 Good afternoon everybody Like to welcome you to the National DAV POW MIA seminar My name is Vincent Dark Angelo. I'm the interim committee chairman and At this time I'd like to Thank you for coming and I hope you you learned something today And it's a very important issue to veterans and we have a few experts here to tell you all the great work that they're doing to resolve this issue and First I'd like to introduce the the head table Like myself. I'm the chairman Vincent Dark Angelo Another committee member member from the Department of Pennsylvania Wayne Stratus From the Department of California Dr. Mariana Arrabba and from the Department of Texas Robert Delgado and Also, we have from the DPAA the deputy director Miss Fern Sumter Wynbush Glad to have her back again and also from the veteran and family laser liaison also from DPAA in Hawaii, Mr. Stephen Thompson So that's the head table and we'll be glad to after everything is pretty much the presentation is over We'll be glad to take questions and answers and like I said, we have some experts here that will help us with that Before we get started does there have are there any former POWs in the room right now? Any former POWs in the room if so stand and recognize how about former family members of a former POW are there? the reason I ask Yes POWs and MIAs that's we're looking for MIAs Okay, I don't know if you've donated the DNA sample to the DPAA, but they're doing remarkable things with deep DNA samples now and from your they need a family member to donate the sample and That's how they get the identifications and get answers to your questions And so if you have not given us a DNA sample I would ask you to do so and we have people here that we can help you after it's over Be glad to explain how you do that Okay in front of me in addition to the head table you see a what we call a chair of honor It's basically an empty chair. It's empty because our MIAs aren't here and draped around it is a POW MIA flag and You've seen that if you were at the memorial service this morning. You've seen the the explanation of the POW table and I Don't know. I don't one of the purposes of this committee is to bring awareness to the POW MIA issue And we hope that we're finding out that some departments don't even have a POW MIA committee Now I know I'm from the Department of Pennsylvania and at our state headquarters building Whenever anybody walks into the headquarters and we have a couple service officers there We have a lot of traffic The first thing they see when they go in the door is a POW table permanently set up there And so I hope that every every meeting you go to every DAV chapter meeting every American if you belong to the American Legion and VFW and Amvets every meeting you go to I hope there's a POW table or an empty chair Some way to recognize the POWs Okay, I think we're going to get on with it. I'm going to end the main course of business. I'm going to introduce Miss Fern Sumter Windbush Fern was She's the deputy director of the DPAA on in 2015. She was Selected to serve as the principal deputy director for the DPAA DPAA by the way is Defense Department POW MIA accounting agency in Support of the director DPAA she is responsible for leading the agency in formulating policy overseeing business development and Increasing outreach initiatives to achieve the agency's goal of providing families and the nation with the fullest Possible accounting of missing personnel from past conflicts Mrs. Windbush hails from Boston, Massachusetts where she was a 1989 honor graduate of the University of Massachusetts and a distinguished military graduate of Suffolk Suffolk universities ROTC program in Boston She began her military career as a private first-class in the Army Reserves in 1983 her service continued upon her transfer to the Massachusetts Army National Guard until her active duty Appointment as a military intelligence second lieutenant in 1990 Over the next 25 years. She held numerous positions of increased responsibility in Germany Saudi Arabia Iraq Korea and the Netherlands and culminating with a deployment to operation enduring freedom in Kabul Afghanistan and Subsequently as the commander of joint base Meyer Anderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia Mrs. Windbush retired from the army after 31 years of military service in January of 2015 Her education includes a bachelor of science degree with honors in business management information systems from the University of Massachusetts a Master of science degree in national resource strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces Her also her awards and decorations include the legion of merit first oak leaf cluster distinguished meritorious service medal Meritorious service metals sixth oak leaf cluster the army commendation medal the joint service achievement medal First oak leaf cluster and the army achievement medal. Ms. Wimbush is married and has one son Please welcome from DPAA the deputy director Mrs. Fern Sumter Windbush Since I think these podiums get taller every time I come it feels taller anyway, or maybe I'm getting shorter due to my age Good afternoon DAV. Good afternoon POW MIA committee and those of you who are interested in this mission and in All of the efforts that the defense POW MIA accounting agency is responsible for as Vince mentioned our mission is critically important Not just for the families who continue to wait for the loved ones to come home But for us to bring home and to fulfill those promises that we made to those unreturned veterans And then I would also add probably Just as important this Demonstrates for Servicemen and women who are serving today That if they go