 Hello, I'd like to welcome everybody to the POW MIA seminar. I want to thank everybody for coming in today. And we appreciate your interest and hope you are inspired today to remain interested and go back to your homes and continue to promote the awareness of the POW issue to your home folks. My name is Vincent Darkangelo. I'm chairman of the committee interim, committee chairman. And I guess the first thing we're going to do, I want to ask everybody to please rise. And we're going to have the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And if you'll remain standing, we'll have a prayer. Would we uncover, bow your heads, Supreme Commander? We thank you for bringing us safely to this seminar. And we ask that you watch over our soldiers that may be in harm's way, that you watch over those American soldiers still in prison, watch over and protect them, bring them home safely to loving family members and friends. And we ask these things in your holy name. Amen. OK. And you may be seated. That was Wayne Stratus that gave us in the pledge. He's from the Department of Pennsylvania. And I'm also from the Department of Pennsylvania. And we're now going to hear our mission, our POW committee's mission statement. And that will be from Nancy Lawrence, Department of Utah. Thank you. The POW-MIA Interim Committee is both dedicated and committed to achieving the fullest possible accounting of United States personnel still held captive, missing, or unaccounted for from all of our nation's wars, which includes bringing the remains of our fallen comrades home and repatriating any living United States POWs. Our mission is carried forward by demanding the immediate release of any American POW and obtaining the most up-to-date information and fullest accountability of those that remain MIA. Preserving the legacy and memory of former, current, and future POWs, and those missing in action to ensure that their inhumane experiences are calculated as part of the cost of war and remain part of the national consciousness. Creating awareness of the POW-MIA experience to include its lasting effects on families and those held captive or who remain unaccounted for. Engaging in local activities such as meetings, dedications, and ceremonies relative to POW-MIA concerns. Increasing awareness and responsiveness surrounding POW-MIA accountability and recovery. Supporting efforts to provide adequate resources for POW-MIA initiatives. Encouraging DAV departments and chapters to support POW-MIA initiatives. Thank you, Nancy. Also at the table is the Deputy Director of External Communications, Mr. Johnny Webb from the DPAA. And we'll hear from him. He's going to do a PowerPoint presentation shortly. Just a couple housekeeping things. If you have a cell phone, be sure to turn them off. And first of all, are there any former POWs in the room right now? Would you stand and be recognized? We have none. How about family members of a missing in action soldier or friend of a missing in action soldier? Would you stand and be recognized? Thank you for what you've gone through and endured over the years. You may have noticed at the corner up here, we have a chair of honor. That is a prisoner of war missing in action chair. That is the universal sign for those missing. And at the end of this meeting, we're going to have everybody was given a ticket. Hopefully you got a raffle ticket. We're going to give that away to somebody in this room. So at the end of the meeting. At this time, I'm going to introduce Mr. Johnny Webb. Again, he's the deputy director of external communications. And he's going to do a PowerPoint presentation for us. Johnny? Do I need a microphone? OK, I didn't think so. People have been pretty loud. It's a pleasure to be here. I flew in from Hawaii, where the majority of DPAA is located, Defense POWMA Accounting Agency. I'll talk a little bit about how we became DPAA shortly. But it's good to be here. And I want to thank you, the DAV, for having a POWMA committee. It's important that you, along with us, keep this issue in the forefront. If you don't keep this issue in the forefront, this is one when we start looking at sequestration and other events. It's very easy to reduce the funding and do away with it all together. So it's important that we keep this in the forefront and in the public eye. So just a few points I want to consider. These are the points that I want to make today. Now, if we have time, if I don't cover anything that you're interested in, I'm open for any questions you might have. I've got pretty thick skin. Been in this business for 40 years. So any questions you got, I'll be happy to entertain them. So as I said, we are the Defense POWMA Accounting Agency. We became the Defense POWMA Accounting Agency in January of this year. It resulted in the merger of JPEC, the Joint POWMA Accounting Command, DPMO in Washington, DC, and a very small section of the Life Science Equipment Laboratory that's located at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. And so all of us came together to form the Defense POWMA Accounting Agency. And the Life Science Equipment Laboratory is a small group of about five or six individuals, and they're responsible for looking at the life science equipment that we would find at a crash site. Those things that a pilot would be wearing are things that would be associated with a cockpit. And so they bring that to the actual work that we do. Now, as I said, 30 January, we stood up. That was when we were IOC, Initial Operating Capacity. We're not going to be at full operating capacity until January of 16. But we are operating as a Defense POWMA Agency now, and we will continue to do that. About a month ago, retired Lieutenant General Michael Linden was announced as the Permanent VPAA Director. He's on board now. Our deputy is so, for the future, the director of the agency will be a civilian. The deputy director will be a military. Currently, we have Major General Kelly McCagg, Air Force Officer, who is our deputy. He is getting ready to be replaced. And a regular general Army BG Singleton is coming on board to be our deputy. And he'll be on board the end of August. Kelly McCagg will probably stay through the end of September, and then he will move on to his next assignment. So General Linden actually retired. He took off the uniform one day, put on a civilian suit, and came over and became the director. So he's got a 33-year military career, brings a lot of good knowledge about this organization, because as we were going into the transformation phase, he was actually the advisor to Admiral Franken, who was the interim director until General Linden was named. So he had spent six months as an advisor before taking the duty as the actual director of the agency. Here are his priorities. And I think that's important for you to see those. Continue the mission. His number one priority is continue the mission as we're going through the process of becoming fully operational capable, not to mislead on the mission. And then focus on completing the reorganization. And as I said, the goal is to have a complete reorganization done by January of 16. That is our goal. Explore technology to improve productivity. I'll talk a little bit more about how we're doing that in a couple of slides. And then foster an environment that is positive and has constructive communications. One of our pillars of the new agency is communications with family members. We've always been communicating with family members. But at this time, we wanted to be more of a push system rather than a pull. We've always been pushing information out to family members. In some cases, some items they needed to pull. We want to make it all a push system. