[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 110-158]
OVERSIGHT AND STATUS OF POW/MIA ACTIVITIES
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
JULY 10, 2008
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California, Chairwoman
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
NANCY BOYDA, Kansas THELMA DRAKE, Virginia
PATRICK J. MURPHY, Pennsylvania WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire JOE WILSON, South Carolina
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
Debra Wada, Professional Staff Member
John Chapla, Professional Staff Member
Rosellen Kim, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2008
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, July 10, 2008, Oversight and Status of POW/MIA
Activities..................................................... 1
Appendix:
Thursday, July 10, 2008.......................................... 31
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THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2008
OVERSIGHT AND STATUS OF POW/MIA ACTIVITIES
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Davis, Hon. Susan A., a Representative from California,
Chairwoman, Military Personnel Subcommittee.................... 1
McHugh, Hon. John M., a Representative from New York, Ranking
Member, Military Personnel Subcommittee........................ 2
WITNESSES
Crisp, Rear Adm. Donna L., USN, Commander, Joint POW/MIA
Accounting Command............................................. 7
Ray, Ambassador Charles A., Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs.............................. 3
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Crisp, Rear Adm. Donna L..................................... 46
Davis, Hon. Susan A.......................................... 35
McHugh, Hon. John M.......................................... 38
Ray, Ambassador Charles A.................................... 40
Documents Submitted for the Record:
Proposals Concerning POW/MIA Issues from Ancient Wars
Vietnam-Korea-World War II, prepared by Ron Broward........ 67
Statement for the Record by Ann Mills Griffiths, Executive
Director, National League of POW/MIA Families.............. 55
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions asked during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mrs. Davis................................................... 87
Mr. McHugh................................................... 89
Dr. Snyder................................................... 98
OVERSIGHT AND STATUS OF POW/MIA ACTIVITIES
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Military Personnel Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Thursday, July 10, 2008.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m. in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Susan A. Davis
(chairwoman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. SUSAN A. DAVIS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
CALIFORNIA, CHAIRWOMAN, MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE
Mrs. Davis. Good afternoon. The hearing will come to order.
And I want to thank our witnesses for coming. We certainly
appreciate your being here with us. We know this is a very
important topic.
Our hearing today focuses on the status of Prisoner of War
(POW)/Missing in Action (MIA) activities which this
subcommittee has been tasked with overseeing.
The last subcommittee oversight hearing on POW/MIA
activities was back in October of 1998, 10 years ago. However,
while the subcommittee did not hold hearings in the intervening
years it has not forgotten its oversight responsibility nor has
it been sitting idly by on this issue. And I know certainly
that the ranking chair, Mr. McHugh, has been involved in this
discussion over the last number of years as well, so we will
look forward to the discussion.
The subcommittee put forward a number of initiatives which
have become law. For example, it is the sense of Congress that
the United States should pursue every lead and otherwise
maintain a relentless and thorough quest to completely account
for the fates of those members of the Armed Forces who are
missing or otherwise unaccounted for.
The Department of Defense (DOD) is required to maintain a
minimum level of personnel and budget resources for POW/MIA
programs. The Secretary of Defense is required to submit a
consolidated budget justification display that includes prior
year and future year funding for specified organizations
supporting POW/MIA activities of the Department of Defense as
part of the President's annual budget request. And the
committee increased funding for the joint POW/MIA Accounting
Command by $7.5 million and the Defense Prisoner of War Missing
Personnel Office by $200,000 above the President's budget
request for fiscal year 2008.
So suffice it to say, the subcommittee remains dedicated to
the full accounting of all American POWs and those missing in
action. We owe it to their families, but most importantly we
owe it also to the men and women who are currently serving in
uniform.
We know we have many priorities today, no question about
that. So while we focus on those who are serving in harm's way
today, we also want to give closure to those wonderful families
who have sacrificed so much and whose loved ones still are
missing and we want to recover.
So I want to welcome the Honorable Charles A. Ray, Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW Missing Personnel
Affairs and Rear Admiral Donna L. Crisp, Commander, Joint POW/
MIA Accounting Command. Ambassador, Admiral, welcome once
again. I would ask that you testify in order that I stated.
And I know that my colleague Mr. McHugh also has some
remarks to make. Mr. McHugh.
[The prepared statement of Mrs. Davis can be found in the
Appendix on page 35.]
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN M. MCHUGH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW
YORK, RANKING MEMBER, MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. McHugh. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I certainly want
to add my words of welcome to our two distinguished witnesses.
Mr. Ambassador, Admiral, thank you both for being here. And of
course equally important for the great job you do. And I might
add I got to see a little bit of that first-hand in 2005 when I
went to Vietnam and Laos and saw the good folks who do the very
obviously important but very dangerous mission of going into
the field and doing field activities, the very risky effort
they put forward to, as the Chair stated so very correctly,
something so important. This for over 30 years has been a
national security for this government to achieve the fullest
possible accounting of all those Americans missing or as
prisoners of war as a result of conflicts of first the 20th and
now the 21st century, and the challenges in achieving that
fullest possible accounting are many, as I know you two know so
very well.
Just the numbers, I had a chance to review those, who yet
today remain unaccounted for in spite of all the efforts for
these past years for America's 20th century conflicts are
staggering: 73,374 from World War II, 8,055 from Korea, 127
from the Cold War, and 1,757 from the Vietnam War. And even as
we find today in places like Iraq and Afghanistan where our
forces are operating and searching in areas that are present
with our military and civilian personnel, there is no certain
result. In short, this is very, very difficult and very, very
hard work. But still the fact of the matter is there will be no
fullest possible accounting without the cooperation of
governments who in the past were not always our best of friends
and allies and getting China or North Korea or Vietnam or even
Russia, by way of example, to open their archives, their lands,
their waters and people to research and discovery or persuading
them to make the unilateral revelations which we happen to
believe are critical and we happen to believe as well they are
very capable of doing.
It requires more than just a DOD effort, at least in my
judgment. I think it takes an integrated national strategy
involving both the executive and the legislative branches of
our government, and that kind of integrated effort is
absolutely essential.
In that regard I want to pay my compliments to the
gentlelady, the distinguished Chair, for having the foresight
and the concern to call this hearing. And clearly our two
witnesses today, as you know, Madam Chair, had the two largest
DOD organizations involved in the accounting effort. And I
think while both organizations have come in for their fair
share of criticism over the years without the Defense Prisoner
of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) or without Joint
Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC) or
organizations like them, we would have no progress at all, it
seems to me, toward that very important national objective of
the fullest possible accounting. I know over the last several
years, as you noted Madam Chair, the subcommittee has been
concerned that while the accounting missions being assigned or
assumed by both organizations were expending the resources that
were being provided were not. And the Chairlady cited some of
the increases and some of the beneficial effect that this
Congress has tried to have.
But I think it is our view that, certainly my view, that in
the competition for limited budget dollars neither DOD nor the
Pacific Command have been fully committed to fully resourcing
the accounting effort. And I would hope today's hearing will
provide us with the opportunity to further examine those
resourcing questions, and of course looking forward to the
discussion today that might as well help us get some
perspective on what kinds of adjustments we can make to the
strategy and approach both DOD and JPAC believe are needed.
So thank you again for being here. And Madam Chair, again
with my appreciation to you for holding this hearing, I yield
back and look forward to the testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McHugh can be found in the
Appendix on page 38.]
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McHugh. Ambassador
Ray, would you like to start?
STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR CHARLES A. RAY, DEPUTY ASSISTANT
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR POW/MISSING PERSONNEL AFFAIRS
Ambassador Ray. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, Mr. McHugh,
distinguished members of the subcommittee, I would like to
thank you very much for the opportunity to appear today to
update you on the current state of our mission to account for
the Nation's missing service personnel.
As the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Prisoners
of War Missing Personnel Affairs, I am responsible for policy
oversight of this mission and for carrying out those policies
established by the Secretary of Defense. Our worldwide team is
made up of more than 600 specialists, men and women who are
recognized as top professionals in their areas of science,
intelligence, historical analysis, public outreach, family
support and foreign area analysis.
My team here in Washington drafts the policies which will
lead us to the fullest possible accounting of our missing. We
negotiate with foreign governments, draft and coordinate
agreements and arrangements throughout the U.S. Government. It
also declassifies and releases information to MIA families, to
the public and to the Congress and provides support and
assistance to our field operational agencies.
Coming out of my final combat tour in the Vietnam War in
the early 1970's, I was a bit skeptical, and I really had no
expectation that our government would keep up the search for
our missing, many of whom were personal comrades of mine. I
thought maybe it would be done for a couple of years, but
certainly not for more than three decades and beyond. I am
happy now to sit here before you over 30 years later and say
that mission continues, and the personal commitment by our
worldwide team continues.
Our 600 team members are posted in Washington, in Hawaii,
in Rockville, Maryland, in Texas, in Russia, Thailand, Vietnam
and Laos. Their travels take them to remote and inhospitable
former battlefields where encounters with diseases, snakes and
unexploded ordnance confirm that our mission today is not
without risk. Nine Americans have lost their lives while
pursuing the effort to account for our missing from past
conflicts.
Our mission of accounting for the missing is the embodiment
of this Nation's commitment to those it sends into harm's way.
We are keeping that promise to every soldier, sailor, airman
and Marine and to their families that should you fall in battle
this government will make every effort to return you to the
loving arms of your family.
For example, the more than 2,500 who were once missing from
the Vietnam War our team has accounted for 889 and returned
them home for burial with full military honors. Another 1,757
are still unaccounted for from that conflict, of which the
remains of more than 650 we deem no longer recoverable. There
is in addition another 127 from the Cold War period, almost
8,100 from the Korean War and more than 74,000 from World War
II. It is comprising nearly 84,000 from those conflicts who are
still unaccounted for. And while we may be pleased with what we
have been able to accomplish, all of us constantly seek ways to
improve our work to locate, identify and return these heroes to
their families as quickly as we can.
In that regard we face the challenges of time, the
environment, disappearing witnesses, and a loss of possible
crash or burial sites from conflicts of more than 60 years ago.
We are always exploring options, looking for ways that we can
carry out this mission better and faster. We owe that at least
to missing service members and to their families.
You only have to visit the central identification lab at
JPAC in Hawaii to know what advances their scientists have
brought to the world of forensic anthropology. As I note in all
of our presentation to the families of the missing and to our
veterans, it is not Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) Miami. This
is the real world where JPAC scientists and team members don't
have the luxury of writing a script so that the case is solved
in less than an hour. They are the ones who are forced to work
with the cards they have been dealt. And while I don't pretend
to be expert in the advances in science that they are
responsible for, I do know they are always leaning forward
trying to do more and more all in the name of that missing
serviceman.
You will soon hear from Rear Admiral Donna Crisp, JPAC's
Commander, about how her unit, through field operations,
carries out the Department of Defense policies. I never met a
senior officer of the United States military who set the bar so
high for her people and for our mission. Admiral Crisp and I
confer almost daily on one issue or another. But I believe I am
safe in saying that every conversation, every single
conversation, is ultimately about the family members and how we
might do our work better and faster.
Even though we all speak proudly of what we have been able
to accomplish with your help, it is simply not acceptable that
many family members have had to wait decades for answers. I
wish it were otherwise, but realities being what they are we
are pushing the envelope every day of every year.
To take advantage of the brightest minds in our field I
formed a senior study group of senior government experts to
advise me on the way ahead in accounting for missing Americans.
Put simply, I wanted to be sure that every agency which had
equities in the personnel accounting mission had an opportunity
to periodically review where we are going and where we have
been.
The core membership of this group includes my organization,
Defense Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office, JPAC, the
Armed Forces Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) Identification Lab,
the Live Sciences Equipment Lab, the U.S. Pacific Command, U.S.
European Command, each of the military services and the Joint
Staff. The senior study group principals, those of flag or
general rank, are represented at our periodic meetings by
colonels, Navy captains or senior civilians. We meet not less
than twice a year and discuss issues with the goal of making
recommendations to increase efficiency and effectiveness in the
accounting mission. This group gives Admiral Crisp and me the
benefit of input from a wide range of experts and policymakers.
But more importantly, it forces all of us to look at the future
and seek to make wise decisions as we move this mission
forward.
Now, while I know the primary focus of these hearings is
accounting for the missing from past conflicts, we must
continue to look to the future as well to be better prepared to
deal with the results of current and future conflicts. One of
our responsibilities is that of establishing and overseeing
U.S. policies on personnel recovery. In the current conflicts
personnel recovery saves lives, it brings Americans home again
alive. It is far broader than just combat search and rescue as
it involves a wide range of options available to the government
to bring our people out of harm's way, out of captivity and out
of isolation behind hostile lines. At some point in the not too
distant future we have to be prepared to make a transition from
current conflict accounting to include personnel recovery to
post-conflict accounting. And if we don't make the right
decisions, the right policies now, then I don't believe we are
living up to the promises to our men and women in uniform or to
their families.
I would like now to address briefly our work around the
globe. In a general sense I believe our work in Southeast Asia
goes well. We enjoy a continued positive relationship with
Cambodia, with their senior leaders and other officials
cooperating in every way possible to help us accomplish our
mission. We are at a point where we will gradually begin
reducing operations there because we have exhausted existing
leads. But as always, we will continue to review individual
cases to reinvestigate any where additional leads offer new
information.
We would like to see a faster pace of progress in Laos but
we won't be deterred. Recent changes in some key personnel have
not appeared to have a negative impact on our work. We note
that the 25th anniversary this year of joint U.S.-Lao
cooperation. It is theoretically possible that some of our
younger team members who are working this issue there weren't
even born when the first U.S.-Lao team carried out its mission.
And to some, to me definitely, that is the embodiment of our
motto, keeping the promise. Both the families and the
government teams are now drawing from a younger generation, but
the commitment and the determination remain firm. Both the U.S.
and Laos have now agreed to exchange defense attaches, a step
in our relationship which I think will contribute positively
toward the effective use of our resources there. Now, there
still exists a backlog of cases to be worked in Laos, but we
are working to address this with the Laos government on a
continuing basis.
Our working relationship with Vietnam is showing steady
progress. The economic relationship between the two countries
continues to grow. Yet as we saw last month, the POW/MIA issue
remains a key area of discussion in every meeting with
Vietnamese officials. Military-to-military exchanges continue
to evolve, offering yet another avenue to improve the bilateral
relationship, and I believe this can only benefit our mission.
This year we will hold a 20-year assessment of U.S. and
Vietnamese cooperation. We will continue to work to bring the
benefits of the evolving bilateral relationship to bear on the
accounting mission to make it more effective and more
efficient.
So what does the future hold? To put the Vietnam War in
context, it has been more than 40 years since the first U.S.
losses there. By comparison, 40 years after World War II we
were in the Reagan Administration. The world changed
dramatically in those years. Former enemies became allies. We
see that same evolution in Southeast Asia, and as our relations
improve it should aid our accounting efforts. As dramatic as
those changes were following World War II, since Vietnam we
have seen profound movement on our issue, including the rising
profile of World War II and Korean War families and more
recently the direct threats to our national security from
terrorism. We are all certainly aware that the competition for
resources within our government is fierce and something we have
to deal with on virtually a daily basis. I think sometimes we
exceed their expectations.
The Founding Fathers intended that there be constraints on
the executive branch and that all branches of government
function more effectively when there is coordination and
cooperation among them. And we recognize, and I would like to
express my personal and professional appreciation for the
longstanding interest and deep support for this mission by this
subcommittee. This coordination is especially important in
activities relating to security and foreign affairs. As well,
ours is a humanitarian mission, not linked directly to other
activities, we are affected by and we do affect them. Our
activities then must be coordinated fully within the
interagency community and with the Congress so that we proceed
with full awareness of any impacts across the entire
government.
