4D,
headed to Da Nang, South Vietnam. There is a large mountain,
Bach Ma Mountain, as you approach to land. It appears that the
F4D clipped the top of Bach Ma Mountain as they came in to land
that day. When we learned that Bobby was missing in action I
promised him that day that I would do everything I could to
bring him home.
JPAC and DPAA have excavated the entire mountain slope and
they found not a single human remain. I still work hard to get
the fullest possible accounting of all of our missing
servicemen, and I realize quickly that this issue is not just
about Bobby, but it is about all. It is about the 1,587 still
missing from Vietnam and our almost 82,000 missing from World
War II to present day.
My parents learned about the National League of POW/MIA
Families about a year later, and we decided to join, and we
have never missed a meeting. I have served as the Georgia state
coordinator for over 36 years, and I have worked diligently to
keep my local Governor, my Georgia Governor, the Georgia State
Veterans Department, our U.S. Senators and Representatives from
Georgia up to date and knowledgeable about the challenges that
we frequently face.
Each year at our annual meeting here in D.C., my husband
and I come two days early. The first day when we get there we
go up to see both Georgia Senators and leave them updated
information. The second day we go to all 14 Georgia
congressional offices in one day. I try to set up a meeting
with each one of them before we come up here, but usually we
wind up meeting with staff members only. But I leave them an
update and I followup after our annual meeting so that they can
never say they didn't know what was going on.
I served on the League's board of directors for 18 years
and was chairman for 16 of those years, and I was blessed to
have the support of my husband and my parents during that time.
I was blessed to make four delegation trips to Southeast Asia,
to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, where we met with
high-ranking officials in each country every time we went. We
went out to about 12 or 14 of our ongoing site excavations. We
actually stayed sometimes in base camps in very remote jungle
locations, and interacted with JTF-FA and JPAC, who were
working our sites at that time. I got to see first-hand what
our excavation teams were doing to try to recover remains and
airplane debris.
I have been to Hawaii several times and I visited CILHI and
JPAC facilities each time, and I got to see how our specialists
process remains that they have recovered, trying to extract
samples of their DNA to match the DNA in the Armed Forces DNA
Laboratory data base with DNA from the maternal side of the
family for each man that is missing.
The accounting efforts face many challenges. No. 1 is
funding this issue. That is a big deal. And I regret that DPAA,
DIA, and AFDIL do not have enough personnel to reach the
seemingly ever-increasing goals first set by Congress, and now
we have to do that. When World War II and Korean War families
finally got organized, and they had never been organized before
the League, we saw a vast expansion in the accounting mission
to include all wars, but without the resources that we need,
the personnel and the budget, to meet the requirements
resulting from the vast mission expansion.
The technology has had major changes over the years. We no
longer use blood samples from a family member, but we can use a
cheek swab or a hair sample to get a qualified family member
whose DNA samples can be on file, and those have to be on the
maternal side of the family. Soil acidity is so high in the key
countries in Southeast Asia that we face limitations, very few
years left to recover and try to identify the remains that we
find. In a few years, our teams will recover bone fragments so
decomposed that we no longer can obtain the DNA, or the remains
will be so decomposed that we have nothing to recover.
I don't know any Congressman who has a loved one, or even a
very special friend, who is missing, and many government
officials have no idea what we are dealing with as we strive to
reach the fullest possible accountings.
Realistically, we will never be able to recover and
identify all of our missing, but many can still be brought home
and honored for their service and the sacrifices that they
made. I believe it is our responsibility, as individuals and as
a Nation, to never ever leave them behind.
I decided not to stand for reelection to the League's board
of directors several years ago. My husband was retiring and my
mother was getting older. She is still very active and praying
that we can get Bobby home. My mother will actually be 103 in
three weeks.
My time and dedication to achieving the League's accounting
objectives have not changed due to my no longer being on the
board of directors. I still work every week and every day to
try to help us reach the fullest possible accounting. And I
have committed to all our servicemen to support them, both
those that are missing and those that are serving active duty
today, and I hope that you are too, that we can bring them all
home and honor them for their service.
Mr. Lynch. Ms. Shirley, thank you for your testimony, and I
am sorry for your loss. You are a good sister. I will say that.
Ms. Shirley. Thank you.
Mr. Lynch. I do want to say that--so I live with a Gold
Star sister as well. She is 94 years old. She lost her--this is
Helen Shaughnessy, my wife's mom, and she lost her brother,
Arnie, in his first parachute jump over the Rhine right at the
end of--about a month before the end of the war, World War II,
in Europe. So while I have not carried that burden I have
certainly witnessed it.
So that experience--and also when I was an ironworker we
had a guy in our crew, with Local four equipment operators, and
a guy by the name of Jim Fitz, and he had lost his boy in 1969
in Vietnam. And I always remember while the rest of my crew
would run off to, you know, the restaurant or the pub for
lunch, Jim would sit in the cab of his pickup truck with the
flag that they had given him, because his son was not
recovered, and he would basically cry each day for lunch. That
was his world.
Thankfully, in 1988, they recovered his son's remains, and
I saw what a profound relief that was for his family and for
Jim. That--those experiences have motivated me, in terms of
being engaged in this process. And, you know, we are very lucky
here, on this issue especially, that we have such great
bipartisan support. Now this subcommittee will--while I have
already done a couple of trips over, we will do another one
specifically of Southeast Asia. We would like to get into Laos
too, because while there has been a lot of attention on Vietnam
and a lot of resources--not enough but a lot of resources on
Vietnam--we would like to get into Laos because some of those
families, you know, deserve our efforts as well.
I want to acknowledge the time and energy and passion that
all three of you have poured into the mission to recover
America's missing heroes and keep their legacies and stories
alive. Not only have you helped bring closure and comfort to
hundreds of families through the recovery and repatriation of
their loved ones, you have also helped raise the awareness of
this noble humanitarian cause.
Ms. Shirley, I would like to ask you to go back to the
issue of--because when we went to the identification lab
recently, we also heard the complaint that we did not have DNA
samples from families, so that it would help the forensic
pathologists identify the remains. You have to have a match.
The Tarawa situation was a little different because you had a
clavicle analysis, because we had x-rays of every single one of
those boys. But can you talk about how perhaps families can be
more engaged and how we might be able to, you know, enlist them
to be more active and provide those DNA samples to help DPAA do
their work as well?
Ms. Shirley. I wish I had a good answer for that, because
there are a lot of families who just choose not to do anything.
Mr. Lynch. Yes.
Ms. Shirley. The pilots on my brother's plane, I called
them immediately when I found out that they wanted DNA from the
maternal side of the family, and he was married and he had a
baby and the baby's DNA would have been, you know, legitimate
to put on file. And the wife told me that they had moved on
with their lives, and this was just a few months, you know,
past that, and not to ever call them or contact them again. So
it has been kind of reluctant, but I don't even know if our lab
has their DNA on file.
I also shared our story at the home where my mother was
staying first, and I shared our story and then I asked if
anybody had a question. And this lady in the back raised her
hand and she said, ``My brother is missing from World War II.''
And I sat down with her afterwards and I said, ``Is your DNA on
file?'' and she said, ``No. I have moved on with my life.'' And
she died six months later, and I went to her husband and I
said, ``Can I have her hairbrush?'' and he said, ``She didn't
want to do that, so I have thrown everything away.''
Mr. Lynch. Wow.