down we won't stop looking for them Before I get started. I want to first thank Vince Vince and I are in email communication pretty regularly probably more often than most and I want to thank you because you answered a call you took care of the agency You're one of those individuals that when asked you don't ask Why me but you act and so because of you DPAA is better positioned and For FY 18 our budget is solid and secure and in fact we got a 15 million dollar ad So thank you so much If we could just take a moment Just to have a moment of silence to acknowledge Those who have fallen To acknowledge those who are still serving in harm's way today and then To remember those who haven't come home That DPAA and others in the accounting community are currently searching for please join me in a moment of silence Rarely do we have an opportunity Like today to just pause It's unfortunate But there aren't a lot of Americans frankly that know about this mission many of them however, we're awakened Over the past month or so When our president had a meeting with chairman Kim and I'm gonna talk a little bit about Korea in a minute So I don't want to get ahead of myself But what's most important if you don't get anything out of today first remember that DPAA is committed We're still looking and that we need you to help us spread the word not just to your peers But to the next generation because they are the ones that are going to continue to carry this mission forward in 2014 then Secretary of Defense Hegel Directed the consolidation of the accounting community into a single agency led by a senior executive last year Major General retired Kelly McKay became our Current director DPAA as his deputy he and I Walk arm-in-arm every day in the DC area throughout the halls of the Pentagon and Congress fighting for this mission taking care of The promises that our nation has made to our fallen heroes out in Hawaii. We have our regional Excuse me our deputy director for operations rear admiral crates He heads all operations for DPAA to include operations abroad as well as Disintermits and then of course our senior enlisted and by advisor because where would any of us be without a good? NCO taking care of us. So our major swam. He's also out in Hawaii as well This is the DPAA leadership team. We are proud to serve and we are dedicated next slide our mission is A daunting one To provide the fullest possible accounting for our servicemen and women DoD civilians and contractors designated contractors who were lost during past conflicts our vision We live every single day Our values are steadfast. We are a team of committed compassionate dedicated professionals who work every day with compassion for families and with integrity This job is not too hard for us Because every single day we remember Someone who has fallen From a past conflict throughout the year we meet with families and with other service organizations such as the DAV and We draw our strengths from you because you all remind us just how critically important this mission is what I'd like to do is give you a quick look into the life of DPAA personnel with the short video It's only nine minutes, but it'll give you a better idea of exactly what our men and women do every single day Can you play the video, please? Since I was told you were the expert my military assistant major field is truly the expert There we go We write no last chapters We close notebooks We put away no final memories An end to America's involvement in Vietnam cannot come before we have achieved the fullest Possible accounting of those missing in action. Why keep searching? The answer is simple You never leave a fallen American behind The mission of the Defense POW MIA accounting agency or DPAA is to provide the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel to their families and Their nation Strategically located in Arlington, Virginia with major facilities at joint base Pearl Harbor Hickam, Hawaii and Off-It Air Force Base Nebraska the more than 600 person newly established defense agency is jointly manned by soldiers sailors airmen and Marines and Department of Defense civilians with specialized skills researching recovering Identifying and ultimately returning an individual to their family begins with analysis and investigation The DPAA experts begin the search by studying all known information regarding the circumstances of each loss Historians and analysts gather information from us veterans foreign witnesses archival records and other sources They then create a case file for each unaccounted for American This file may include historical records official correspondence maps photographs Daily activity logs and medical and personnel records of the missing person These files are continually updated until an identification is made Once the research has been done here And we get the command's approval We send out small teams could be up to people it could be a 10-person team Conducting interviews at a villager's house at a district office or a combination of there of going to the site first and And then conducting the interviews on site Once all available information is analyzed a decision can be made to dissenter individuals buried as unknown or conduct field investigations During a typical investigation mission personnel interview potential witnesses conduct on-site reconnaissance and Survey terrain for safety and logistical concerns Teams also try to generate new leads that may result in future recoveries The main goal of the investigation is to obtain enough information To correlate or connect a particular site with one or more missing Americans If enough on-site evidence is found the site will be recommended