[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 113-52]
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE'S CHALLENGES
IN ACCOUNTING FOR MISSING PERSONS
FROM PAST CONFLICTS
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY PERSONNEL
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
AUGUST 1, 2013
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY PERSONNEL
JOE WILSON, South Carolina, Chairman
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
JOSEPH J. HECK, Nevada ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa
JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire
KRISTI L. NOEM, South Dakota
Craig Greene, Professional Staff Member
Debra Wada, Professional Staff Member
Colin Bosse, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2013
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, August 1, 2013, Department of Defense's Challenges in
Accounting for Missing Persons from Past Conflicts............. 1
Appendix:
Thursday, August 1, 2013......................................... 23
----------
THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 2013
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE'S CHALLENGES IN ACCOUNTING FOR MISSING PERSONS
FROM PAST CONFLICTS
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Davis, Hon. Susan A., a Representative from California, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Military Personnel..................... 2
Wilson, Hon. Joe, a Representative from South Carolina, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Military Personnel............................. 1
WITNESSES
Cole, Dr. Paul M., Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education
Fellow, Central Identification Laboratory, Joint POW/MIA
Accounting Command (JPAC)...................................... 4
Farrell, Brenda S., Director, Defense Capabilities and
Management, U.S. Government Accountability Office.............. 3
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Cole, Dr. Paul M............................................. 48
Davis, Hon. Susan A.......................................... 29
Farrell, Brenda S............................................ 30
Wilson, Hon. Joe............................................. 27
Documents Submitted for the Record:
``Accessions with Possible U.S. Human Remains FY 03-FY 13,''
by Dr. Paul M. Cole........................................ 61
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE'S CHALLENGES IN ACCOUNTING FOR MISSING PERSONS
FROM PAST CONFLICTS
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Military Personnel,
Washington, DC, Thursday, August 1, 2013.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 8:02 a.m., in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Joe Wilson
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE WILSON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
SOUTH CAROLINA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY PERSONNEL
Mr. Wilson. The hearing will come to order. Everyone is
welcome to the Subcommittee on Military Personnel on the topic
of the Department of Defense's challenges in accounting for
missing persons from past conflicts.
Today the subcommittee will continue its oversight on the
important issue of POW/MIA [Prisoner of War/Missing in Action]
recovery. Last August, Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo and I
had the opportunity to visit the Joint Personnel Accounting
Command--JPAC--headquarters, as well as a field recovery team
on the side of a mountain in Vietnam.
I was extremely impressed with the professionalism and work
ethic of our service men and women as they worked in extreme
heat and dangerous conditions to recover the remains of missing
persons from a jet crash site. There were many dedicated
military personnel involved in this effort.
The joint U.S.-Vietnamese team was inspiring for its
determination of recovery of remains. They shared the desire
for the fullest possible accounting with the many family
members of those who are still missing.
We, as a nation, owe the proper emphasis, resources, and
priority of effort to account for our missing persons from past
conflicts and to bring closure to their family members. That is
why this subcommittee, then chaired by Representative Susan
Davis, in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal
year 2010 required the Secretary of Defense to increase
significantly the Department's capability and capacity to
account for missing persons, with the objective that the POW/
MIA accounting community could identify at least 200 missing
persons annually, beginning in fiscal year 2015.
In May 2012, after 3 years of little apparent progress by
the Department of Defense toward achieving the 2010 mandate,
this committee directed a Government Accountability Office
review. There have been approximately nine studies over the
past decade on ways to provide and improve the accounting
community's effort to include a recent internal review of
JPAC's procedures conducted by Dr. Paul Cole, who is employed
as a fellow at JPAC.
Our goal today is to better understand the ability of the
POW/MIA accounting community to meet the requirements of the
National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2010 and to
help the Department build the capability and capacity to
identify 200 missing persons per year by fiscal year 2015.
I would like to welcome the distinguished witnesses, Ms.
Brenda S. Farrell, Director of Defense Capabilities and
Management, U.S. Government Accountability Office; and also Dr.
Paul M. Cole, Ph.D., Oak Ridge Institute for Science and
Education Fellow with the Joint Personnel Accounting Command,
Central Identification Laboratory, U.S. Pacific Command.
Mrs. Davis, do you have any opening remarks?
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wilson can be found in the
Appendix on page 27.]
STATEMENT OF HON. SUSAN A. DAVIS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
CALIFORNIA, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY PERSONNEL
Mrs. Davis. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly want
to welcome also Dr. Cole and Ms. Farrell. We appreciate your
being here with us today.
As we know, this hearing is the first of several that the
subcommittee is planning on the effectiveness and the
efficiency of the POW/MIA accounting community.
Mr. Chairman, I hope that the next hearing we hold will
include the appropriate representatives from the Department of
Defense. Ultimately, it is the Secretary of Defense's
responsibility for ensuring that the Department meets the legal
requirements to achieve at least 200 identifications a year
beginning in 2015.
And therefore it is only appropriate that we have the
representatives from the Department of Defense before the
subcommittee to understand what actions, if any, the Department
is undertaking to truly address the concerns that have been
raised in the Cole report and in the recent GAO [Government
Accountability Office] report that we will be hearing about
today.
The culture of service instills within each service member
that no one should be left behind on the field of battle. And
we have a moral responsibility to those who are missing and
remain unaccounted for to be returned home to their families
and their loved ones. As the GAO report makes clear, weak
leadership, fragmented organizational structure, and the lack
of clearly articulated roles and responsibilities have hampered
the effectiveness of this community for years. Given the
current budget situation, we can no longer afford to let these
concerns slide.
So it is time we focus our attention on how to make the
POW/MIA accounting community more effective and efficient to be
able to meet the goal of identifying at least these 200 sets of
remains a year by 2015.
So I look forward to hearing from our witnesses and having
an open and productive dialogue on the issues and challenges
that our two witnesses have identified within the POW/MIA
accounting community.
And again, I want to thank you all for being here. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Mrs. Davis can be found in the
Appendix on page 29.]
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mrs. Davis.
I now ask unanimous consent that Representatives Richard
Nugent, Colleen Hanabusa, and Congresswoman Jackie Speier be
allowed to ask questions during the hearing. Without objection,
so ordered.
Ms. Farrell, we will begin with your testimony. As a
reminder, please keep your statements to 5 minutes. We have
your written statement as well as Dr. Cole's for the record.
STATEMENT OF BRENDA S. FARRELL, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE CAPABILITIES
AND MANAGEMENT, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. Farrell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member Davis, and members of the
subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today to
discuss GAO's recently issued report on the Department of
Defense's missing persons accounting mission. As you know, we
conducted our review of DOD's [Department of Defense] efforts
to increase its capability and capacity to account for missing
persons in response to a mandate driven by this subcommittee.
For the past decade, DOD has accounted for an average of 72
persons each year. Congress mandated DOD to increase its
capability and capacity such that it could account for at least
200 missing persons annually by 2015. We were mandated to
review DOD's efforts to reach that goal of 200.
My main message today is in the title of our report, ``Top-
Level Leadership Attention Needed to Resolve Long-Standing
Challenges in Accounting for Missing Persons from Past
Conflicts.'' While more than a dozen DOD organizations, known
collectively as the accounting community, have a role in
accounting for the missing, the Under Secretary for Policy and
the U.S. Pacific Command are the two top-level leadership
organizations.