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. I think it's important that you understand the pillars that the organization is built on. I'm not going to read all these to you, but I think the first one on our mission, to provide the fullest possible accounting of our missing personnel to their families and to our nation. We owe it to these that have given their life for this country to return them to their homeland and to their families. And one of the things that I have always said, if this nation was willing to send our young men and women into harm's way, we need to have the will to bring them back home, regardless of what it takes. And we believe in that very firmly. And so our values, compassion, integrity, teamwork, respect, and innovation. Now, as we look at communication with families and veterans, we've always had a good working relationship with the veterans organizations. We appreciate their support. Just like I said, we really appreciate your support. That you see this issue as important enough that you have a separate committee to address the POW-MIA issue. And to keep this issue in the forefront. We have a good working relationship with the VFW and the American Legion. And in fact, the last two years, their commanders have made a trip to Southeast Asia to Vietnam and Laos to actually visit our teams in the field. And so needless to say, that is a big motivator for our teams in the field to see that these former veterans are out there supporting them in the work that they're doing. Understand, most of the young men and women that we have doing this, whether they be military or civilian, most of them were not even born during the Vietnam War. And for sure they weren't during the Korean War or World War II. But regardless, they understand the importance of this mission. They understand the importance to account for those that wore the uniform before them, that wore the cloth of our nation. And so they're highly motivated. We get volunteers all the time wanting to take an assignment with us. We're going to be creating a website so that family members can actually go to that website. They'll be able to log into the website and go to their specific laws of their loved one and find the most current information that we have on their loved one. Now this is going to take time. We've got a beta test that we're going to do probably within the next couple of months. But we're only going to have a couple of thousand cases on there. So it's going to take time to build all that information. We're anticipating probably as much as two years to get the website up with all the cases of all those unaccounted for listed on that website. But that's a goal. We're already progressing there. Like I said, we'll be beta testing that in the next couple of months. We're going to continue to do the family updates. And this is a program where seven times a year we go to a metropolitan area. Next month, we're going to Norfolk, Virginia. And we invite all the families that live within a 350-mile radius of that location. And we invite them in for a full day of briefings and dialogue on Saturday. So the first three quarters of the day, we're doing briefings. But at the same time, we're doing one-on-ones. We will sit down with those family members and we will talk to them about their loved one and where we are and try to account for their loved one. So we do that seven times a year, twice a year. In addition, next month, we're going to be having the Korea Cold War annual government meeting in Washington, DC, where we invite all the Korea Cold War family members into DC for a two-day convention. And for that, we actually fund transportation costs for two family members to fly into DC. We do the same thing for the Vietnam War families. We held their meeting in June. Again, the government pays for two family members to fly into DC, pays the transportation cost. That's all we pay for is the transportation cost to bring those family members into DC so we can actually meet with them, tell them what we're doing, and give them an update on their individual case. We'll continue to do that. It's something that's paid big dividends. We think it's a program that needs to continue and will continue. Again, working with VSOs, we want to continue to support VSO. So I will tell you today, if you need information, if you need some updates, reach out to us. That's part of our job in external communication, is to provide information to the VSOs. So we reach out to the VSOs, to members of Congress and their staff, to families, family groups. That's what we're there for, and we want to continue to push the information out to you that you need. That's something that is new, but I think it's going to pay great dividends. And that's what we call P3, public-private partnerships. Now, it's really more than P3 as we look at this. It's not only public-private partnerships, but it's also public-public partnerships. And you give me an example of a public-public partnership. We're getting ready to do a recovery of a cargo aircraft that went down in Malaysia during World War II. We're working with the Malaysian military with their army. They're providing helicopter support. They're providing laborers. And so this will be a public-public partnership. Our recovery team will go in and work with the Malaysian army. He was going to provide transportation to the site, be with us on site, set up the base camp for us to work out up. We'll base camp on site. And so that is a public-public partnership. Another example of a public-private partnership is an individual that died as a POW in World War II. He died in Stalaw III and was buried in an area that's now a park in Lubin, Poland. We think we have found that grave site. So we have now contracted with an organization out of Ohio who's