So that we are humanitarian, we do not operate without
limits. Some of those limits are legal and constitutional, some
are bureaucratic, but like budgetary constraints they serve to
shape our actions.
Our work continues in seeking to account for the missing
from the Korean War and World War II. We negotiated an
arrangement with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to
begin recovery operations there in the summer of 1996, and
since that time as a result of annual negotiations in 33 joint
field operations our teams recovered the remains believed to be
those of 229 Americans. Of those, JPAC scientists have
identified 61 and returned them to their families.
We temporarily suspended remains recovery operations in
North Korea in the spring of 2005 and JPAC redirected more
teams to South Korea and to other parts of the world. The
forensic identification work in the lab continues, however,
with the remains that were already recovered. And our teams
continue to locate and identify the remains of servicemen lost
during World War II in the South Pacific and Central Europe and
South America and even in North America. To the families of
those missing from this war and others we often see shock and
amazement that the government has not forgotten their loved
one's sacrifices.
I would like to close my formal statement today by
reaffirming our commitment to keeping our MIA families fully
informed of the work we are doing on their behalf. All of our
investigative case files are available to family members for
review either in person or by mail. For certain intelligence
information may be classified, we declassify it for them. And
each month we send a team of 30 to 40 of our specialists into
hometowns around the country where these families live to
update them on their cases and to make our scientists and
analysts available to them for questions.
In addition, we meet annually in Washington with Korean
Cold War families and with Vietnam War families. Through these
two programs we have met face-to-face since 1995 with more than
14,000 family members. We take very seriously our obligation to
keep the families, the American public, and the Congress fully
informed about what some consider our sacred mission.
I appreciate the opportunity you have given us today, and I
will be pleased to respond to your questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Ray can be found in
the Appendix on page 40.]
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. Admiral Crisp.
STATEMENT OF REAR ADM. DONNA L. CRISP, USN, COMMANDER, JOINT
POW/MIA ACCOUNTING COMMAND
Admiral Crisp. Madam Chair, members of the committee, this
is the first time I am coming before you as the Commander of
the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command.
I want to thank you for your support for personnel accounting,
and I also want to thank you for your support to the military
in uniform both abroad and at home, for civilians who have been
lost in the field, for the veterans who focus on passionately
returning their comrades back home, and for the families who
have waited so long for those that are missing to return. So
thank you so much for your support.
As you heard from Ambassador Ray, JPAC is an integral part
of the Department of Defense. It is a humanitarian mission, it
is a global mission. We research, we investigate, we recover,
and we identify military and civilians who gave their lives for
our country and our freedom.
We have an detachment in Thailand that provides logistic
support for our detachment in Vietnam and Laos. Thailand also
does the missions for Cambodia, India and Papua New Guinea.
We are also home to the world's largest skeletal forensic
lab. And this is a really great lab, a world class lab. And
just to show you how proud I am of them, they have just
completed re-accreditation on international standards by the
American Society of Crime Labs with nothing wrong in the entire
laboratory. So I am real proud of them, and I am sure that you
are as well.
JPAC currently has 354 personnel, both military and
civilian, working on board. We have 251 military and 103
civilians. We maintain a very high operational tempo. We do
about 70 missions a year. That includes research and
investigation missions. And the deployment tempo is 113 days
average deploy time per employee.
This year we have gone to 15 countries to look for both
World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. We have been
to Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Papua New Guinea, Palau, the
Solomon Islands, South Korea, Japan, Pagan Islands, Canada,
Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Germany and France.
As Ambassador Ray noted in his remarks, we talk together on
a daily basis. I seek his frank advice and our team, both JPAC
and DPMO, work together for a unity of effort. Our whole focus
is accounting for those missing in action.
Mrs. Davis. Excuse me, Admiral Crisp, if I could just let
you know, we have a vote in about 10 minutes. So if you could
take about another 4 or 5 minutes and then we are going to have
to go vote and we will come back. If it is possible to complete
your remarks that would be great, and then we will come back
for questions.
Admiral Crisp. Okay.
Basically this year, what we have done this year in
Vietnam, we have done 46 missions, and 16 for World War II and
five for Korea. We have done a lot of host nation work. We have
an operational plan that is out that we are reviewing. JPAC
coordinates with host nations and also primary U.S. agencies to
ensure mission success. In the past six months we have done
extensive bilateral discussions with many countries. We are
very proud we are starting to go back to the Republic of China
and do our very first missions with the Republic of India.
I can't over-emphasize the support of the host nations.
Wherever we go they really want to help us find our ancestors
that are missing from past conflicts. In Cambodia they set the
standard, they are very cooperative, they are the blueprint by
which other nations should follow. Laos People's Democratic
Republic, they have sustained cooperation for 25 years. We have
issues that we work through, but all in all that is a
tremendously cooperative nation.
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam we continue with a
measured approach. We are marking our 20 years of regular
operations. And in September we are hosting a meeting and we
are going to basically work at reassessing everything we have
done in the past and how we can do a better job in the future.
The Republic of Korea I have worked with closely. We have a
similar organization called Republic of Korea's Ministry of
National Defense Agency for Killed in Action Recovery and
Identification (MAKRI) that looks for 130,000 Koreans that have
been lost during the Korean War. I met last month with the Vice
Minister of National Defense and we talked about a memorandum
of understanding between MAKRI and ourselves and pledged that
we would work closely with the Republic of Korea.
Papua New Guinea I can't say enough of. What a wonderful
group of people. They are always open and we spend time and we
go into the field. They provide support, safety and security
for our people. So basically we are in consonance with your
2000 congressional direction to work closely with them, and I
report back they are a fantastic people.
People's Republic of China, we just started renegotiations
with them after five years of not going there. Again, we are
working very hard with the support. We are focused on going
into a mission in Dandung, which is for the Korean War. And so
as soon as the Olympics are over we will start back up again
with negotiations with the Republic of China.
The Republic of India has embraced us coming there. We meet
monthly, and we are hoping to do several recoveries in 2009.
In Europe, although 78 percent of JPAC's work is in the
Pacific Area of Responsibility (AOR), we do spend time in
Europe. Much of it is burials and graves that people find. And
so we send teams into the field to work those. My commander's
priorities are basically safety first, safety for our teams and
our people. That is always the most important. As Ambassador
Ray mentioned, it is a dangerous business. And so if at any
time I feel our troops are in danger I will call off a mission,
and I have already done that once this year.
Quality of life and quality of service, you can't beat
having a great working environment. And so my focus has been to
ensure that the people of JPAC have good office spaces, have a
good working environment, a place where they are proud to bring
their parents and their families. We have done a lot of
innovative things doing military to civilian conversion. I am
studying the pay structure under the national security
personnel system. I am looking at recruiting and retention for
our laboratory and our scientists. I want to make sure that
everything that you have approved for the Department of Defense
to do in anything that deals with human resource management, we
are going to use all of those enablers to ensure that JPAC has
the finest staff that we can have.
Our headquarters building is on track and we really
appreciate that. We are split up on three different bases. We
have got people in 10 trailers. But the bottom line is you have
given us the money for the design, we are going ahead with
that. The military construction (MILCON) is on track. And so
again I appreciate your support.
Continuous improvement is an area that I love to focus in
personally. And so Ambassador Ray and I have really embraced
the challenge of looking at every single facet of personnel
accounting and looking at it from a Lean Six Sigma kind of
perspective of checking every function to make sure it is
optimum and effective.
In the area of technology application we have a geographic
information system; in a nutshell is we are taking all the
legacy data that has existed in people's files and we are
putting it together so that if you are in the field and you
want to know information on a site you are going to, you can
click a button and find out everything that has happened, to
include if there is any avian flu in that area.
Phase two testing is a very old standard way of doing
business in anthropology, archeology. We have just embraced it,
and I think it is going to save us a lot of money and time.
In closing, thank you for having me here to address you.
The two of us work together. And all we focus on is soldiers,
sailors, airmen and Marines and dedicated civilians who gave
their lives for our country so that we can bring them home. So
thank you very much for having me, and I look forward to your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Crisp can be found in
the Appendix on page 46.]
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Admiral Crisp and Mr. Ambassador. We
are going to go vote. Members are going to have to rush down
there really quickly. It could be about 40 minutes, 45 minutes.
So we certainly appreciate your being here. We wish we could
have a hearing that was all together, but that doesn't always
work for us. At least we got through your two presentations,
and we appreciate that. We will be back. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mrs. Davis. Well, thank you to everyone in the room. I know
how warm it is in here, and we know it was a long wait. I
estimated about 45 minutes. Sorry, I was really off. It is hard
to tell. I just want to thank you again for your patience.
Ambassador Ray, why don't I just start with you? I think we
will have a few members coming in, but I am afraid that we have
got some flights going and so members were not able to stay.
In 2007, the Department sent to Congress a report regarding
the organization management and budgeting of the Joint POW/MIA
Accounting Command, and it stated that the Department has
implemented steps that resulted in the improvements and
organization management of budget of JPAC. And I know you have
been through a number of areas, but could you try and just very
specifically and pointed tell us what those were, what
improvements you think an organization management budget
occurred and whether or not they have begun some of those
improvements and where you are in that process in the most
significant areas that you would pinpoint for us? And also
could you share with us the results of the review that looked
at decreasing the time between recovery and identification and
what recommendations came as a result of that review?
Ambassador Ray. Thank you, Madam Chairman. On the issue of
what efficiencies we have instituted, on the one hand the
personnel accounting budget exhibit which we do has helped give
us much more visibility across the community in the budgeting
in terms of what is requested, what is needed and what is
actually made available. And it has enabled me to be more
effective and responsive in advocating when there are the
occasional budget difficulties. The other area that we have
made improvements, as I mentioned in my opening statement, is
the institution of the senior study group. What this has done
has enabled us to apply expertise across the community, not
only to the problems that have been identified in past
communication with the committee and with other Members of
Congress, but to look forward at those things that might be
problems in the future and to look at where we can find new
efficiencies. And these are some of the general areas where we
have achieved some improvement in process.
And as Admiral Crisp said, we have also begun the process
of applying business methods to everything we do. And Lean Six
Sigma is just one. I mean, I apply my grandmother's common
sense method, is look at it and if it ain't working figure out
a new way to do it rather than do the same thing over and over
again and look for a different result.
And on the second question, if I may, I would defer to
Admiral Crisp on that, is that the identification process is
part of her command and she is much more I think qualified to
address what efficiencies and changes have taken place in that
area than I would be.
Mrs. Davis. Okay. Thank you. That would be great. And I
wanted to come back to just one of the budget comments you
made. Go ahead.
Admiral Crisp. One of the two most important changes that
we have done as a department, the first one I would say was in
the year 2006. And as a result of looking at the individuals
that came out of punch bowl from the Korean War where the
remains had been covered with a powder which destroyed DNA,
Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL) did a
considerable amount of research and it allows you--it is
basically called the demineralization process. And let me
explain it this way. If you were to look at a picture of a
skeleton several years ago, you would see that you would have
to have your giant leg bones, your femurs. And that would be
your only bones for 90 percent identification. Now, after all
the research and discoveries, mostly to try to figure out how
to do the unknowns at Korea, your entire skeleton will give you
a 90 percent identification. And instead of having to have a
sample that is 2 grams, it is .2 grams. So that will accelerate
the time between recovery and identification, particularly for
the Vietnam War where the pieces that you find are so small. So
that is an innovation in science, particularly as we tried to
figure out Korean remains. That has helped all of the Vietnam
identifications.
For Korea itself, one of the things that the scientists
said to me is you know we have these 208 boxes of remains which
are probably 400 people, but we have no place to lay them out.
Our lab is so small, we just can't lay them out. And so what
the Navy has done is helped me find temporary space in Pearl
Harbor. And I am taking the entire floor of an old lab building
and I am fixing it up. So by October the laboratory will have
increased three times in size and we will for the first time be
able to lay out the remains from the Korean War undisturbed on
tables so the scientists can begin piecing together all the
people that were commingled remains.
So those are the two things that come to mind of innovative
things that have happened in the last couple of years to
decrease recovery and identification (ID) time.
Mrs. Davis. Could you give us just kind of a ballpark
figure? I know it would differ between the wars and the time
frame. But about how long does that take?
Admiral Crisp. I will be honest with you, some cases I see
come in and are solved within a week, and that is if you are
lucky enough to find a skull and your teeth. Because if you can
find that, you have got it made to identifying a person. After
that it could take up to 10 years. Before, if it were just a
tiny piece of bone and there was no way I could identify you,
you would have been sitting there for years.
Mrs. Davis. Does the family reference----
Admiral Crisp. Family reference samples are very important
because if you have a large enough sample of bone that you can
get a DNA out of it and the family has given a reference
sample, preferably through the maternal line, you can----
Mrs. Davis. Is it preferably or is it only through the
maternal?
Admiral Crisp. Well, I will be honest with you, they are
just now finding new ways of doing maternal, but it is not
quite ready. So again all these struggles for the Korean War
unknowns are producing incredible results for the entire
country in DNA analysis. But right now I would say maternal
reference.
And so you would have to--I will show you how hard it would
be. You might have to go to your grandmother's sister's
cousins, because if you didn't happen to have sisters and your
mother didn't happen to have sisters, you would have to go to
your grandma and start genealogically searching down another
path. So I realize some cases are easy and some cases are a lot
tougher. Some could take three years to just do the
genealogical search to find all of your fourth and fifth
cousins.
So that is why it takes long on some cases. Does that
answer your question.
Mrs. Davis. That is helpful, because I had heard that it is
just a very, very long time.
Admiral Crisp. Well, it is. But I will tell you, both
Ambassador Ray and I--like I say, every process that we look at
we tear apart. So family reference samples is the same process.
You cut the--you know, you do the whole reference sample, and
then it goes through the services, they do genealogical
searches, they find the individuals, they send the sample to
AFDIL. And what the two of us are doing, again through a Lean
Six Sigma kind of approach, is, okay, where does every sample
go, who has got the sample, how long is it there, do they need
more people, what do they need to get it done so there is no
backlog.
So that is the kind of things that our junior officers and
junior civilians are working together on.
Mrs. Davis. And that is some of the liaison positions that
help and work with the families in that case? Okay. Great.
Thank you.
Mr. Ambassador, I will come back in a few minutes. Mr.
McHugh, any questions.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you Madam Chair. As somebody who lives on
the Canadian border I was interested to hear we had an
operation in Canada. I thought maybe it was Benedict Arnold
back in 1775, but I am told it was a training mission off of
Newfoundland.
Admiral Crisp. Yes, sir.
Mr. McHugh. I am just curious, was that a success?
Admiral Crisp. It was an underwater investigation and we
haven't done it yet.
Mr. McHugh. Well, I wish you all the best.
Admiral Crisp. Thank you, sir.
Mr. McHugh. I talked about, as the Chair did as well, about
resourcing. Obviously, budgets are a difficult thing. There is
never enough money to do all we would like to do. Lean Six
Sigma comes out of that recognition in part, that you want to
do all you can with whatever resources you have available.
Still, as we get the submissions for your activities we are
told that all your requirements are being fully funded, and yet
as we look through from 2009 to fiscal year 2013, and yet as we
look at some of the realities I really question if maybe we
might go beyond full if you are fully funded. You are
authorized for 18 field teams, but we are told you only have
sufficient manning for 15. And the question I would have is, do
the budgets from 2009 to 2013 provide for full manning of all
18 teams that we have available?
If you want to respond to that, I have got some other
pertinent questions.
Admiral Crisp. The manpower authorizations are there. I
would say 86 to 90 percent manning. 90 percent, which would be
in what we would call a C-1 category, a mission ready category,
is a good number. I have never in my 34 years been in a command
that was 100 percent manned without ever having a gap. So I--
and I have worked through several wars, Vietnam on forward. So
if you are a non-combat team and you are anywhere between 86
and 92 percent manned, that would be what I would consider to
be optimum in wartime environments.