Ms. Shirley. So there are families who just have moved on
with their lives. I honestly can't be in that same pew, but you
can't force them to do it.
Mr. Lynch. Yes.
Ms. Shirley. We try to get the message out there. We try to
spread, you know, the issue that we are trying to recover and
bring them home. And my response now, I try to be nice about it
but my response now is, ``Okay, so you want them to sit in a
box on a shelf in the lab somewhere, and we can't bring them
home and honor them for their service and their sacrifice.''
And there are families that just kind of blow you away and they
don't want to do it.
Mr. Lynch. Yes.
Ms. Shirley. So I think the more we get the message out
there, the more likely we are to have somebody step forward.
And now we have got another generation that might be
willing to do it. Like that baby that the pilot had, she is 47
years old. I have never met her. She has never come to a League
meeting. She has never joined us or done anything. How do you
force people to do it?
Mr. Lynch. Well, maybe our successes, when people hear
about Bakersfield and Boston----
Ms. Shirley. Absolutely.
Mr. Lynch [continuing]. and the Benson family, maybe that
inspires people to say, ``Hey, you know, this is meaningful and
these young men deserve it.''
Ms. Shirley. And it can happen.
Mr. Lynch. Right, and it is possible.
I have exceeded my time for questioning. I would like now
to yield five minutes to Mr. Cloud for his questioning.
Mr. Cloud. Thank you, Chairman, and thanks again for
holding this hearing. It is comforting that we can come
together as a Congress on an issue as important as this and lay
aside the differences and approach something that is extremely
important to our Nation.
Thank you, Mr. Noah, and thank you, Mr. Lawrence, for your
service to our country. Thank you especially that it continues
beyond just wearing the uniform and all that you have done to
serve with those who do wear the uniform but that your service
has continued in what you are doing today. It is to be admired
and respected, and I hope challenges us, all of us, in our
service.
Ms. Shirley, of course your loss, we are sorry for that,
and want to do our best to help you and other families like
you. Could you tell us some of the challenges that families--I
know you have worked, not only your personal experience but you
have also worked with a number of families. Could you share
your experience and maybe some of the challenges that families
run into in recovering the remains or trying to find out
information about a member who has been lost?
Ms. Shirley. You know, you never know which case or which,
you know, one of our missing is going to be on the list. So we
really just have to be very confident that DPAA is going to do
everything they can, in all the countries, to get to those
locations. You know, the real--you know, the challenge is to
find where those locations are, because a lot of them, we have
lost them but we don't know, you know, where to go and try to
do those recoveries.
So I think, you know, families are just--I think the more
we have--the more we can get involved, the better off we are,
because we can spread the message to our Congressmen, to our
President, to our Vice President, and I think that is a real
challenge, to get more families. And now you look at--you are
talking World War II. Is it going to be the children, the
grandchildren, the great-grandchildren now that you want to be
involved, that care? They didn't even know that loved one that
is missing.
So I think we have a lot of challenges to get the message
out, you know, of what we can do, what we are willing to do,
what our capabilities are. And the more involved they are going
to be, the better off we are.
Mr. Cloud. What are, I guess, maybe a couple of tips that
you would give a family?
Ms. Shirley. Well, the first one would be DNA. Get your DNA
on file if you are on the maternal side of the family. And I
think being involved where you can spread that message is huge.
Not--you know, if I share Bobby's message then, you know, it
just shows that we do have information, there are things we can
do, and it brings other people in as well, not just family
members but it brings, you know, our veterans groups in. And I
think the more we can get that message out, the better off we
are. But you have got to consider, you know, those generations
are now much lower. They are not the ones who actually knew
that guy that is missing, and that is difficult.
Mr. Cloud. Now we have a few individuals in our district,
in the community where I live, who have looked to our office
for help, not for family members but for their buddies, and we
have run into even challenges trying to help them because of
privacy issues and those kind of things. Do you have any
thoughts on, first of all, if that is an issue that you have
heard as well, how we could address that while respecting the
privacy issues, speaking from the perspective of a family
member? Do you have any guidance on that for us?
Ms. Shirley. Well, privacy is kind of a challenge, I think,
for some people, but people like me, I don't care about the
privacy about my brother's case. I want the message out there,
you know, that the more people that are involved--they can do
fundraising, they can do public awareness, they can support
those families. And, you know, the people that I have that
support me and my mom in everything we do, it is so uplifting
and so encouraging that that is huge.
So it is not big things--fundraising is great--but I think
just the emotional support from people who don't have someone
missing is, you know, critical.
Mr. Cloud. Now we mentioned some of the infrastructure
needs, I guess, or financial needs, or those kind of things,
finances being one. Is lab capacity another issue, or do you
understand, from your understanding that we have the lab
capacity? When it comes to capacity, is it more of a lab issue
or personnel issue?
Ms. Shirley. You are probably asking the wrong person, but
I would say both. You know, I think the more people we have
that work these cases, that have the expertise to do, you know,
their specific jobs, the better off we are going to be. So I
think, you know, DPAA needs the personnel and the budget to be
able to achieve, you know, the fullest possible accounting.
We have so many, you know, sets of remains that come in,
and when you get remains like you get from Korea, and this
might just be my opinion, but when they brought all those
caskets in, that crazy guy over there, I can see him taking one
set of remains and putting them in three or four different, you
know, caskets. And it looks good, but when you get to the lab
they have got to really do, you know, an examination on each
one of those, you know, pieces of remains, and make sure that
they are individual and they are not, you know, the same
person.
So I think, you know, we have to have the expertise in the
lab to be able to do those kinds of things, while we are still
going out and bringing others, you know, in as well. So it is a
real challenge. I think the lab, they do an amazing job, but I
think the more people we have in there that have that
expertise, the better off we are going to be.
Mr. Cloud. I have exceeded my time, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Lynch. The gentleman yields. Just on that point--and we
will hear from Mr. McKeague a little later, but it is my
understanding of the 51 sets of remains that we got from North
Korea, the Chosin Reservoir area, there were 187 sets of
remains within the 51 boxes, and that I believe there were
dozens that were actually Chinese soldiers that had perished at
that battle.
Ms. Shirley. And we sent them back.
Mr. Lynch. And we did. And we did.
Ms. Shirley. Yes.
Mr. Lynch. The chair now recognizes the gentlewoman from
Michigan, Mrs. Lawrence, for five minutes.
Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Noah, History
Flight has been working on various projects in cooperation with
DPAA, and you have described History Flight's relationship with
DPAA as solid and professional. Can you explain how DPAA
funding supports your work?
Mr. Noah. The History Flight project has been funded over
the years by the personal donations of some of the members, as
well as selling airplane rides and using the revenue from the
profit margin to fund the search for the missing. And History
Flight also has a series of government partnership contracts
with DPAA. So it is a combination of private donations and DPAA
funding for our projects.
Mrs. Lawrence. And it is sufficient?
Mr. Noah. Well, in the remarks that I made, at the end, I
mentioned that we had recovered 325 individuals, including 79
individuals in Fiscal Year 2019, and for Fiscal Year 2020 we
received a 66 percent cut in funding. So I have to say, looking
at the macro picture of the missing from all the wars of the
20th century, they have all been chronically underfunded since
the 1950's, and I think that in order to really put the best
foot forward for the country, funding has to be adequate to the
problem at hand.
Mrs. Lawrence. I appreciate that. If DPAA is able to
continue its work in North Korea under a new record of an
agreement, would History Flight want to be involved?
