Last week, we wrote about the
Pentagon’s floundering
efforts to find and identify the 83,000 service members missing from past
conflicts – of which the military ID’d just 60 last
year. As our story laid out, the mission has been hampered by outdated
scientific methods, a lack of public outreach and cumbersome bureaucracy.
Lawmakers and Pentagon leadership have zeroed on the
overlapping agencies and lack of clear chain of command in the mission. Last month, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel
ordered a review of how the military manages the effort.
But streamlining the structure
won’t be enough, many outside experts say. Here are four ideas to really fix
the effort.
Overhaul use of DNA
The main agency involved is the
Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command, which runs the
forensics laboratory used to identify the remains of the missing. J-PAC starts
with historical and medical records first and leaves DNA last.
That’s backwards from all other
modern day efforts to identify the missing, which begin the process with DNA
and let that powerful tool lead the process. Using DNA as the primary
identification method was used in Argentina after the dirty war, in the Balkans
after the genocide there, and here in the United States after 9/11 and
Hurricane Katrina.
If changes don’t bring the methods
up to date with the latest forensics techniques, Ed Huffine,
a DNA expert, said, “the system will still fail.”
Another issue is the type of DNA J-PAC
uses.
It relies on mitochondrial DNA,
which is passed down from the mother and is consistent along the maternal line
for generations. A grandmother shares the same mitochondrial DNA with her
daughter and her daughter’s children, for example.
But other scientists involved in
identifying the missing stopped using maternal DNA almost twenty years ago.
Instead, in places like Argentina and Bosnia, scientists use nuclear DNA, which
can be compared to the mother, father, children and siblings of the person to
make a positive ID. It’s also faster and cheaper to process than mitochondrial
DNA.
In Bosnia, they would extract DNA
from a bone on a Monday, sequence the DNA on a Tuesday and do any necessary
troubleshooting by the end of the week, said Huffine,
who helped designed the effort in Bosnia. For the Pentagon, similar DNA
processing often take months.
Since J-PAC works decades-old
cases, scientists would face times when nuclear DNA samples from immediate
family might not be available. In those cases J-PAC must rely on maternal DNA,
using, for example, the DNA from a missing soldier’s niece. But here too,
experts say, J-PAC could make better use of DNA.
J-PAC won’t rely on maternal DNA to
make an ID, because it can be shared across different families. However, even
the most common mitochondrial DNA is only shared by 5 percent of the population
– meaning J-PAC could be 95 percent sure of the person’s identity when using it,
according to Joshua Hyman of the University of Wisconsin. He and others argue
that DNA is the strongest and fastest place to start an ID, regardless of the
type, rather than leaving it last in the equation.
Family samples of maternal DNA
could also be combined with samples of paternal DNA to make a match. J-PAC
should request all the different types of DNA to be sequenced at once.
Do a national, high-profile outreach campaign to collect needed DNA
samples for WWII – before it’s too late.
Siblings are among the best DNA
matches for WWII missing service members, especially if the MIAs had no
children. That generation is dying. The Pentagon could enlist the help of
Hollywood – Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg have been suggested – to publicize a
massive effort to collect as many DNA reference samples from family of the
missing. TV ads, social media, radio and YouTube videos and more could all be
used to solicit participation. The U.S. government has actually given Argentina
millions of dollars in grants to do just that.
The more samples for a missing
service member are on hand the easier it is to make a match.
“Given
that close relatives of WWII soldiers are older, how long are we going to wait
to collect their DNA? They represent the best opportunity to find a match,”
Hyman said. “Are we just waiting for the issue to go away, assuming that when
they die there will be no one left that cares enough to cause a fuss?”
Do massive disinterments of 9,400 unknown servicemembers to try to identify with DNA
More than 9,400
service members from WWII and the Korean War are buried as “unknowns” in
American cemeteries around the world because of the limitations of
science at the time. But many of them could now likely
be identified if the Pentagon exhumed the remains for DNA testing.
“Seems to me like the logical
approach,” Clyde Snow, a world-renowned forensic anthropologist said.
With the copious records the U.S.
military has, the unknowns could be broken down into like groups from theater,
battle or event, and dug up accordingly to keep it manageable.
In order to be both efficient and
respectful of the remains, scientists say the bodies could be left in place and
tested using a mobile DNA unit and then housed in a mausoleum while DNA cross
referencing is done.
Embrace outside help
Experts say about 45,000 MIAs are recoverable,
likely an overwhelming task for any one organization or agency. So some people
formerly involved in the effort have suggested enlisting universities,
historical organizations, military unit associations, veterans and other
interested groups.
At J-PAC’s sister agency, the
Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, there was an idea floated of building
regional centers that could be responsible for researching and building cases
on the missing from their area. That would tap into a pool of people who care
deeply about those who are missing, building “a cadre of people who are focused
towards the mission in manageable chunks,” said Navy Commander Renee
Richardson, formerly of DPMO.
“We’d be leveraging all the things
universities already do,” said Richardson. “If you go to a university, let’s
say Harvard, and tell them, ‘from your class of ‘37, you still have three
people missing from WWII.’”
This would require much more
openness with records and findings than the Pentagon has been willing to share
in the past, Richardson said.
In the search for remains – the
hardest task of the mission – locals can often help. There are Belgians, for
example, who live near the Battle of the
Bulge and have long worked to find missing American soldiers. They have the
advantage of speaking the native language and being a part of the community,
but are often shunned by the Pentagon.
Anthropologists have also
suggested outsourcing overseas archaeological operations for continuity and
efficiency. Rather than flying scientists from Hawaii to spend a few weeks
looking for remains in, say, Papua New Guinea, there could be a team stationed
there. Their work would be continuous rather than filled with the time lags of
sometimes years between digs that hinders J-PAC’s efforts.
This series is in partnership with NPR. See their online presentation of our original joint investigation.