My written statement is divided into three parts. First, we
reported the need for DOD to examine options to reorganize the
accounting community. Top-level leadership has been unable to
resolve disputes between accounting community members in areas
such as roles and responsibilities and developing a
communitywide plan, as outline in our report. Further, the
community is fragmented in that the community members belong to
diverse parent organizations under several different chains of
command. No single entity has overarching responsibility for
communitywide personnel and other resources.
A majority of the community members we surveyed conveyed a
lack of confidence about the organizational structure. Not a
single organization ranked the current structure as the most
effective organizational option.
Moreover, illustrating a disconnect between leadership's
perspective and the rest of the community, only two
organizations, the two top-level leadership organizations I
have noted--the Under Secretary for Policy and PACOM [U.S.
Pacific Command]--responded that the current structure greatly
enabled the appropriate senior leadership involvement.
The second part of my statement addresses the need for
DOD's guidance to clearly articulate roles and responsibilities
for all accounting community organizations. Disagreement over
roles and responsibilities, where DOD's guidance is broad or
vague enough to support different interpretations, have led to
discord, lack of collaboration and friction among the community
members, and particularly between DPMO [Defense Prisoner of
War/Missing Personnel Office] that reports to the Under
Secretary for Policy and JPAC, a subordinate command of PACOM.
For example, JPAC views itself as having the lead on
operational activities, such as conducting investigations and
recovery missions. And JPAC officials express concerns with
DPMO's plans to conduct some operational activities.
We found overlap and duplication efforts have led to
inconsistent practices in key areas, such as equipment and
artifact identification and analysis and research and analysis.
The last part of my statement addresses the need for DOD to
finalize the communitywide plan to develop increased capability
and capacity as required by statute. Communitywide planning has
been impeded by disputes and by a lack of coordination among
members of the missing persons accounting community.
DPMO and JPAC developed two competing proposed plans,
neither of which encompass the entire accounting community.
Both plans call for an increased capability and capacity and
for a new satellite remains identification laboratory in the
continental United States.
However, the two plans differed as to which organization
would have control over much of the increased capability and
capacity. And each plan favored the organization that authored
it.
The other members and their resource needs were not
mentioned in either proposed plan. We made recommendations in
each of these three areas to DOD along with six other
recommendations. And DOD generally concurred with all of our
findings and recommendations.
Let me conclude by noting that prompt action on the part of
DOD to address these recommendations is critical because the
2015 timeframe is rapidly approaching and, importantly,
families have been waiting for decades to discover the fate of
their loved ones.
Chairman Wilson, this concludes my remarks. I will be
pleased to take questions when you wish.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Farrell can be found in the
Appendix on page 30.]
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Ms. Farrell.
We proceed to Dr. Cole.
STATEMENT OF DR. PAUL M. COLE, OAK RIDGE INSTITUTE FOR SCIENCE
AND EDUCATION FELLOW, CENTRAL IDENTIFICATION LABORATORY, JOINT
POW/MIA ACCOUNTING COMMAND (JPAC)
Dr. Cole. Congressman, thank you for the opportunity to be
here today and your colleagues. I will just submit my prepared
statement for the record and just have a couple of opening
statements to make.
The first one is, again, to thank you for the opportunity
to be here. I need to state a couple of things for the record.
I am not an employee of the Department of Defense. I am a
participant in the ORISE [Oak Ridge Institute for Science and
Education] scholarship and fellowship program. So I don't
represent the Department of Defense, JPAC, the Central
Identification Lab, or anybody else for that matter, except for
me. So I am not a DOD employee.
I would like to just briefly summarize what I did and what
I was asked to do. I came to JPAC from a management consulting
background. And I was asked to look at, not the science of the
identification process, but the business side of it, how is it
done, and to look at the process to identify where there could
be some improvements, efficiencies, that sort of thing.
So I want to emphasize when I talk about what I do and what
I found. I have profound respect for the missing. My father is
a World War II and Korea War veteran. And every time I look at
a photograph of the missing people we are working with from
World War II, I always think it could have been him. So it is a
very personal thing. And I have worked with families of the
missing over the years since I first got involved with this
issue in the early 1990s. So if it sounds like I am just being
dispassionate, I hope that doesn't give the wrong impression
that I don't have respect for the issue we are working with.
But what I did was broke the identification process up into
four parts. Think of it this way. You have procurement. Well,
let me start over. What is the end product? The end product is
an identification. It is in the form of a written product, if
you have never seen one. It is in a binder. It is in a, you
know, black cover and so forth. That is what JPAC does. It
produces identifications.
Now, how do they get the information for that
identification? It starts on this end with a procurement of
remains. You have to find them. Then, that is the procurement
step, then they must come into the laboratory. That is the
inbound logistics part. Now, that is the recovery teams that
Congressman Wilson referred to who are out digging in the
jungles and so forth.
Then there are laboratory operations that occur within the
CIL [Central Identification Laboratory] that produce the
identification. So there are four parts. So when I talk about
procurement, that means finding the remains. Inbound logistics,
that is the recovery operations. Lab operations is the actual
identification process--where the scientific director, who is
the only one in the Department of Defense who has the authority
to sign off on an identification finally says, ``These remains
are this person,'' and then the identification report itself.
So what binds this all together--I have it here. I wrote an
SOP for that, a standard operating procedure, to bind all those
pieces together into one coherent production process. Along the
way, I identified--I don't want to use that word. The result
revealed some problems in the identification process; those I
addressed in the SOP.
So the ones that you saw in the information value chain
report, that is actually a problem statement. The SOP that I
have here is supposed to be the solution statement. And that is
what I was asked to do. I stand by the report that I did.
And that concludes my comments and look forward to having a
discussion with you. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Cole can be found in the
Appendix on page 48.]
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Dr. Cole. And I want to
thank you and Ms. Farrell for your thoroughness, your obvious
appreciation of how significant this issue is, and we are just
very grateful that you have provided this information.
Ms. Farrell, the GAO report provides DOD nine
recommendations for executive action in order to improve the
accounting community's efforts and efficiencies. If DOD
implements the recommendations, will the department be able to
build the capacity and capability to meet the fiscal year 2010
mandate of identifying at least 200 persons a year?
Ms. Farrell. Our report does make nine recommendations. At
the top of the list is the recommendation for DOD to examine
its organizational structure to determine if it is the right
structure to help it increase its capability and capacity by
2015. We think that this is an examination that needs to be
made quickly. And, from that, it should flow the roles and
responsibilities of who is going to do what and by when.
Right now, the DOD does not have a plan of how they are
going to increase their capability and capacity to reach that
200. So the first thing they need to do is have a road map of
how they are going to get there. They may have to make
adjustments. They may find that the feasibility of 200 is not
realistic. Or they may find that they can do more than the 200.
But right now, they do not have that roadmap.
Mr. Wilson. And I really appreciate your clarity in regard
to organizational structure. And I am confident this committee
will be looking into that.
And, Dr. Cole, I appreciate your candidness, the report
that you did. And you originally, to do a snapshot of JPAC
operations to help provide for its standard operating
procedure, SOP. Has the SOP been completed? Is it being
utilized? What recommendations, indeed, could be provided? And
I appreciate you giving a step-by-step analysis, too.