Mr. McHugh. Well, not to nitpick----
Admiral Crisp. Does that----
Mr. McHugh. I understand what you are saying, and from a
technical perspective on a war basis I guess that is pretty
correct. But when you are talking about 18 or 20 divisions, a
company here, a platoon there as not rated C-1 is one thing.
But when you only have 18 field teams technically authorized to
go out and to find the thousands of undiscovered remains, that
lack to operate at 100 percent becomes a little bit more
important, wouldn't you agree? Is it a question of money or
just being able to recruit and get the people into the slot?
Let us step beyond the percentage, et cetera. Why are there not
18, if there are not, slots available and funded through 2013,
what is the reason? You are not able to get those individuals
or you don't expect to have the money?
Admiral Crisp. It would not have to do with money, sir.
There are probably a few captain slots that are not filled at
the 2004 level. That really doesn't have to do with money. It
just deals with manning.
Mr. McHugh. So you are not immune from the end strength and
deployment problems we are facing across the board?
Admiral Crisp. For the entire Department yes, sir.
Mr. McHugh. As I look at the budgets from 2009 through
2013, that fully funded or all requirements funded designation
does not of course include North Korea. Mr. Ambassador, in your
opening comments you use the phrase temporarily left--someone
stole my pad, but I believe it was May of 2005. When are we
going back? That was our decision. Let us concede for the
moment it was done for a good cause. But that was three years
ago.
Ambassador Ray. Sir, we are currently reviewing the
circumstances, as all of us are aware that have changed over
the last few weeks, and are beginning the effort to get
interagency discussions going to make an assessment of what our
recommendation to the President and to the national authority
would be if the situation continues to develop in a positive
direction.
Mr. McHugh. Certainly given some of the declarations--I
mean, the North Koreans have been taken off the sponsor of
state terrorism list. They have had some pretty good
developments with respect to denuclearization, et cetera, et
cetera. I hope that the way in which we continue over the
longer term to express--and I am speaking through you, not at
you here, Mr. Ambassador--I would hope the way we continue if
we choose to, to express displeasure with some of the actions
of the North Koreans are not placed on the backs of those
families of those thousands of lost souls in the North Korean
theater. And I won't ask you to comment, but I would be
surprised if you didn't agree with that as well. And I hope we
can reexamine the policy.
But it gets us back to the question, what, for example,
would happen if all of a sudden now that theater does become
available to us; what do we do on the budgets? Would you expect
to be a part of any future supplemental request or have you had
an opportunity to think about that?
Ambassador Ray. We have in discussions with the Office of
the Defense Comptroller actually addressed this issue. And when
we prepared the first budget exhibit, I believe two years ago,
the decision was made then. It was recognized that resumption
of operations in North Korea would require a significant
increase in budget, that that would be funded. I think the
additional amount was about $14 million at that time.
Now, that gets adjusted as we continue to take another look
at requirements. And it is an estimate at best, because once we
do go back in, of course JPAC will have to go back in and
examine all of the equipment they left. The question of whether
we have to replace all the equipment we left in place we will
probably revise that.
I would, based on what I have been told by the comptroller,
not assume that this would be a supplemental request but that
it would be funded out of other DOD budget lines.
Mr. McHugh. But the recognition, more money, would be more
essential there; that is the important thing.
Madam Chairman, if I may, just one more quick budget
question. I know you have others who want to question,
obviously Ms. Tsongas and Ms. Shea-Porter.
Government Accountability Office (GAO) took a look at this
program, and how it became directed, and of course, it is
rooted in the effort to find all those left behind in Vietnam,
but over the years, through regulation and through, to a lesser
extent, through statute, it has obviously grown. And now we are
covering virtually every theater in which, just about every
theater, Americans have found themselves in conflict on.
Budgets are--there is intra- as well as interdepartmental
politics afoot, and I don't necessarily mean that in a
denigrating way. It is just, it is a fight.
You are not specifically, your current charge is not
specifically legislative. Would it help in the budget fight,
would it give you a seat closer to the table if, in the
discussion of an allocation of resources within the Department,
you actually had a congressionally mandated charge to do a
broader scope of what you are doing now?
Ambassador Ray. It certainly with not be unwelcome if we
had very clear mandates, but we look at what we are required to
do and accept it, clearly.
Mr. McHugh. Well, it would not change your scope. That is
not my objective, and it is not a criticism of what you are
doing. I am just trying to say, would that give you and your
budget people an additional tool to make the arguments? You
know, Congress has told us to do this as well. I mean, we ought
to have X dollars more.
Ambassador Ray. I think it probably wouldn't hurt.
Mr. McHugh. I mean, that is something we need to take a
look at.
Thank you. I appreciate your responses.
And thank you, Madam Chairman.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. McHugh.
Ms. Tsongas.
Ms. Tsongas. I would like to thank Chairwoman Davis for
holding this important hearing, and I would also like to thank
our witnesses for being here today and for the important work
that you do.
We all know how families really do need to bring closure,
and this allows them to do that, however time consuming and
lengthy it may be.
But I would like to ask a question about our current
conflicts, in particular the war in Iraq, because I happen to
represent a district in which a young man has been missing for
over a year.
On May 12, 2007, Sergeant Alex Jimenez of the 10th Mountain
Division was ambushed south of Baghdad. There has been no
information regarding his whereabouts since that time. And, on
June 27, the U.S. Army changed his status from ``duty status
whereabouts unknown'' to ``missing or captured.''
Sergeant Jimenez, as I said, is from my district. I have
met several times with his family, and you can imagine how
difficult this past year has been. We can only all be fortified
by the kind of inspirational capacity they have had to deal
with this.
He is one of three soldiers currently designated as
missing, and we pray that each of these young men will return
home safely. I recognize that most of the work that JPAC and
DPMO has focused on past conflicts and that we rightly regard
unaccounted-for personnel from our current conflicts as
recovery missions, but DPMO is the lead agency for personnel
policy re-discovery within the Office of the Secretary of
Defense.
Ambassador Ray, to the extent possible, could you elaborate
on our current policies for recovery in Iraq, particularly
given the unique nature of the conflict we are engaged in
there?
Ambassador Ray. Thank you, ma'am.
I am responsible for policy formulation for personnel
recovery. The actual recovery operations, in an active theater,
are the responsibility of the combatant commander, in this
case, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). We work very closely with
them to ensure that they have all of the assets they need to do
this, and, to their credit, the fact that we only have three
missing says that they are doing a very effective job.
What we are looking at is, the phenomena that has been made
clear in this current conflict is that there is a point when
personnel recovery becomes active combat theatre personnel
accounting. And we are currently working with CENTCOM
primarily, but other theatres as well, to develop a policy that
recognizes this overlap between accounting and recovery and
enables us to make a seamless transition to post-conflict
accounting if, in fact, the conflict ends and we haven't
settled a case.
At this point, this is still very much a work in progress.
We are using lessons learned from our historical accounting
from Vietnam and other conflicts. I might add, we are also
using the lessons we are learning from the current conflict to
help shape more efficient operations in our historical
accounting as well.
Ms. Tsongas. So as that transition is being made, how does
that play itself out in the lives of these young men so that we
don't--you know, we hear this so often between the transition
from active duty to Veterans Affairs (VA) status, how so many
people are sort of left in limbo for some time. I am just
wondering if the process remains engaged so that all
appropriate action is taken to look for these young people in
spite of the fact that they have been missing for a year.
Ambassador Ray. Our objective is that there will be no
change in the tempo of trying to account for them regardless of
the status of the conflict, and that is why I said that we are
working very hard to establish a seamless transition so that
when someday it is declared that hostilities are ended and that
combatant commanders are no longer responsible, from the
outside you will see no change in the effort to account for
them.
Ms. Tsongas. And what would you say the tempo is today in
terms of the active seeking out and trying to discover their
whereabouts?
Ambassador Ray. It is very active. The briefings I get
indicate that in many cases some of the units on the ground are
taking incredible risks to try and get information as to their
whereabouts and status.
Ms. Tsongas. Thank you.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Ms. Shea-Porter.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Thank you, Chairwoman, for this very
important hearing.
And thank you to the witnesses for coming.
We all share our absolute debt of gratitude to those who
served. And to those who didn't come home, we have the debt
that we need to find them and bring them. I thank you for the
work that you are doing for this.
I, too, have been very concerned about what is happening to
those who are missing in action in Iraq, and I want to bring up
Commander Speicher and ask how involved are your commands in
locating him and the others still missing in action.
Ambassador Ray. Thank you, ma'am.
We currently are required, DPMO, to do a quarterly report
to Congress on the efforts to account for Captain Speicher.
There are intelligence or information requirements that are
active in CENTCOM and other areas whenever there is an
interrogation or interview with people. All of these cases, to
include Captain Speicher, are included as those elements that
we seek information on. That is also a very active case.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Okay, and I am sure you are aware of a
piece of legislation introduced in the House calling for a
Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, and both of you have made
a career as members of the armed services. Now this part of
your job requires you to bring the remains of service members
and heroes home to us.
In your professional and personal opinion, do you believe
that creating a select committee in Congress would benefit your
mission or detract from it?
Ambassador Ray. Ma'am, I have to, there was recently a
Department of Defense position provided to a Member of Congress
on that. We oppose the establishment of a select committee.
From a professional standpoint, I fear that such a committee
would be a distraction, could cause us to have to diminish our
efforts to our core mission as we respond to the requirements.
And, from my own, I have frequent contact, as do people
from JPAC, with this committee. We feel that the current level
of interchange and oversight serves the purpose of ensuring
that we are doing, that we are following the congressional
intent and that we are doing what we can with available
resources to serve the American people.
So the bottom line is that we oppose any such
establishment.
Ms. Shea-Porter. When you say ``with available resources,''
would more resources make the difference, or are we still
giving it the straight-out effort, all we could do?
Ambassador Ray. We are still constantly looking at what we
could do to see if we are using those resources in the most
effective way. I am reluctant to say, give me more resources,
until I am sure that I am using the resources you are giving me
to the best advantage.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Thank you.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Ms. Shea-Porter.
Could you speak, Ambassador Ray, to the interagency issues
around this, because we know that in many ways you and the
Department in many ways shoulder the burden here, and, yet,
many other departments, tools of government can also be used in
this way? You mention it in your comments, obviously, recent
pronouncements coming out of North Korea, will have an effect
there.
How do you see that progress? What can you point to that
has shifted, changed, been helpful in that area? And are enough
of these elements, with whether it is trade, you know--the
State Department, I would hope, certainly, is part of this
interagency work, but talk to us a little bit more about that.
And where do you think some obvious voids are and have not
really changed much over the years?
Ambassador Ray. Well, our work with the interagency, Madam
Chairman, goes on on a continuous basis. It is a big challenge
because, within the interagency, there are a lot of competing
elements that have to be balanced.
I would say that, in general, the support that we get from
the interagency has been extremely good. We get, from the State
Department, outstanding support. A lot of what we are able to
do abroad, we could not do if it were not for the support we
get from our ambassadors and our consulates and from the
geographic bureau of people in the State Department, one, who
know the ground much better than we do but who also carry our
water for us on many occasions.
Other elements of government, we have had fairly good
responses from them and including our issues and their messages
to foreign governments when they deal with them.
So I would not characterize it as a void. We don't win
every round, but we do, I think, in general, win the war, and
that is the interagency. We spend a lot of time making sure
that the interagency understands the importance of what we do,
and as far as the State Department and the intel community is
concerned, they are actually a part of the community, because
when we do Southeast Asia, when we do the Korean War, and we do
the Cold War, the State Department and the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) also have missing people in there. And they
participate with us in outreach to families.
Other agencies, in general, we get a very good, supportive
response from them, the Justice Department. Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
has been very supportive of what we do. And, particularly
because we now do the personnel recovery and they have people
who are at risk, they understand that we are all in it together
and we have to work together.
I would say, in general, interagency support has been good.
It can always be better, and that is partly our responsibility
to stay out there and make sure that they don't forget, and we
keep making it better.
Mrs. Davis. Is there an area specifically that you would
want to seek some help?
Ambassador Ray. Madam Chairman, I can't at this time think
of any area where I would think that there is a void that we
needed.
We simply need to keep doing what we do and do it better.
Mrs. Davis. But you think that the opportunity to engage
where these issues are front and center is there.
Ambassador Ray. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Davis. Where appropriate?
Ambassador Ray. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Davis. That is very important, I think, to us, that
there is a consistent and strong message in that regard. I
would hope that you would call upon us, that you would call
upon the interagency to do that.
Ambassador Ray. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Davis. Because there are some ways in which we can
leverage this, and I think it is important that we continue to
do that.
Ambassador Ray. Yes, ma'am. Well, I would go so far, if I
may, Madam Chairman, to point out that it is not only the
interagency, and not just from my position in this job but
having served as an ambassador and also as consul general in Ho
Chi Min city, that the assistance we have gotten from others in
the interagency and from travelling congressional delegations
to carry this message to our foreign audiences has been
extremely supportive and first-rate.
So what I would say is, we need for people to continue to
do what they are currently doing.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
I am going to go to Mr. McHugh, and then come back for
another round.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you.
In response to that last very good question, the
ambassador's comments, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, I
did have a chance to make a trip through Southeast Asia, and I
would highly recommend it to any Member who is so disposed,
because it is an eye-opener to--I had a vision of people just
kind of leisurely walking through fields, kicking over rocks,
and it is quite a different challenge than that, rappelling
down mountains, climbing up other mountains, as the ambassadors
said in his comments, dodging snakes, and hopefully, you are
out of there before the monsoon season starts. It really shows
the depth of that challenge.
I agree, Mr. Ambassador, the governments in that part of
the world, although not as often, not always as forthcoming as
we like, certainly from my experience, were very willing to sit
down and talk about this. And I hope it helped in some fashion.
I appreciated Ms. Tsongas' comments about Sergeant Jimenez.
As someone who has the honor of representing the 10th Mountain
Division, I would be remiss if I didn't also add the names of
Private First Class (PFC) Byron Fouty and PFC Joseph Anzack,
who were also involved in that attack that left two of those
brave soldiers missing.
It must be a very sobering pause for good folks like
yourselves to remember at times that you are really a big
source of hope for people like that, and there is no question
involved there, just an underscoring of the importance of the
work that you do.
Mr. Ambassador, I appreciated your comments of using
resources to their best advantage, and we all like to talk
about that in government. It is nice to run into somebody who
is actually thoughtful about it and trying to do it.
So let's talk a little bit about the way ahead. It is not
quite warm enough in here; let's warm it up a little bit.
You know, we have got a process now that talks about ``most
recent first'', and I can certainly see the efficacy of that. I
am not trying to paint a stilted question here one way or
another, but there are those who are making the argument to me,
and I am sure the Chair and others who have had the discussion,
that we are too resource heavy in one area, in this case
Southeast Asia, about 70 percent, and the rest is left to go
around somewhere else. And if you look at the rate of
recoveries in Southeast Asia, they have held relatively steady,
while you do have other opportunities in other places.
To what extent and how often do you have a chance to sit
down and contemplate that ``most recent first''? I could argue
in support of that as well. I am not trying to tell you what to
do. I am just curious, is that something that comes under
thoughtful consideration? And how often do you get a chance to
reevaluate that?
Ambassador Ray. Sir, that is something that is currently
being reevaluated. It is part of the mission review of the
senior study group that I mentioned earlier, and we are looking
at what our policy should be across all conflicts, and
conflict-specific, and our policy in general.