for recovery and excavation Recovery sites range in size from a few square meters such as in Individual burials to areas larger than football fields for aircraft crashes DPAA may hire as many as a hundred local workers to help with the excavation process This job has so many Benefits for me personally. It's an opportunity to serve the country But also our fighting forces and kind of contribute to that as well Professionally, it's just an incredible challenge to get to work in all the countries where we work to travel to these amazing sites To work with the local villagers and local officials And just have the opportunity to give somebody some answers after decades of waiting to know what happened to their loved one and you know maybe just Wrestling with the grief that that lack of information and lack of answers brings we have the chance to resolve that for them And that's just an incredible opportunity Investigative and recovery missions in search of missing Americans take DPAA personnel to distant remote and Often dangerous locations all over the globe rice paddies in Southeast Asia Areas on the Korean Peninsula 16,000 foot mountain tops in the Himalayas and underwater sites off the coast of Papua New Guinea and We still continue to search the battlefields of World War two throughout Europe After a successful recovery all evidence is then transported to the DPAA laboratories Once they've arrived in the lab The painstaking process of identification begins. This is the final step of the mission leading to the return of an individual in Many of the cases an important step in the identification process is DNA analysis Which is accomplished by cutting a bone sample that is sent to the armed forces DNA identification laboratory One of the challenges DPAA faces today Is the lack of reference samples from family members of those still unaccounted for Any person who is a relative of an unaccounted for American is Encouraged to contact their service casualty office to ensure there is a DNA reference sample on file for that service member DPAA makes an identification when all available evidence remains Artifacts and historical documents point to the same person The ID process can take anywhere from a few months to several years to complete any unresolved cases are kept open with the hope that new Evidence will be found or new technologies will be developed to make a future identification possible Once an American has been identified There remains a return to their family through the respective service casualty office They return home with full military honors and given the respect they earn through their service and sacrifice for their country Oh as a family member of this agency to me is doing phenomenal work and in a very personal way because when Somebody loses somebody like my father and you really don't know What the story is for 70 years and then you find an agency that knows about him and keeps his His memory alive keeps the mission alive to try to find him It's very meaningful in a very personal way Because it means you're not just doing this yourself alone You have a whole body of people Who are concerned about finding your dad and bringing him home It's just So grateful because not only you our kids and everything else are fully aware that my brother is Somewhere and We are gonna find it. It's all a matter of working working hard and then the good Lord will find Small miracle and it turns into a better miracle, and I'm so and as long as I live I'll never give up on that miracle I just wanted to yell Hopefully to everybody out there. He's home. He's home. I Couldn't believe it and when I went up and touched his name. You're home. You're home It's unbelievable. I'm glad I Live in the United States of America and That we have this attitude Leave no man behind We are we're so fortunate I want you to know and I know from my own experience that if something's happened to you We will be looking for you The men and women of the Defense POW MIA accounting agency are United in their effort to recover and return as many of our missing personnel as possible One more patriot return One more family that now has answers One more step in fulfilling our nation's promise National commander has arrived. I'm going to ask her to come in by the way. I forgot to mention We have a committee advisor The good-looking guy in the back there Justin Hart, he's with the committee advisor and there's another we have another committee advisor Shane Learman and he couldn't be here for this afternoon, but a national commander met calf waster. Would you come on up here? commander We're continuing a tradition. We started a few years ago The outgoing commander is a way of our gratitude showing our gratitude and saying thanks you For your support of this committee in our effort to do the DAV spark There's a brand new POW. I want to thank all of you for your support through the years I would not be where I am today if I didn't get the support that I have from the DAV and all my friends here And I'll always remember that I always say it's never a big eye and it'll lose you we all work together And I wish you nothing but the best and if I can do anything for anyone Please feel free to reach out even though my new business card is going to read PNC PSC and in the middle of says MIA for those that don't know Delfine Metcalf Foster was the first female to ever lead a major veteran organization and We congratulate her for that and not only the DAV. I mean any of them. She's the first one and she has led This organization very well different in her year Okay, miss miss Wimbish. Here we go again. Okay, I'm gonna pick up the pace a little bit because the video