Dr. Cole. Certainly, thank you. Yes, I completed my
assignment and submitted the SOP to the command. After that, I
had nothing to do with it. It was amended quite a bit. So the
SOP was signed, and it is in effect. It is on the portal of the
JPAC. You can look at it. But it varies significantly from the
one that I have submitted.
One of the things that was very important in the
information value chain study was the identification of areas
where there were no accountability measures. The Department of
Defense requires every element of the Department of Defense to
have a reportable metric, a quantifiable metric to report,
right? So I put those into the SOP where they were missing.
Unfortunately, quite a few of those were taken out in the
final version. So, yes, short answer to your question is yes.
But the version that you see on the portal is, sort of, rather
alien to me.
Mr. Wilson. And with the metrics that you identified being
taken out, which metrics were they?
Dr. Cole. It was primarily in the procurement side. And
that is the investigative team missions. There was just nothing
there. When you would ask--I did my methodology for this was to
do written surveys and follow up with face-to-face interviews
and so forth. But, more importantly, I looked at the products
of each of the sections at JPAC.
Just to give you a contrast, with regard to the laboratory,
I was given a free hand. I looked at hundreds of the
identification packets, right? With respect to the J2 [now
known as Research and Analysis (R&A)], which is responsible for
the investigative team missions, they denied me access to
almost everything. And I was lucky to have a look at about 20
of their field reports.
So, from that, I was able to see that at the end of the
field report--you know, I have been a government consultant in
addition to other things. You generally have to say what you
did for the money. That part was missing. There was no so what
section to any of these. And there were certainly no
quantifiable metrics in those reports. So in the SOP, I hate to
say made up--but I constructed an accountability ladder that
would allow these metrics to be collected, quantified, and
reported. And that is what was missing, and the one that you
can see on the Web site.
Mr. Wilson. And, again, you are continuing being candid.
And we all appreciate that, because we all, who are here, have
such a profound interest that this program be successful.
And, concluding my questions, Ms. Farrell, the nine
recommendations--and I think I already know your answer. It is
called organizational structure. Which of the GAO
recommendations do you feel is most important to achieve the
goals of identification of remains?
Ms. Farrell. Yes, Mr. Chair, I think all the
recommendations are important to help increase the capability
capacity. But I think we would put deciding if the status quo
is the correct structure in place to help increase that
capability and capacity or if there should be a more
centralized chain of command. And once that is decided, then
the next step would be whether you stay with the status quo or
decide to make a change in the structure to more clearly define
the roles and responsibilities.
Mr. Wilson. And I sincerely appreciate your efforts
promoting accountability.
And we now proceed to Congresswoman Susan Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I wanted to follow up with your question,
actually, to Mr. Cole. And maybe this is just--so what is going
on?
Dr. Cole. Well----
Mrs. Davis. Could you talk a little bit about procurement,
particularly? And is there a problem with training? Are there
other responsibilities that get in the way? What do you think
is going on?
Dr. Cole. Well, first I have to give full disclosure. I am
not a forensic scientist, right? I am an economist. I am a
failed scientist. I am an economist and management consultant.
So I looked at this from a business perspective. So if you want
to know anything about the, you know, forensic anthropology and
the archaeology and things like that, unfortunately, I can't
answer that.
But I can tell you about the organization of it. The search
for human remains is actually a very complicated----
Mrs. Davis. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Cole [continuing]. Issue, right? But there is a--I
can't remember the fellow's name now, but there is a famous
forensic anthropologist from Ohio State University who wrote
the ten commandments of forensic anthropology. The first one is
that human remains are always found by accident. It is very
difficult to have a systematic way to search and get results
for this. But it can be done.
So the first thing I would point out that--and it is in my
report. I think there was an absence of a meaningful
methodology in the procurement process. And it lacked, as I
mentioned, accountability. But there was also a lack of
structure in that an analyst should never be allowed to invent
the world that they analyze. You know, that you end up in a
logic loop that way. And there is also no accountability if you
invent your own problem.
So I suggested in this SOP, for example, that every year
the commander of JPAC should establish something that I call
the Command-Authorized Research Program. Unfortunately, the
acronym was CARP. I couldn't come up with a better one.
But that would say that we are going to look at Papua, New
Guinea this year. Or we are going to look for big bombers in
Europe. But it gives a teleological, an end-oriented structure
for the process.
That was missing entirely. So what happened, well it is
still going on, actually, is that the researchers sort of come
into the office and say, ``Well, this is what we are going to
do today. This is what we are going to look for.'' So they
lacked a--in fact, if you read the methodology that is in--I
reprinted the entire thing, I can't think of a more salient
example of opaque sophistry than that methodology that was
presented by the J2.
So it needed instruction from the top. ``Go do this.'' And
that was missing.
And also the methodology, because any observation is
pointless if it is not against a standard. So for every section
in JPAC, I looked for best international practice and held each
section accountable to best international practice in their
particular field.
And we are not the only country that does this mission. It
may be unique for the Department of Defense, but there are
other countries that do it and they do it very well, and we can
learn from them. So I used that as a standard and saw that
there was a tremendous disconnect between the procurement
program at JPAC and the best international practice being used
by other countries.
So let me stop there and see if that is answering your
question.
Mrs. Davis. And what about the community as a whole and
their interaction with this? What did you find--I guess maybe I
will just go to Ms. Farrell because you had----
Dr. Cole. That exceeded my mandate.
Mrs. Davis. Yes.
Ms. Farrell. Yes, our mandate did focus on the total
community and JPAC is obviously a key player. JPAC, as you
know, reports to PACOM, also the Central Identification Lab is
the laboratory for JPAC. But that is just one player, as I
noted in my opening.
The other major coordinating authority is the Under
Secretary for Policy that has the Deputy Assistant Secretary
who oversees work related to developing policy, coordinating
policy and overseeing the missing accounting programs
community.
There are other players such as the Life Sciences Equipment
Laboratory that reports to the Air Force Materiel Command. That
is another chain of command we have got. Now we are up to three
chains of command.
The Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory falls
underneath the Army Surgeon General. So we have got, again,
another chain of command.
This is where you need the two major coordinating bodies,
being PACOM and the Under Secretary's office, to step in at
times when there have been disputes about which plan to proceed
or what are the overlapping roles and----
Mrs. Davis. And how do you see that process, then? How do
they establish those priorities? Because obviously there are a
lot of different ways to approach. And this has been going on,
of course, for a long, long time.
Ms. Farrell. Yes, it has. DPMO was established in 1993. And
what our report is saying, the top leadership coordinating
bodies are not stepping in to resolve those disputes, and it is
not clear where this particular mission falls in terms of
priorities.
Again, there is no communitywide plan that would help lay
out goals, metrics, such as what Dr. Cole is referring to. We
too believe that metrics can help guide an agency to reach
their goal, and if they need to make adjustments, then they can
use that plan to do so.
But right now, it is not clear where this particular
accounting mission does fall in terms of priorities with the
Department.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mrs. Davis.
And we will now proceed with questions from the members who
are here. And I appreciate everyone being here. We will be on a
very strict 5-minute rule. And it will be administered by Craig
Greene, so we know it will be done properly.
And we begin with Dr. Joe Heck of Nevada.
Dr. Heck. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you both for being
here.