Mr. Noah. I would have to say absolutely. History Flight
has pioneered a transdisciplinary methodology to use remote
sensing cartography, aerial photography, and archaeology
combined to find missing graves that are unmarked. We have
recovered over--well, we have recovered 309 individuals from
Tarawa. Many of them were underneath buildings, underneath
roads and houses. And we used the transdisciplinary methodology
to find them. And we also used the concept of establishing an
office in the project area and maintaining a 12-month-a-year
presence. We had the continuity for the projects.
So if there was ever an opportunity to get back into North
Korea, there are numerous graveyards in North Korea that were
left behind by the U.N. when they pulled back after the Chosin
Reservoir. There are also numerous graveyards of allied service
personnel at the POW camps throughout North Korea. So I think
the opportunity to get back into North Korea would be a very
fruitful one, and we are well-suited to do that.
Mrs. Lawrence. That is good to know.
Mr. Lawrence, you have stated that the Veterans of Foreign
Wars, and I quote, ``continues to stand firm on its
relationship and dedication with both the National League of
POW/MIA Families and DPAA.'' How would you describe your
communications with DPAA leadership? Would you say it is
responsive to your feedback?
Mr. Lawrence. I believe they are very responsive. We are in
constant communication. We have some joint programs that we
both monitor as it pertains to the POW/MIA mission. I spoke of
one in the testimony that the VFW currently is involved with
DPAA on, and that is asking our members, our over 1.7 million
members worldwide, to consider giving us artifacts to the VFW
or maps or battle memorabilia that they might have brought home
from previous wars, and we turn them over to DPAA to process
and to analyze.
We also have another program, and the chairman asked about
it. We also have another program where we urge our members to
provide those DNA samples, and we do that through our
publications, our magazine, our Checkpoint newsletter, and on
social media. So we actually pursue DNA--ask our families to
submit DNA samples as well. That is another one of our
programs.
Mrs. Lawrence. Great. I want to say thank you. We hope that
DPAA will continue to capitalize on the numerous benefits it
gains from working with organizations like History Flight and
the National League. If you think that more can be done to
support the network of NGO's and the accounting mission, I
encourage you to reach out to members of the subcommittee, and
I yield back.
Mr. Lynch. The gentlelady yields back. The gentleman from
Georgia, Mr. Hice, is now recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Hice. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Shirley,
as past chairwoman of the National League, what were some of
the more common problems, challenges that you faced working
with DPAA, that you heard or that you saw that families were
dealing with? What were some of the common challenges?
Ms. Shirley. Honestly, I think most of our relationship
with them has been very good. We reach out to them and then we
get a response back very quickly. We have had great guys
working, you know, out there in Hawaii, and I think we are
blessed to have that kind of, you know, support.
Mr. Hice. Okay. So let's go there. Once a servicemember is
found, then the family is notified, what kind of timeframe are
we talking about from that point? How long is it before the
family is able to make arrangements and have a proper
interment, or whatever they want to do?
Ms. Shirley. Well, I can't say I have been down that road
so I am not sure, but I think we get them back on a pretty, you
know, quick basis and honor them, you know, in whatever way the
family----
Mr. Hice. Like what is a quick basis? I mean, what are we
talking about? What kind of timeframe?
Ms. Shirley. I am not absolutely sure about that. It just
depends.
Mr. Hice. Do any of you have an idea?
Mr. Lynch. Next panel.
Mr. Hice. Okay. The next panel will? Okay. So your
experience has been very positive. You mentioned your brother.
So I understand that DPAA, on at least a couple of times, have
thought they had located your brother. So what kind of
communication, in that kind of instance, took place with DPAA?
Ms. Shirley. I think being involved and as active as I have
been, and knowing everybody, you know, that works our cases in
different aspects, I have gotten great response back from them.
Not, you know, having to wait too long or sometimes I just call
and ask questions and I get a response back pretty quick. So I
am blessed to have, you know, the interaction that I have had
up to this point.
Mr. Hice. Do you think that is characteristic of other
families, you have a very close relationship or working
relationship? Is that from what you hear? I mean, you work with
a lot of families, talk to a lot of families. Is that the type
of thing that you hear?
Ms. Shirley. I truly believe it is. I think----
Mr. Hice. Excellent.
Ms. Shirley [continuing]. DPAA does everything they can to
get that, you know, message out to the families.
Mr. Hice. Okay. So we have--let's just say we have a family
out here who is trying to locate a servicemember or a loved one
and they are just trying to get started in the process. It has
got to be a pretty intimidating thing to even begin the
process. They have probably just kind of have a sense of
overwhelming challenges. Where do you tell them to go? What
happens for that family? How do they need to get started? What
can they expect?
Ms. Shirley. I think they just need to contact DPAA and ask
the questions, you know, that are on their mind, and get what--
if they don't get the responses back that they want then they
need to ask those questions again. I don't think sitting back
and just saying, ``Well, I am just going to wait here and hope
that, you know, miracles happen.'' I think the more the
families, you know, come on board and, you know, ask the
questions they need answers to, they are very quick to respond
to those.
Mr. Hice. Chairman Lynch introduced--he mentioned it a
little earlier before I had to step out, the Defense POW/MIA
Accounting Agency Support Act. Are you familiar with that,
somewhat?
Ms. Shirley. Um----
Mr. Hice. How would--I guess my question is, can you talk
about how that would impact DPAA?
Ms. Shirley. I am going to let somebody else answer that
one----
Mr. Hice. Okay.
Ms. Shirley [continuing]. because I am not totally up to
date on that one.
Mr. Hice. Okay. All right, well, listen, I again want to
thank you. I want to thank all of our panelists for the
incredible work you do. All of us here feel that what you do is
not only worthwhile, it is necessary. And we are just grateful
for each of you, the role that you are doing to make this
function as efficiently, and I am thrilled that the experience
that you have had with DPAA has been so positive and that that
seems to be across the board. That is just tremendously
encouraging to hear, so thank you very much.
I yield back.
Mr. Lynch. The gentleman yields back. The gentleman from
Tennessee, Mr. Green, is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member
Hice. I thank the witnesses for being here. I am very thankful
for what you guys do and what DPAA does to bring our sons and
daughters home, my brothers and sisters, I might add, in arms,
who have made the ultimate sacrifice. And I ask the members of
the audience and anybody watching on television, if you thought
your nation would abandon you on the battlefield, you probably
wouldn't aggressively expose yourself to enemy fire or put
yourselves more violently in harm's way.
You guys are the ones who enforce the motto of our
soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, and that is that we
will leave no man or woman behind, and the unit that I served
in, committed two Chinooks fully loaded with Army Rangers to
find one Navy SEAL's body, and we lost several men on that
battle. My friends died trying to find his body.
As we now transition into what is the Nation's first
multigenerational war, what was my generation's war is now
becoming my son's war, as Second Lieutenant Green just returned
from Syria and Iraq and Kuwait. Knowing that you have committed
wholly to your mission, I just want to thank you and say that
my wife and I are--we find some reassurance in knowing that you
are there doing your mission.
My questions are mostly about the process itself. None of
you guys are from DPAA, though, right? That is in the next
panel? Okay. I am really not going to say much else then for
now, other than to just thank you for all that you do. And I
agree with Chairman Lynch--you are a great sister, and I can
only hope that if that would have been me or my son, we will
all fight as equally hard. I am sure we will. But again, thank
you. Thank you for your service to the Nation and your service
to these men and women who have paid the ultimate sacrifice.