Covered a bit of what I'm gonna talk about so I'm gonna advance pretty quickly so that Steve Thompson can come behind Come behind me and give you really the other important piece of what we want to talk about today So this slide just gives you an idea of the scope of the effort over 82,000 missing many of them are deep-sea losses or High-speed air crash Losses and many of them we won't ever be able to recover and we understand that so we assess that that there are about 34,000 remaining That we think we can actually get to and recover The agency as the video said 600 strong we have anthropologists forensic anthropologists archaeologists researchers explosive ordinance personnel especially as we go and Conduct field recovery operations in Vietnam Louson, Cambodia, especially along the Ho Chi Minh Trail as you know That's heavily bombed so we have our own Ordinance personnel and a whole host of other professions that are required to execute this mission Last year Thanks to the hard work of not only our scientists But our researchers and our personnel in the in the field and then also support from organizations like the DAV We met the highest number of identifications in the history of the accounting mission 201 identified what that really means is Not 201 Individuals that means 201 families have been contacted or will be contacted and given The ultimate the ultimate miracle Their loved one is coming home their uncle their brother their father It's really an awesome awesome experience for us Those of us who work this mission every single day and I will tell you much as I said before when I spoke to the DAV We're gonna well exceed 2017 Because we have to and because the families expect us to we are already in 2018 well on our way to blow in 201 out of the water. So you heard it here first next slide This is just a quick snapshot to show you how our Identification successes over the years have progressed and so the far right of the slides starts from 1946 all the way to 2018 so be of course 2018 is not over yet So we've got a little way to go before we surpass the 2017 numbers But what I want you to take away from this slide is the light blue At the bottom is Vietnam War accounting. I'm sorry the light blue is Korean War accounting Soon as I said it I knew it was wrong. I figure out how to back back up Korean War accounting as you can see the numbers have increased yearly with Korean War because we did a large Korean disinterment project that we are continuing to work on and I'm gonna talk a little bit more about Korea in a minute the green Bars are Vietnam Identification so early on we were able to get quite a number of identifications annually But you know as the acidic soil urbanization and other elements in Vietnam Laos Cambodia have whittled away at those remains we don't quite have the ability to recover as many as we used to and So those that we do recover Oftentimes are they're very difficult to get DNA out of and so the numbers are dwindling Because of that we are keeping Vietnam as the focus for the next couple of years so that we can get as many remains out of the ground Out of Southeast Asia as possible before we have before there's nothing less left the darker blue bars are World War two so through our disinterment program, but also recovery efforts in Europe We've been able to increase our World War two Accounting as well next slide when I talked a little bit about our priorities our main effort right now As I said is world is a Vietnam our Vietnam operations But in addition to that, you know one of the biggest challenges for an agency is database management And we have talked a lot over the past three years that I've been associated with DPA a about a case management system Well, we are here case management system Will be fully operational in December of this year. We're using it right now. It's a internal program of software that our analysts researchers anthropologists and scientists use to share information, but also to digitize and preserve a lot of those fragile documents and Photographs that if we leave them On the shelves where they are right now, they will continue to deteriorate and be of no use to us in the future So we have a huge scanning effort afoot to not only Ingest those documents and images But we also have this case management system that we're going to be using not just internal to DPA a but also with the service Casualty offices and some of our partners so that we can properly share information and develop that case That service members case file that Congress and frankly the families have been demanding for years And so we're getting much closer Steve Thompson is going to talk to you about the public portal So I'm not going to touch on that here We continue to grow next slide our public private partnerships Over the last three years we have grown this effort to over 130 either active or in the works partnerships We have partnered with organizations such as history flight that I'm sure many of you have heard of they are working on recovering the marines from Taroa Hugely successful partnership for us. They have really done an outstanding job in addition as I talked about in Europe. We are also Partnering with in the bottom right hand photo is a picture of a young man who is Is a student with the University of Pennsylvania? We've partnered with Pennsylvania with the University of Innsbruck, Austria and the World War two museum and we Last year conducted a highly successful to be announced Mission in Austria where we recovered remains and we believe We are hopeful that these remains will be of a Tuskegee airman that went down during World War two and then of course We continue to partner