Dr. Cole, I wonder if you could help me try to understand
to the best of your ability some of what appears to be
personality clashes in the process in which you were engaged.
Because looking at Colonel Thoma's memo of 30 January 2012, he
said some ``contentious material and personalization'' within
the report.
And Major General Tom's memo of I guess it was February 3rd
of 2012 seems rather harsh in its assessment of the process in
your report.
What was it that was in the report or your interactions, if
any, with these two officers that caused them to have such, I
guess, such angst over the report that you generated?
Dr. Cole. The short answer, Congressman, is that I wish I
knew. I had very cordial relations with both the commander of
JPAC, General Tom, and Colonel Thoma. There was never any
personality conflict or anything like that, from my
perspective.
But then again, when you are in the management consulting
business, you kind of grow thick rhino hide, so I am kind of
used to that.
But let's go back to what the purpose of this was. The
purpose of this report was to be a management document for the
top management. There were supposed to be maybe two or three
people who would see this.
And as far as the comments that there is personalization in
the information value chain report, bear in mind, I did this
from interviews and surveys. There is very little of my own
judgment in this. And if it does sneak in, it should have been
taken out. There wasn't an editing process, for example. There
wasn't a verification process. There wasn't a review process.
What you have seen is basically a data dump from me, which
I am not going to take it back. I wish I had written the draft
a little bit better. But the personalizations in there came
from interviews. It was what the colleagues at JPAC were saying
about the product produced by somebody else.
For example, if I say, ``Congressman, you produce a widget
for me,'' and I think this widget is broken, I never use it,
that is what you see in that matrix at the end of the report.
So that was supposed to then be used by the JPAC command to say
we have a dispute between two recipients of a product and the
producer of a product. Resolve that. Get rid of the waste and
the misunderstanding.
So I could see that that could be a bit contentious, but as
far as the speculation about why people kind of took offense to
the report, I could only speculate.
Dr. Heck. Who did you report to during the process?
Dr. Cole. It was the--as you see in my opening statement, I
refer to two Deputy Commanding Officers. One was the
Commissioning DCO, and that was Colonel John Sullivan. And the
second was Colonel Thoma, who came in late in the game. He was
there about 3 months toward the end.
So it was Colonel Sullivan. And I spent well over--we kept
track of it. It was nearly 40 hours of consultation just with
him on this report.
Dr. Heck. And during the time that you were doing the
research and generating the report, were there interim updates?
Dr. Cole. Absolutely.
Dr. Heck. And at any time during your providing those
interim updates did there seem to be any concerns or backlash
from any of those----
Dr. Cole. I never got any feedback.
Dr. Heck. Thank you, Mr. Chair. No further questions.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Dr. Heck.
We now proceed to Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo of Guam.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank
you for calling this hearing on such an important topic. The
recovery of remains of our POWs or MIAs is important to our
military community, as well as to their families.
And I want to thank you. I found that the trip that I took
with Chairman Joe Wilson to the lab with remains in Honolulu,
and our trip to the jungles in Vietnam, where incidentally we
personally climbed down hills with the crew. And I was just
very--it was an eye-opener for me. I didn't know that there was
such a vast team working on this.
We were at a site where two American pilots had crashed
into a mountain and they were excavating and finding out what
they could. And there were the pictures of the two pilots. We
went to the site.
I did ask one of them, I said, ``Are families interested in
this?'' And the lead of the team there said, ``In some cases,
yes. They even come to the site to see how we are doing.
Others, I guess it has been so many years, that it is even hard
to find relatives.''
But all in all, I was very, very impressed with this trip
and with the amount of time and money that we put into this.
And I want to thank the Chairman for inviting me on that trip.
It was an eye-opener for me.
I understand there have been many challenges in this
endeavor. However, I know Major General McKeague and have full
faith in his capabilities to resolve the failures in the JPAC
office. He is a proven leader and I look forward seeing the
positive impacts of the reforms that he will need to make.
I have a question for both of you. I appreciate the data
provided in the report and the recommendations to help the POW/
MIA accounting community to improve operations. But I am
curious to know if, through your interactions and awareness of
the operations today, is the community engaged and postured to
increase the accountability? And what steps has JPAC office
taken or will take to improve the operations?
I guess we will begin with you, Miss----
Ms. Farrell. Yes, thank you.
Again, in order for DOD to meet this mission, it is going
to take the collaboration of the entire accounting community.
If JPAC alone were to develop or update its current operational
plan and how it plans to proceed to address the goal of 200 and
it does not take into account what the other key players have
to do in order to finish the mission, they will not be able to
say in 2015, ``Yes, we have met that goal.''
It is very important that all of the community be included
in the planning, have goals, understand their roles and
responsibilities, how they are going to leverage off of each
other in order to attain that goal. And right now they are not
positioned to do so.
Ms. Bordallo. I see. So you don't have too much faith in
this. Is that what I am hearing?
Ms. Farrell. At this point there is not a plan for the
community to reach that goal.
Ms. Bordallo. And Mr. Cole?
Dr. Cole. I politely disagree with that assessment. The
answer to every great question is ``it depends.'' And it
depends on what kind of identifications you want to produce for
200.
If you want to produce 200 identifications solely from
field operations, and that is a procurement process of bringing
new remains into the laboratory, the flow of remains right now,
you see in my statement, it is way too low.
The field operations have failed. That is--in fact, it is
important to emphasize that is what is dysfunctional at JPAC. I
never said that the entire command was dysfunctional.
Now, if you want to make 200 identifications from
disinterments, you could do that. We are making 30 to 50 a year
right now from the disinterments from the Punch Bowl of Korean
war unknowns, well, Congress changed the name of all this to
missing persons in 2009.
But there is a lot of what I call DOD interference--maybe
that is too strong of a word--in the scientific approach to the
disinterments from the National Memorial Cemetery of the
Pacific. If they had a free hand in the World War II
exhumations, for example, if the Department of Navy would stop
blocking the exhumation of the Arizona, for example, or the
Inora Maru, there would--the flow of human remains into the
laboratory would be in the hundreds.
And it is very low cost. In fact, it is revenue neutral for
the lab because it is reimbursed from an open Army allotment.
Right?
So it is not from a field. You could do it.
Ms. Bordallo. Mr. Cole, my time is up here, but I just
wonder, what are the recovery numbers now?
Dr. Cole. Sorry, I have those, but may I respond later with
that?
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 61.]
Ms. Bordallo. Clearly. Yes.
Dr. Cole. Absolutely.
Ms. Bordallo. I just----
Dr. Cole. The accessions numbers are on the--I think the
last page of my prepared statement.
Ms. Bordallo. Very good. All right.
Well, thank you very much.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wilson. And thank you Congresswoman Bordallo.
We now will proceed with Congressman Austin Scott of
Georgia.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have questions for both of you, so I am going to try to
move fairly quick.
Dr. Cole, I listened to your testimony and you talked about
the quantifiable metrics. I mean, the question is, quite
honestly, or I think your statement is, without those metrics,
how do you hit the goal that you have? And maybe the DOD
doesn't or won't accept the metrics.
But more importantly, you talk about other countries that
are doing this and that other countries have a better model.
Which country do you believe has the best model and the
best practices that we could mirror with minor modifications in
the United States to help improve this process?