To address the comment about the resources being applied to
one conflict or another, it is true that the Vietnam War takes
a rather large portion of the monetary resources. That has to
do with the nature of that terrain and the conflict as much as
anything. Vietnam operations are much more expensive than
others because of the requirement for paying for helicopter
support to get teams and equipment to sites. And, as you
mentioned, some of these sites are on ridge lines where you can
get one helicopter in at a time. With the increase in fuel
costs over the last couple of years, our costs to support
operations in this area have also increased.
There are other elements, though, of accounting across the
conflicts that get left out when we talk about resources, and
that is investigations, identifications, and other, and
research.
If we were to simply do a mathematical parsing of the money
and divide resources up on conflict, on hard mathematical
grounds, we run the risk of damaging the gains that we are
making across all conflicts. If we were to reduce the resources
that we apply now to Southeast Asia, the fairly slow rate of
recovery and ID could be diminished even more. Therefore, it is
not a matter of whether this conflict is most recent or not; it
is a matter that in an area where operations are extremely
difficult and costly, if you take away resources, you simply
make it more difficult to do those operations.
As we look at how we do our resources, how we allocate our
efforts in research as well as in operations on the ground, we
are looking at ways we can do a better job in World War II, in
Korea, without disadvantaging any other conflict, and that
includes looking at the current and future conflicts and the
personnel recovery activities.
Mrs. Davis. The last statement you made about reevaluating
World War II, the current DOD posture, and this is a quote,
with respect to the World War II, is the mission remains,
quote, ``very much a work in progress,'' unquote. So as you
look at that work in progress, at least from my perspective, it
is a little hard to tell what the plan ahead is, and I suspect
that is because there isn't yet one.
Ambassador Ray. We are still working on that.
Mr. McHugh. And you are working on that. When might that
evaluation work be done, do you think?
Ambassador Ray. I am really reluctant to make predictions
on that because the group that is working on it has that and
several other things, and usually, when I make these
predictions, they would prove me wrong very quickly. But I
would hope very soon.
We have had some progress in shaping our view of how we
should be looking at conflicts across the board, and I would
hope that certainly before the end of this year, we would have
a more concrete idea of how we approach the resource allocation
and work for all the conflicts.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you.
Madam Chairman, if we go to another round, I could
certainly ask a few other questions, but I know that other
Members want to weigh in again, so I will yield back for the
moment.
Mrs. Davis. Yes, Ms. Shea-Porter.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Yes, I wanted to ask you about recent
revelations that China had a body, an American soldier's body,
from North Korea, and I wanted to ask you to comment further on
these revelations about American POWs taken during the 1950's
and 1960's.
Ambassador Ray. I believe you are referring to the
Desautels case. We have in fact engaged with the Chinese on a
number of occasions on trying to find out where this particular
individual's body is buried, so far without success. There were
others who we have information on, confirmed information, who
were taken in but who were returned.
Ms. Shea-Porter. This is a surprise?
Ambassador Ray. Not really.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Not really.
Ambassador Ray. Not really. I mean, these are issues that
have been a matter of our conversations with these governments
for a long time. We have not had the success we would like.
My hope is, having just recently signed an archival-access
arrangement with the Chinese, that we will be able to see a
little more progress in getting information about a lot of
these case, not just the Korean War but Vietnam War and World
War II as well.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Well, this is something that POW/MIA
groups have been talking about for a great while, as you know.
So, this has a poignancy and a bitterness and a sense of
tragedy to it.
Ambassador Ray. Yes.
Ms. Shea-Porter. I would hope that we would stay right on
this issue.
Thank you.
Mrs. Davis. Mr. Murphy, do you have questions?
Mr. Murphy. Yes, ma'am.
I want to thank both of you for your service to our
country.
I am Patrick Murphy from Pennsylvania.
And I want to open up my comment real quick and I want to
tip my hat, even though it is not in your domain, but to the
CIA agencies that actually just helped free three of our
hostages over in Colombia. They did an incredible job, and the
15 hostages over all. They did an incredible job with those
three hostages for the past--they have been in captivity in
Colombia with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
for over five years. So I know they don't get a thank you
enough and with the public acknowledgment of their work.
I understand that the policy of the United States is to
pursue the ``most recent first'' strategy in deciding how to
allocate funding assigned to each conflict unaccounted-for
servicemen.
Obviously, if there is a chance that any MIA or POW
servicemen are still alive, then we should do whatever it takes
to rescue them.
The ``most recent first'' tragedy leads to a funding
breakdown where 65 percent of the funds are allocated to
Vietnam, 20 percent of the funds to Korea, and 15 percent of
the funds to World War II.
But when you look at the numbers, there are over 74,000
servicemen unaccounted for from World War II but only 8,000
from the Korean War and about 1,700 from Vietnam.
Again, if there is any chance that there are servicemen
still alive, we need to pursue that vigorously, as I know you
would already agree. However, the DPMO and JPAC estimate that
the remains of 19,000 of the 74,000 unaccounted for World War
II servicemen might be recoverable.
So my question is, how much of the funding allocated to
Vietnam is actually dedicated to a search for those possibly
still alive? Is that funding separated from the funding used to
recover remains?
So what am I--I guess what I am trying to get at is, can we
still continue to aggressively search for possibly living
servicemen but also focusing at the same time for recovering
and identifying the most remains possible, even if those
remains are not from the most recent conflict?
Admiral Crisp. If I could just share, when I have the
percentages, I actually don't apply them to the money, although
I could do that. I don't have that right now, but I do apply
them to the different functions within JPAC. So I look at
recoveries and investigations. And so, if I were to just look
at that over a 4-year period of time: 67 percent of recoveries
and investigations are Vietnam; 14 percent are Korean War; and
19 percent are for World War II.
But when I look at the laboratory and I also look at their
level of effort, identifications are 36 percent for Vietnam; 42
percent for World War II; 21 percent for Korea. And I also look
at the sampling, because the scientists have to spend their
time cutting samples and sending them to AFDIL for designation,
so 65 percent of the samples are for the Korean War, just as an
example, and 24 percent for Vietnam.
So I look at the guidance given by Office of the Secretary
of Defense (OSD), of the 65, 20 and 15, and then I try to apply
that to all of the areas of work that we are doing and knowing
that each war is different and just trying to ensure that we
comply with it to the best way possible.
Mr. Murphy. Thank you.
Ambassador Ray. On the issue, sir, of possible living
personnel and their recovery, we have not broken down what is
spent on that effort, and the reason is that shapes everything
we do. Every contact we have with governments on this issue,
that is the number one priority.
It is also difficult for us to break down how this is
funded because there are other agencies besides our two that
are involved in it. The intel, intelligence agencies have
standing requirements on this issue. Most embassies and areas
of interest, these are pieces of information that they would be
responding to for us.
So this effort, what we spend on recoveries of remains
across the various conflicts has no impact on what we do to try
and recover any living people, and if we should find someone
alive, you can bet that everything else would stop while we
took every effort to get that person back.
Mr. Murphy. May I ask another brief question? I have a
little bit of time left.
For years, the Government of China has denied that any U.S.
service member was removed from North Korea into China. And the
Pentagon has long held that China returned all the POWs that
were inside of China. I am not sure if the panel already
addressed this issue. I apologize if it did.
Obviously, last month, we all became aware of Sergeant
Richard Desautels, who was buried in Chinese territory in 1953.
I have a constituent, Charlotte Minnick, whose brother has been
missing in action in Korea since June of 1952.
I just want to make sure that I can respond to her
effectively and just say that she could believe in her
government that we are all working together and that we are
going to make sure that we are being straight with her and the
rest of Americans, because you know, it was, obviously, we have
known for five years that there was remains in China, and yet
we just made the American public aware of this a month ago.
Ambassador Ray. This is true, and it is not at all unusual
that we would provide information to the next of kin without
providing that information publicly. There are a number of
reasons why that might not be done.
In terms of prisoners taken to China, as I said earlier,
the only information we have, other than Desautels, who we have
been told was buried in China. We know that. We are now working
with them to try and determine where, so that we can do a
recovery.
The others that we have information on were prisoners who
were taken into China for interrogation and returned.
Mr. Murphy. Thank you, ma'am.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Murphy.
Ambassador, I know you mentioned earlier that the
prioritizing and the apportioning issue is being looked at. I
am just wondering, in the work that you all do and as you were
talking about how you used the percentages or don't necessarily
focus that with the budget, is that helpful, or would it be
helpful to not have those kinds of apportionments?
Ambassador Ray. We are actually looking at that issue. I
inherited that policy. And for the last two years, it has been
under review as to whether that is the--that makes good
business sense to go about it, especially given that each
conflict is very different. The areas of conflict are
different.
We face, for example, in Vietnam, a real serious problem
with the type of soil there. Biologic remains don't last very
long.
On the other hand, in parts of Eastern Europe, in Papua,
New Guinea, and others areas, we are quite lucky, we usually
find entirely skeletal remains that are fairly well preserved.
So one of the first questions I asked when I came in and
found out that I had inherited this numerical policy is, why?
And that has been under study. We have actually made minor
adjustments, but the entire policy is being looked at to
determine if it makes sense to do that, and, also, how will we
fit that into current and future conflicts? How will the
current conflict, when it ends, be fit into a numerical policy?
You know, who do we take a percentage from to cover this. I, my
own guess, just from my own assessment of how it would be done,
is we will probably scrap the percentage policy and go to a
more rational basis for resource allocation.
Mrs. Davis. Well, I am glad to hear that it is being
reviewed; not because I know better how to do it, I just think
that it is helpful to have people taking some fresh eyes on
that and trying to understand it better.
If we could turn to the personnel issues for just a minute,
because, Admiral Crisp, you mentioned earlier that it is not so
much a matter of money in filling positions but just difficult
in some cases to fill those positions. And I am wondering if
you could share with us, what are some of the difficulties in
doing that?
The other issue is just the consolidation of operations and
whether it makes sense to have a number of different
operations, or whether consolidating some of that makes any
more sense, having operations near the archives in some cases?
How best to be more, not necessarily efficient with it, but
also to have it work better for the people that are engaged in
this operation?
Admiral Crisp. I am looking right now at our laboratory, so
when you look at the laboratory, if you are just talking
manning--I don't have the numbers, I did it back home--the
laboratory as a whole is manned at 93 percent. That doesn't
really tell you the story, so you have to dig down to, well,
what are the specialties that you are having problems with?
And the scientists came to me, the anthropologists, and
said, you know, we are having problems; maybe we should move
somewhere else.
So, from my background, I said, what is the real issue? Is
it recruiting? Is it retention? Is it an increased capacity of
the identification? What are we dealing with? And so they said,
well, it is really recruiting and retention.
So what I said is, okay, there is a suite of things that
are available to any command in the Department of Defense to
handle recruiting and retention issues. Have we done any of
these? No. I said, okay.
Well, the first thing we are going to do is we are going to
look at robust internship programs. We are going to look at the
National Security Personnel System, pay system. Part of that
allows a labor market supplement. Let's do the analysis to see
if our anthropologists are paid differently than those in the
rest of the United States, so you know if you are basically
shooting yourself in the foot before you even start, to do all
of the homework. Do you have career ladders? No. What do you
expect from your people? Do you want them to go out to the
field and then have one or two managers? And I said, okay, you
need to have a career ladder system for your scientists, and so
those are all the things that we are looking at.
What I have asked Ambassador Ray is that, rather than to
rush into a singular person's thought of, well, gosh, if I just
lived in Virginia, life would be fabulous, rather than to rush
into that, to do all our homework, to do a business case
analysis, to do the appropriate things we need to do in
recruiting and retention, and look at, do I need to change end-
strength within my own command? Do I have too many linguists
and not enough anthropologists? I want to look at that whole
picture, fix the command to where I think it needs to be for an
optimum laboratory. And then, if that doesn't work, is when I
would come to my boss and to Ambassador Ray and say, okay, we
need another solution.
So I know that is not as fast as some of my constituents
would like me to do it, but I think that is the best thing, the
best approach.
Mrs. Davis. Well, thank you, because I think clearly you
are saying that there may be a way that you can have the kinds
of qualified people that you need but to have them differently.
Admiral Crisp. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Davis. And that might bring about a much better result
and a result that certainly serves our families. And that is
what we are all about, is trying to find a way to do that. I
appreciate that.
Mr. McHugh.
Mr. McHugh. I may just tie into the question, Admiral, you
just responded to the Chair. I am assuming--I get in trouble
when I do this--but I am assuming at the end of the hearing at
some point, the Chair will move to accept into the record a
number of documents that have been submitted to us.
You have not had a chance to see those, so I am not going
to quiz you on it, but one of them comes from a gentleman, Ron
Broward, who may be familiar to you, but he lists a lot of
thoughts and a lot of suggestions. One of the observations he
makes is of the number of unidentified remains that are
currently in the Punchbowl from the Korean War.
Of course, as you all well know, those are, that figure is
just part of the 1,200 to 1,214 number of remains that are
currently at the central identification lab awaiting
identifications.
I spoke earlier about the concerns I have with respect to
the out-year budgets of 2009 through 2013. I am just curious,
Admiral, is that process you are undergoing right now, it would
seem a reduction of that number would require more
anthropologists--maybe I am wrong, I don't--scientists,
something, more something, or rebalancing.
So how are we going to achieve a reduction of that number,
that backlog?
Admiral Crisp. The first way we are going to achieve it is
by expanding the facilities, which we did temporarily. So, by
October, I will be able to lay out the remains so that the
anthropologists have a better chance of identifying the Koreans
in the 208 that were--boxes--that were given to us.
Mr. McHugh. So part of that backlog is generated by the
mere fact we don't have the physical space to tackle it?
Admiral Crisp. To lay it out, yes, sir.
With the identifications in Punchbowl, I know that the DNA
was destroyed. All that is left, at least right now,
scientifically, is if I have a skull with teeth in it, and, in
fact, I just sat down with Ron, and we were going through some
of his thoughts on a database. There are things that can be
done, but it isn't going to be a massive fix for all of the
unknowns at Punchbowl, and that will only take time. And when
AFDIL and their scientists break through that barrier of
figuring out how to get into the bone of whatever DNA might be
left.
So just so we all know, the Army, during the Korean War--
they didn't do it during World War II, they did not do it after
Korean War--soaked all the bones in formaldehyde and then
covered it with a formaldehyde case, and it did, indeed, keep
the bones perfect but destroyed DNA. So unless we have the
skull with the teeth, there is nothing we can do.
I have advised that it is not prudent to dig up all of
these heroes and put them in JPAC and leave them for some
future advancement at AFDIL when they are honorably buried
there at Punchbowl.
So what I would prefer to do is to wait till that
scientific breakthrough takes place and then take them out.
Because as soon as you remove people from Punchbowl, new people
come in, and then you are just left with them being at JPAC.
Mr. McHugh. I appreciate your laying that out. Your
description raises a question in my mind. It is hard to
answer--it is hard to know what you don't know. However, I am
going to ask you anyway.
Of those 1,200 to 1,400, you presumably have a certain
number that are non-U.S., that are Korean, or--are you sure
they are all U.S.?
Admiral Crisp. I know they have reported to me that there
are some non-U.S, but the information, the data I have with me
today, is strictly what is believed to be U.S.
Mr. McHugh. Okay, of that 1,200 to 1,400, those with
currently unrecoverable DNA samples is what number? Do you
know?
Admiral Crisp. Oh, for that, that would be about 800. Let
me look.
Mr. McHugh. So, basically, the Korean.
Admiral Crisp. All of the unknowns that are in Punchbowl--
okay, 857, 857.
Mr. McHugh. And under current method, we have no way to
extract the DNA, without teeth?
Admiral Crisp. The only way we can do it is if I had the
teeth.
So, for that reason, that would be the last group of people
I would just begin exhuming. I prefer to take the remains of
the 208 that were given to me from North Korea that are
actually 400 people and begin working on those as my first line
for Korea.