with organizations that have underwater expertise Woods Hole The Croatian Navy and The National Park Service Partnered with us this past year. We conducted an underwater recovery which is pictured in that top left photo in Croatia to recover Another set of remains and so with our partners they Not only do they bring the expertise But they also give us the ability to do much more right because we 600 sounds like a lot of people, but it's not a lot of people when you have Only a handful of anthropologists a handful of archaeologists and then the rest are researchers and support We need people who can put their hands in the dirt who can dig who can dive deep and help us recover those remains And so though our partners give us that extra Bit of personnel and resources to help us get after this very very challenging mission in a much better way next slide And then this just gives you an idea of just how vast our partnering effort has been this slide shows Map of the US and then shows by state where we have partners Next slide like said I'm gonna move quickly so I can get Steve up here These are upcoming events Steve Thompson is from our outreach and communications directorate Responsible for not only reaching out to organizations such as this but also to families and family groups Listed on the slide are our upcoming events. I'd like to invite everybody in this room To Washington DC on the 21st of September for the POW MIA recognition day The secretary of Defense Secretary Mattis has agreed to host that event so I can guarantee you it will be awesome We've had guest speakers in the past congressmen and women former POWs MIAs and this year secretary Mattis has agreed to host so please come out show your support and Hear our secretary of defense and then I would also like to put the board on notice So I'm not gonna hide behind an email Put the board on notice and invite you to one of our current family member updates Right where you could actually come and not only hear this same Set of remarks again given by much more experienced individuals than than me, but also here from the families We have during the family member updates. We have a Moment of remembrance where family members if they're comfortable and many of them are if they're comfortable to stand up Behind the mic and tell us about their loss. It is hugely moving so I can't I can't invite all of DAV because it really is only for the families So I can however invite the POW MIA committee to and you can go to anyone one Exactly, it's so please please come Next slide with without further ado I'd like to introduce Steve Thompson who's going to give you the outreach and communications perspective of the DPA a mission Steve Thank you Well, good afternoon everybody As I've already been introduced my name is Steve Thompson and as Vince mentioned at the beginning of the meeting I'm a family and veteran liaison So what does that mean? I mean I exactly as the title says I liaison with families of our Articana for service members and with the veterans organizations Vfw Merrigan Legion DAV Special Forces Association Special Operations Association so on and so on We work with all these organizations on a very close basis So I'm going to talk about What we want you to know which is that we're not just sitting behind our our desks and our closed doors Either either in DC or Hawaii. We're out. We're talking to veterans groups We're talking to families and family organizations. We want you to know what we're doing on your behalf So that's what I'm going to talk about So you've heard mentioned already a family member updates Vince has already promised to come to the one in Philadelphia in September. We'll see you there Show me Philadelphia So these are our these are a great opportunity For family members and for us. So we have we hold these eight times a year in different locations around the country on our website if you want to write it down as www.dpaa.mil and I'll show you what's on the website here in a minute, but on there you can find the 2018 and 2019 Schedule for the FM users already online. You can see it. You can see those Since 1995 when we started this program, we've had over 19,000 family members that have attended It's an all day long affair. We're quite tired. I can promise you at the end of the day But you get briefings. You'll get a nice welcome by mrs. Wimbush. You get policy briefings. You get operations briefings Briefings by scientists who are actually doing the work Briefings by the head of the DNA laboratory and they're really a lot of the family members, especially if it's their first time They're actually quite overwhelmed. They're like, wow, this is a lot to take in in one time So we say well, that's why we encourage you to come back One of the best things about these meetings is we have we have an opportunity to meet in a one-on-one setting With family members. So and they come in in different varieties. So for example World War two You see more and more nieces nephews You know second third generation you see grand nephews grand nieces not not necessarily people who knew the casualty But you've got you know families go down the line So they tend to know a little bit less about what we're doing and about the loss as you get closer to the loss Like say Vietnam War, you know, we get mothers that come to these mothers who are still waiting for their sons to come home We get brothers and sisters. We get wives. We get certainly get children So we get in that one-on-one meeting setting we get an opportunity to sit down and say, okay, Mrs. Jones Or in a lot of cases we know these families personally We've developed friendships with them over the years and we sit down