I yield.
Mr. Lynch. The gentleman yields back. The chair now
recognizes the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Higgins, for five
minutes.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the
panelists for appearing before us today. It is a very important
topic, bipartisan, of course. We support full funding and what
is required to retrieve all American service men and service
women who have been lost. I believe that is a unanimous
consensus.
I do have a question that perhaps, Ms. Shirley, you may be
the one that could give me some insight in this, all of us. Do
you have any idea how many remains have been recovered, that
have, in some nation state, in some laboratory that we have no
DNA on file?
Ms. Shirley. I don't know how many they have there in the
lab. I know that they just keep hoping that they are going to
get somebody's DNA, that they can, you know, run through the
data base and bring them back. But I do know that they do have
some.
Mr. Higgins. These recovered remains exist, that are
awaiting DNA comparison, for a DNA hit, right?
Ms. Shirley. Yes.
Mr. Higgins. And are you aware of, or can you shed any
light, is there an equivalent agency at, say, the United
Nations level, that works with DPAA, that communicates with
other nation states that perhaps have similar endeavors, be
they private or nonprofits or government organizations?
Ms. Shirley. I can't answer that. I am sure----
Mr. Higgins. Perhaps the next panelist would be able to.
Any one of you could perhaps respond to this query. In law
enforcement, we watched something change over the last 15
years. So as the digital age became manifest, especially
including cold cases and missing persons, the older detectives
had a way of doing things that required a great deal of assets
and resources in order to research and try and get tips or
leads, or look into cold cases and missing persons.
As the new generation of investigators that have IT skills
came into service, they started having ideas about using the
internet to search for missing persons and to put clues out
there for cold cases, and it has worked, from sea to shining
sea. Now you have cold cases and missing person cases that have
lingered for, in some cases, decades, that have been solved by
a bright, young detective that brought a new methodology to a
detective division at departments everywhere.
Has that happened within the DPAA, or are you aware of it,
where we can do more with less? I mean, we are a nation that
intends to fully fund this very, very important core principal
endeavor, but at the same time we want to use every efficiency
possible. So can any of you shed a light on anything that has
been done? Mr. Noah?
Mr. Noah. There are a large number of individual personnel
deceased files and personal records related to missing
servicemen from World War II and Korea that are available
online, and many people have done a prodigious amount of
research to collect data that will start the process for field
activity and for searching for missing people. But it really is
just the beginning. The beginning of finding and solving a 75-
or 60-or 50-year-old case starts with a prodigious amount of
research and culminates in placement of correct excavation
decision, where you might be able to find that.
Mr. Higgins. Understood. That would be, in the interest of
time, just to clarify, you are talking about field research.
That would be once there was some basis for an investigation
into a particular site.
Mr. Noah. Correct.
Mr. Higgins. But comparing the expense of initiating an
investigation to that level in the field, now versus 15 years
ago, it would seem to me that more could be done with less. In
other words, we have digital efficiencies that reach worldwide
now that we did not have 15 years ago.
Mr. Noah. Correct, and DPAA has already started utilizing
some of those opportunities by doing research related to the
unknown soldiers that are already buried in American military
cemeteries, to determine the possibilities of who they may be,
to fund excavation decisions to disinter them and then to
identify them.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you all for your commitment, and I thank
the chairman and the ranking member for holding this hearing
today. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you. The gentleman yields. At this point I
would just like to say thank you, Mr. Noah, Mr. Lawrence, Ms.
Shirley, for your testimony here today and helping the
committee with its work, and putting a personal face on this
effort, and also inspiring us by your own efforts that you are
doing, and reaffirming the commitment that we have as a country
to make sure that we identify, we recover, and we return every
one of these service men and women that we have lost.
At this point I would declare that the witnesses are
dismissed, with the thanks of the committee.
The other witnesses in the next panel, would you please
come forward. As the panels are switching out, please be aware
that there may be additional written questions for you for the
record, and I would ask that you answer them promptly and
completely. And again, we want to thank Panel One for their
willingness to testify and help this committee with its work.
Thank you.
We are going to take a five-minute recess just to reset the
panel. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. Lynch. The committee will now reconvene. At this time I
would like to welcome our next witness. Today we are joined by
Kelly McKeague, Director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting
Agency. Mr. McKeague, would you please rise and raise your
right hand.
I will begin by swearing you in.
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
Let the record reflect that the gentleman has answered in
the affirmative. And with that I would like to welcome you to
offer a five-minute recitation of your upcoming testimony.
STATEMENT OF KELLY McKEAGUE, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE POW/MIA
ACCOUNTING AGENCY
Mr. McKeague. Chairman Lynch, Ranking Member Hice, other
distinguished members of the subcommittee, it is a privilege to
appear before you today and to update you on the efforts of the
Department of Defense to achieve the fullest possible
accounting of missing Americans from designated past conflicts.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has worked
collaboratively to execute and advance this noble mission with
other partner agencies within the DoD, with the Department of
State and its embassies, with 46 partner nations, and with non-
Federal entities, three of whom you had represented on the
first panel.
These efforts are global in scope with investigations
marked by painstaking research, challenging recoveries in
inhospitable environments, and remarkable scientific
enterprise. While the numbers of our Nation's unaccounted for
and the inherent task to find answers on them is daunting, DPAA
and its partners are not deterred.
I have structured my written statement highlighting the
four lines of effort within DPAA's five-year strategic plan--
research and analysis, accounting, communications, and business
operations. Focus on achieving an agile, innovative,
collaborative, and digital agency capable of an increased pace
and scope to account for our missing, our lines of effort will
build upon the agency's significant successes since its
establishment in 2015.
Among those successes are, as many of you pointed out, we
have consistently increased the number of missing persons
accounted for each year since our 2015 reorganization, with the
last Fiscal Year culminating in 218 accounted for. We
established and maintained a single centralized data base and
case management system by leveraging the latest in information
technology. Our efforts in Vietnam and Laos have been marked by
an increased pace and scope, as both countries have been more
amenable to initiatives that better achieve mutually shared
objectives.
While we were not able to arrange field operations with the
North Korean army, as you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, 41
servicemembers have so far been accounted for from those 55
boxes repatriated last year, and many more are expected in the
months ahead.
We are increasingly utilizing public-private partnerships,
as you heard from Mark Noah, to increase capacity and
capabilities that to date have resulted in 82 partner field
missions at an estimated cost avoidance of $32.1 million.
Since almost 20 percent of the missing who are estimated to
be recoverable are buried as unknowns in U.S.-controlled
cemeteries here at home or abroad, DoD continues to
successfully execute a rigorous program to disinter these
remains for the purpose of identification.
And last, through our increased engagement with families
and veteran service organizations, we continue to strengthen
transparency and trust as we provide more information about
their loved ones and DPAA's activities on their behalf.
While DPAA has become the cohesive agency the Department of
Defense and this Congress envisioned, we still face significant
challenges, but DPAA will not waver in its commitment to bring
our missing heroes, their families, their comrades in arms, and
the American people the answers they deserve. It is a moral
obligation to seek the fullest possible accounting of those who
lost their lives in service and sacrifice to this great nation.
They must never be forgotten, and Mr. Chairman and members of
the subcommittee, I thank you for not doing so, as you support
the sacred mission.