Mr. McHugh. I understand. I would assume all of us, and I
know you are familiar with, certainly thousands, and I don't
have a number of individual family members, family groups that
are concerned about the identification of a loved one that was
lost, and I have a number of them. It is source of inspiration
in a very important way to see these folks, after all these
years, still care so much about a family member and be so moved
when closure finally comes, or at least a little piece that
takes them closer to closure.
Many of those, and one lady and her family, Christine
LaFrate, have been very active and have shared some questions
with me, most of which I will submit for the record, Madam
Chairman. But I would like to ask you one here today.
From their experience, they know that there are really
multiple organizations involved in the accounting effort, two
of them of which are here today. DPMO and JPAC are the largest,
but they have had to deal with the service casualty offices and
other agencies. They are not so much questioning that fact,
but, rather, they have at times been frustrated as they cite
other families have been as well, because each of the
government agencies responsible for POW/MIA issues apparently
continued to individually maintain their only files on each
unresolved case.
And, through their experience, none of these files always
contain all the information that another file does, and that is
bureaucracy at its finest. They are just curious as to what
extent we may be working to have a centralized file, if nothing
else. We don't want to cripple that multiplicity of effort,
necessarily, but one file.
Admiral Crisp. I will tell you the small part that we are
doing and on that geospatial system that we are building. It is
basically a middle ware that begins drilling down on any legacy
data or people's individual files in order to create a holistic
picture of every case.
So we are at the point where we are beta testing it in the
field so that I can download it and a team can begin taking all
of the data with them. And I am just beginning to share that
with several people to test it at DPMO so that they can drill
down with the expectation that all of our historians and all of
our analysts and everyone who has files will be able to feed
that into a singular system so they can all work with the same
picture.
Ambassador Ray. And I might answer that we are also looking
at a project now for creating a portal so that each element of
the community can have visibility into the files of every other
element, which would then hopefully mitigate some of this
bureaucratic missing of papers.
But back to the service casualty offices, we find that
while there are occasionally instances where one agency's files
will maybe not have something that another has, is that having
the Service Casualty Office be the principal point of contact
with the family members prevents a lot of confusion and enables
us to make sure that the families are getting a consistent
message, that they are not getting different stories as they
move around Washington.
But they also don't have to run around Washington to find
someone to talk to. That Service Casualty Office is their
primary point of contact. Whether it is an identification made
by JPAC or whether it is a new piece of information found by
one of my analysts, we seldom provide that to our families
directly ourselves except at our family update meetings
monthly. That is given to the Service Casualty Office to be
relayed to the family who are there.
Mr. McHugh. Well, without question, they will be uplifted
to hear that there is going to be some progress in that area.
Madam Chairman, if I may just close my portion here today,
I want to thank both the ambassador and the admiral for joining
us, and for everybody in the audience who didn't take that hour
or so hiatus that we did in the cool Capitol for sticking it
out here.
Again, I have enormous respect for the mission that you
have taken up and the deepest admiration for those,
particularly for those out in the field who tried to bring some
closure and hold up one of this Nation's most, I think,
outstanding pledges, and that is to bring everyone home and
that full accounting, no matter how long it takes and no matter
what the barriers are in front of us.
I just want to again underscore the great challenge that
you face. Finding these remains is an incredibly difficult
chore, and it is only half the chore. Then we have to match
them and bring them home to those that have waited for so long,
and it is a dual challenge, each of which is of great
dimension. I know all of us here on this subcommittee, the full
committee, indeed the entire House, want to be as supportive as
we can.
With that final word of appreciation, my thanks again to
you, Madam Chairman, for holding this hearing. I would yield
back.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. McHugh.
Ms. Shea-Porter. I, too, would like to thank you for your
work. It is a grim task, and I would like to thank all those
who do this every single day. It is the way that we honor our
commitment to our POWs/MIAs, and they are certainly in our
prayers and your workload every single day. Thank you for that.
Thank you for the hearing.
Mrs. Davis. I want to thank you as well. It certainly is a
painstaking effort, but it is to help relieve some of the pain
of those who have sacrificed so greatly. We appreciate that.
I have not had an opportunity to work with this issue
before, but I feel that you come with great seriousness, and I
really appreciate that.
We want to work with you to try to help, to make those
steps come together as easily as possible, because it is quite
difficult. And moving from one phase to another, I know, can be
quite difficult, and we appreciate that.
I also wanted to acknowledge the work of--there are many,
many, people that I think we have submissions from, two
individuals in particular, who have gone to great lengths to
work over the years with families, and I want to acknowledge
them and their submissions that I would ask unanimous consent
that the written submissions be included in the record: Ann
Mills Griffiths, the Executive Director of the National League
of POW/MIA Families; and also Mr. Ron Broward, supported by the
World War II Families for the Return of the Missing, the
National Alliance of Families, the Korean War Families and the
Korean War Veterans Association.
And they will be submitted for the record.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 55 and page 67.]
Mrs. Davis. Certainly members have up to five working days
to submit any additional questions that they may have.
Thank you very much for your testimony today. Thank you to
all of you in the audience for being so patient and having to
sit through this warm room today. We appreciate it. Thank you
very much.
[Whereupon, at 4:56 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
July 10, 2008
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
July 10, 2008
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DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
July 10, 2008
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
July 10, 2008
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MRS. DAVIS
Mrs. Davis. DPMO has the responsibility of providing for the
centralized management of POW/MIA for the Department, including
notification to families of information from investigations and other
agencies. There are concerns that information and action on cases are
not being provided to families. For example, there have been cases
where members were removed from the Last Known Alive list but families
were not notified, or information on cases provided from private
researchers were also not provided to families. What process has DPMO
established to ensure that information that it obtain, action taken on
specific cases, or identification of remains are relayed to the primary
next of kin in a timely manner?
Ambassador Ray. DPMO strives to keep all the service casualty
offices fully informed of all new information that is received or
developed on the cases of missing personnel so that information can be
passed to the families of the missing. At the same time, DPMO is
required by law to provide similar information from Vietnam War cases
to the general public, which it does through the Library of Congress.
Recently, there was a Marine Corps family who located a document in the
Library of Congress that they had not received from the Marine Corps
casualty office. Likewise, there was a case involving an Air Force
family member who had not been informed of the results of the Last
Known Alive review of their loved one's case. DPMO regrets both errors.
Moreover, DPMO is working even more closely with the services, to
include two biannual discussions of such issues, to ensure that the
families receive all information on their case in a prompt manner.
Moreover, DPMO recently assumed responsibility for compiling,
redacting, and providing to the service casualty offices all message
traffic from JPAC and DIA, for forwarding to the families. This effort
has reduced by three months the time necessary for this information to
be provided to the families.
Mrs. Davis. The Vietnamese Prime Minister recently visited
Washington and met with the President, Secretary of Defense and Acting
Secretary of State. The Prime Minister reportedly pledged to allow US
Navy ships to participate in underwater recovery operations in
Vietnamese waters. We understand that JPAC is planning on using a
hydrographic US Navy ship to facilitate the recovery operations. How
does the use of a hydrographic ship facilitate the recovery operations?
Ambassador Ray. The utilization of a US Navy hydrographic survey
vessel should facilitate JPAC's underwater investigation processes by
employing the vessel's state-of-the-art technology in locating and
correlating underwater losses. The vessel will assist JPAC in
confirming underwater loss locations and better clarifying the
subsurface distribution of incident-related material and intra-site
patterning of material evidence. Use of a US Navy hydrographic vessel
will enable JPAC to conduct underwater investigations prior to any
excavation operations.
Mrs. Davis. The Vietnamese Prime Minister also pledged to renew
unilateral efforts on archival records. What efforts is DPMO taking to
leverage this level of commitment? How is this pledge different from
those that were made in the past?
Ambassador Ray. DPMO is preparing to follow up on Prime Minister
Dung's commitment and re-engage the Vietnamese government to seek
access to Vietnamese archival records that could assist our efforts to
account for U.S. personnel missing in the Vietnam War. When we meet
with the Vietnamese for our policy level assessment on September 17,
2008, we will communicate his statement that the Government of Vietnam
has archival records concerning our losses in wartime Laos and
Cambodia, whose existence was previously generally denied, and is
prepared to provide them unilaterally to us. This is the first time we
have received such a high level commitment on this subject, and we will
make every effort to ensure it will translate into meaningful results.
Mrs. Davis. To what extent has the DPMO or JPAC raised the issue of
adequacy of support in the collection of family reference samples by
the casualty offices to the senior leadership of the Department? What
has been the response?
Ambassador Ray. DPMO has kept the Department's leadership apprised
of progress on collecting DNA family reference samples of all
unaccounted-for service members from World War II forward, including
the significant advances the service casualty offices have achieved in
recent years. In order to improve collection even further, DPMO is
currently leading an effort involving JPAC, the service casualty
offices, the Armed Forces DNA Laboratory (AFDIL), and the Joint Staff
to review all aspects of the family reference sample collection
process, identify gaps, and recommend solutions. We anticipate this
review will result in further improvement in the efforts by all the
organizations involved. The Department supports these efforts.
Mrs. Davis. Should DPMO and/or JPAC have some responsibility for
collection of family reference samples?
Ambassador Ray. Both DPMO and JPAC have responsibilities in the DNA
family reference sample collection process. DPMO is responsible for
oversight and coordination of the entire process and for all the
organizations that play a role, such as the service casualty offices,
AFDIL, and JPAC. JPAC is responsible for identifying cases for which it
requires samples and informing the service casualty offices of their
requirements. The service casualty offices are responsible for
contacting appropriate DNA family reference donors and providing them
with collection kits. We believe that our ongoing review will result in
improvements in each organization's performance.
Mrs. Davis. What should be done to improve the response time in
obtaining family reference samples of DNA?
Ambassador Ray. The response time for obtaining DNA family
reference samples is based on several factors, and even in relatively
straightforward cases, collection can take several months. In those
instances in which the service casualty offices must search for
suitable donors, successful genealogic research can take 60-90 days.
Casualty officers must then make contact with the donor, explain the
requirement, and send a collection kit to the family. In some
instances, they must make repeated contact to ensure the donor provides
a sample and sends it to AFDIL. In cases where no suitable donor can be
found despite genealogical research, or appropriate donors will not
consent to provide a sample, the response time can be protracted as the
service casualty offices seek other solutions. Despite a great amount
of hard work by dedicated persons, the effort can stall altogether.
We anticipate that our ongoing review of the DNA family reference
sample process will result in some improvements in response times, but
in many instances, finding suitable donors who are willing to provide
samples will inherently involve a lengthy process, and sometimes we
will not succeed.
Mrs. Davis. What factors are inhibiting JPAC's ability to reduce
the backlog of identifications of remains at the CIL in Hawaii?
[Question 24, for cross-reference.]
Admiral Crisp. The term ``backlog'' is not defined in the
traditional sense; all 1,078 boxes of remains have been analyzed;
however, identification is impacted by the following factors: (1) The
quality of the evidence (in this case, the amount and type of human
remains available for analysis with current technology), (2) the
quality and quantity of before-death records on which to base a
forensic comparison, (3) the quantity and quality of the scientific
staff doing the analysis, (4) the adequacy of the laboratory
facilities, and 5) the availability of DNA reference samples.
Mrs. Davis. To what extent are shortages of personnel in JPAC
contributing to the backlog or reducing the time forensic personnel can
spend in the labs?
Admiral Crisp. As previously addressed (Question 24), the shortage
of qualified scientific staff is not the sole issue regarding the
backlog; current technology does not exist to address many of the
cases. However, trained forensic anthropologists are vital to our
ability to establish identifications. JPAC has 18 authorized civilian
anthropologists and 7 archeologists; 13 anthropologists and 5
archeologists are currently assigned. Additionally, the Command
utilizes Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) fellows
to supplement our scientific staff to accomplish our mission. We have
seen an overall reduction in qualified ORISE applicants over the past
five years. The shortage of assigned personnel contributes to a
reduction of time spent in the laboratory in order to maintain the
operations tempo of 70 team deployments per year. JPAC has taken
aggressive action to recruit for these vacancies and is working closely
with US Pacific Command and Hawaii's Navy Human Resource Office.
Mrs. Davis. JPAC is undergoing a feasibility study to address these
concerns, when do you anticipate that the study will be completed?
Admiral Crisp. JPAC is currently conducting a detailed recruiting
and retention review. We anticipate completing this review in October
2008 and will forward our findings to the US Pacific Command.
Mrs. Davis. To what extent has the DPMO or JPAC raised the issue of
adequacy of support in the collection of family reference samples by
the casualty offices to the senior leadership of the Department? What
has been the response? [Question 27, for cross-reference.]
Admiral Crisp. In 2008, JPAC recommended this complex process be
reviewed for improvement. Analysis is being conducted by the DPMO led
Senior Study Group comprised of executive level government officials
from throughout the accounting community. The Accounting Community
includes operational organizations, the Joint Staff, Combatant
Commands, and the Services. The results of the Family Reference Sample
process review will then be presented to a Senior Leadership Council
for action; Senior Executive Service and General/Flag officers from
within the accounting community. The adequacy of support for the
collection of family references samples is not solely a military
Service issue; it cuts across many organizations and requires support
throughout the Department.
Mrs. Davis. Should DPMO and/or JPAC have some responsibility for
collection of family reference samples?
Admiral Crisp. JPAC is responsible for providing reference sample
collection requirements and prioritization of reference samples for
collection to the Service Casualty Offices and the Armed Forces DNA
Identification Laboratory. JPAC does not recommend being assigned any
additional responsibility for direct interface with families to obtain
their reference samples. Interfacing with the families is the
responsibility of the military Service Casualty Offices.
Mrs. Davis. What should be done to improve the response time in
obtaining family reference samples of DNA? [Question 29, for cross-
reference.]
Admiral Crisp. There are two areas which could improve the Family
Reference Sample process: 1) Completion of the process improvement
study being conducted by the DPMO led Senior Study Group. 2) A greater
awareness of families of the importance of family reference samples to
the identification process, as well as leveraging Veteran Service
Organizations to assist in locating families of the unaccounted for
individuals. Leveraging Veteran Service Organizations does not include
contacting families.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. MCHUGH
Mr. McHugh. Ambassador Ray, achieving the fullest possible
accounting for the prisoners of war and missing from the Nation's past
and current wars is a national priority and requires an effort that is
worldwide in scope. Furthermore, given the large numbers of service
members unaccounted for from past wars. the effort required to achieve
the fullest possible accounting will, among other things, require world
class resources and structure. I am concerned, however, that neither
DOD nor Pacific Command has a strategy, built the required
organizations and structure, or committed the resources necessary to
achieve the national objective of the fullest possible accounting. My
concerns are based on the following: - The current DOD strategy treats
the WW II accounting mission remains ``very much a work in progress,''
with no coherent answers apparent as to how the nation will achieve the
fullest possible accounting for this war. DOD and JPAC funding and
resourcing levels for the next five years are structured ``to cover
operations at the current level for the Vietnam Conflict, and the
Korean War, with the exception of any DPRK [North Korean]
operations&.and provides for expanding the level of effort for World
War II&.,'' according to a DOD report provided to the SASC a year ago
(July 2007). Funding DPMO and JPAC for the ``current level of effort''
does not address the evidence of significant unfunded requirements. -
Resourcing allocation rules provide up to 70% of those available to the
most recent wars, leaving the largest accounting requirements for Korea
and World War II to share the remainder. - Reorganization decisions
that gave US Pacific Command (with its subordinate units at JPAC/
Central Identification Lab) a world-wide accounting mission, without
giving the either PACOM or the Navy any additional resources to fund
the mission, also eliminated the oversight of the remains recovery and
identification process previously exercised on a world-wide basis by
the Army as DOD's executive agent for mortuary affairs. It is not clear
whether there is any effort to examine how the Army's significant
capabilities could be reintegrated into the accounting effort. Given
those concerns, how should a future accounting effort be restructured
and resourced to achieve the fullest possible accounting on a worldwide
scale?