Dr. Cole. Once again--that is an excellent question, by the
way. I wanted to make a distinction between the procurement
process and the laboratory operations.
The laboratory operations, the JPAC still are--that is the
international standard. That is the gold standard. Others
aspire to be like the JPAC CIL. So they write the regs
[regulations] ; they write the ICRC [International Committee of
the Red Cross] regs, that sort of thing.
The procurement side, on the other hand, the two
outstanding examples are, first, Argentina, where they recover
victims from the Dirty War. That is an incredibly politically
charged environment they work in. They have a very small
budget. And so they have to produce results, because if they go
out and make a--it is always a big media show. If they dig in
them wrong place and find nothing, then the opposition says,
``See, these people don't know what they are doing.''
The other one that is incredibly impressive is the
activities in Bosnia to recover and identify the remains from
the war there.
I was in Sarajevo a year ago to take a look at how that
operation--because the attempts by the Serbians to disguise the
massacres and to move remains from various open graves and that
sort of thing, and to be able to sort that out, they are
extremely well-organized.
So their procurement process in Argentina and in Bosnia, we
could learn a lot from them.
Mr. Scott. Okay. Thank you for that question.
Ms. Farrell, if you were in control, what would the idea of
structuring the chain of command look like?
Ms. Farrell. It would be more centralized. GAO is not
presenting here is the organizational structure that DOD should
go to. We are noting that with these multiple chains of
commands, the focus has been on disputes, rather than unity of
command. The focus has not been on what are the requirements
and what are the resources needed for those requirements.
We present five possible options for the organizational
structure in our report that we surveyed members of the
accounting community, and those are possibilities. There could
be another structure. But the ones that we present have a more
centralized chain of command.
Mr. Scott. Do you have a preference in those five
recommendations?
Ms. Farrell. No, we do not.
Mr. Scott. But do you?
Ms. Farrell. No, I do not. There is never one right way.
There can be multiple ways to go.
But, I mean, we looked at possible mergers. We looked at
whether the Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness should
perhaps be in charge instead of the Under Secretary of Policy.
There are advantages and disadvantages with each of these
options. But this is a choice that DOD has to make.
Mr. Scott. The bottom line is it is important to put the
right person in charge--and that we have a centralized chain of
command for it, I gather, from what you have said.
Mr. Chairman, out of respect for time and other members, I
will yield the remainder of my time.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Congressman Scott. We now
proceed to Congresswoman Niki Tsongas of Massachusetts.
Ms. Tsongas. Well, I appreciate very much your testimony
today and sort of highlighting the many challenges, if not
dysfunctions, that are currently in place.
It is not an easy thing to shed light on something--to shed
that kind of dysfunction on an area that is so important not
only to our families, but as I recently learned, to those who
have served with some of those who were lost.
I represent Concord, Massachusetts, and earlier this week
one of my constituents, retired Navy Captain Thomas Hudner,
returned from a sadly unsuccessful trip to North Korea aimed at
locating the remains of his wingman, Ensign Jesse Brown, who
was the U.S. Navy's first African-American aviator.
Ensign Brown was tragically shot down over the Chosin
Reservoir battleground in 1950. Captain Hudner valiantly crash-
landed his own plane in a bold attempt to rescue his friend,
when it was clear that he would not be able to free himself
from the wreckage of his plane.
And unfortunately, it proved impossible. And so, at the age
of 88, Mr. Hudner returned to North Korea to uncover the
location of his friend, but was thwarted by a flooding from
recent monsoons.
So we see--we know how important it is to the families of
those who have lost loved ones, but clearly also to those who
have served with them as well. So I appreciate all the effort
you are bringing to sort of making this process more functional
and more successful.
Mr. Cole, you have mentioned the fact that our roles on the
production side are not always consistent with international
standards. And in response to Mr. Scott, you highlight
Argentina and Bosnia.
What do they do that we could do? I mean, what is the
difference?
Dr. Cole. Pretty simply, Congresswoman, they use
scientists.
Ms. Tsongas. Scientists to?
Dr. Cole. When they go into a field to look for remains,
they have a strategy to look for them, and they use
archaeologists and anthropologists.
Until recently, the JPAC model for procurement was to use
historians. Now, according to the Daubert standard, a historian
is not a scientist. This has been adjudicated you know in the
courts in this country.
So the difference is, if you look at how--when Australia,
when looking for the ANZUS [Australia, New Zealand, United
States Security Treaty] missing from World War I, the team
consisted of battlefield archaeologists. When the Argentines go
looking for the victims of the Dirty War they use--I have met
the guys who do it--archaeologists and anthropologists.
For years, the JPAC procurement method has been to send
historians into the field to look for human remains.
Ms. Tsongas. And do you know why we don't adhere to the
international standards and use archaeologists, rather than
historians?
Dr. Cole. I can only tell you it was partly because there
was no SOP; there was no direction to say do it a different
way. And that department was left to itself. They were assigned
authority by the JPAC commander in 2005 to take complete
control of the procurement program. They ran it themselves.
Ms. Tsongas. So to change that SOP, the standard operating
procedure, where would that have to come from?
Dr. Cole. You do it like that. There is a, well I wrote a
procedure into the standing operating procedure to amend the
SOP. It can be done on a semiannual annual basis. It is a very
simple thing.
Ms. Tsongas. And do you think the goal of locating 200
remains annually is doable, were we to shift to that kind of
process?
Dr. Cole. Yes. I will tell you why. Because I once said to
the commissioning DCO, I said, ``I am willing to be in charge
of that department and you hold me accountable to it. I can do
this.''
So my personal reputation, yes. And the skill, the
tremendous skill that you find at JPAC is, if it is channeled
in the right direction, these are really good people. What has
been missing is this management and leadership which has been
pointed out by the GAO. Instead of saying, come in to the
office and figure out what you want to do today, I say to you,
``Congresswoman Tsongas, go to PNG [Papua New Guinea] and look
for bombers,'' you know, that sort of thing.
Ms. Tsongas. Thank you, Mr. Cole.
Dr. Cole. Thank you.
Ms. Tsongas. And thank you for your analysis.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Ms. Tsongas.
We will now proceed to Congresswoman Kristi Noem of South
Dakota.
Mrs. Noem. Thank you.
I thank both of you for being here.
Dr. Cole, Austin Scott and Representative Tsongas have both
brought up a topic that I was concerned about and thinking
about as well, is these other countries.
Can you tell me what their procurement numbers are per year
that they are outperforming the United States by in Argentina
and Bosnia? What kind of results are they gathering compared to
what we are gathering?
Dr. Cole. Well, unfortunately, that is not the correct--we
are not comparing----
Mrs. Noem. I understand we have different budgets,
different numbers of people----
Dr. Cole. Yes. In Argentina, you are looking for hundreds,
maybe thousands. In Bosnia, it is probably, you know, tens of
thousands.
In the United States, listen, this is part of the problem
is that the list in the United States includes everyone who was
classified by the War Department and after Korea as non-
recoverable--not unrecovered, they were casualty status 6, non-
recoverable.
So we have all of the losses at sea and so forth are still
on the U.S. list.
The lists for Bosnia and Argentina are very refined.
Mrs. Noem. So you are saying potentially procurement that
we have in front of us could be more difficult compared to what
they are facing?
Dr. Cole. No. Ours could be much, much more----
Mrs. Noem. Much easier?