I respectfully submit my written statement for the record
and welcome any questions you may have.
Mr. Lynch. I thank the gentleman. I yield five minutes to
myself for questioning.
First of all, thank you very much, Mr. McKeague, for your
willingness to come before the committee and for all the work
that you are doing to help return our heroes to their families
and to their communities.
During the recent codel, when I had a chance to get out to
Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, I spoke with your deputy
director, Rear Admiral John Crites, and it was a great
opportunity to see the lab in action. At that point they had
recovered 40 sets of remains from Tarawa, and so I got an
opportunity, and our staff got an opportunity to observe that
whole identification process. It was really emotional, but just
spiritually, you know, it felt right that we were doing that
work and that those young men would be returned to their
families and to their home communities.
I know that for Fiscal Year 2019, Congress appropriated
about $15 million additional for DPAA's operations, and I am
just concerned. I know there is a shortage of funding. Where
would additional resources be best allocated? Is it the
investigation portion? Is it the actually recovery operations?
Is it the identification portion where we have remains that are
recovered but not identified?
Where do you think the additional resources--because we
have--look, I have to give my Republican colleagues great
credit for their willingness to work on this as partners. So
there is no--I cannot sense any opposition. It is more inertia,
that we have got to move this thing and create a priority for
it, and then fight like heck when we get it on the floor, or by
amendment, you know, friendly amendments, Democrats and
Republicans fighting together for this purpose. So this is
something we agree upon. So I don't see what the hold-up is
here, you know, and I think that--well, I can't speak for the
Senate but I think they would take a favorable view of this as
well.
So could you tell us where do you think the allocation of
resources would be best received and produce the--you know, the
biggest benefit for the expenditure?
Mr. McKeague. Mr. Chairman, first of all I would like to
thank the Congress. In 2018, you all provided us $15 million
extra in funding. This last fiscal year, you provided $30
million extra to DPAA. In both cases, all of that money was put
toward operations in the scientific enterprise.
If we were to receive additional funding, there are three
priorities we would place it against. First would be expanding
the scientific staff to be able to do more identifications and
forensic analysis. The second would be a digitization project,
again, as we try to, as a member talked about earlier, what are
we doing to improving finding missing persons. And the third
area would be expanding public-private partnerships, which you
heard from Mark Noah.
So if we were to receive extra funding, that funding would
go toward capabilities and capacity purely from an operational
standpoint, to allow us to increase our pace and scope.
Mr. Lynch. Okay. I do know that in one of your earlier
requests--and I am not sure if it was last year or the year
before--actually, it was for the 2020 budget, DPAA asked for a
$17 million increase in the budget for North Korea. And I
understand, you know, that was open, you know, that theater was
open for a while and we were getting some remains. I am not
sure what the status is right now. Could you explain, you know,
the urgency and the focus on North Korea, which has been a
closed shop since we had a falling out over some of their
nuclear proliferation issues some years ago.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir. So we operated successfully in
North Korea for 10 years, from 1996 to 2005, but we have not
been back since to conduct joint field operations. As part of
the Singapore Summit, the President was able to get from
Chairman Kim a commitment to not only repatriate remains that
they hold but also to resume field operations.
Twenty million of the 30 million that Congress gave us was
directed toward operations in North Korea. We were unable,
obviously, to execute that. In 2019, the Department of Defense
gave us an additional $17 million for the express purposes that
should we get an arrangement with North Korea that we could
utilize that money to conduct those operations. Unfortunately,
our entreaties to the North Korean army have been met with
silence. Our last contact with them was in March. But we
continue to be open to the opportunity to sit down with them,
to negotiate field operations in 2020.
Mr. Lynch. Very good. I have exceeded my time so I would
like to recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Hice, for
five minutes.
Mr. Hice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Director
McKeague, for being here.
It is my understanding that DPAA has developed a case
management system that helps list the names of those missing in
action and so forth, so that families can research and kind of
keep updated. When did that go live?
Mr. McKeague. That went live in 2015.
Mr. Hice. Okay.
Mr. McKeague. Actually, we started developing it in 2015.
It utilizes the latest in information technology. It is cloud-
based computing. We intend to look at machine learning. We
intend to look at artificial intelligence as we expand it. We
had our initial operating capability with that system in 2017,
and declared final operational capability this past April.
Mr. Hice. Okay. So it is still relatively new.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Hice. How often is it updated?
Mr. McKeague. It is a continual process.
Mr. Hice. So it is constantly being updated.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir. As our users begin to become more
familiar with it, and it is across the entire enterprise, and
it is just not the historians and researchers. It is also the
scientists. So it runs the full gamut in terms of providing
that common operating picture when it comes to the missing.
Mr. Hice. So do family members or those who sign up for
this, or however they get on with it, do they receive automatic
updates, or do they have to go online to check it on a regular
basis? How does that work?
Mr. McKeague. So there is a public portal piece that a
family member has access to, all of their cases, all of their
profiles, all loaded in there. They can readily access that
with ease. The case management system is more an internal
agency as well as a Department of Defense collaborative tool.
Mr. Hice. So does that mean--do they receive an email that
there is an update on their case, or do they have to keep
looking?
Mr. McKeague. They have to keep looking.
Mr. Hice. Oh they have to keep--Okay.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Hice. So once you have identified an individual, what
safeguards do you have to make sure that it is the
servicemember of a particular family?
Mr. McKeague. Before our scientists make an identification
they utilize multiple lines of evidence, and it is not just one
line of evidence that secures that definitive, it is this
soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine. Utilizing those multiple
lines of effort, the medical examiner assigned to DPAA will not
make that forensic determination until he is satisfied that
lines of evidence have been--sufficient lines of evidence have
been met.
Mr. Hice. But you don't always have those sufficient lines.
So how do you make a determination? I mean, what you just
described certainly would be an ideal scenario, where you are
able to verify and reverify and have different angles from
which verification is positive. But what if you don't have all
those different lines?
Mr. McKeague. We need three before we can make an
identification.
Mr. Hice. All right, so if you don't have three out of X
number----
Mr. McKeague. Seven.
Mr. Hice [continuing]. if you don't have three out of seven
then that person is never identified.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Hice. Okay. All right. So once a servicemember is
identified, and this is the question I asked Ms. Shirley
earlier, what kind of timeframe from that point until when the
family is able to receive their loved one and have a proper
interment, or whatever they want to do?
Mr. McKeague. As soon as we make an identification report
we turn it over to the Service Casualty Office of the
servicemember's service. They will then contact the family.
They will share with them the identification report, and at
that time they will make arrangements for the interment, within
weeks.
Mr. Hice. Okay. So we are not talking months and months.
Mr. McKeague. No, sir.
Mr. Hice. So once an individual is identified, we are
talking weeks----
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Hice [continuing]. before the family--wow, that is
amazing.
Mr. McKeague. Now the interment, in a case like Arlington,
is challenging----
Mr. Hice. Sure.
Mr. McKeague [continuing]. because of the delay----
Mr. Hice. But at that point it is in the family's hands and
it is out of yours, and the family has their servicemember
home, and making the arrangements from there is a different----
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Hice. I have got you. Okay, let me go back to--Chairman
Lynch introduced the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Support
Act. I am just curious, your thoughts and discussions of how
this would impact DPAA.