Ambassador Ray. Ideally, a future accounting effort would be
structured and resourced to support increased research on World War II
and Korean War losses (principally in U.S. archives), increased
scientific staff and facilities to support remains identification for
all conflicts, and additional remains recovery teams to provide the
capacity to increase operations worldwide and provide short-notice,
worldwide follow-up to recover remains lying exposed to the elements or
sites in imminent danger of destruction by local development. Research
should be organized to identify responsibilities for each organization
and align all efforts to support communications, investigations,
operations, and remains identification. The ultimate goal is to
increase the rate of remains identified annually.
More specifically, a future accounting effort should be
restructured and resourced by conflict as follows:
1.) World War II:
a) Increase research and analysis to:
-- respond to queries from families and other external
persons;
-- support investigations, excavations, and remains
identifications, and;
-- define losses that are not recoverable.
b) Increase and prioritize WWII remains recovery operations
to:
-- comply with Congressional guidance to pursue aviation
losses in the Southwest Pacific, including Papua New Guinea;
-- respond to information provided by non-USG entities
identifying sites for excavation, and;
-- focus on sites in countries where personnel accounting
operations can support broader National engagement goals.
c) Develop the Personnel Missing World War II data base to
enable family access and support for United States Government
efforts.
2.) Korean War:
a) Increase emphasis on:
-- improving DNA identification technologies and other
forensic support for the identification of Korean War remains
already recovered and;
-- archival research to support the identification process.
This effort will require additional scientific staff and
facilities, which will also benefit other conflicts.
b) Establish and fund a separate initiative focused on:
-- research to improve DNA support to remains identification
and possibly solve problems associated with identifying Korean
War remains buried as unknowns.
c) At the same time, to the extent the information base and
international access permit:
-- maintain sufficient recovery and investigative teams to
investigate and recover losses on the Korean Peninsula and,
when relevant, China. This includes the ability to work in
South Korea at the same time as North Korea, when operations
resume in the latter.
d) Develop the capability to exploit our new access to China's
military archives.
e) Facilitate inter-agency planning toward a Vietnam War
fullest possible accounting approach to operations in the North
when operations resume there.
Vietnam War:
a) Increase remains recovery operations to focus on:
-- investigating cases and excavating sites while the
relatively perishable remains still present can still be
recovered, and;
-- decrease the lengthy and longstanding backlog of recovery
sites in Vietnam and Laos.
b) Maintain analytic and research resources sufficient to
manage the extensive information base on each case, support
investigations and excavations, and respond to family and other
queries.
c) Maintain sufficient in-country Vietnamese, Lao, and
Cambodian language investigators sufficient enough in number to
exploit the aging witness population to the maximum.
Mr. McHugh. Ambassador Ray, the budget justification material sent
to us with the fiscal year 2009 Department of Defense request indicates
that DPMO, JPAC and the other organizations in the accounting community
are funded to meet 100% of their requirements, not only in 2009, but
also through 2013. I would like to know more about the
comprehensiveness of the requirements determination process that both
of you go through, because it seems to me that there are indications
that both your organizations may have substantial unfunded requirements
for missions, money and personnel. There are significant numbers of
remains (1200-1400) already at the Central Identification Lab in
Hawaii, awaiting identifications. To what extent does the FY 09-13
budget submission provide the resources to substantially reduce the
number of remains awaiting identification? Under the FY 09-13 funding
levels, what will be the number of remains at CIL still awaiting
identification in 2013? [Question 8, for cross-reference.]
Ambassador Ray. The requirements determination process for JPAC and
DPMO is part of the Department's larger process in support of the
President's budget request. DPMO is developing, validating, and
prioritizing its FY09 Budget Execution Plan, mapping all requirements
to the DPMO Strategic Plan and internally prioritizing those
requirements to identify the mission essential efforts that warrant
additional funding consideration. Identifying and tracking those
requirements is a continuous process. It is our goal to mitigate all
mission critical unfunded requirements that arise during FY09 through
the Department's Budget Execution Process.
DPMO identified additional FY 2010-2015 funding requirements that
the Department will evaluate in the DoD FY 10-15 POM process. Decisions
on these requests will be documented in future budget requests.
JPAC will be responding to the Committee, under separate cover,
regarding their requirements determination process and unfunded
requirements.
Mr. McHugh. Ambassador Ray, the budget justification material sent
to us with the fiscal year 2009 Department of Defense request indicates
that DPMO, JPAC and the other organizations in the accounting community
are funded to meet 100% of their requirements, not only in 2009, but
also through 2013. I would like to know more about the
comprehensiveness of the requirements determination process that both
of you go through, because it seems to me that there are indications
that both your organizations may have substantial unfunded requirements
for missions, money and personnel. JPAC is authorized 18 field teams,
but we are told that they have sufficient manning for only 15. Does the
FY09-13 budget request provide JPAC with full manning of all 18 teams?
Ambassador Ray. Please refer to question #8 regarding our
requirements determination process. Additionally, JPAC will be
responding to the Committee under separate cover regarding their
requirements process and manning issues.
Mr. McHugh. Ambassador Ray, the budget justification material sent
to us with the fiscal year 2009 Department of Defense request indicates
that DPMO, JPAC and the other organizations in the accounting community
are funded to meet 100% of their requirements, not only in 2009, but
also through 2013. I would like to know more about the
comprehensiveness of the requirements determination process that both
of you go through, because it seems to me that there are indications
that both your organizations may have substantial unfunded requirements
for missions, money and personnel. If, as we are told, the field
research and recovery effort by JPAC requires existing teams to
maintain a very high optempo, a deployment-to-dwell time ratio of 1:1,
to what extent does the FY 09-13 budget request provide additional JPAC
manpower to reduce that high optempo?
Ambassador Ray. Please refer to question #8 regarding our
requirements determination process. Additionally, JPAC will be
responding to the Committee under separate cover regarding the question
of whether or not the FY 09-13 budget submission provides additional
JPAC manpower to reduce their optempo.
Mr. McHugh. Ambassador Ray, the budget justification material sent
to us with the fiscal year 2009 Department of Defense request indicates
that DPMO, JPAC and the other organizations in the accounting community
are funded to meet 100% of their requirements, not only in 2009, but
also through 2013. I would like to know more about the
comprehensiveness of the requirements determination process that both
of you go through, because it seems to me that there are indications
that both your organizations may have substantial unfunded requirements
for missions, money and personnel. We are told that JPAC forensic
anthropologists spend about 17% of their time in the lab and 47% on
deployments/field recoveries, compared to a DPMO standard, we are told,
that indicates they should be spending about 50% of their time in the
lab. Does JPAC have sufficient anthropologists to meet all mission
requirements? Does the FY09-13 budget request provide the resources to
allow JPAC to meet the 50% objective?
Ambassador Ray. While we have laid out our requirements
determination process in our response to question #8, the personnel
accounting community is focused on solving the critical problems
associated with forensic support and field excavations your question
identifies. Additionally, JPAC will be responding to the Committee
under separate cover regarding the question of whether or not they have
sufficient anthropologists to meet all mission requirements, and how
their budget submission meets objectives.
Mr. McHugh. Ambassador Ray, the budget justification material sent
to us with the fiscal year 2009 Department of Defense request indicates
that DPMO, JPAC and the other organizations in the accounting community
are funded to meet 100% of their requirements, not only in 2009, but
also through 2013. I would like to know more about the
comprehensiveness of the requirements determination process that both
of you go through, because it seems to me that there are indications
that both your organizations may have substantial unfunded requirements
for missions, money and personnel. Do JPAC and DPMO maintain an
unfunded requirements list? Can DPMO and JPAC provide that to us?
Ambassador Ray. The requirements determination process for JPAC and
DPMO is part of the Department's larger process in support of the
President's budget request. DPMO is developing, validating, and
prioritizing its FY09 Budget Execution Plan, mapping all requirements
to the DPMO Strategic Plan and internally prioritizing those
requirements to identify the mission essential efforts that warrant
additional funding consideration. Identifying and tracking those
requirements is a continuous process. It is our goal to mitigate all
mission critical unfunded requirements that arise during FY09 through
the Department's Budget Execution Process.
DPMO identified additional FY 2010-2015 funding requirements that
the Department will evaluate in the DoD FY 10-15 POM process. Decisions
on these requests will be documented in future budget requests.
JPAC will be responding to the Committee, under separate cover,
regarding their requirements determination process and unfunded
requirements.
Mr. McHugh. Ambassador Ray, the DOD personnel accounting strategy
allocates the available resources (largely a function of the dollars
available), as follows: 65% for Vietnam War, 20% for Korean War (North
Korea), and 15% for World War II. What's more, because access to North
Korea is suspended, the Vietnam War is getting 70-75% of the resource
allocation. The subcommittee has heard concerns that this resource
allocation needs to be readjusted because the resource allocation
priority on Southeast Asia has not resulted in increased
identifications there, and that reallocation of some resources to other
previous conflicts may result in an overall increase in recovery and
identification of Americans MIAs from all conflicts. Is the DOD
resource allocation and ``most recent first'' approach consistent with
the government's objective of achieving the fullest possible accounting
for all wars?
Ambassador Ray. DPMO, with JPAC's assistance, is currently
reassessing the ``most recent conflict first'' concept and the 65-20-15
formula to determine if this approach is consistent with the
government's objective of achieving the fullest possible accounting for
all wars. We are developing guidance that devotes a meaningful,
serious, and balanced level of effort to account for Americans missing
in past conflicts, regardless of the conflict, and one that recognizes
this is an enduring mission that will go on for the foreseeable future.
As part of this effort, we are discussing overarching guidance that
will apply to all conflicts, as well as a summary of the direction for
each conflict, based on its own unique requirements. We look forward to
sharing the results of our deliberations with the Committee as soon as
they are complete.
Mr. McHugh. Ambassador Ray, the DOD personnel accounting strategy
allocates the available resources (largely a function of the dollars
available), as follows: 65% for Vietnam War, 20% for Korean War (North
Korea), and 15% for World War II. What's more, because access to North
Korea is suspended, the Vietnam War is getting 70-75% of the resource
allocation. The subcommittee has heard concerns that this resource
allocation needs to be readjusted because the resource allocation
priority on Southeast Asia has not resulted in increased
identifications there, and that reallocation of some resources to other
previous conflicts may result in an overall increase in recovery and
identification of Americans MIAs from all conflicts. Do DPMO and JPAC
believe the resource allocation and ``most recent first'' strategy need
to be revised? If so, how?
Ambassador Ray. DPMO, with JPAC's assistance. is currently
reassessing the ``most recent conflict first'' concept and the 65-20-15
formula. We are developing guidance that devotes a meaningful, serious,
and balanced level of effort to account for Americans missing in past
conflicts, regardless of the conflict, and one that recognizes this is
an enduring mission that will go on for the foreseeable future. As part
of this effort, we are discussing overarching guidance that will apply
to all conflicts, as well as a summary of the direction for each
conflict, based on its own unique requirements. JPAC is prepared to re-
adjust their accounting operations in the field based on the revised
national-level guidance. We look forward to sharing the results of our
deliberations with the Committee as soon as they are complete.
Mr. McHugh. Ambassador Ray, the purpose of the outreach program is
to contact persons authorized to direct the disposition of remains and
acquire reference DNA specimens from the families of Americans who are
MIAs. Currently outreach to families to obtain family reference samples
are the responsibility of the military services' casualty offices.
Without such DNA reference samples, according to a July 1995 Defense
Science Board Task Force report, many identifications (500 cases from
Southeast Asia, 200 remains that were repatriated by North Korea, and
865 unidentified American remains from Korea interred in the National
Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii) may not be
identified. However, given the many competing demands on the service
casualty offices, there is concern that these offices do not have the
resources to conduct effective outreach programs to family members to
obtain DNA reference samples. For example, JPAC forensic scientists
estimate that three to four years elapse between the time a sample is
requested and when it is received. To what extent has the DPMO or JPAC
raised the issue of adequacy of support in the collection of family
reference samples by the casualty offices to the senior leadership of
the Department? What has been the response?
Ambassador Ray. DPMO has kept the Department's leadership apprised
of progress on collecting DNA family reference samples, on all
unaccounted for service members from World War II forward, including
the significant advances the service casualty offices have achieved in
recent years. To improve collection even further, DPMO is currently
leading an effort involving JPAC, the service casualty offices, the
Armed Forces DNA Laboratory (AFDIL), and the Joint Staff to review all
aspects of the family reference sample collection process, identify
gaps, and recommend solutions. We anticipate this review will result in
further improvement in the efforts by all the organizations involved.
The Department's leadership supports this effort.
Mr. McHugh. Ambassador Ray, the purpose of the outreach program is
to contact persons authorized to direct the disposition of remains and
acquire reference DNA specimens from the families of Americans who are
MIAs. Currently outreach to families to obtain family reference samples
are the responsibility of the military services' casualty offices.
Without such DNA reference samples, according to a July 1995 Defense
Science Board Task Force report, many identifications (500 cases from
Southeast Asia, 200 remains that were repatriated by North Korea, and
865 unidentified American remains from Korea interred in the National
Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii) may not be
identified. However, given the many competing demands on the service
casualty offices, there is concern that these offices do not have the
resources to conduct effective outreach programs to family members to
obtain DNA reference samples. For example, JPAC forensic scientists
estimate that three to four years elapse between the time a sample is
requested and when it is received. Should DPMO and/or JPAC have some
responsibility for collection of family reference samples?
Ambassador Ray. Both DPMO and JPAC have responsibilities in the DNA
family reference sample collection process on all unaccounted-for
service members from World War II onward. DPMO is responsible for
oversight and coordination of the entire process for all the
organizations that play a role, such as the service casualty offices,
AFDIL, and JPAC. JPAC is responsible for identifying cases for which it
requires samples and informing the service casualty offices of these
requirements. The service casualty offices are responsible for
contacting appropriate DNA family reference donors and providing them
with collection kits. We believe that our ongoing review will result in
improvements in each organization's performance.
Mr. McHugh. Ambassador Ray, the purpose of the outreach program is
to contact persons authorized to direct the disposition of remains and
acquire reference DNA specimens from the families of Americans who are
MIAs. Currently outreach to families to obtain family reference samples
are the responsibility of the military services' casualty offices.
Without such DNA reference samples, according to a July 1995 Defense
Science Board Task Force report, many identifications (500 cases from
Southeast Asia, 200 remains that were repatriated by North Korea, and
865 unidentified American remains from Korea interred in the National
Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii) may not be
identified. However, given the many competing demands on the service
casualty offices, there is concern that these offices do not have the
resources to conduct effective outreach programs to family members to
obtain DNA reference samples. For example, JPAC forensic scientists
estimate that three to four years elapse between the time a sample is
requested and when it is received. What should be done to improve the
response time in obtaining family reference samples of DNA?
Ambassador Ray. The response time for obtaining DNA family
reference samples is based on several factors, and even in relatively
straightforward cases, collection can take several months. In those
instances in which the service casualty offices must search for
suitable donors, successful genealogic research can take 60-90 days.
Casualty officers must then make contact with the donor, explain the
requirement, and send a collection kit to the family. In some
instances, they must make repeated contact to ensure the donor provides
a sample and sends it to AFDIL. In cases where no suitable donor can be
found despite genealogical research, or appropriate donors will not
consent to provide a sample, the response time can be protracted as the
service casualty offices seek other solutions. Despite a great amount
of hard work by dedicated persons, the effort can stall altogether.
