Department of Defense Reply

Thank you for your March 11, 1998, electronic letter to President Clinton requesting information on Army Sergeant Joseph G. Kusick who was lost during the Vietnam War. The White House forwarded your letter to our office since we are the Department of Defense (DoD) agency responsible for accounting for our nation's missing service members, and asked that we respond.

Sergeant Kusick and five other service members were killed in action on November 9, 1967, when their HH-3 helicopter crashed in Laos. The next day a Special Forces team was inserted in to the area to recover the remains of the six men. The team recovered four sets of remains from the wreckage, to include those of Sergeant Kusick, but was forced to evacuate the area without the remains due to the presence of enemy forces.

Since 1995, DoD investigators have conducted two investigations in Laos in an effort to recover Sergeant Kusick's remains. Despite our efforts, he is still listed as killed in action/body not recovered. If you would like to learn more about sergeant Kusick and our efforts to account for him, his records are located at the Library of Congress (LoC). You can access the LoC index through the Internet site: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pow/powhom.html.

Over the past year, our agency has received a number of inquiries from concerned citizens similar to the one you presented to President Clinton. Each letter contains similar phrasing suggesting that the United States Government abandoned many of our men at the end of the Vietnam War, and is doing nothing to find these men or their remains. Such information is grossly inaccurate.

President Clinton, like Presidents Reagan and Bush before him, has declared accounting for our countrymen to be a matter of the highest national priority. To support the President, DoD has assigned more that 500 men and women to work this issue. This mission of our agency is to lead and oversee this effort to locate, account for, and repatriate Americans missing or captured as a result of past, current, and future hostile actions. Operations to recover remains from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, North Korea, China, Armenia, the Netherlands, New Guinea, New Caledonia, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Burma, the Kuril Islands, and the Tibet illustrate the United States Government's commitment to recover American remains wherever they may be located and to determine the fates of all our unaccounted-for Americans.

At this writing, there are 2,093 American servicemen who remain unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. There are also more than 8,100 from the Korean War; approximately 78,750 from World War II; and 3,350 from World War I. We know that most of these men were killed in action, and the combat situation at the time of their deaths prevented American forces from recovering their remains. Regrettably, as is the nature of combat, there are many cases in which w simply do not know and will never know what happened to the men.

DoD is vigorously working to account for missing Americans in Southeast Asia. Since 1988, American teams have completed more than 2,000 investigations in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to account for Americans lost during that war. As a result of the United States Government's commitment to the fullest possible accounting since 1973, 490 American servicemen who were unaccounted for in Southeast Asia have been repatriated, identified, and interred with full military honors.

You also should know that our effort are not limited to the Vietnam War. The key to unlocking most of the answers we need in our accounting efforts for the Korean War lies in gaining access to North Korea. In the past two years, our long years of frustrating negotiations with the North Koreans have succeeded in establishing four joint recovery operations. As a result of our efforts, the remains of seven American servicemen have been recovered. Moreover, last August for the first time ever, American archivists from our agency initiated a concentrated research effort in North Korea's central military museum for information that may relate to unaccounted for American servicemen. We recently concluded talks with North Korean officials which will allow us to conduct five joint recovery operations and at least one archival research operation in 1998. We are hopeful these efforts, and those we hope to perform in the future, will yield more information on many of our lost men.

Unlike our efforts to account for Americans lost during the Vietnam and Korean Wars, we do not actively seek locations of World War II losses due to that war's global scale. Nevertheless, once possible American remains are discovered and we are notified, we make every effort to recover and identify the remains and return them to t heir families. Since 1992, the remains of 96 servicemen from World War II have been recovered. Of those 96 men, 28 have been identified, returned to their families, and interred with full military honors.

Despite all our efforts on this issue, some continue to speculate that Americans remain in captivity in Southeast Asia and other countries where the United States has prosecuted war. Contrary to the many conspiracy theories, no investigation, no evidence, and no information collected and analyzed collectively to date has proven the presence of American servicemen in captivity anywhere in the world. This, despite the fact that we have at our disposal the most advanced intelligence collection systems known to mankind. Nevertheless, our top priority is live Americans. If we receive any information concerning the possibility of Americans being held, we investigate to the fullest possible extent. To stay abreast of our current operations throughout the world, I recommend you contact our Internet site at www.dtic.mil/dpmo.

Your concern for Sergeant Kusick is gratefully appreciated by the men and women of this office, the majority of whom are members or former members of the military. Hopefully, you have gleaned from this letter that President Clinton and his administration are committed to t he mission of accounting for all our servicemen. Unfortunately, we may never be able to provide all the answers to ease the pain for all the families. However, we will continue to strive to do so.

Sincerely,

Charles W. Henley
Legislative and External Affairs
Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office