Mr. McKeague. It impacts DPAA from the standpoint that as
an entity within the Department of Defense, we do not--our
mission does not fit the risk to public safety as well as a
national security imperative. And as such, there have been
instances in the past when there has been a lapse in
appropriations that we have had to shut down the operation and
only leave a skeleton crew behind for ensuring that equipment
and materials are protected.
Right now, the bill is not consistent with department
policy as to us qualifying for that exemption, and it would be
something that we would collectively have to weigh, is the risk
of these civilians conducting this mission and not getting
paid, how is that weighed against is it a threat to national
security or public safety?
Mr. Hice. Okay. Well, maybe that is something we can work
together on.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Hice. But again, I want to thank you for the incredible
job you do. Thank you for being here.
Mr. McKeague. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Hice. Thank you.
Mr. Lynch. One quick question. Admiral Crites had mentioned
that when some families are contacted about the identification
of a loved one they actually fly out to Hickam, at Pearl
Harbor, to accompany the body, the remains, back into the
country.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Lynch. Do we pay for that, or DPAA, do we provide
funding to help those families come out?
Mr. McKeague. The respective service funds a military
escort.
Mr. Lynch. Wow.
Mr. McKeague. Under the rules, it has to be a uniformed
member. So we benefit from the standpoint that there are family
members, second and third generation, serving in uniform today,
whose uncle, great-uncle, grandfather, in fact, they have the
privilege to bring home.
Mr. Lynch. Okay.
Mr. McKeague. So the military department will fund those
individuals.
Mr. Lynch. That is great. Okay.
The chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Cloud.
Mr. Cloud. Thank you, Chairman. Okay, so we have--and thank
you for being here.
Mr. McKeague. Certainly.
Mr. Cloud. I really appreciate, again, the opportunity for
us to work on this topic together.
So we have about 82,045--am I--so that would be 43,000,
roughly, who we deem are unrecoverable, and then almost 39,000
we think we could have the potential to find. Do we know, of
those two, where they are? Like what distinguishes--why do we
think they are unrecoverable versus recoverable? What are you
using to make that--to distinguish that? And then, do we know
where, roughly, they are, what field of service?
Mr. McKeague. A majority of those individuals that are
nonrecoverable are deep water, at-sea losses. These are ships,
aircraft that are in depths that are technologically impossible
to get.
Mr. Cloud. Okay.
Mr. McKeague. There is also a category of nonrecoverables
that we, through our investigations and our excavations, have
hit a brick wall, evidenced by Bobby Jones.
Mr. Cloud. Right.
Mr. McKeague. Jo Anne's brother, we have been to that site
eight times. Now we don't classify him as nonrecoverable yet.
It is still in a deferred status. But we have categorization--
four categorizations that we will place an individual in,
depending upon where we are in the investigative as well as the
recovery phase. The majority of the nonrecoverables are the
deep water, at-sea losses.
Mr. Cloud. Okay. Like 70 percent?
Mr. McKeague. I would say probably 80.
Mr. Cloud. Eighty?
Mr. McKeague. Eighty, 85 percent.
Mr. Cloud. And of those we think we could find, do we know
what field of service they are in? How many are in North Korea,
or----
Mr. McKeague. Oh, absolutely. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cloud. Could you break that down, roughly?
Mr. McKeague. Sure. If you will allow me to pull out my
handy-dandy cheat sheet. So if you were to look at our missing
by conflict, we estimate that the recovered individuals, for
World War II we estimate close to 30,500 are recoverable; for
the Korean War, 7,200; for the Vietnam War, close to 1,100; and
126--actually, none from the cold war.
Mr. Cloud. Right. Okay. So basically--and the process would
be, generally speaking, you get a tip on a location, through
research, history, then we work through excavation recovery,
remains, and then it goes to the lab, and then we work with the
family to try to make the contact. How many remains do we have
that we can't find who they are connected with because of lack
of DNA, or is it more the fact that we--are there remains we
have, I should say, that we don't know who to connect them
with?
Mr. McKeague. It is both. It is both remains that have not
yielded DNA, and these are because they have either degraded
environmentally or they have been degraded by being treated
with formaldehyde powder when they were first recovered and
being able to un-identify them back in the 1940's and 1950's.
So it is that piece as well. But then we also DNA that is not
yielding because we don't have a family reference sample.
Mr. Cloud. I guess I was trying to figure out is more along
those lines. How many could we identify if we had the DNA
information from the family?
Mr. McKeague. So if you look at the Vietnam War, we have 88
percent family reference samples on file. For the Korean War it
is 92 percent. For World War II, we only have 12 percent of the
missing have a DNA family reference sample. And the reason for
that is because it wasn't until 2010, when Congress directed
the department to proactively search for, recover, and identify
missing from World War II. Prior to that it was a reactive
mission.
And so, Mr. Cloud, it is a very linear process, and you hit
the nail on the head. In order for us to be able to excavate,
we first must do the research and analysis up front, to take an
area this size and reduce it down to this size. Then we send
field investigators to narrow it down even further. And if we
are higher than probable theory that we know where, we have an
idea where the excavation might be, we will send a recovery
team in there.
So we are playing catch-up with World War II, just given
the late start. Until we build out the research and analysis
and the historical archival information, we won't be sending
teams all over the world as effectively as we do with Vietnam.
Mr. Cloud. Okay. I have no more questions.
Mr. Lynch. The gentleman yields. The chair now recognizes
the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Green, for five minutes.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Chairman Lynch. I really appreciate
it.
Just to kind of go over your history a little bit, you are
a two-star general, as I understand, retired?
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Green. How many years of service did you give in the
Air Force?
Mr. McKeague. Thirty-four.
Mr. Green. Thirty-four years of service. So these are your
brothers and sisters too.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Green. You were raised a patriot, as I understand. You
have a family member serving as well. Thank you for that.
It is an honor to have you here, sir, and I think the
country is lucky to have you serving where you are. Most of the
questions that I had planned to ask have been asked. Just one
quick reminder on the remains. I think it was 55 that were
given to us from North Korea. Is that right?
Mr. McKeague. Fifty-five boxes.
Mr. Green. Fifty-five boxes, and there were 31 that you
have identified so far?
Mr. McKeague. Forty-one.
Mr. Green. Forty-one.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Green. Okay.
Mr. McKeague. But here is an interesting fact. There are
250 independent DNA sequences in those boxes.
Mr. Green. Wow.
Mr. McKeague. Eighty of them are of Asian origin----
Mr. Green. Okay.
Mr. McKeague [continuing]. either South Korean or Chinese.
But of the 170 of Western origin, only 20 have been previously
identified and accounted for.
Mr. Green. Okay.
Mr. McKeague. It shocked us that we are now talking
potentially up to 150 U.S. or U.N.-sending state individuals
that could be identified from these boxes.
Mr. Green. Wow. That is fantastic. Okay.
I think you heard a little bit of my story earlier when we
were talking. I served for 24 years myself and I have family
members now serving. So I asked the question, you know, we are
also Congress and we have a responsibility to taxpayers and all
that stuff, and you are in a unique mission that we want to do
all we can for, and I support the chairman's bill. But at the
same time I want to ask, you know, some tough questions, so
bear with me just a second.
As I understand it, your budget last year was--well, the
budget you asked for this year was $146 million. Is that right?
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Green. And that is, I think, 14 or so million less
than--we put in the line entry about $14 million less than
that, right?
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir. You enacted 160.