going to go in and actually do the recovery of this burial site, and then return the remains. We'll have a small group there to take possession of the remains and then return them to Hawaii for identification. So that is really not a public-private partnership. It's more of a contract. But we know that we're going to go into contracting with a lot of these private organizations as we're doing this. And we currently have a true public-private partnership on going in Italy right now. A group in Italy that does a lot of exploration, does a lot of searching for World War II losses, found a World War II crash site, did some work there, realized there were remains there. So now we're going to go in, and they're going to support our team in doing the actual excavation of that site. So they will be providing a lot of the labor. We'll have some of our scientists there as the expertise, but a true public-private partnership. And so those are the three pilot programs that we have ongoing this year. We're reaching out to other groups, and you're going to see this program expand considerably into the future. And why is this important? Well, there are more sites than our own excavation list than we can get to in a reasonable amount of time. We just don't have the resources, even though we've got 20 recovery teams, and those recovery teams deploy three to four times a year. By adding a partnership with some of these private groups, we can put more boots on the ground to either investigate or recover those individuals that are lost. So this is a huge program that we're only going to see expand over time, something that is ongoing as we speak. USS Oklahoma, when it was bombed at the attack at Pearl Harbor on December the 7th, as most of you know, it sank very quickly. And because it sank so quickly, most of the crew members were caught inside that ship as it capsized. So most of those men lost their lives. There were a few that were actually rescued. We had some folks there that were actually cutting holes into the side of the ship, trying to get survivors out. A few made it out. Most did not. So from the USS Oklahoma, we have almost 400 individuals that were lost. And the thought was, as they looked at the USS Oklahoma, they thought they could salvage the Oklahoma. And so a lot of effort went into riding the Oklahoma. And you see photographs of all the cranes and pulleys that were there to try to ride the Oklahoma, which they did. And as they began to pump the water out, they had Navy divers going in. And quite honestly, they were going in with burlap bags, because by this time, after a couple of years, most of the remains were skeletonized. So they were literally going through the ship with burlap bags, collecting the remains. And they were brought up. And at the time, World War II, we had a central identification unit that was located in Schofield Barracks. And so those remains were taken to Schofield Barracks. And they attempted to try to make the identification. Now, if you know the history of the Oklahoma, they did write the Oklahoma. And it was sold to a salvage company. And as it was being towed from Hawaii to California, it sunk. And so the Oklahoma itself is at the bottom of the ocean. But before it sunk, the remains of all those crew members were taken out and taken to Schofield for identification. As I said, because of how the remains were collected, they were highly commingled. And so as the scientists began to try to reconstruct those individual remains, they were having an extremely difficult time. So the identification packet was sent to the Department of the Army and was refused. So then they said, OK, because the anthropologist at that time, Mildred Trotter, said, I really can't re-associate the postpranial, that is, from the deck down with the skulls. So Army came back and said, well, you're going to have to, because we don't want to bury just the skulls and we know more of the remains are there. So as you went back, again, said I can identify 27 individuals through dentition. But I can only identify their skulls. And so that report was submitted. Army came back and said, no, if the rest of the skeletal remains are present, we will not accept the identification of only the skulls. So at that point, decision was made to inter those remains as unknowns. Not as a group burial, but as unknowns, true unknowns. So those individuals were buried and they were intentionally commingled at that point, even more so. They were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. And at that time, there were 62 caskets buried in about 45 graves. So you can tell that some of the caskets were stacked. There were two caskets in one grave. We have started a distant, well, we actually did a distant term into one of those caskets several years ago. And we knew that casket contained the skulls of five of those 27 individuals. What we didn't realize is what else was in that casket. So to begin to process those remains at the lab and do DNA testing, we found that in addition to the skulls, there was almost 100 different individuals represented in that casket. And we determined that through DNA testing. So we got some 100 different DNA sequences from that one casket. We went ahead and identified the five skulls. And those skulls have now been identified in return to their family. We told the family at that time, if we get approval to do the distant term, there will probably be additional remains of your loved one that will be coming home at some future day. But it took us several years to convince everybody that it was the right thing to do. Now the issue becomes, because the unknowns have no next of kin and the Department of the Army as the executive agent for mortuary affairs has responsibility for all unknowns. So they actually act as a next of kin for all unknowns. So if you want to disinter an unknown grave, you have to get approval from the Army. So when we proposed doing the distant term, Army agreed it was probably the right thing to do, but said, we're not going to do this without the agreement of our sister service, the Department of the Navy. Navy was not convinced it was the right thing to do. And so it took a couple of years of negotiation back and forth. And finally, we got their agreement. And Deputy Secretary of Defense ordered the disinterment of those unknowns from the USS Oklahoma. We've now disinterred 20 of those caskets, remains are undergoing processing in our lab. And I think probably within the next, I would say at least within the next month, we'll see some of the first identifications from the USS Oklahoma being made. So again, we believe it's the right thing to do. They're unknowns. So when you look at the roles of the missing, all of those individuals from the Oklahoma