and we go over, you know, whatever questions they may have Okay, last time we met we told you we're gonna do an investigation and that we were looking for this witness We can give them an update face-to-face on what occurred since the last time we met We normally get 150 to 250 family members at each of these meetings That really depends normally on where we are. I think in Rapid City. We had Less than a hundred, but that's fine. You know, we're we're it's okay And I just said at this billet the last billet that bullet there this morning So what we've done in last year? So we've invited senior members of the VFW the American Legion to come and send a couple of Department officers so we invite DAV to do the same thing Vince has got a part will probably be the first To do that But again, we want to have the point is we want to have a closer relationship with the DAV and and continue our Collaboration slight please Okay, in addition to the family member updates, we hold two annual government briefings one is for the Vietnam War families That's in conjunction with the National League of Families And that's in July. We have held that last June. I find out last month And then next month in DC, we'll hold the annual meeting for the Korean War and Cold War families We normally get about 400 Korean War families showing up for that meeting with all the news about what's going on Between President Bush and Chairman Kinn. We're expecting large large numbers. I think we're well over 450 already So that's going to be a large meeting One of the benefits of this is that the the government will fund the travel for two family members That that's as done through this the service casually office So if yours if you're missing a loved one is a soldier then the army would handle that all those arrangements for you Again, we have one-on-one meetings so you can sit down with an analyst go over your case And and anyway from 200 to 400 family members attend those annual meetings, but again Korea this year. We expect it to be Mature slight please Okay, one thing we love doing in Hawaii is hosting family visits So the gentleman in the top right photograph there, I forget the relationship, but he had a family member who was On account of for we met him at a family meeting. He said geez I'd love to come to Hawaii We said well, we know let us know when you're coming and we'll give you the you know dollar tour So that typically a family member comes out we give them an orientation tour We take them to the laboratory where they have one of our anthropologists give them a Presentation on how they go about making identifications And in some cases family members come out to receive their identified remains of their loved one normally that's an active duty person So if if somebody in your family Somebody in the family if not accounted for individual is still in uniform that individual can come out as special escort They're put on on orders and that's their place of duty They come out and they get escort those remains back to the mainland for in term of wherever the family chooses normally That's Arlington, but that that's a family decision And the bottom right photograph there is those are That's an identified individual leaving our facility and you can see we get Surveying staff to get military to come out and pay the respects as this individual is making his way home to his family In fact this coming Tuesday morning. We have the husband of a grand niece of an individual killed at the Children's Reservoir Has been identified and the family's coming out to receive his remains, and I believe he's going to Arlington as well slide please Okay, this is something mrs. Wimbush is very involved in and again This is our way to reach out to you folks and push information out to your leadership So you know what we're doing on your behalf I guess so we're not sitting behind our closed doors or you know on our military facilities We want you to know what we're doing so once a quarter. There's a big conference call and headed by the Let led by on our half by the director he we got VFW Murray Legion DAV VVA Families of family groups from Vietnam War Korean War so on and so on And we have this conference call and we give them an update on on on budget on operations on policy whatever It needs to be discussed In addition to that we post on our webpage, and I'll show you that in a second That that a similar update so even if you're not You know that you're not Vince here, and you're not dialing in to be part of that conference call You can go on our webpage and see essentially the same information slide please Okay, mrs. Wimbush already mentioned National PWM a recognition day DC always holds their their Ceremony at the Pentagon. I'm told it's a beautiful ceremony in Hawaii. We have ours. We love it again The same veterans groups that I've mentioned repeatedly now show up DAV shows up The two individuals you see there from VFW they come we have a beautiful ceremony. There's a eulogy clergy member giving some kind of benediction type thing if we've had return PLW's we've had family members We've had all kinds of guest speakers come out and and to share their experience And then the last thing at the serve at the end of ceremony is the wreath laying Last last year. I think we had about 30 different groups again veterans groups civic organizations the governor State representatives boy scouts girl scouts. It's it's quite a big deal and it's it's it's Really nice. Have you ever know why third Friday of September any year, please come on out slide Okay, kind of like what we're doing here today, we do this every year we attend the VFW American Legion DAV conventions and we meet