Mr. Green. Okay. If you divide that by 218, which is what
you guys got last year, that is about $600,000 per person. With
the 38,000 that we have got left to find, if it is $600,000
per, we are talking about close to $25 billion. My question to
you is, how can we be more efficient and do this, and find some
efficiencies in doing this?
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir. We have looked at this for many
years. So if you look back to the predecessor organizations, we
didn't do it very well, and I think that was part of the
impetus why, as you mentioned, GAO, by the IG, and ultimately
Secretary Hagel recognizing that we needed to look at a better
way to do that. And thus you have the merged agency, single-
purpose, sole mandate to fulfill this Nation's commitment.
Over the three-years that we have had DPAA in place, since
the stand-up of our final operating capability, we have
utilized the authorities that Congress gave us, particularly
with establishing public-private partnerships. I mentioned that
cost avoidance of $32 million, that we are very proud of. And
we are able to do that by agencies such as Mark Noah's. But we
work with universities, both domestic and international. So we
are looking for ways to expand capability and capacity, because
we know we won't get additional manpower.
We are also looking at technological advances. Our
laboratory just put forward a stable isotope analysis
capability. This allows us to differentiate comingled remains
by the geographic origin of where they came from, as well as
who they might belong to. That will save us tremendously in not
having to do the expensive, time-consuming step of DNA
analysis, if we can segregate up front.
And I mentioned to you that we are also utilizing our case
management system. We are looking for efficiencies there on how
we can figure out to bring in new technologies, new innovations
such as machine learning and artificial intelligence to help us
do more on the up-front, and, more importantly, on the back
end, when it comes to identification.
Mr. Green. It just makes it much easier for us to write a
bigger check knowing that you are looking for efficiencies in
the system. And if we could get the cost per down, you know,
that makes it easier for us to write more. Nobody wants to find
these remains any more than I do.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Green. And like I said, I have lost friends in combat,
so I know. But I just want to make sure we are doing it as
efficiently as possible.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Green. And thank you for all the hard work that you are
doing.
Mr. McKeague. We are also looking at our annual operations
plan. We have a quarterly assessment that looks at, okay, how
did we do that particular mission in Laos? Did we do it to the
best of our ability?
We are also leveraging, to their credit, the Vietnamese
have doubled the number of unilateral teams they are putting in
the field.
Mr. Green. That is fantastic.
Mr. McKeague. And they will go from four this year to six,
and next year they will field eight unilateral excavation teams
that have no U.S. personnel on it, that we have helped train,
going out to areas that are hard to get to, that are
inaccessible, and they are doing this on their own volition.
Mr. Green. Well, thank you again for your amazing service
and your willingness to do this.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Lynch. The gentleman yields.
So, Mr. McKeague--and again, thank you for your service--I
wanted to just touch on that issue as well. Obviously, when the
Koreans did the recovery, they gave us 51 boxes and 250 sets of
remains, the precision with which they operate, or, you know,
the care and exactitude that they operate with is far less than
what you do when you do these operations. So, you know, there
is some quality issues, I guess, in terms of recovering our
personnel.
Are you worried about the same situation with Vietnam? We
actually met with some of their recovery teams when we were
there back a few years ago, and I understand when we were doing
recovery operations, if we recovered Vietnamese boys we
returned them to their home country and try to help them with
that. But do you worry about not being on the ground with these
Vietnam recovery teams during their operations?
Mr. McKeague. No, sir. We have ultimate confidence in their
abilities, and, more importantly, their passion. When we first
started out we would create Vietnamese recovery teams. These
normally had five to six American subject matter experts,
rounded out by Vietnamese officials and part of their military.
Those VRTs have evolved to these unilateral excavation teams,
and it is because they, themselves, have committed to the
capability building, they have committed to the training that
we have provided them, and, more importantly, they have
delivered with great results.
I would like to clarify that the remains that came from
North Korea, we know that they lack forensic capabilities, and
so these remains in these 55 boxes were very disjointed, they
were very degraded, but all the bones--there were 500 bones in
those boxes, very comingled, very degraded. But every single
one of them yielded DNA, because they had been stored for many
years in an environment that was conducive to that.
On the other hand, their South Korean counterparts probably
rival us in terms of capability, capacity, and talent. We
helped stand up their capability with them in 2001, and they
have developed it to quite the impressive enterprise. And you
might recall that as part of the North Korean and South Korean
agreement, they actually had been working in the DMZ, on
Arrowhead Ridge, since April 1st.
I met with my South Korean counterparts last month. They
have found 600 bones from that effort. And so we are very
confident. We have a strong relationship with our South Korean
counterparts. We are just hoping that, again, North Korea will
be receptive to us, at some point, resuming field operations
with them.
Mr. Lynch. Okay. That is great. That is encouraging.
Can I ask you about the USS Oklahoma? When we were there
recently I was told that while earlier on, maybe it was because
of a lack of technology, the remains of those sailors were
considered just buried at sea. And now I understand that there
has been some recovery and identification operations going on
with respect to the USS Oklahoma, which was sunk at Pearl
Harbor.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir. So when the ship was righted about
a year and a half later, the Navy went through and recovered
all the remains. Back in the 1940's, they identified what they
could. A majority of them could not be identified, and so they
were buried as unknowns at the cemetery in Honolulu, and we
were able to disinter them, working with the Navy, in 2015.
There were 388 sailors and Marines in those 60 caskets. They
were highly comingled. One casket alone had 95 DNA sequences.
Since 2015, we have diligently, at our Omaha, Nebraska,
laboratory, we have diligently begun the process of
forensically analyzing those remains, along with the Armed
Forces DNA Laboratory, and today we have identified 240 of
those 388. And that is in about four years. We have another 89
that we believe will yield--that yielded DNA. We believe that
those 89 will also be identified here in the next few months.
And so we are very pleased with the progress that we have made,
but that has come about because of the collaboration with the
Department of the Navy, as well as the Armed Forces DNA
Laboratory.
Mr. Lynch. That is great. I would like to ask you about the
role of private partnerships. So who are our partners? Are
these universities? Are they research labs? Just for the
public's interest, who are some of your private partners now
that actually help you with these location, identification, and
recovery efforts?
Mr. McKeague. So we have 57 active partnerships today. We
have another 34 that are evolving. They range anywhere from
helping us with research and analysis--I will give you an
example.
Mr. Lynch. Can you name some of them?
Mr. McKeague. Sure. University of Wisconsin. We have a hub-
and-spoke arrangement with the University of Wisconsin to help
us with research for World War II.
Mr. Lynch. Is that the Madison campus, or----
Mr. McKeague. Madison. Yes, sir. We are working with Texas
Tech, which probably has the largest non-Federal holdings of
Vietnam War history. We are working with them. You met Mark
Noah on History Flight. We work with Scripps Oceanographic
Institute out of California. We work with Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts on helping us with
underwater recoveries. We just added East Carolina University
Underwater Excavation in Palau that was very successful.
We also work with international partners. The University of
Papua New Guinea is one that we are very excited about because
their contacts throughout the Nation State is such that they
are able to get into villages, remote villages. They have the
relationships. Another one that we are working with, that we
are very excited about, is, there is an organization called
American Veterans Archaeological Recovery, AVAR. These are
veterans, combat veterans, who through this opportunity to work
an excavationsite, they found is very therapeutic for them. So
they helped us with a B-24 recovery in the UK. That was very
successful.
There is another organization similar to that, Project
Dagger, Task Force Dagger, that has helped us with an
underwater recovery, along with Scripps, in the South Pacific.
