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Post by Registrar on Aug 18, 2014 12:14:41 GMT 8
There are 3,734 unknowns buried at Manila American Cemetery. If John Eakin is right, that number will soon be reduced by ten. By way of background, one of our extended circle (John Eakin) has been involved in litigation against the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) concerning - amongst other issues - their constructive non-involvement in identifying unknowns interred at the Manila American Cemetery. Throughout the course of the litigation, the attitude of officialdom has been the denial that a problem existed, it being cheaper to use litigation to delay the fixing of the problem, than to fix actually move to fix the problem itself. The problem never goes away, but the pay is good, and you can make a career of non-accomplishment. Such is the way of bureaucracies, which would rather waste hundreds of millions of dollars pretending to be useful, than actually being it.
This week, Dr. Thomas D. Holland, Scientific Director & Deputy to the Commander for Central Identification Laboratory Operations, announced that he has been dismissed effective January 1, 2015. Sources said that Holland’s subordinates, Dr. John Byrd, Director of JPAC’s Central Identification Laboratory and his deputy Dr. William Belcher, were also being dismissed. It is widely expected that Maj. Gen. Kelly K. McKeague, JPAC Commander and Mr. Johnie E. Webb, Deputy to the Commander for External Relations and Legislative Affairs will also be removed along with others being held responsible for failing to recover the remains of missing American Servicemembers. While it appears that Holland was given the opportunity to go quietly, he appears intent on totally disgracing himself by forcing the Department of Defense to publicly reveal the details of a major investigation conducted by the DoD Inspector General. In spite of instructions not to do so, Holland pseudo tearfully announced his firing to several hundred Korean War MIA families gathered in Washington for briefings on the progress of efforts to recover their missing family members. Holland has also encouraged his subordinates to organize a letter writing campaign directed at Secretary of Defense Hagel and members of Congress. These letters all appear to have used the same script and praise Holland’s many awards, but fail to note that he has squandered hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and has few identifications to show for it. Last year his lab identified only fifty-five MIA’s and so far this year only twenty-five. Nor do the letter writers note that the CIL has nearly two-thousand sets of remains backlogged in their warehouse. Along with Holland, most observers also credit Johnie Webb with the abject failure of the Department of Defense to recover the remains of the fallen from America’s wars. Webb, is a retired U.S. Army officer who has been continuously associated with JPAC and the predecessor agencies since 1975[/quote] .
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Post by JohnEakin on Aug 19, 2014 2:17:39 GMT 8
In Texas, it is said to be acceptable to shoot someone because they needed kill’n. Well, if there was ever anyone who needed fire’n it is Tom Holland and Johnie Webb.
In 2009, when I first started looking for information on my MIA Cousin, I had no idea that I would actually find his remains – or even that his remains could be found. Nor, did I expect to end up in the middle of the huge mess that the POW/MIA issue has become. I just thought it would be nice to include a little information about him in the family archives.
When I first obtained his Individual Deceased Personnel File, it may have taken all of ten minutes to figure out that he was one of ten possible Unknowns. Most of those ten minutes were spent scratching my head thinking that it couldn’t be this simple to find a grave that the U.S. Government had repeatedly told my Aunt and Uncle didn’t exist.
At that time I believed the cow manure slogans posted everywhere by JPAC and DPMO. Until they are home is one of them and it seems fitting – these bureaucrats have a job for life until *they* are home. It took two phone calls to learn that my Cousin’s older Brother was a dentist and he had replaced all of his Brother's silver fillings with gold inlays – a little bit of information that graves registration had failed to ask for. I had no idea when I gave this information to the Army Casualty Office that only one of the ten possible Unknowns had gold inlays. Considering the rarity of gold inlays, that’s a pretty good indicator of which remains were those of Arthur H. “Bud” Kelder. It was much better evidence than the Army had accepted on the more than 1,800 identifications (out of 2,655) from Cabanatuan. I figured then that it was a done deal that he would be identified.
Since then, the Department of Defense has worked, not to identify and return Bud’s remains, but to avoid doing so. When they didn’t act on their own, I filed a formal petition for a review board. Army wouldn’t act on that and sent me to DPMO. DPMO claims they never received the petition I sent or that Army had forwarded to them. That’s when I filed suit in Federal Court.
Unbeknownst to me, JPAC, bless them, did act. Three of their own investigators had worked on the case and recommended that the remains be disinterred for identification. Tom Holland ignored them and recommended that no action be taken. His boss, Major General Kelly McKeague concurred and forwarded the file to DPMO – where it sat for sixteen months without action. Holland and McKeague kind of neglected to provide their investigators' reports to the Federal Court – just an oversight, I’m sure. However, those three investigators were so outraged by Holland and McKeague’s conduct that they sent me copies. There are some good people there - they just don't run the place.
Between then and when they were backed in to a corner and knew they were going to have to produce the remains for DNA testing, I heard every excuse and was the butt of repeated slams by the nameless bureaucrats of JPAC and DPMO.
They still insist that my family is trying to “cut the line” and get ahead of other Unknowns that they plan to recover. Right, sure they are, seventy frigging years and they haven’t done diddly to recover any of the Unknowns. Show me where the line is and I’ll get in it.
My favorite was that exhumation would somehow defile the “sanctity of the grave.” That sounds good until one realizes that Bud Kelder had been buried five times. Most recently, he was moved to another grave that had been vacated. The cemetery can’t move “knowns” because the families know what grave they are supposed to be in and they don’t want to defile the sanctity of the grave. But Unknowns are fair game to use for landscaping purposes. I'm going to bury him one last time next to his parents who went to their graves never knowing what happened to their son.