Dr. Cole [continuing]. Much more focused, if we would
prioritize the search list, just like they have done in those
countries. Because one of the key differences in all of this is
we have a lot more money than they do.
So we can afford to do things that they can't.
Mrs. Noem. Could you tell me a little bit about your
report, when it was amended, who it was that actually amended
that report?
Dr. Cole. You mean the SOP?
Mrs. Noem. Yes.
Dr. Cole. Just to be clear, no one amended----
Mrs. Noem. You said it appeared foreign to you, the one
that is----
Dr. Cole. That is the SOP. The SOP.
Mrs. Noem. Yes.
Dr. Cole. I don't know who did it.
Mrs. Noem. So you turned it over to whom specifically?
Dr. Cole. It was a deliverable to the commissioning deputy
commanding officer.
Mrs. Noem. Okay. And then from there, you had no indication
of what you knew they were going to be doing with it. Your job
was done. You turned it over to----
Dr. Cole. Well, I was hoping that I would be involved and
at least see what the revisions were.
Mrs. Noem. Okay.
Dr. Cole. I sort of talked to the guy who edited the thing,
but that was it.
Mrs. Noem. And then once it was edited, you are saying it
is posted online, as well. But it is in its amended form, not
in the original form.
Dr. Cole. Well, that is their prerogative. You know, as a
management consultant, my job is not to tell someone how to run
their business--to say, ``If you want to run it like this, this
is what it looks like. If you want to run it like that, it
looks like that.'' So this was my attempt to say, ``If you want
to run this business according to best international standard,
do this.''
Mrs. Noem. Do you believe that they are implementing the
SOP?
Dr. Cole. No.
Mrs. Noem. As amended?
Dr. Cole. No.
Mrs. Noem. So why take the trouble to even go forward and
amend it as they have if they are not planning on following it?
Dr. Cole. You are asking the wrong guy.
Mrs. Noem. Okay. Thank you.
Ms. Farrell, I have a question for you. You talked about
changing the chain of command and making it much more
centralized. Do you believe the DOD has the authority to do
that within itself to centralize that chain of command if they
believe that would make them much more accountable and much
more effective in what their job in front of them is?
Ms. Farrell. Yes, I believe they do. I mean, some positions
are established, as you know, by statute. But the statute does
not say how DOD has to organize the accounting community. DOD
has looked--a few years ago, there was a 2006 IDA [Institute
for Defense Analyses] study that raised some questions about
DPMO not being accepted, and perhaps there should be steps
taken. And we know that there was some examination but not an
indepth examination following that as to whether or not the
DPMO should stay with the Under Secretary for Policy or be
moved to the Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness.
Mrs. Noem. Do you believe that there are some actions that
could be taken by Congress that could have some impact on
centralizing that chain of command as well?
Ms. Farrell. I think what you are doing today by providing
oversight and focusing on the issue is desperately needed. I
think timeframes are needed for DOD to move ahead in order to
reach the 2015 goal. I think the issue that Dr. Cole brought up
about priorities is a--one of the findings in our report that
although DOD has developed criteria to categorize those that
are feasible for recovery from Vietnam, they have not done so
for the other 73,000 from these other conflicts. So there is
much that has to be done in order to move forward to 2015.
Mrs. Noem. Are you aware of any consequences that have been
laid out if those timeframes are not met with the levels of 200
findings per year?
Ms. Farrell. Well, the findings from our report are to help
DOD address the issue of how you are going to reach that goal
of 200. Right now, I think there is enough evidence that shows
there is a total lack of confidence by those in the accounting
community that the status quo has the capacity and the
capability to get there or that steps will be taken with the
current status quo. And, again, action needs to be taken with
time frames instead of waiting until 2015 and focusing on this.
Three years have passed, and now is the time to send in some
interim steps in order to get there.
Mrs. Noem. Thank you. I appreciate you both being here.
Mr. Wilson. And thank you, Mrs. Noem.
We now proceed to Congressman Colleen Hanabusa of Hawaii.
Ms. Hanabusa. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for
letting me participate in this hearing.
Like Ms. Tsongas, I have a personal interest. I have a
husband whose cousin, a West Point grad, is still MIA in the
Korean War. And we have been watching JPAC as a result of that.
So first, I think one of the critical issues,and Ms.
Farrell, I will begin with you,has been that we are not in a
contained situation. It is not like just Bosnia and looking for
remains or Argentina, and geographically defined. I think the
GAO report makes it very clear that one of the issues we have
is that for PACOM's jurisdiction, and for World War II, we are
looking at numbers of about 80,000 people that are out there,
however they may be classified.
Dr. Cole says, you know, we should focus. I understand what
he is saying, but the result is, there is a lot. And there is
also the inability to access in certain areas. Because my
understanding is one of the problems we have that, for example,
other countries in Asia may not have, is they may have better
relationships into the areas where they are trying to procure,
using Dr. Cole's statement.
I think that is also something that GAO report concluded,
as well. Am I correct?
Ms. Farrell. If you are talking about there needs to be
agreements or some type of mechanisms in place other than what
PACOM has taken steps with EUCOM [U.S. European Command] or
their area responsibility, you are absolutely correct.
Ms. Hanabusa. And even within the PACOM jurisdiction, to
get to certain areas to procure where there would have been,
obviously, remains historically defined, you still have to have
relationships with those areas and the ability to send in
archaeologists or historians or anyone that we need to start
the first step with this procurement. That is also understood,
right?
Ms. Farrell. Correct.
Ms. Hanabusa. Now, your focus of your report is that there
needs to be--the community working together. But you do not
make a recommendation as to how they would work together.
So who would make that decision--not GAO. But who would
make that decision as to how this community will finally focus
and get together?
Ms. Farrell. Well, I think currently, it is up to the
Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary. We do know that
after our report was issued, the Under Secretary for Policy did
brief Secretary Hagel regarding the findings and, specifically,
the recommendation on examining options for the organizational
structure. And we know that taskings were sent out to DPMO to
look at details regarding implementation cost, if any, that
would be associated with these various options and report back.
We do not know the status of that. And we do not have any
documentation that shows exactly what they are looking at. But
this is an issue, because it does involve so many chains of
command, would have to be, at least I would think, up at the
Deputy Secretary level.
Ms. Hanabusa. Thank you.
Dr. Cole, you come to JPAC as a fellow originally. Is that
correct?
Dr. Cole. That is correct. I still am.
Ms. Hanabusa. You still are a fellow. And how long are you
going to be at JPAC?
Dr. Cole. Depends on what happens today, I think.
[Laughter.]
But the ORISE fellowship program provides for a 5-year
maximum.
Ms. Hanabusa. I see.
Dr. Cole. And I am into 3\1/2\ years.
Ms. Hanabusa. Three-and-a-half years.
Okay, Dr. Cole, who exactly, either were the person who
brought you, or you directly report to as the fellow?
Dr. Cole. I report to lab management. No one brought me to
JPAC. I was a management consultant and working the
telecommunications business in Africa for 12 years. Before
that, I was with the RAND Corporation. And when I was with
RAND, I did a lot of work with the CIL-HI [U.S. Army Central
Identification Laboratory-Hawaii], the Central Identification--
--
Ms. Hanabusa. I am running out of time. I am sorry to put
you off.
