Improve MIA recovery efforts

The Hawaii-based military unit responsible for locating and recovering Americans missing in action on foreign battlefields has gone about its laborious task quietly over the decades. However, a scathing report by an insider — a recognized expert in the profession — describes an "acutely dysfunctional" operation, and should prompt a congressional investigation of the important effort aimed at achieving highly needed improvement.

The internal report was done by Paul M. Cole, a management consultant and research expert in accounting for war remains, who still works for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, based at Hawaii. It was obtained by The Associated Press after Freedom of Information Act requests by the AP and others were denied.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Kelly K. McKeague, the current JPAC commander, told the news service that he would not dispute those who say his organization is dysfunctional.

"I’d say you’re right, and we’re doing something about it," he said.

Indeed, both families of the MIA as well as taxpayers deserve to know how the operation will improve; otherwise, the noble mission deteriorates from continued avoidance of problems.

Especially in this age of sequestration and federal budget cuts, the military cannot afford to ignore acknowledged mismanagement — characterized in the report as woefully inept, even corrupt. It must work on better efficiency and cost-effective practices.

The unit’s mission is to account for the estimated 83,348 service members still listed as missing from World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The accounting for the missing and dead in Iraq and Afghanistan has been achieved by circumstance and science, but the families of those missing from the 20th century still await information, at the very least.

Chris Tench of Gastonia, N.C., still awaits word about whether her first husband, Pfc. Kenneth F. Reese, was among the 7,910 unaccounted for, not dead, in Korea, as she was told in 1950. In 1975 she said: "No, missing isn’t dead," she wrote to her home newspaper. "It’s worse than dead."

Cole’s report criticized JPAC, mostly its foreign field operations, for:

» Identifications of bones and other material having "collapsed" in recent years;

» Finding too few investigative leads to achieve Congress’s demand for at least 200 identifications per year;

» Citing unnecessary or excessive field trips, particularly to Europe, as "military tourism";

» Turning in a main database "riddled with unreliable data"; and

» Using "sketch maps" that have been "chronically unreliable."

The AP obtained a tape indicating that U.S. investigators believe "10s if not 100s" of American POWs were transferred to the former Soviet Union and in some cases moved to Russia through rail transports in China. Russians have denied receiving America POWs from Korea, but further investigation is needed.

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz has requested "a comprehensive briefing" from the U.S. Pacific Command and JPAC "to determine the appropriate steps moving forward." U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, a member of the Armed Services Committee, has said that "JPAC’s current command should be given an opportunity to address their challenges."

They are both right. Pentagon press secretary George Little has acknowledged that the unit headquartered at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam has "a sacred obligation to perform the mission well." The emphasis must be on the word "well" — so the concerns must be reviewed and addressed as promised. This all might necessitate hearings before Congress to determine how and why accountability for missing Americans on foreign battlefields turned into ineptitude, waste and mismanagement.

The internal report says the myriad problems risk plunging the JPAC operation from "dysfunction to total failure" — a truly alarming conclusion. The effort needs to be revamped. The sacredness of the mission cannot be allowed to obscure the fact that the weight of ineptness bogs down that mission.