with their members that we educate them and let them know what we're doing on your behalf slide Okay, this is something This is really cool. So for example the top Top right-hand photograph there is that's Cliff Newman. Cliff Newman was an army special forces soldier served in Vietnam both with Fifth group and Mack v. Sog The reason you see picture of Cliff there in Vietnam Cliff was on the bright light mission for RT intruder which was lost just west of the Westside of the Oshawa Valley on the Vietnam loud border. So Cliff was on the ground the day or a day or so after Recon team intruder went missing Cliff has now been back with us three times To help us find that site. He just came back. I got back to war brag. I think like two weeks ago We finally found the site So that's a great story. That's a great guy You won't know it by looking at the photograph but Cliff Cliff lost the lower half of his left leg when he stepped on a mine His last tour in Vietnam You'd never know by the way he gets around. He's a pretty impressive guy bottom right-hand corner pictures of Larry Page and John Caviani Both of these special forces soldiers were at a place called Hickory. It was a NSA listening post So they had you know, it kind of an enemy territory. So they had a heavily guarded NVA came in with brigade side side side's unit and they said well, you know, we're not gonna win this So they pulled everybody off During the last moments of our occupation there a soldier named Jones was killed John Caviani was the only American Left at the site when Jones was killed So we took Larry Page who had just been evacuated before the NVA hit and they went back and they helped us find the bunker Where Jones was was last seen what we suspect that he was killed We recovered Jones remains and he was identified about four years ago. By the way, John Caviani was captured At that battle spent the remainder of the war in a prison up in Hanoi It came home and was later recognized and we received the Medal of Honor. He's gone now. So we got him But we got him before he passed slide. Okay. I mentioned our public website. So again www.dpaa.mil if you go to the If you look at the top where you see the top left-hand corner is our logo Down and over to over when it says families you click on that and that's our family web or fan web We're calling it if the intent is to push information out to family members, but anybody can actually go on there and see it So the information you'll see you'll see on there So once you go into fan web, there's four tabs what welcome to fan web quarterly updates and so on the first tab is Which is a picture that you see right there. You can see recent identifications You can see our ID count for the current fiscal year You can see where we have teams currently deployed around the world. You go to the next tab quarterly update I mentioned that our director and Mrs. Wimbush participate in a quarterly conference call with all the Our stakeholders and so the information that is shared during that that that Telephone conferences is also posted here. So anybody can go on there and see the latest information slide, please. Okay The next next tab over is service members profile again, you can anybody can see this you can go on there You if you have an individual you knew was on a counter for You you can search his name You can search by home of record by state you can search by date of loss You can search by country of loss all those information is available And then the last tab a family member update you can go in there You can see the schedule currently we have posted schedules for 2018 2019 There's hotel information if your family member and you want to register and there's also contact information for your service casualty office And I think this is Wimbush already mentions. I'll emphasize this if you know anybody who has Unaccounted for a service member in their family their initial point of contact is not DPA a it's the service casualty office So if they were a soldier, it's the Army casualty office of Fort Knox, Kentucky If they're Marine, then it's it's the Marine casualty office of Quantico So that's the family members first up So if anybody stops you and says hey, you know, I'm a family member and I'm looking for information You know, they can go to our website. They can find this if contact information But their first contact should be with the service casualty office Hey slight, okay, I'm gonna talk a highlight for few minutes the great things that are all of our smart Scientific staff folks are doing Okay, so When we make identifications, we look we develop Multiple lines of evidence a line of evidence is that is a piece of the puzzle if you would Sometimes we have all those pieces of puzzle when we get the remains and we can make an identification fairly quickly In other cases in most cases it takes us time to put these this puzzle back together So every time you get a piece of evidence, maybe it's a DNA match That's the line of evidence So when the when remains come into our laboratory the anthropologist develops a biological profile Which is normally age height race sex But sometimes depending on the remains the amount of remains you have that may be an easy task or it may be a very difficult task So we look for again for multiple lines of evidence before we can make an identification So about ten years ago. We had this anthropologist incredibly smart guy and he said you know guys I had this idea that Clavicles are unique to each of us much like a fingerprint similar to DNA so he commenced his study and He was right. So now this is an accepted Tool in the forensic community that was developed in our laboratory to help