We anticipate that our ongoing review of the DNA family reference
sample process will result in some improvements in response times, but
in many instances, finding suitable donors who are willing to provide
samples will inherently involve a lengthy process, and sometimes we
will not succeed.
Mr. McHugh. Ambassador Ray, why does DPMO classify cases as ``No
Further Pursuit'' (NFP) when there are indeed leads that have yet to be
followed in some of these cases? I have been told by POW/MIA families
that DPMO assigns the NFP classification to cases where all leads have
been followed, every avenue of investigation has been pursued and there
is simply nothing more than can be done. However, I am also told that
even in NFP cases where new information comes up or leads are being
followed, the cases remains classified as NFP. Can you explain? On what
basis does DPMO move a case from the NFP category? How does a family
get the NFP classification changed?
Ambassador Ray. To maximize our manpower and other resources, DPMO
analysts, in coordination with JPAC analysts and representatives from
the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Life Sciences Equipment
Laboratory, prioritize our investigative and recovery work in Southeast
Asia. Cases are put in the ``no further pursuit'' (NFP) category only
when it is the consensus of the analysts that in investigating the
leads they have developed clear and convincing evidence demonstrating
that the remains of the American are unrecoverable and further efforts
on the case would be futile. Nevertheless, should we receive promising
new information that indicates the remains are recoverable, we will
investigate that information. If, based on this new information, it
appears that the remains may be recoverable, the case will be removed
from the NFP category.
Mr. McHugh. Ambassador Ray, family members have told me that they
have no recourse when they feel that DPMO is making an error or
overlooking pertinent information in a case of an unaccounted for
service member. What is the appeal or review mechanism or process in
such cases?
Ambassador Ray. In my tenure at DPMO, I have found the office to be
one of the most transparent offices in the United States Government. We
incorporate, at all levels, the families' views, as well as those of
all other elements of the accounting community, in order to achieve the
fullest possible accounting. Steps involving every aspect of a case are
immediately reported to the primary next of kin through the service
casualty offices. Should they wish to appeal any part of our approach
to accounting, they simply need to communicate their views to me, and I
will ensure these are received and reviewed at all levels before
issuing a response.
Mr. McHugh. Admiral Crisp, achieving the fullest possible
accounting for the prisoners of war and missing from the Nation's past
and current wars is a national priority and requires an effort that is
worldwide in scope. Furthermore, given the large numbers of service
members unaccounted for from past wars, the effort required to achieve
the fullest possible accounting will, among other things, require world
class resources and structure. I am concerned, however, that neither
DOD nor Pacific Command has a strategy, built the required
organizations and structure, or committed the resources necessary to
achieve the national objective of the fullest possible accounting. My
concerns are based on the following: - The current DOD strategy treats
the WW II accounting mission remains ``very much a work in progress,''
with no coherent answers apparent as to how the nation will achieve the
fullest possible accounting for this war. - DOD and JPAC funding and
resourcing levels for the next five years are structured ``to cover
operations at the current level for the Vietnam Conflict, and the
Korean War, with the exception of any DPRK [North Korean]
operations&.and provides for expanding the level of effort for World
War II&.,'' according to a DOD report provided to the SASC a year ago
(July 2007). - Funding DPMO and JPAC for the ``current level of
effort'' does not address the evidence of significant unfunded
requirements. - Resourcing allocation rules provide up to 70% of those
available to the most recent wars, leaving the largest accounting
requirements for Korea and World War II to share the remainder. -
Reorganization decisions that gave US Pacific Command (with its
subordinate units at JPAC/Central Identification Lab) a world-wide
accounting mission, without giving the either PACOM or the Navy any
additional resources to fund the mission, also eliminated the oversight
of the remains recovery and identification process previously exercised
on a world-wide basis by the Army as DOD's executive agent for mortuary
affairs. It is not clear whether there is any effort to examine how the
Army's significant capabilities could be reintegrated into the
accounting effort. Given those concerns, how should a future accounting
effort be restructured and resourced to achieve the fullest possible
accounting on a worldwide scale? [Question 30, for cross-reference.]
Admiral Crisp. The October 2006 DoD Strategy to Recover and Account
for Missing Personnel, identifies a level of effort by the following:
65% for the Vietnam War, 20% for the Korean War and 15% for World War
II. This strategy is currently being reviewed by DPMO. JPAC is
structured to accomplish our mission effectively and efficiently, now
and in the future, given where the preponderance of unaccounted for
individuals is located. We conduct an average of 70 team deployments
and establish 70 identifications per year. JPAC currently has only one
significant unfunded requirement: helicopter costs in Southeast Asia
have increased substantially which has resulted in our submission of a
POM 2010 requirement for $9M to cover the estimated costs for fiscal
year 2010 and beyond. When JPAC was established in October 2003, the US
Pacific Command and Navy received all funding originally programmed for
the US Army's Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii. JPAC is in
compliance of DoD Directives, Instructions, and Regulations as
established by the DoD Executive Agent for Mortuary Affairs and uses
the assistance of Army Mortuary' Affairs offices in some theaters.
Mr. McHugh. Admiral Crisp, the budget justification material sent
to us with the fiscal year 2009 Department of Defense request indicates
that DPMO, JPAC and the other organizations in the accounting community
are funded to meet 100% of their requirements, not only in 2009, but
also through 2013. I would like to know more about the
comprehensiveness of the requirements determination process that both
of you go through, because it seems to me that there are indications
that both your organizations may have substantial unfunded requirements
for missions, money and personnel. There are significant numbers of
remains (1200-1400) already at the Central Identification Lab in
Hawaii, awaiting identifications. To what extent does the FY 09-13
budget submission provide the resources to substantially reduce the
number of remains awaiting identification? Under the FY 09-13 funding
levels, what will be the number of remains at CIL still awaiting
identification in 2013? [Question 31, for cross-reference.]
Admiral Crisp. JPAC follows the same rigorous capability/capacity
based requirements determination process as established throughout the
DoD. The foundation for JPAC's accounting mission is established in
Title 10 United States Code, Sections 1501 through 1513, the Missing
Service Personnel Act and DoD Directive 2310.7. As stated in Question
30, JPAC currently has only one significant unfunded requirement;
helicopter costs in Southeast Asia have increased substantially which
has resulted in our submission of a POM 2010 requirement for $9M to
cover the estimated costs for fiscal year 2010 and beyond. We are
programmed for an FY2010/11 MILCON project which will significantly
increase our laboratory facilities thereby potentially reducing the
number of remains awaiting identification. I cannot predict the number
of remains that will be awaiting identification in 2013 primarily
because JPAC cannot forecast which counties we'll have access to or the
quantity or quality of remains recovered at future sites.
Mr. McHugh. Admiral Crisp, the budget justification material sent
to us with the fiscal year 2009 Department of Defense request indicates
that DPMO, JPAC and the other organizations in the accounting community
are funded to meet 100% of their requirements, not only in 2009, but
also through 2013. I would like to know more about the
comprehensiveness of the requirements determination process that both
of you go through, because it seems to me that there are indications
that both your organizations may have substantial unfunded requirements
for missions, money and personnel. JPAC is authorized 18 field teams,
but we are told that they have sufficient manning for only 15. Does the
FY09-13 budget request provide JPAC with full manning of all 18 teams?
Admiral Crisp. The JPAC budget request provides for 18 teams of
authorized end strength and requisite support staff. Historically, the
DoD mans Joint organizations at 85% to 92%; currently our military
manning is at 92%. As stated in question 31, JPAC follows the same
rigorous capability/capacity based requirements determination process
as established throughout the DoD. The foundation for JPAC's accounting
mission is established in Title 10, United States Code, Sections 1501
through 1513, the Missing Service Personnel Act and DoD Directive
2310.7. As stated in Question 30, JPAC currently has only one
significant unfunded requirement; helicopter costs in Southeast Asia
have increased substantially which has resulted in our submission of a
POM 2010 requirement for $9M to cover the estimated costs for fiscal
year 2010 and beyond.
Mr. McHugh. Admiral Crisp, the budget justification material sent
to us with the fiscal year 2009 Department of Defense request indicates
that DPMO, JPAC and the other organizations in the accounting community
are funded to meet 100% of their requirements, not only in 2009, but
also through 2013. I would like to know more about the
comprehensiveness of the requirements determination process that both
of you go through, because it seems to me that there are indications
that both your organizations may have substantial unfunded requirements
for missions, money and personnel. If, as we are told, the field
research and recovery effort by JPAC requires existing teams to
maintain a very high optempo, a deployment-to-dwell time ratio of 1:1,
to what extent does the FY 09-13 budget request provide additional JPAC
manpower to reduce that high optempo?
Admiral Crisp. The FY2008 average deployment tempo for field teams
is 113 days, less than a 1:1 ratio of 176 days. Some senior team
leaders were deployed at a higher average of close to 1:1, as many
times senior team leaders deployed earlier or were deployed on
additional small team missions. JPAC has 18 team leader authorizations
and 13 currently assigned. All team leader positions are O-3 billets;
however, we recently accepted two O-2 candidates. My recent command
guidance, for future planning, is to not deploy personnel for longer
than 160 days each year in order to keep the operations tempo below
1:1. Our military manning is 92%, which is fully mission capable. The
FY09/13 budget does not request additional manpower to reduce the high
operations tempo. JPAC is using the military to civilian billet
conversion, initiated in fiscal year 2008 and extend over a three year
period with all actions to be complete by the end fiscal year 2010, as
an opportunity to shape the quality and quantity of the staff;
specifically adding four forensic anthropologists to the JPAC
laboratory in order to mitigate the operations tempo on our scientific
workforce. As noted in answers to previous questions, JPAC follows the
same rigorous capability/capacity based requirements determination
process as established throughout the DoD. The foundation for JPAC's
accounting mission is established in Title 10, United States Code.
Sections 1501 through 1513, the Missing Service Personnel Act and DoD
Directive 2310.7. As stated in Question 30, JPAC currently has only one
significant unfunded requirement; helicopter costs in Southeast Asia
have increased substantially which has resulted in our submission of a
POM 2010 requirement for $9M to cover the estimated costs for fiscal
year 2010 and beyond.
Mr. McHugh. Admiral Crisp, the budget justification material sent
to us with the fiscal year 2009 Department of Defense request indicates
that DPMO, JPAC and the other organizations in the accounting community
are funded to meet 100% of their requirements, not only in 2009, but
also through 2013. I would like to know more about the
comprehensiveness of the requirements determination process that both
of you go through, because it seems to me that there are indications
that both your organizations may have substantial unfunded requirements
for missions, money and personnel. We are told that JPAC forensic
anthropologists spend about 17% of their time in the lab and 47% on
deployments/field recoveries, compared to a DPMO standard, we are told,
that indicates they should be spending about 50% of their time in the
lab. Does JPAC have sufficient anthropologists to meet all mission
requirements? Does the FY09-13 budget request provide the resources to
allow JPAC to meet the 50% objective?
Admiral Crisp. The DPMO Strategy dated October 2006 states 50% of
the anthropologists' time should be spent ``engaged in identifying
remains''. The identification process actually begins in the field at
the excavation site. JPAC has not submitted a budget request for FY09-
13 to meet a 50% objective. However, in FY 2009, I will increase
forensic anthropologists' billets to 22 from the current 18; this is
accommodated from within my overall end strength. Hiring these
additional personnel will increase the percentage of time the
anthropologists spend engaged in identifying remains. Historically,
JPAC has relied on the ORISE fellowship program to provide additional
deploying forensic anthropologists. We have initiated several programs
to improve retention and recruiting. A report of actions taken will be
forwarded to the US Pacific Command in October 2008 at the conclusion
of the recruiting and retention review. We will reevaluate the success
of these programs in September 2009. As stated in previous questions,
JPAC follows the same rigorous capability/capacity based requirements
determination process as established throughout the DoD. The foundation
for JPAC's accounting mission is established in Title 10, United States
Code, Sections 1501 through 1513, the Missing Service Personnel Act and
DoD Directive 2310.7. As stated in Question 30, JPAC currently has only
one significant unfunded requirement: helicopter costs in Southeast
Asia have increased substantially which has resulted in our submission
of a POM 2010 requirement for $9M to cover the estimated costs for
fiscal year 2010 and beyond.
Mr. McHugh. Admiral Crisp, the budget justification material sent
to us with the fiscal year 2009 Department of Defense request indicates
that DPMO, JPAC and the other organizations in the accounting community
are funded to meet 100% of their requirements, not only in 2009, but
also through 2013. I would like to know more about the
comprehensiveness of the requirements determination process that both
of you go through, because it seems to me that there are indications
that both your organizations may have substantial unfunded requirements
for missions, money and personnel. Do JPAC and DPMO maintain an
unfunded requirements list? Can DPMO and JPAC provide that to us?
Admiral Crisp. As stated in previous questions, JPAC follows the
same rigorous capability/capacity based requirements determination
process as established throughout the DoD. The foundation for JPAC's
accounting mission is established in Title 10, United States Code,
Sections 1501 through 1513, the Missing Service Personnel Act and DoD
Directive 2310.7. As stated in Question 30, JPAC currently has only one
significant unfunded requirement; helicopter costs in Southeast Asia
have increased substantially which has resulted in our submission of a
POM 2010 requirement for $9M to cover the estimated costs for fiscal
year 2010 and beyond.
Mr. McHugh. Admiral Crisp, the DOD personnel accounting strategy
allocates the available resources (largely a function of the dollars
available), as follows: 65% for Vietnam War, 20% for Korean War (North
Korea), and 15% for World War II. What's more, because access to North
Korea is suspended, the Vietnam War is getting 70-75% of the resource
allocation. The subcommittee has heard concerns that this resource
allocation needs to be readjusted because the resource allocation
priority on Southeast Asia has not resulted in increased
identifications there, and that reallocation of some resources to other
previous conflicts may result in an overall increase in recovery and
identification of Americans MIAs from all conflicts. Is the DOD
resource allocation and ``most recent first'' approach consistent with
the government's objective of achieving the fullest possible accounting
for all wars?
Admiral Crisp. JPAC tracks the execution of the DoD Personnel
accounting strategy by the number of teams deployed vice the dollars
available. The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing
Personnel Affairs is currently reassessing the current strategy placing
emphasis on the most recent conflict, along with the level of effort
(65-20-15) currently directed within the strategy. JPAC conducts the
bulk of its accounting work in Southeast Asia based on the guidance and
direction provided by OSD. We look forward to the DoD reassessment of
the current guidance and level-of-effort for personnel accounting and
are prepared to adjust our accounting operations based on the revised
national-level guidance.
Mr. McHugh. Admiral Crisp, the DOD personnel accounting strategy
allocates the available resources (largely a function of the dollars
available), as follows: 65% for Vietnam War, 20% for Korean War (North
Korea), and 15% for World War II. What's more, because access to North
Korea is suspended, the Vietnam War is getting 70-75% of the resource
allocation. The subcommittee has heard concerns that this resource
allocation needs to be readjusted because the resource allocation
priority on Southeast Asia has not resulted in increased
identifications there, and that reallocation of some resources to other
previous conflicts may result in an overall increase in recovery and
identification of Americans MIAs from all conflicts. Do DPMO and JPAC
believe the resource allocation and ``most recent first'' strategy need
to be revised? If so, how?
Admiral Crisp. The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/
Missing Personnel Affairs is currently reassessing the current strategy
placing emphasis on the most recent conflict, along with the level of
effort (65-20-15) currently directed within the strategy. We look
forward to the DoD reassessment of the current guidance and level-of-
effort for personnel accounting and are prepared to adjust our
accounting operations based on revised national-level guidance. JPAC
will then review the new guidance to determine the appropriate manpower
and funding resources required to conduct field and laboratory work, as
well as any environmental and political challenges our operations face.