are on the roles of the missing. The Battle of Tarot. Many of you know the history of World War II. You know that the Battle of Tarot is one of the bloodiest battles that we had during World War II. Hundreds of Marines were lost trying to take that small at all. Many of those individuals never came home. Now, if you look at the history of Tarot, after we took that small island, there had been a number of temporary cemeteries that had been created on the island. So those temporary cemeteries housed many of the Marines that gave their life on the fighting for Tarot. So after we took full control and we actually occupied the island, the decision was made that we needed to beautify those temporary cemeteries. And so the way those cemeteries were beautified was that they came in and they lined up all the headstones nice and neat. However, the headstones didn't match up to any of the most of the graves. They just moved the headstones and put them in line over the area that had been a cemetery. So many of those graves were lost. We knew that, we've known that, but we knew also it was a very complex situation. So we've been working on the Tarot along with the private group, History Flight. And we knew from records, temporary cemetery 27, when the Army Grave Destration Team came in and recovered the remains right after the war, that they did not locate one complete row in cemetery 27. So that row had been missing all of these years. Now, if you've ever seen anything of Tarot, well that is the most heavily populated area, part of square foot of any place in the world. People are actually almost living on top of one another. There's no real sewage system there, it's a big mess. But in working together with History Flight, we had began to narrow down the location. And this year, the History Flight team that was there found the missing row from cemetery 27. Now, records indicate that there's probably 40 individuals buried in that row. History Flight recovered 35 of those individuals. And so what you see on the slide are, when those remains came back, we actually wanted Army, I mean Marine Corps involvement. So the Marine Corps sent C-130 down to Tarawa to pick up, have a repatriation ceremony and pick up the remains of those Marines. They then flew to Quajolain so that we could put one individual Marine in each of the caskets. And so three Marine Corps C-130s flew from Quajolain to Hawaii, they arrived on a Sunday afternoon. And so Sunday afternoon, there you can see all of those caskets lined up. They were actually 36 caskets lined up in Hangar 35 on Hickam Field. And as you looked out over those caskets, a flood of emotions poured over you. Because you looked at those caskets and realized that here were 36 young Marines, 18, 19 years of age who never got to live their life but gave their life for this nation. And you realized at that point, if you don't, already know it, what it cost this nation. But those 36 Marines are now back in our laboratory and all indications are all the dedications have not been validated yet. All indications are that one of those Marines is Lieutenant Alexander Boneman, a Medal of Honor recipient. I had the pleasure of meeting his youngest daughter. His youngest daughter lives on the island of Maui. I invited her over for this ceremony on a Sunday afternoon, she arrived, I picked her up at the hotel and took her out to the ceremony. And needless to say, you can imagine the emotions for her as these young Marines landed on their homeland for the first time in some 70 years. One of the things that has happened, it's been a long time coming, five years, we've been trying to get this new facility but this is a brand new facility that's located on Hickam base, Hickam field in Hawaii. It is a beautiful state of the art facility, 136,000 square foot facility. The entire top floor is dedicated to our laboratory and the people in the laboratory. Now the good news about the building, when the architects completed the design, they estimated that it would cost $95 million to build this facility. I don't often have a chance to say this and you don't often hear it. That building came in $10 million under budget. We got that building for $85 million on the 27th of July, by the way, the Marines that I just talked about, they landed on Oahu and Hickam Sunday afternoon, the 26th of July, the morning of the 27th of July, at 10 o'clock, we dedicated this new building. And so it's being utilized now. We're in a phased process of moving in. Some of the folks have moved in. Others will be moving within the next 30 to 60 days and it will be fully occupied at that point. When I say it's a state-of-the-art facility, so let me give you a couple of ideas of what's in the laboratory and the way of equipment. There is a full-size CAT scan that's in the laboratory. There is a scanning electron microscope in the laboratory. There is all the bells and whistles that you could ask for to have a fully capable lab to do the work that we're doing. So you couldn't ask for a better facility for our veterans to come back home to to be identified. But the mission hasn't changed. It is a global mission. And this gives you an idea of the locations that we have conducted operations over the last few years. So when I say it truly is a global mission, I think this portrays that fact. So what are we doing? What have we done and what are we scheduled to do this year? Well, these are the locations for 15 that we're actually working. So as you can see, we're operating in 17 different countries this year. And in those countries, total 29 investigation teams and 64 recovery teams. So these are the locations that we're operating. And currently we have ongoing missions in Germany, Italy, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Laos, Solomon Islands and getting ready to go into India. And so you can see our teams are spread across the globe at any given time. We're 16, go to 18 countries with 28 investigation teams and 61 recovery teams. Now, you're gonna see more work because as I said, we're gonna start using public-private partnerships. One of the groups that we're gonna start probably utilizing a lot is Bint Prop. Bint Prop has done a lot of underwater work around Palau. They've recovered, they've actually discovered a number of World War II plane crashes. We just recovered one of those. There's one more to be recovered. But we want them to expand and they have agreed to expand their reach beyond Palau and to other areas in the Pacific. And so we're gonna start using those assets heavily for underwater recovery operation as well as some of the other folks that I have named already. So we're gonna see a big expansion in the number of remains that are coming into the laboratory. And that's what