Dr. Cole. Yes. So that is how I came back to that.
Ms. Hanabusa. So that would have been the----
Dr. Cole. CIL-HI.
Ms. Hanabusa. Okay. Now, your report, so I understand it,
is you are not critical of the lab functions. You believe the
lab function is really the state of the art. You are critical
of the procurement aspect of it. Is that also correct?
Dr. Cole. No, I am not critical of anything. I reported the
findings.
Ms. Hanabusa. So you feel that the way JPAC is
functioning--I thought you said they were inefficient. But
maybe the word is inefficient is in the procurement portion of
it.
Dr. Cole. That is correct, ma'am.
Ms. Hanabusa. So the--everything else--in other words, if
they were to get more remains to work on, then you feel that
everything else would fall into place, the four steps. And you
would have the identification----
Dr. Cole. Reasonably well, yes.
Ms. Hanabusa. So you don't take issue with the
identification report, which is your end product. You are just
saying that there is not enough done in terms of the
procurement aspect of it.
Dr. Cole. That is correct. The identification step--for
example, there--that is confirmed by external consultants. And
then there is a DOD procedure called the AFIRB, the Armed
Forces Identification Review Board. If there is a problem with
that identification, there is a process to review it. So there
is a lot of internal controls. Also, there is accreditation in
the lab that looks after a lot of those procedures.
Ms. Hanabusa. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, my time is up. Thank you.
Mr. Wilson. And, Ms. Hanabusa, thank you very much.
And we now proceed to Congressman Rich Nugent of Florida.
Mr. Nugent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for letting me sit in
on this very important hearing. And I want to thank both of you
for being here. I do not sit regularly on this subcommittee.
But I do have great interest--you know, I have three sons that
currently serve in the United States Army, and have had a
brother in Vietnam and myself serving.
So I am concerned when I hear from the GAO, obviously, that
you have two organizations that seem to have competing
interests. When we have a single common goal, is to recover the
remains of our missing servicemen. And you hit on a couple of
areas, in particular, in regards to chain of command. And so, I
guess, I am trying to figure out, A, this all falls under DOD,
correct?
Ms. Farrell. Correct, the accounting community in DOD.
There are other stake holders, such as the State Department.
But we are talking about the community within DOD.
Mr. Nugent. So, really, the Secretary of Defense has the
ability to--or does he have the ability to consolidate those
two under one chain of command for the purpose of, at least,
accountability to take the turf war out of it? Does he have
that ability?
Ms. Farrell. Yes, he does. And that is part of what we
presented in terms of various options of how the Secretary
could reorganize the accounting community to have a more
centralized chain of command. You still would probably have
some key players outside of that chain. Because this is quite a
process. I mean, it starts with DPMO. And in terms of--they are
the ones that maintain the list that has the 83,000 on it.
Mr. Nugent. Right.
Ms. Farrell. And it ends with DPMO. And they are the ones
that decide, ``Okay, this person is accounted for.'' And they
come off. But there are so many players between. I mean, JPAC
is one player. We have mentioned the Armed Forces DNA lab, the
military services with their casualty offices, as well. So you
would never be able to get everything under one chain.
Mr. Nugent. I understand.
Ms. Farrell. But the major players, we feel that it could
be much more streamlined and under a more centralized chain of
command.
Mr. Nugent. I appreciate that.
Dr. Cole, I hate the term, ``procurement.'' I understand
why it is what it is, obviously. I just--I don't care for the
term. But the recovery of remains, and I agree with you that
you really need to have a focus as to where you are going to
look. Because, you know, you talked about ships that have been
sunk. Obviously, you know where the remains are located within
the body of that ship, but it gets more difficult obviously
when you are looking at single remains or a remains of an
aircraft that is down.
Ms. Hanabusa touched on the aspect of some areas we can't
get into. North Korea is a difficult one in regards to dealing
with them.
So I would think that by focusing, let's say, in Vietnam,
it would be--for JPAC or DPMO to target an area that we know we
have a number of remains that are more recent than Korea and
more recoverable than North Korea, that we would target and
look to recover as many remains. Because we do know, from DPMO,
that those that we believe are there in Vietnam.
Why wouldn't they take that as a goal to meet that 200 but
to target a particular area and say, ``Okay, we have done as
much in that area as we can unless something happens''? Why
wouldn't we do that?
Dr. Cole. I agree with you about the prioritization. The
way that it is being approached at the Central Identification
Lab, I know a little bit about this because since I did this
report, what I have been working on is something called the
Solvability and Resolvability Project.
The identification is based on biological evidence. So what
we are doing is a review of all of the biological evidence from
the missing persons and the unknowns to see if we can build a
common database of the two.
The recovery locations, that is a matter of what I
described earlier. That is the Command-Authorized Research
Program. It says start here. That is, as you will see from my
statement, that is happening now in Papua New Guinea. It is a
zone-by-zone recovery effort.
But that is exactly the kind of methodological approach
that has been missing and really needs to be implemented.
Mr. Nugent. I appreciate your comments. And Mr. Chairman,
my time has expired and I yield back. Thank you.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Congressman Nugent. And
thank you for your family's past and current service.
We will be concluding with Congresswoman Jackie Speier of
California.
Ms. Speier. Mr. Chairman, thank you for allowing me to sit
in on this hearing as well. I too am very concerned about this
issue and appreciate the chair and ranking member taking this
issue on.
I am really very saddened by the reports, by the
conclusions and by our gross inability to do something that
seems so straightforward. And it is like we are the gang that
can't shoot straight, so to speak.
It sounds like this is a gross turf battle that has been
going on for a very long period of time, that we have studies
dating back to 2006 that make recommendations that seem pretty
logical and should be embraced and we move forward.
I mean, if we can go to war and succeed and yet we can't
recover the remains when there is a systematic way of doing so,
how can we explain it to the American people? How can we
explain it to the families? To, as Congresswoman Tsongas said,
to those that served with them?
Let me start with the numbers--83,000. Dr. Cole, you
suggested that there is a prioritization here. Of that 83,000,
are we talking about some that are lost at sea that are
unrecoverable, and if so, should we reduce that number to
something that is more realistic?
Dr. Cole. The short answer is yes. It should--the issue is
not to take people off a list, saying we are not going to do
research. It is to prioritize how we are going to allocate
resources.
So for example, from World War II, there are approximately
78,000 who were given the casualty status 6, which is non-
recoverable. Of those, approximately 55,000 are associated with
at-sea incidents. So that would leave 23,000 someplace else.
So the at-sea incidents are the ones that I would say
should be looked at first to determine if we want to pursue
those. And then if the decision is, say, half of them or
whatever, then focus on the ones that are associated with
losses on land. And then, to work that way.
In Korea, actually it is a very productive place to work.
The recoveries that were done in the 1990s, you will see from
my statement, produced over 100 identifications from the
recoveries there. So getting back into North Korea could
actually be very productive.
But that list, as well, if memory serves me right from my
RAND report, there are approximately 350 at-sea losses in
Korea.
Ms. Speier. Okay, so one of the very first things we should
do is really kind of look at that number and target those areas
where we could be most efficient and effective at recovery?
Dr. Cole. If I could be--politely disagree with you,
please. What should happen first is the creation of a coherent
list because there isn't one right now.