Mr. McHugh. Admiral Crisp, the purpose of the outreach program is
to contact persons authorized to direct the disposition of remains and
acquire reference DNA specimens from the families of Americans who are
MIAs. Currently outreach to families to obtain family reference samples
are the responsibility of the military services' casualty offices.
Without such DNA reference samples, according to a July 1995 Defense
Science Board Task Force report, many identifications (500 cases from
Southeast Asia, 200 remains that were repatriated by North Korea, and
865 unidentified American remains from Korea interred in the National
Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii) may not be
identified. However, given the many competing demands on the service
casualty offices, there is concern that these offices do not have the
resources to conduct effective outreach programs to family members to
obtain DNA reference samples. For example, JPAC forensic scientists
estimate that three to four years elapse between the time a sample is
requested and when it is received. To what extent has the DPMO or JPAC
raised the issue of adequacy of support in the collection of family
reference samples by the casualty offices to the senior leadership of
the Department? What has been the response?
Admiral Crisp. While the 1995 Defense Science Board report noted
identification of unidentified Americans from the Korean War interred
in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific could likely be
assisted by DNA, subsequent forensic analysis of disinterred remains
have determined the formaldehyde used by the Central Identification
Unit in Kokura, Japan has inhibited the extraction of usable DNA. JPAC
began tracking Family Reference Sample request dates in 2005; of the
482 requests submitted to the Services in 2005, 219 have not yet been
obtained for a variety of reasons. As stated in previous answers, DPMO
is leading a community wide study of this issue. The results of the
study will be provided to the Accounting Community's Senior Study Group
and Senior Leadership Council. These groups are comprised of executive
level government officials from throughout the accounting community.
The accounting community includes operational organizations, the Joint
Staff, Combatant Commands, and the Services. The results of the Family
Reference Sample process review will be presented to a Senior
Leadership Council; Senior Executive Service and General/Flag officers
from within the accounting community. Additionally, as stated in
question 27, the adequacy of support for the collection of family
references samples is not solely a Service issue; it cuts across many
organizations and requires support throughout the Department.
Mr. McHugh. Admiral Crisp, the purpose of the outreach program is
to contact persons authorized to direct the disposition of remains and
acquire reference DNA specimens from the families of Americans who are
MIAs. Currently outreach to families to obtain family reference samples
are the responsibility of the military services' casualty offices.
Without such DNA reference samples, according to a July 1995 Defense
Science Board Task Force report, many identifications (500 cases from
Southeast Asia, 200 remains that were repatriated by North Korea, and
865 unidentified American remains from Korea interred in the National
Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii) may not be
identified. However, given the many competing demands on the service
casualty offices, there is concern that these offices do not have the
resources to conduct effective outreach programs to family members to
obtain DNA reference samples. For example, JPAC forensic scientists
estimate that three to four years elapse between the time a sample is
requested and when it is received. Should DPMO and/or JPAC have some
responsibility for collection of family reference samples?
Admiral Crisp. As stated in question 28, JPAC is responsible for
providing reference sample requirements and prioritization of reference
samples for collection to the Service Casualty Offices and the Armed
Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. JPAC does not recommend any
additional responsibility to interface directly with families to obtain
their reference samples. DPMO is currently conducting a review of the
Family Reference Sample process. The results will be presented to the
DPMO led Senior Study Group comprised of executive level government
officials from throughout the accounting community. The accounting
community includes operational organizations, the Joint Staff,
Combatant Commands, and the Services. The results of the Family
Reference Sample process review will then be presented to a Senior
Leadership Council for action; Senior Executive Service and General/
Flag officers from within the accounting community. The adequacy of
support for the collection of family references samples is not solely a
Service issue: it cuts across many organizations and requires support
throughout the Department.
Mr. McHugh. Admiral Crisp, the purpose of the outreach program is
to contact persons authorized to direct the disposition of remains and
acquire reference DNA specimens from the families of Americans who are
MIAs. Currently outreach to families to obtain family reference samples
are the responsibility of the military services' casualty offices.
Without such DNA reference samples, according to a July 1995 Defense
Science Board Task Force report, many identifications (500 cases from
Southeast Asia, 200 remains that were repatriated by North Korea, and
865 unidentified American remains from Korea interred in the National
Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii) may not be
identified. However, given the many competing demands on the service
casualty offices, there is concern that these offices do not have the
resources to conduct effective outreach programs to family members to
obtain DNA reference samples. For example, JPAC forensic scientists
estimate that three to four years elapse between the time a sample is
requested and when it is received. What should be done to improve the
response time in obtaining family reference samples of DNA?
Admiral Crisp. As stated in question 29, there are two areas which
could improve the Family Reference Sample process: 1) Completion of the
process improvement study being conducted by the DPMO led Senior Study
Group. 2) A greater awareness of families of the importance of family
reference samples to the identification process as well as leveraging
Veteran Service Organizations to assist in locating families of the
unaccounted for individuals. Leveraging Veteran Service Organizations
does not include contacting families.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER
Dr. Snyder. What processes are in place to ensure that families are
notified when there is change of status regarding a service member? Is
there a process for determining whether or not a family wants to be
notified of a change of status, in order to prevent unnecessary
emotional stress?
Ambassador Ray. The Department has longstanding practices and
procedures to notify family members when a change in their loved one's
status is about to take place. Prior to any status change, i.e. a
pending identification of remains, the respective service casualty
office is in close contact with the designated Primary Next of Kin
(PNOK) and/or the Person Authorized to Direct Disposition (PADD) of
remains. Once JPAC identifies remains it sends that information to the
appropriate service casualty officer. The service casualty officer
reviews the information for completeness and arranges a time to meet
with the family to brief them on the identification process and the
identification of their loved one's remains. No change in status is
made until the PNOK formally accepts the identification of the remains.
We are obligated to notify all families about changes in status.
The service casualty offices have been in contact with the families of
our missing for many years and consequently know best which particular
family member to relay this information to and the appropriate manner
in which to do it. DPMO has a team of four military personnel (three
officers and one NCO) who work in DPMO's External Affairs (EA)
Directorate and serve as liaisons to the service casualty offices. All
requests for information made by the services, on behalf of their
family members, to DPMO come through the EA liaison team, which ensures
the questions are addressed by the analytic and/or policy staff within
the office. Conversely, information obtained or developed by DPMO that
relates to a specific case is passed from DPMO through the EA officers
to their counterparts in the services for forwarding to the appropriate
family.
Dr. Snyder. Should DPMO and JPAC be given flexibility to shift the
number of missions they allocate to a given country based on the rate
of remains recovered per team?
Ambassador Ray. We have sufficient flexibility to assign teams
around the world. Decisions on where to assign teams are based on many
criteria. These include sites where we may find information on
Americans who were prisoners of war, or are believed to be good
candidates to have been captured, yet we lack convincing evidence of
death; remains are exposed or are in imminent danger of loss; we have
sufficient information to support a productive excavation; ability to
obtain access to the area or country; existing commitments to
individual countries or families; and weather and other logistical
considerations.
As a practical matter, allocating teams based solely on the rate of
remains recovered per team in a given country would likely result in
focusing chiefly on multi-crew World War II aircraft losses. In fact as
long as we are not operating in North Korea, a decision made solely on
this criterion would mean that we ceased all Korean War, Vietnam War,
and Cold War accounting operations.
Dr. Snyder. There is anecdotal evidence that North Korea regularly
disturbs or even falsifies sets of remains that they lead JPAC teams
to. Should DPMO and JPAC be given flexibility to cancel missions to
North Korea when they become particularly uncooperative?
Ambassador Ray. To date, we have recovered U.S. remains on every
remains recovery operation undertaken in North Korea. In some cases,
remains have been planted and sites disturbed prior to our arrival,
apparently to ensure that our excavations always result in the recovery
of remains. We have repeatedly asked the government of North Korea not
to engage in this activity, even if it means that an excavation might
result in our teams not finding remains, and we will continue to do so.
Nonetheless, it is our assessment that operations have been
sufficiently productive to justify continuation. DPMO and JPAC
personnel working in North Korea are responsible for reporting daily to
the Department and USPACOM. Should conditions deteriorate to an
unacceptable degree, the Department is prepared to reassess available
options based on the observations and recommendations of both DPMO and
JPAC.
Dr. Snyder. There is anecdotal evidence that North Korea regularly
uses funding we grant them to pay for the administration and personnel
costs of researching and recovering remains in unintended ways, like
building barracks. Are there any auditing controls to prevent these
abuses? Does DPMO or JPAC need additional authorities or greater
flexibility in regulations to negotiate with North Korea to prevent
these abuses?
Ambassador Ray. At this time, neither DPMO nor JPAC requires
additional authorities or greater flexibility in regulations relative
to negotiations. We negotiate on a government-to-government basis with
many countries around the world, to include North Korea. We routinely
reimburse these governments for their expenses, and we rely on them to
disburse those funds internally, according to their own systems of law
and governance.
The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel
Affairs has the authority to negotiate reimbursement for operational
expenses associated with remains recovery operations in North Korea,
and we make every effort to ensure that the negotiated payment fairly
reflects actual expenses. In addition, during operations JPAC has the
authority to deny requests for any additional reimbursement beyond that
agreed to during negotiations.
Dr. Snyder. Could you discuss the number of U.S. personnel that
have been lost in support of the JPAC mission, including Central
Identification Laboratory-Hawaii (CILHI) and Task Force Full
Accounting? Could you discuss the risk assessment undertaken by JPAC in
evaluating whether or not to pursue leads, balancing the mission
against service members' safety? In particular, could you discuss risk
assessment of missions in North Korea? If a service member is injured
there, how is that handled? Would they be treated there or in South
Korea? Are there emergency cross border flight agreements in place for
these missions?
Admiral Crisp. (1) A total of eight personnel have lost their lives
while conducting the fullest possible accounting mission; one
individual was shot on the third day of a recovery mission in Vietnam
on 15 December 1973 and seven individuals were killed in a helicopter
accident in Vietnam on 07 April 2001.
(2) Risk mitigation is a significant aspect of our mission planning
and decisions prior to any mission.
a) General: The JPAC mission deploys military and civilian
personnel worldwide to some modem areas but most are very
austere. We conduct a thorough risk assessment for every
mission based on location, difficulty of excavation, difficulty
of site, dangers associated with the excavation, communications
capabilities, mission requirements, and professional experience
and capabilities of the individual team members. Each area has
different risks associated. Risk is assessed as Low, Moderate,
High, or Extremely High based on such things as terrain, flora/
fauna, weather, communications, medical care available, the
current political situation in the planned area of operation,
crime levels, cultural considerations, Intelligence
information, background information from US Embassies and
previous lessons learned from past operations.
b) Communications: An essential element for team safety is
communications capabilities. With few exceptions, our teams
deploy with a standard communication package which includes
satellite communications equipment, VHF/HF equipment, repeater
systems, and worldwide cell phones. Typically, our
communications capabilities are excellent and our host nation
counterparts approve the use of our standard equipment list.
That was not the case, however, in North Korea. Communications
were severely limited; satellite and cell phone communications
were not permitted. JPAC was reliant on short range HF radio
communications. Reliable and redundant communications has been
a topic of past negotiations and will continue to be a
significant subject for our future negotiations.
c) Medical: Part of safety risk assessment is the medical
officer's evaluation of the county's medical capabilities and
assets. This evaluation includes: hospitals and clinics
available for treatment; transportation for MEDEVACS; times
involved to evacuate to nearest care; closest US Military
Treatment Facility (MTF); dangers involved on missions such as
high altitude sites, underwater sites, and mountaineering
sites; equipment needed to evacuate in an emergency such as
jungle penetrators, winch operations, hyperbaric dive chambers;
dangers involved at site due to diseases, animals, flora &
fauna or other natural risks. JPAC goes to great lengths to
mitigate the risks in these austere environments by conducting
advanced training, placing helicopters at the site for
MEDEVACs, a rigorous medical screening program including
immunizations, supplying advanced equipment, such as Hyperlite
portable dive chambers, and staffing missions with highest
trained medics in DOD. Once all factors have been reduced to
the lowest level, the JPAC staff makes recommendations to the
commander for a decision. JPAC's policy is to prevent the loss
of life while searching for remains.
(3) Several factors play into the DPRK mission starting with the
remote locations and the poor medical capabilities in country. For
these reasons, a US medical doctor has accompanied the team for
treatment at the site. There were many restrictions placed on the
mission by requirements for DPRK military to accompany all aspects of
the mission and escort personnel during a medical emergency. The
MEDEVAC plan was limited by the DPRK restrictions of not flying close
to the DMZ border with ROK. This required an injured patient to flown
by DPRK military helicopter to the airfield at Pyongyang for transfer
to ambulance. The patient would then be driven to Panmunjom for an
ambulance transfer to a ROK or US ambulance. Depending on the severity
of the injuries, the patient would be driven or flown via helicopter to
the 121st General Hospital (MTF) in Seoul, ROK.
(4) Due to past restrictions on flying near the DMZ by the DPRK
government, there were no cross border flight agreements in place and a
MEDEVAC would take place as described above.
Dr. Snyder. Should DPMO and JPAC be given flexibility to shift the
number of missions they allocate to a given country based on the rate
of remains recovered per team?
Admiral Crisp. Allocating missions to a given country based on the
rate of remains recovered per team constrains the personnel accounting
community to focus primarily on World War II, where aircraft employing
many crewmembers were used extensively. Most Korean War losses were
ground losses, and the majority of the remaining Vietnam War losses
were either single- or dual-seat aircraft. The majority of Cold War
losses were also multi-crew aircraft losses. A shift toward ``rate of
remains recovered per team'' would focus recovery operations on World
War II and potentially Cold War losses dropping the priority for Korean
War and Vietnam War accounting operations. JPAC uses the following
established criteria in the conduct of remains recovery:
Last Known Alive case (Southeast Asia only)
Site with remains recovered/received
Site in jeopardy of imminent disturbance or
destruction
``Open'' excavation sites
Correlated/associated site to a known loss incident
and evidence suggesting the presence of remains
Sites that do not meet the above criteria; (i.e.
uncorrelated sites, ground losses, witness only statements with
no supporting physical evidence)
Resolved incidents in which local villagers'
recovered additional remains
The above criteria provides JPAC sufficient flexibility to plan,
prioritize, and conduct field operations. They also allow JPAC to
consider several other factors such as political and environmental
challenges to ensure the right priority is placed on each case.
Dr. Snyder. There is anecdotal evidence that North Korea regularly
disturbs or even falsifies sets of remains that they lead JPAC teams
to. Should DPMO and JPAC be given flexibility to cancel missions to
North Korea when they become particularly uncooperative?
Admiral Crisp. Host nations provide for the safety and security of
US teams; our operations cannot be accomplished without their
cooperation with investigation and recovery missions. As the
operational commander, the Commander US Pacific Command has given me
the authority to immediately cease operations in any country should the
need arise.
Dr. Snyder. There is anecdotal evidence that North Korea regularly
uses funding we grant them to pay for the administration and personnel
costs of researching and recovering remains in unintended ways, like
building barracks. Are there any auditing controls to prevent these
abuses? Does DPMO or JPAC need additional authorities or greater
flexibility in regulations to negotiate with North Korea to prevent
these abuses?
Admiral Crisp. DPMO negotiates with foreign governments for access
and JPAC then negotiates agreement on appropriate reimbursement for
services rendered to the US in the conduct of the personnel accounting
work. In every instance, we seek to provide fair and reasonable
compensation based on our collective experiences and lessons learned
over the past two decades. It is up to the host nation to disburse the
funds provided by the US to relevant agencies and companies, according
to their internal procedures and law. If additional authorities or
flexibilities are required in any nation, JPAC will consult with the US
Pacific Command and coordinate with DPMO.