we need. As you know, back in 2010, Congress said, by 2015, we want you to have the capacity and the capability to identify 200 individuals a year. But we're well on our way to having that capacity and capability. We've got a brand new lab. More than double the laboratory space. We're keeping some of the laboratory space that we currently have. So we'll have triple the laboratory space. We also have a laboratory at Offit Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska. And so all of those labs are being utilized as a matter of fact, a number of the remains from the Oklahoma are going to our lab in Offit for identification work there. So we have expanded the capacity and we're expanding the capability by bringing on partnerships, private partnerships to work with us. And so I think you're gonna see a huge expansion in the number of remains recovered and identified as well. Now, we want you to follow us. We wanna be as transparent as possible. So if you go on the internet and you search for the Finch Field WMI County Agency, you can find us on Facebook. You can leave comments for us on Facebook. If you ask us a question, we'll respond to you on Facebook. If you just wanna see what some of our teams are doing out in the field, there are hundreds of photographs on Flickr of our teams in action in the field, work that they're doing. And you can also follow us on YouTube. So we want, if you're looking for information, reach out on the internet, or these locations, you'll find a lot of information. If you don't find what you're looking for, give us a call. You can also, if you go on our website, there is a space where it says contact us. If you will write a note to us asking a question, asking for information, that comes straight to my office. Comes into us as an email, we'll get back to you with the information you're asking. So we wanna be as transparent as possible. And I thank you for allowing me the opportunity to stand before you today. It is a privilege and an honor to stand before fellow veterans and talking about what we're doing to try to bring some of our veterans that have not come home because a lot of people talk about remains. I talk about these individuals. These are veterans just like you and I that never came home. We need to bring those veterans back home. That's what we're all about. And we appreciate your support. Vincent, we have time. I'll take any questions. Yes, sir. It's the vision of Tennessee. How many missing in action do we estimate? There's still more in helping. Okay, that's a very good question now. I'm glad you asked it. Because it brings up the point that I think we need to explain to everybody. If you look from World War II to present day, there's some 83,000 Americans that are unaccounted for. I'm serious, 83,000. So now, having said that, we're doing work now. And we're going through and actually categorizing every one of those missing. Because what we know is, when you look at that 83,000, I think it's kind of misleading. I mean, it's a true number. But if we're looking at how many of those individuals we think we might be able to recover and return home, it's really misleading because if you look, there's probably, and we're still working to sort it out, but there's probably close to 50,000 that are deep water losses, navy losses that we will never recover. So we believe that the number that are possibly recoverable is somewhere between 25 and 30,000. Now that's still a huge number. So there's, we got to get with it. I mean, we, no doubt about it. We got to get with it. There's too many people left out there. And so that's the reason we're going to public-private partnership, finding any way we can to try to get more guys, more of our folks back home. I think I saw a question over here. I'll get to you next, sir. Yes, ma'am. And I have a question to you. You mentioned that the next Korean, K-I-A-I-A was in two months? No, a couple of weeks. It's actually, it's actually the 13th to 14th of August. Yes. Because I couldn't make it this year. Yes. As a matter of fact, I'm on my way there now. It just worked out that I was already scheduled to go to that meeting. And so I just came early so I could come here and I'm headed to DC on Sunday. So I'll be there for that meeting next week. I don't know because we have not put out our 16th schedule yet. But it, again, when our 16th schedule is finalized, we will post it on our website. So you can go to the DPA website and all of those family updates will be posted with the date and the location. Yes, sir. Can you talk about surveillance assets, satellites, aerial photography, drones and things of this nature to help find the bodies? Very good question. The answer to that is yes. And so part of what our analysts and researchers do is they go back, if there is a, primarily a crash site, if there is a crash site that we have not been able to locate, then we will go back and ask for imagery during that time period. And so as you know, during the Vietnam conflict, we were flying a lot of those type missions. So we will go back and ask for any imagery that might have been taken on that date in that area. We'll then pull that imagery. Then we will also request current day imagery where we will actually overfly that area to see if we can see any result or any indication of that crash. Now, typically what you will see is you'll see the scarring from the historical imagery where that aircraft went in. Sometimes you may or may not be able to see that same scarring today, but you can actually do some trained analysis and get a good idea of where we need to go and be looking for that crash site. So good question and yes, we are using. Okay, yes, sir. Front. So this is Mark Zary, Louisiana, Chapter 50. I was wondering about how much cooperation is there or is there any with North Korea? Right now. Yeah, let me, so that's a tough one. You look at North Korea. In North Korea, there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 53 to 5,500 of our men that are in North Korea. Now we operated North Korea from 1996 until 2005. We conducted operations there every year. Every mission that we conducted there, we covered remains. We thought, and then it was US government that decided conditions are not right to have US personnel on the ground in North Korea. So in 2005, we pulled out. Now the bad news is when we pulled out, we left every piece of equipment that we had in North Korea there to include, I think, 24 brand new SUVs, two trucks, all the base camp equipment, it was left there. So in 2011, the North Koreans, now they had been talking about this in the Six Party Talks. They had raised it a couple of times in the Six Party Talks when they were on going. It said they would like to resume the remains recovery