And so, for example, in 2009, Congress changed the
accounting methods. There is only one right now. And that is to
recover the remains and if they are not identifiable by visual
inspection, they have to be identified by a practitioner of an
appropriate forensic science.
That is only one authorized accounting method. Now, you are
not going to recover a lot of these remains that were lost at
sea. But yet the mission now, as stated, is they can't be taken
off the list until their remains are recovered. So at the time,
they were unrecoverable, the NDAA [National Defense
Authorization Act] 2010 changed that to non-recovered. It is a
great distinction.
So I think there has to be a review of who is on the list
now, who are we looking for, and to reconcile some of the cases
that we know will never be resolved. That is the first step, in
my view.
Ms. Speier. And you also recommended that we need more
scientists involved in this process and less historians.
Dr. Cole. Not more scientists, more scientific approach to
the matter. Because at the end of the day, the identification
report by law is produced by forensic evidence, not by
circumstantial information. And this is a consequence of NDAA
2010 that has been in force since October 2009.
Ms. Speier. Dr. Cole, I would like to get a question to Ms.
Farrell. My time is almost up.
Ms. Farrell, it appears that you did a survey and that
overwhelmingly it was the view of those who participated that a
more centralized chain of command is desperately needed. Is
that where the crux of this really comes in?
Ms. Farrell. That is the crux of it.
We administered the survey to 17 organizations. We received
a single response from each organization. We did not receive a
response from the Defense Intelligence Agency that has a role
in terms of providing intelligence-sharing to non-intelligence
agencies, as well as the cost assessment and program evaluation
group did not respond.
But overwhelmingly, 12 of 14 thought that another
organization would be more effective. We also saw disconnects
between the top leadership in terms of PACOM and the Under
Secretary for Policy's office believing that the current
structure allows ample opportunity for senior leadership
involvement, which shows a disconnect with the other
organizations that were noting the exact opposite, in terms of
no confidence that the current organizational structure could
increase its capability and capacity to reach the 200.
Ms. Speier. Thank you. My time is expired.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Ms. Speier.
And I would like to thank both witnesses today. I
appreciate actually both of you were very candid. Dr. Cole,
thank you for your emphasis with Ms. Speier about a coherent
list. That just must be done and, goodness, thank you, Ms.
Farrell, in regard to structure.
We will be having a follow-up hearing with DOD personnel,
and I truly look forward to them addressing the issue and
maybe--hopefully, actually letting us know that there has been
a structural advance and reform.
Again, thank everyone, the subcommittee, for being here. I
want to thank the professional staff. They have just been so
effective on this extraordinary issue, which has been so
clearly identified as of concern to families, but also for
service members, the people they have served with, but also the
reassurance that we indeed leave no one behind.
And that is what I saw, the commitment that I saw, and
determination, when I visited the hillside, with Congresswoman
Bordallo, in Vietnam.
We are now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 9:10 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
?
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A P P E N D I X
August 1, 2013
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?
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
August 1, 2013
=======================================================================
Statement of Hon. Joe Wilson
Chairman, House Subcommittee on Military Personnel
Hearing on
Department of Defense's Challenges in Accounting for
Missing Persons from Past Conflicts
August 1, 2013
The hearing will come to order. Everyone is welcome to the
Subcommittee on Military Personnel on the topic of ``The
Department of Defense's Challenges in Accounting for Missing
Persons from Past Conflicts.'' Today the Subcommittee will
continue its oversight on the important issue of POW/MIA
recovery. Last August, Congresswoman Bordallo and I had the
opportunity to visit the Joint Personnel Accounting Command's
(JPAC) headquarters as well as a field recovery team on the
side of a mountain in Vietnam. I was extremely impressed with
the professionalism and work ethic of our service men and women
as they worked in extreme heat and dangerous conditions to
recover the remains of missing persons from an airplane crash
site. There are many dedicated military people involved with
this effort. The Joint U.S.-Vietnamese team was inspiring for
its determination of recovery of remains. They share the desire
for the fullest possible accounting with the many family
members of those who are still missing. We, as a nation, owe
the proper emphasis, resources, and priority of effort to
account for our missing persons from past conflicts and to
bring closure to their family members.
That is why this subcommittee, then chaired by Rep. Susan
Davis, in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal
Year 2010 required the Secretary of Defense to increase
significantly the Department's capability and capacity to
account for missing persons, with the objective that the POW/
MIA accounting community could identify at least 200 missing
persons annually beginning in fiscal year 2015.
In May 2012, after 3 years of little apparent progress by
the Department of Defense toward achieving the 2010 mandate,
this committee directed a Government Accountability Office
review. There have been approximately nine studies over the
past decade on ways to improve the accounting community's
effort, to include a recent internal review of JPAC's
procedures conducted by Dr. Paul Cole who is employed as a
fellow at JPAC.
Our goal today is to better understand the ability of the
POW/MIA accounting community to meet the requirements of the
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, and to
help the Department build the capability and capacity to
identify 200 missing persons per year by Fiscal Year 2015.
I would like to welcome our distinguished witnesses:
LMs. Brenda S. Farrell, Director, Defense
Capabilities and Management, U.S. Government
Accountability Office; and
LDr. Paul M. Cole, Ph.D., Oak Ridge Institute
for Science and Education Fellow with the Joint
Personnel Accounting Command, Central Identification
Laboratory, U.S. Pacific Command.
Statement of Hon. Susan A. Davis
Ranking Member, House Subcommittee on Military Personnel
Hearing on
Department of Defense's Challenges in Accounting for
Missing Persons from Past Conflicts
August 1, 2013
Mr. Chairman, I would also like to welcome Dr. Cole and Ms.
Farrell. Thank you all for being here with us.
I understand this hearing is the first of several that the
Subcommittee is planning on holding on the effectiveness and
efficiency of the POW/MIA Accounting Community. Mr. Chairman, I
hope that the next hearing we hold will include the appropriate
representatives from the Department of Defense.
Ultimately, it is the Secretary of Defense's responsibility
for ensuring that the Department meets the legal requirement to
achieve at least 200 identifications a year beginning in 2015.
Therefore, it is only appropriate that we have the
representatives from the Department of Defense before the
Subcommittee to understand what actions, if any, the Department
is undertaking to truly address the concerns that have been
raised in the Cole report and the recent GAO report.
The culture of service instills within each service member
that no one should be left behind on the field of battle. We
have a moral responsibility to those who are missing and remain
unaccounted for to be returned home to their families and loved
ones. As the GAO report makes clear, weak leadership,
fragmented organizational structure, and the lack of clearly
articulated roles and responsibilities have hampered the
effectiveness of this community for years. Given the current
budget situation, we can no longer afford to let these concerns
slide. It is time we focus our attention on how to make the
POW/MIA Accounting Community more effective and efficient to be
able to meet the goal of identifying at least 200 sets of
remains a year by 2015.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses and having an
open and productive dialogue on the issues and challenges that
our two witnesses have identified within the POW/MIA Accounting
Community. Thank you again for being here today.
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DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
August 1, 2013
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
FY FY FY FY FY FY FY FY FY FY
04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13
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Disinterment 2 7 3 3 1 11 2 6 18 25
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Unilateral 19 28 24 25 26 21 24 9 25 21
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Joint 47 41 32 27 29 24 30 22 26 15
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