Mr. Lynch. That is great. Very helpful.
Mr. McKeague. And for the record, Mr. Chairman, I would be
more than happy to submit----
Mr. Lynch. Yes, that would be helpful if you would submit
that for the record----
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Lynch [continuing]. without objection.
Mr. Lynch. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from
Texas, Mr. Cloud.
Mr. Cloud. Thank you again, Chairman. I appreciate you
answering some of Mr. Green's questions. It is comforting to
know that as we are, you know, prioritizing funds that you are
looking at the efficiencies of it too and how what you are
doing can better inform. So that is helpful.
And I was going to ask about Laos as well, so it is good to
know that is going well.
Mr. McKeague. I would offer that the Lao also have been
more cooperative over the last few years. So I give you three
examples where we have asked them, presented initiatives to
them. They have allowed us to increase our personnel that are
there for the four joint field activities from 53 to 65. That
allows us to do more. They have approved us adding a fifth
operational period, and then they just added two individuals,
Lao officials, to augment what the defense intelligence agency,
STONY BEACH Program, is doing on field investigations and
finding witnesses.
These are just three things that the Lao government have
been cooperative and amenable to as we have presented it to
them.
Mr. Cloud. Awesome. Thank you. I had asked this in the
previous panel and you are probably the one who may have more
information on it. Are there things from a legal or regulatory
standpoint that we could do, any roadblocks that you are
running into that we could help? You know, we talked about
funding, I know, already, but is there anything that you are
running into when it comes to dealing with families or dealing
with----
Mr. McKeague. No, sir.
Mr. Cloud [continuing]. servicemembers? Okay.
Mr. McKeague. You all gave us that private partner
authority, which has been a godsend. You have given us the
opportunity to engage in grants and cooperative agreements,
which, again, allows us to work with universities that work in
that venue of grants and cooperatives. And last year we came to
you and asked you for the authority to accept gives, and you
gave us that authority.
So we assess the authorities that we have, and I can tell
you that there are none that we lack today.
Mr. Cloud. Okay. And then we talked about all the different
steps in this process, from exploration and research to
recovery and identification, and I believe when you were
answering the chairman's questions you kind of discussed that
the staff is probably the bottleneck of it. My understanding,
in looking through some of the materials, was we probably have
the lab infrastructure capacity to identify up to maybe 600 a
year. Is that the thinking? We just don't have the staff, or is
that not correct?
Mr. McKeague. Not today. The capacity and capability we
have today allows us to identify and account for 200, 250 a
year.
Mr. Cloud. Okay. Is that--I guess I am trying to
distinguish between lab infrastructure and personnel.
Mr. McKeague. They are both alike.
Mr. Cloud. Okay. Those resources are kind of matched at
this point.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cloud. Okay. And if you had more funding for lab
personnel you would be able to find it? Is there a workflow
issue with that?
Mr. McKeague. Not at all.
Mr. Cloud. Okay.
Mr. McKeague. These young men and women are talented in
their own right and live for the opportunity to serve DPAA and
its mission. Mr. Lynch, you met many of them out there and you
see that they are bright-eyed, they are uber-intelligent, and
they are just dedicated, when we ask them to do what we ask
them to do, not only in the laboratory but also in the field,
where they are there for 45 days, in inhospitable environments,
and working back-breaking labor to find missing Americans.
Mr. Cloud. And for clarity I wasn't questioning those who
are--I was questioning whether, you know, people are coming out
of universities with the degrees needed to do----
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir. They want----
Mr. Cloud. So you would be able to find the talent pool.
Mr. McKeague. They look at DPAA as really the brass ring in
the anthropology and archaeology world, just because of the
very nature of its work.
Mr. Cloud. Okay. Thank you very much.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cloud. I appreciate it.
Mr. Lynch. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from
Tennessee, Mr. Green, for five minutes.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It kind of dawned on
me, and I am a former infantry guy so maybe I am not the
fastest guy at the table, but it kind of dawned on me, a lot of
what you are doing is really foreign affairs work at the U.S.
Government.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Green. I mean, you are out there working with our
former enemies, in a way, to--you know, to find our remains.
You are finding their remains and you are returning them with
dignity. I can only imagine that returning those Chinese to
China was, you know, a huge plus for us, from a foreign affairs
and foreign relations standpoint. And I just want to say it is
sort of--as I have listened to you talk, it sort of opened my
eyes to even further possibilities with what you are doing. So
I want to again thank you.
Mr. McKeague. Sir, if I could comment.
Mr. Green. Yes, please do.
Mr. McKeague. That is a very insightful observation. Our
mission actually predated normalization of relations with
Vietnam by 10 years.
Mr. Green. Wow.
Mr. McKeague. We were actually working in Vietnam on
investigations and recoveries seven years before the U.S.
Embassy planted a flag. Vietnam, at the time, recognized,
through the work of the National League of Families and other
activities, that this was important to the United States.
And so you are absolutely right. It is a tool of diplomacy,
it is a tool of engagement, and because it is humanitarian,
even today we are the only military-to-military engagement
allowed by DoD with Russia.
Mr. Green. Wow.
Mr. McKeague. And we engage with the Chinese. And again,
both countries, despite the strain and stress and tension with
the overarching bilateral relationship, recognizes this as a
humanitarian endeavor.
Mr. Green. Well, that certainly makes it a lot easier. I
mean, I just--I am excited to hear that, and I think that is a
huge plus, sort of a side effect. I mean, your goal, of course,
is to go and find our boys and girls who have given their lives
for their country, but I think it is icing on the cake that
what you are doing is really beneficial to our foreign policy.
Mr. McKeague. Yes, sir.
Mr. Green. And, Chairman Lynch, I just want to ask you, the
next time you make one of these codels, I would love to know,
because I would love to go out in the field and just share our
appreciation with the men and women who are doing this mission.
So thank you.
Mr. Lynch. Mr. Green, you are in. You are in. We would be
proud to have you, and obviously this will be a joint
Democratic and Republican codel, and you are certainly welcome
to attend, as are other members of the committee too, Mr.
Cloud, as well.
I do want to close by saying this. So on our previous visit
to Vietnam on this issue we had a closing luncheon with a bunch
of the communist generals in Saigon. Actually, it was in Hanoi.
It was Ho Chi Minh City.
And at the closing ceremony the commanding general,
communist general, sort of gave a toast to our delegation at
the end, and he said that the people of Vietnam have great
respect for the people of the United States, but it is probably
not for the reasons that you think. He said it is not because
of your, you know, being a major--the major military power. He
said it is not because of your--you know, you are the major
economic power.
He said it is because of efforts by the DPAA, and at that
time, JPAC. He said, ``The fact that you are here 60-some-odd
years later, for the sole purpose of bringing the bodies of
your sons and daughters home for a dignified burial,'' he said
that is why the people of Vietnam respect the United States so
much.
So thank you for your work. You will be hearing from us. We
definitely will be trying to get out to Laos and maybe some of
the live recovery operations going on in Vietnam. We will
probably try to swing around to some of the other operations in
the South Pacific as well.
So I would like to thank our witness for his testimony
today. Without objection, all members will have five
legislative days within which to submit additional written
questions for the witness--all the witnesses, first panel and
second--to the chair, which will be forwarded to the witnesses
for response. And I ask our witnesses to please respond as
promptly as you are able.
This hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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