us make identifications This was this whole project was kind of spurred on by the by the fact that when we when we started working on Korean war unknowns Buried at the Punchbowl Cemetery in Hawaii. We were unable to get a deep get a DNA sequence We found out later that the remains had been Treated with a formaldehyde based solution at the army mortuary in Japan during the Korean War So that formaldehyde Created a chemical chemical bond that that our DNA scientists could not break So the so the end run was kind of what well if we can't get DNA out of these remains We need to develop another line of evidence that line of evidence became is what you see up here so by by by comparing X-rays taken TB x-rays chest x-rays taken at the induction of the individual To determine you know see if you if you qualified for military service if you had TB that he wasn't qualified. So we got a I Fast majority maybe like 98% I'm not sure what the exact number is of the x-rays of individuals who were inducted into the army or into the military during the Korean War We now use those x-rays and compare them against Korean War unknowns Okay, it's like Okay, this is brand new brand spanking new so again another line of evidence is now isotope analysis So an isotope is a variation of a standard chemical element like carbon or nitrogen We all ingest these things in water and in the food that we eat Well, it turns out that these variations of isotopes are different depending on where you live and You can use that to determine the origin of the remains So we have remains in the laboratory and it's a white guy. He's six foot 11 and a half He's 18 to 22 years old. I don't have it. Maybe I don't have a DNA match But I've but I can use isotope and maybe I've got two possibilities I got two in men that are missing from the Korean War. They both maxed the profile One's from Washington State and one's from New York Well, what am I gonna do so you can use isotope analysis to determine the origin of that individual Based on what they drank what they ate as a child So the results come back and all this individual Has characteristics of somebody who grew up in in the Northwest part of the United States. Well, it's this individual So again, you can't make identification offer this one single piece of information But if you put it together and you develop multiple lines of evidence Then that allow will allow you to go forward to make the identification again. This is brand brand new We're still developing this capability in our laboratory in Hawaii Dr. Tom Holland who runs our strategic partnership program It tells me that he's working on developing this with Outside partners who are smart on this. So we're really we're really excited about this slide, please Okay, I know I think mrs. Wimbush mentioned unknowns So after World War two after Korean War there are roughly 8,500 individuals buried At different cemeteries around the world American cemeteries abmc And Pudgepole Cemetery in Hawaii So the advances that I've explained a couple of them already Now allowing us to make identifications of individuals who have laid as unknown since World War two Since the Korean War One good thing about this is we have access to all the graves. It's an American cemetery All we have to do is coordinate with the local cemetery Administration, so hey, we want to dig up So I wanted this inter this this grave because we believe we know who that individual is and we make the coordination and it's fairly simple So the folks that are working this we have historians that are going back looking at records of cemeteries Mortuaries trying to put piece together where do these remains actually come from which would help us make the identification And then we have scientists that are looking comparing at the list of individuals this these remains could possibly be associated to And then they come up with a with a recommendation and then we do the disinterment slide please So here are the current numbers of individuals that we've identified Men who were previously unknowns And most of this is in the last couple years if I can point that out So again the science allows us the the advancement of forensic science allows us to make identifications today That just five ten years ago. We would not have been able to make The us oklahoma us oklahoma went down in pearl harbor december 7 1941 There were 397 sailors and marines on board And we've now identified 143 of them. They were all disinterred. They were on our laboratory in hawaii And we've identified 143 so far and that work continues Taro at 27 ids And you can read the rest but a total of 355 individuals who are previously interred as unknowns have now been identified slide please Okay, so where are we where we working? This is our current plan for 2018 You can see we're in 24 countries asia Europe south pacific world over the place slide Okay, you can see the level of effort this side There's two things one you can see the level of effort on the left side You can see where we're putting our emphasis and again, this is when bush mentioned that vietnam war is our priority And she explained why that, you know, we have we have this soil acidity problem In southeast asia that we don't we don't face that problem anywhere else So we're actually losing the remains in southeast asia. They're being dissolved slowly So that's why our as what primarily why our emphasis is still on southeast asia Okay slide Okay, this is our operational plan for next year These are the places and numbers of teams that we have we plan on sending out Obviously, we may add north korea to that. We'll we'll see don't know yet Okay, all right. Okay. I'm getting the hook so