operation. So in 2011, the US said, okay, we're willing to talk to you. So in October of 2011, we met with the North Koreans in Bangkok, Thailand, and we hammered out an arrangement. It said in 2012, we would resume recovery operations in North Korea. Now that left us at a bit of a pinch because we knew that that equipment that had been left there was either no longer there, if it was there, it was not usable. So we went to a full course press this time because we were playing on doing more operations. We bought 30 brand new SUVs, the two trucks, and all the base camp equipment, and had it ready to go. Now one of the things that also is required when we do those missions is we need, because of their food shortage, we wind up taking food in for the personnel that are gonna be working with us. So we had actually shipped in rice, some vegetables, and other items. We probably had, I've never seen so much spam in my life. We bought other than how they can be spammed. Because they said they wanted meat, and we said, okay, spam is meat, so. So that went in. And then, so then in April, let's see, I guess late March, I was to lead the advanced party into North Korea, because I'd done a lot of work in North Korea while I was there, while we did the 10 years. I've actually been to North Korea 25 times in that 10 year period. So I've got a lot of experience in dealing with the North Koreans. So I was to lead the advanced party in. It was going to be there to receive the trucks, all the other supplies. I was gonna go out, pick out the base camps for our teams, check out the hospital, do the coordination with Swedish Embassy, and do all that. So we went to Beijing, China to pick up our visas to get into North Korea. We get there, called up their embassy, and they said, we're here to pick up our visas. They said, well, they're not ready yet. Call us back in a couple of days. So call back in two days. They said, no, we still got some work to do. Call us back tomorrow. So we called them back the next day, and they said, well, and now recall what happened during this time period. Young Kim Jong-un came into power. So we weren't sure how that was gonna play out, but we had not received any indication that they're not gonna proceed with the operation. And so, that last phone call we made, they said, well, we don't think it's appropriate for you to be conducting war games in South Korea while you're doing humanitarian operations in North Korea. We said, wait a minute, those exercises, those military training exercises have been going on for years. As a matter of fact, those training exercises that we do with South Korea were conducted every year for the 10 years that we were in North Korea, you didn't object. So they said, well, if you will cancel those exercises, what they call war games, then we'll let you come in. And we said, no, we're not gonna do that. And so it kept going on back and forth with some negotiations. Finally, after our team had been setting in Beijing for 30 days, waiting to get our visas, and I was about to climb the walls at that point, they fired off the missile. And that was, okay, that's it, we're done. So we came back home. And as long as Kim Jong-un continues his saber rattling with the things that he's doing, provocations, firing off missiles, continuing a nuclear program, we're probably not gonna go in there. I wish I could tell you we weren't, because until we can get in there, we're not gonna be able to do much for the Korean War families other than disinterpreting the unknown that are buried in the Punchbowl in Hawaii. I just read a blurb on the internet that they sent a message to us that the remains that are there are being disturbed and people are walking away with them as a sort of putting pressure on us to negotiate a deal with them. They are, and they've actually done a number of things. But one of my last trips there, they took me out, they're doing land reclamation. Of course, they're trying to get more land that they can actually cultivate to raise food stuff. So they actually took me to an area where they were doing land reclamation. It took me out, they had this big bulldozer that they were flattening out the land and they actually walked me out to a place where this bulldozer had uncovered human remains. And they said, well, here are your soldiers, right here you need to get in here. So since then, they've sent photographs of dog tags of individuals. And so they're doing that and they're trying to do things, do those types of things that would cause us to agree to it. But I don't see the administration agreeing to it anytime soon, as long as the provocations continue. My part of it is a P.O.W. in smoking. Yes. And about... Conopatwan? He wrote a book on it, it's called Lost in Action. I'm just kind of curious, he had a lot of friends over there, left over there. Right. Give me just a brief thing about what you're doing over there so I'm going back and bring my mother. Sure. Philippines was an area where we couldn't get agreement from the Philippine government because they were concerned about security of our teams. The last thing the Philippine allies wanted to have happened is something happened from one of our teams and we get team members killed. So they were concerned about security for our teams. And we've resolved that now. And so we've been doing investigations, been going out to areas where we're doing investigations, looking for American losses. We're going in later this year and do a recovery of one of our pilots that was lost. He actually shot down a Japanese aircraft but either he got target fixation or something happened, both of them flew into the side of the mountain. And so we've been to his side, we've been investigating his side, we're going in and do a recovery this year. The problem that we see in the immediate future of doing field operations is, as you know, when they have elections in the Philippines and they're having elections in 16, there's a lot of unrest in the country because of those elections. So I'm not sure we're going to be able to do any field operations in the Philippines in 16. We are scheduling operations in 17. What we may be able to do is there's a number of unknowns that are buried in the American Cemetery in Manila. Now we disinterred 10 of those graves earlier this year. Those remains are undergoing identification. We'll probably do some more disintermits of unknowns in 16 to try to, again, continue to do some work, keep the dialogue going on with the Philippine government. Thanks, sir. Did I answer your question? Yes, sir, thank you. Yes, sir. What is the recovery team? What does the personnel make up? Okay, good question. What of our recovery teams normally consist of 10 to 14 individuals? Most of those are