In 2010 a seven-member team from the Hawaii-based Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command investigated an anonymous lead that an American World War I soldier’s remains were in an underground passageway in Connigis, France.
According to an internal report by JPAC’s Paul M. Cole, the accounting command had no authority to investigate a World War I case, but the team went anyway as part of three stops in France.
What they found were a rubber skeleton, some nonhuman bones and some Champagne at the owner’s chateau that apparently was to the team’s liking, the report states.
The J2 "intelligence" section of JPAC then proposed to send a recovery team to excavate — even though no human remains had been identified, and the chateau’s owner thought someone might have mistakenly reported the Halloween rubber skeleton as remains, according to officials.
It was "gross research misconduct," and it was among a series of JPAC trips to Europe that Cole characterized as "military tourism" boondoggles costing many thousands in taxpayer dollars.
The Star-Advertiser obtained a copy of the explosive and contentious 342-page draft JPAC study — which was disavowed and rejected by JPAC brass —after The Associated Press published a story on it earlier this month. The Star-Advertiser ran the article on the front page.
The former two-star general who was in charge of JPAC until November said he instituted a series of reforms after the report’s research was completed in late 2010, correcting many problems within the Hawaii command.
Still, the allegations in the study have prompted a Pentagon re-examination of JPAC — and infuriated some POW/MIA groups that claim the government agency moves too slowly on remains cases.
"The report raises issues about how (the Department of Defense) accounts for missing service members," said Lt. Col. Jim Gregory, a Pentagon spokesman. "While this report remains a draft work, DoD takes seriously the allegations and recommendations in it."
The undersecretary of defense for policy has initiated a review of the issues raised, including allegations of fraud, waste and abuse, Gregory said in an email.
Headquartered at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, JPAC has a staff of about 500 and sends 70 teams a year on identification and recovery missions to a dozen countries in search of American service members missing from World War II, Korea and the Vietnam War.
A sampling of the JPAC J2 section’s "military tourism" visits to Europe showed that they did "not appear to be rigorous, demanding, or an imposition on anyone who enjoys luxury accommodations, fine hotels and top-tier cuisine," Cole said in the report, released in 2012.
On another 2010 mission, this time to Italy, a JPAC team spent $58,577, excluding airfare, to retrieve "additional portions" from a 1945 B-26 bomber crash when the crew had been "located, recovered, identified and removed from the roster of the missing 65 years ago," Cole said.
Yet another 2010 mission to Italy saw four JPAC team members stay five nights at the Grand Hotel de la Minerva, where room rates started at $500 a night, according to Cole.
Now-retired Maj. Gen. Stephen Tom, who ran JPAC from 2010 to November 2012, said he already had targeted for change some of the shortcomings identified by Cole. Others, meanwhile, have sought to discredit Cole, pointing to inaccuracies in the report.
"In a way, it’s hard to double-check all the facts on that thing," said Tom. "I don’t doubt that that type of stuff had gone on in 2010 (when Cole did his research), but he went overboard. … It’s like turning the knife in someone’s back."
Tom said he doesn’t dispute that a team noted in one of Cole’s examples stayed at an expensive hotel in Italy. "It might have been a $500-a-room hotel for some," Tom said, "but we were staying there for the government rate." Tom said he is not sure what that cheaper government rate was.
After it was reported by The Associated Press, the Cole report touched a nerve with members of Congress and some of the families of the more than 83,000 missing Americans desperately seeking closure with loved ones who went off to war and never returned.
A separate Government Accountability Office examination of the remains recovery effort is due out soon.
"Allegations of mismanagement at any federal agency is a matter to be taken seriously," said U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I am working with military officials and will closely examine the upcoming GAO report in order get a more complete view of what is going on in the unit.
"JPAC is tasked with a solemn mission of finding those who have given the ultimate sacrifice, and everyone can agree that this unit should carry out these duties with dignity and honor," she said.
Adm. Samuel Locklear III, head of U.S. Pacific Command, JPAC’s higher command, said Thursday, "I do think that there are areas where we need to take harder looks at how it (JPAC) is organized and how the mission steps are prioritized."
Tom, a 1967 Punahou graduate who still lives in Hawaii, said he improved the accounting command by instituting standard operating procedures and engaging in a "wholesale restructuring" in the summer of 2012.
Overseas investigations had been run by civilians in the J2 section, while follow-up excavation and recovery missions were overseen with "stricter military command and control," Tom said.
Tom said he put them both under military control.
The military teams had to file daily reports and had responsibility for enforcing proper standards and conduct, Tom said.
Asked whether there was previously not enough oversight of the overseas missions by the J2 section, Tom said, "Let me just say that it needed improvement."
He also said he put in place a special board to review whether overseas missions were warranted.
Cole, a political economist on a fellowship at JPAC who has provided economic and project management services to government agencies in the U.S. and abroad since 1994, said in the report that he was tasked in 2010 with taking a "snapshot" of JPAC operations. He could not be reached for comment Friday.
Tom said he asked for the report as the accounting command looked ahead to a congressional mandate that JPAC increase its identifications of American war dead to 200 per year by 2015 — more than double the 80 identifications in 2011.
But the former commander said he also ultimately rejected Cole’s report because it did not look at all sections of JPAC as requested, and because of personal attacks it made on JPAC personnel. "That’s not what I wanted," Tom said.
The past European excursions are harshly criticized as extravagances, while their shortcomings — failing to produce enough new remains to be identified — threatened to undermine JPAC’s mission of accounting for missing American service members, Cole said in the report.
At the time that Cole gathered his information, he estimated that JPAC was wasting in excess of $3.5 million per year on products and services that were "unwanted, unneeded, unused or defective."
Cole revealed that it took 18 "site surveys" to produce one Southeast Asia identification and 36.75 site surveys to produce one World War II identification.
Gregory, the Pentagon spokesman, said that unlike Vietnam War case files, with more than 40 years of research and investigative work, the case files for World War II are minimal.
"JPAC has had to develop a reservoir of information to kick-start the nascent World War II recovery activity," he said. "This required increasing mission-essential travel and operations in Europe as well as the Pacific."
Tom said JPAC is focusing on Europe because of the larger numbers of missing bomber crew members it can recover. Also under his command, teams working on recoveries from Vietnam began using Vietnamese to do the searches, reducing the number of Americans needed, he said.
Mark Sauter and John Zimmerlee obtained the report for their book, "American Trophies: How US POWs Were Surrendered to North Korea, China and Russia by Washington’s ‘Cynical Attitude.’"
The Cole report affirms how America has failed to make accounting for its missing a top priority, Sauter said. The ebook will be available at www.cynicalattitude.com.
"A tragic part of the behavior in this report is how it diminishes the service of the many JPAC people who have suffered and even risked their lives to recover remains," Sauter said.
Lynn O’Shea, director of research with the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America’s Missing Servicemen, said JPAC has been allowed to do anything it wants and get away with anything it wants.
"JPAC has become its own little kingdom, run by a group of people that never changes, no matter who the commanding general is," O’Shea said.
The National League of POW/MIA Families, however, decried the Cole report, saying it pitted the Central Identification Laboratory against other JPAC entities.
"Inaccuracies and manipulated data in his report, largely unfounded assertions and personal accusations reflect a lab-generated power-play seeking greater lab control within JPAC," the group said on its website.