military personnel, but you were saying more and more that some of them would be civilian. One that's always a civilian is the anthropologist or the archaeologist. So that anthropologist or archaeologist, once they get to the site, he takes control of that team and directs the recovery operations to ensure that it's done within the scientific standards that have been established. But the rest of the team make up is, you have a military officer normally in the grade of a captain or a major. He will have a senior NCO as his team sergeant, and then we will go down the list. The Ecomo specialist, there'll be a special operations medic, there'll be a linguist, EOD technician, analyst, and then probably some, what we call marchwear affairs specialist just to kind of direct the operations along, the digging operations along with the anthropologist or archaeologist. So it's a self-contained team. They all have very specific duties to perform, but I will tell you in the end, once they've done those duties, they all become diggers. Yeah, I mean that EOD guy, once he swept the area and determined it's safe from any ordinance hazards, he picks up a shovel and he just liked the rest of it. Same with Ecomo guy, with the medic, all of them. They all become diggers. That's a recovery team. Investigation team is a little bit smaller. We like to keep the footprint as small as we can with the investigation team because they're moving a lot. And so we can keep that footprint smaller. It gives them greater flexibility to move as they need to. So you'll typically have a team leader, the, senior NCO, then you'll have a linguist, an analyst, and probably an EOD technician and a medic. Okay, on this side, yes sir. I was a Martin, Minnesota. I found the crash site of an individual from my home town a year after he went down. I called him in and they said, you can't possibly be there because of course. Are you still playing politics? No, no. We're still, we're doing a lot in Laos. I'll just tell you that there are some restrictions. For example, when we conduct operations in Vietnam, while they don't hold as to it as Regis Laos does, we basically have a 100 person cap in Vietnam. So when we send a mission in, they try to hold us to around 100 people that go in, Americans going in. In Laos, that number is 53. And they're pretty strict in holding us to that cap or less. And so we pretty much max out the cap in Laos every time we do a mission there. But yeah, we are doing a lot of missions in Laos. We've got a lot of sites left to recover. And I think in Laos, I think we've recovered, I think we've located Don't quote me on this, but I'll give you a pretty rough number that I think is pretty accurate. I think we've located every aircraft lost except for 18, which is pretty good considering the number of air losses that occurred over Laos. Current mission in Vietnam is about 1,627. That's the current number. Correct. That's 1627, that's the Vietnam War. That's Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and a small number in China. Oh, yeah, we've recovered and identified over 1,000 individuals from the Vietnam War. Yes, ma'am. We still have POWs from... Actually still being held as POWs? Yeah. We, while we cannot rule out that possibility, we have not found any credible evidence that there are Americans being held as POWs. I'm not, I'm just telling you, I'm telling you, that's our position. Is we have looked, we have spent thousands of man hours tracing down a lot of leads. We found a lot of fabrications, a lot of individuals who had their photograph taken saying they were a POW. We found them, found that they were not POWs. So it's something that we take very seriously. Like I say, I'm not asking if you have to believe me, I'm just telling you, we've done a lot of work. We have not found any credible evidence of anyone is currently being held as a POW. The men haven't returned, nor their remains haven't returned. We have to assume they're still alive. And as you heard me say in the very beginning, we cannot rule out that possibility. Yeah, it's over here, gentlemen. Reference, young fellow over there, there's a little more to some of this play here. Do we cooperate with our allies in a situation like Laos, where we had hundreds of Thai special forces flown in to Laos to support our activities there. And these, many of these people did not come home. The same as Air America people. Yes, we do. We still have Air America individuals on the rows of the missing that we're looking for from the Vietnam War. And we have, if we recover anybody of our allies, we will either return them or if we can, we will actually make the identification. We actually recovered captain from the Korean rock army. He was on one of our helicopters. When we recovered it, we recovered his remains. We identified him. We actually had a repatriation ceremony. His government came over with his family. They had a repatriation ceremony in the Punchbowl Cemetery, turned the remains over. Not only that, also from our enemies from that time. We've returned well over 200 Japanese remains that we've recovered during that time period. I was going to tell you, one reason you might be hearing when these guys say we were in Laos and government says there wasn't, there was a Vietnam. I was on a carrier. We did the water bombing in Cambodia and in Laos. And when we were there, it was top secret. Nobody ever knew we ever existed. So that's the reason they're having that. Those guys were there, but they don't get something. It's like the... Hey, well one of the, I will tell you, one of the issues that we deal with all the time no doubt about it, family members were lied to. Family members who had a loved one go down in Laos were originally told, no, it was in Vietnam. Families now know they've been lied to. They were lied to by our government. And so, we make it very clear. No, it's in Laos. We recovered him from Laos. And so it's an issue that continues. But that's the reason that you're having that problem is because there's like, CIA people I understand now who have been hurt in Vietnam and in other places, especially in Laos or somewhere, are not getting benefits from the VA because there's no record that they're ever there. Of course there's no record. They're not supposed to be seen. But nowadays when they can't get any help. So that's another reason I think I wanted you to know that a lot of secret missions were going on with carriers and everything else. And they're not shown where they really are. Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well I know you feel the press off before we went to Laos. Yes ma'am, you've been very patient. Go ahead. My DD 214 says Indo-China. It doesn't say anything about Thailand, Laos, Cambodia. And that's how I retired from the Air Force. Indo-China. Indo-China, right there. Right. Well, as you know, it wasn't until the mid-80s that they finally released the information about our TATCAN site that was on Food by Tea that was directed into bombing missions over North Vietnam. And so yeah, it happens. Yes ma'am. Okay, we have a big collection of dog tags. We have a big collection that we've got over the years. We'll take them and we'll take a look and see if we can find the individual. We'll go to the service casualty office and see if the individual's not accounted for. If he's not on our roll. Also there's a lot of counterfeit dog tags, you know, that they put into the system that is selling, if you go to Souvenirs, Lighters, old... Yes, I have Elvis Presley's dog tags that I got in Vietnam. Right. He can't go to Vietnam. Oh yes, I'm very aware. There you go. There's no place I can email you. Yes, I'll give you my email address. So just email me. Yes, sir. I was directed to Tom Dooley Hospital. It's not me. Eddie. So I was directedly to Tom Dooley Hospital when I was on police aisle 66, 67 for periods of time. But bring up an interesting point because some of the dog tags that we've actually got from individuals that survived and got back home, what we found is a lot of those individuals have been injured. And when they went into a field hospital and they were stripped of their clothing, a lot of them, as many of us get in Vietnam, put one dog tag in our boot places. And so a lot of those, when they just pulled their boots off and threw them out, had a dog tag on them. And so those have been collected over the years and you're seeing a lot of those. And we've returned a number of dog tags to individuals who were injured and believe that they lost that dog tag while they were in the field hospital. Yes, sir. Sure. If you go to our DPA website, their primary point of contact is the service casualty and we have a toll-free number listed on our website of how they can call that casualty. Army, there's an army toll-free number. They can call into that number and make contact. Once we have their address, then they will be provided notification of any time we're having a meeting within 350 miles before they leave. Yes, sir. Does anybody have a question over here? Yes, sir. The teams have been going, how long has there been? We've tried to make those 30-day missions, which means by the time they depart from Hawaii, when they get back from Hawaii, you're probably talking 35, 40 days. Now, that's not an absolute. For example, if the team is on the site and they believe that they can close that site within two weeks at the end of that 30-day period, then we'll go to the government and ask for an extension within to stay on that site so they can close it. My preference is to once we open the site, close it if at all possible. The last thing we wanna do is leave a site open. You can imagine, if you were here and you saw some foreigners in your neighbor's field they're gonna hold, as soon as they left, what would you do? Go sit right there. You'd go check it out. Same thing happens over there. So we want to ensure if we open the site and we close it, if at all possible. We complete. If not, we do everything we can to protect that until the next team can actually get in and complete that recovery operation. Normally 30 to 45 days is basically what we're looking at. Okay, any other questions? I'd just like to say that I appreciate your information. Yes, well, we're going all the way back not only in America, but the cat pilots before that, ABG before that. So in fact, there's two ABG, maybe three ABG policy regulations unknowns in the punchline that we're getting ready to be this in turn, in the very near term. Like I said, we're gonna be very transparent. Just call us. This is a different color to your hat. Just call us. The life sciences folks, they're gonna stay at right path? We're discussing that now. Probably they're either gonna stay at right path or they will move to office. But that decision has not been made at this point. But those are the two options that are being looked at. We have stayed at right path and moved to office. Thank you so much. Let me just say, I've been doing this for a long time. And the reason I do it, I can't thank you for a better job than the world and this one that I have. And I consider it an honor and privilege to play a small role in bringing our veterans back home. That's it. So, it's an honor to have the job. Thank you, Johnny. Are there any questions for the committee? I wanna bring up something that we've discovered that some departments don't have a POW committee. And of course, what we're trying to do is spread the awareness of the POW issue. And we're looking for best practices. If you're doing something really good in your community or in your department, in your state, if you would let us know, maybe we could spread the word, get it in our magazine, DAV Magazine if you're doing things. I've got my business cards up here with my email address and phone number. I'd love to get an email and a message from you and we'll do what we can to get it publicized. We also have a website you can go to if you're doing something special for each individual chapter, right now the chapters. And then you can get it posted on the national website. If anything else, other than we have a brand new POW MIA flag, we're going to raffle off. We'll make sure you go there. Did everybody get a ticket? Frank? So, we have a few for the Vietnam veterans with the National League of POW Families. I'll let you keep the website up. If anyone has a family's view of the National League, I want to give out their website. Oh, yeah, POWMIA.Families. Yes, go ahead. Go ahead, Frank. Oh, no, no. Please do. My families go to their website. And you can get a group of your site. If you have a family to use, you can go to that website. You can just put everything you need to go over. And I'd like to say one more thing. I have a... I do regular updates on the internet by email. And I have a distribution list. Anything of importance that comes around, I send out up POW updates. If you'd like to give me your email address, I'll be glad to put you on that distribution list and fire you off updates whenever I'm aware of something going on. If you want to, like I say, once we're done, come up and give me your email address. I'll certainly add you to the list. Yes, sir. I want to thank you for that, too, because you put out a lot of jam really amazing. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you. Okay, I guess there's nothing to do except this. Look at the pretty girl figure. She's hot. What are you doing? Can't be one of ours. 665-8709. 709. 709. Woohoo. All right. Thank you.