There were, and continue to be, all sorts of excuses, but my favorite is when JPAC insisted to the Court that they had no obligation to identify Unknowns. They admit that the families have a legal and moral right to claim the remains, but not until the remains are identified. Seems like at least one Federal Judge thinks the evidence is sufficient to identify the remains and they should be returned.
Sorry if I sound angry, because I’m not. I’m just really, really disappointed in my government and the Army that I served in. IMHO, the sorry bastards that run JPAC dishonor the memory of every American hero who gave his all for our country.
John
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Post by dmether on Aug 19, 2014 10:03:30 GMT 8
I emailed some of the guys I know that still work at JPAC, they said only Dr. Holland has been told he is no longer needed. Bill Belcher said he hasn't heard of any of this.
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Post by JohnEakin on Aug 22, 2014 0:11:19 GMT 8
Several people from this forum have inquired about the “personnel changes” we told you about a few days ago. While Holland announced his dismissal before a large room full of people and confirmed it with the petition and letter writing campaign by his supporters, some of the others – Byrd, Belcher, McKeague and Webb – are denying that they have been fired and they are correct, for now. Our apologies if we weren’t clear about that, we just said it was widely expected and it still is expected.
Holland is a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES) and, unlike lesser civilian employees, can be dismissed without notice or cause. McKeague is an Air Force Major General and will not be the commander of what for now is being called the New Defense Agency which will replace JPAC and DPMO on January 1, 2015. DASD Winfield, a political appointee, will not be needed by the new agency, either.
That leaves Byrd, Belcher and Webb, all GS employees. They won’t be needed by the New Defense Agency, either. The new agency will be transitioning to a new way of doing business and making identifications which does not rely on anthropologists. The anthropologists who are left can expect to spend much more time deployed than in the lab. (Even now, the CIL anthros average less than one identification per year.)
The question is not if they will be leaving, but under what circumstances and how many others will go with them. If you read the interim OIG report which was widely circulated a few weeks ago (and was to be released several weeks ago), you may have noticed the brevity of several sections. One section that was glossed over pertained to the use of DNA in identifications. You can expect to see and hear much more about this issue between now and the first of next year. The identification process will be moving from the 19th Century to somewhere in the late 20th Century and will require minimal input from anthropologists.
Besides a section on travel and expense irregularities, there was also a rather brief reference to misconduct including sexual harassment and sexual assault.
Approximately 50 current and former members of the MIA accounting community have submitted complaints to the DoD IG and Congress regarding various alleged leadership and management derelictions and abuse. Most of these allegations dealt with JPAC and the CIL The assessment team contacted and interviewed all complainants referred to the OIG by Congress. While the team was at JPAC and the CIL in February and March 2014, approximately 45 people contacted the team to submit complaints about JPAC and CIL management. The team interviewed many of the complainants at off-site locations.
The assessment team forwarded the allegations to the DoD Hotline for investigation and adjudication.
Taken together, the complaints paint a picture of long-term leadership and management problems resulting in a hostile and dysfunctional work environment, and low morale throughout the accounting community.
If left uncorrected, the problems driving these complaints will be brought into the new Defense agency created by the reorganization of the accounting community as announced by the Secretary of Defense on March 31, 2014, hindering mission accomplishment.
Some of these issues will be addressed when the final report is issued. However, there are multiple additional OIG investigations in to these other areas and these investigations are ongoing. There will definitely be new faces at the new agency. We’ll have to wait to see if there will also be a new way of doing business.
And just as an interesting side note. The letters supporting Holland seem to be having an opposite and unintended effect. They all follow the same script – these are supposedly senior level people and they seem unable to compose an original letter. They all concentrate on Holland’s many awards and what a good guy he is and completely ignore his organizations’ shameful lack of success at accounting for missing American Servicemembers or the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars which have been squandered. The tone of the letters seems to be don’t fire the anthropologists because we can do the job better than the Armed Forces Medical Examiner. Unfortunately for the anthros, they seem to be their own worse enemy.
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Post by dmether on Aug 23, 2014 10:34:40 GMT 8
I'll put this down to "hope and change." JTF-FA was merged with the CILHI to form JPAC. It was suppose to fix all the problems. Now JPAC is merging with DPMO which will also fix all the problems. "Working with civilian groups" "openness" "transparency" I'm trying to think of a single government agency that actually follows that. New way of doing business sounds great but I order a single file from the US Army, 4 years ago I'd get it in about 3 months, now it takes up to a year.
As for sexual harassment and sexual assault, a very broad category to begin with. However, how many of those complaints included formal allegations that turned into convictions? Anyone can make an allegation, but we are innocent until proven guilty. And take a look at how the military has cracked down on sex, buying a lady a drink at an overseas bar can lead to a sex crime charge, the military is far harder on sexual misconduct than the civilian world is. "Low moral" is something I've read about for JPAC but have never seen. I met with JPAC last month in Manila, there was no low moral in that group.
Personally, I do wish that things change in the accounting community, however realistically I don't see anything changing for the better.
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Post by JohnEakin on Aug 24, 2014 4:44:36 GMT 8
Right, there are no problems at JPAC - just ask the people who work there. Ask quick while they are still there.
The IG didn't have any trouble finding low morale - in fact, more than fifty JPAC employees filed formal complaints with the IG.
Up until now the sexual harassment/assault complaints were dealt with by cash settlements - read the IG report.
Most people would be embarrassed to be associated with an unit that spends North of $100 million and recovers only 25 MIA's (and most of those were handed to them). Glad the morale of your friends has not suffered. JPAC is a disgrace to all who have worn the uniform and a stain on the memory of the fallen. No man left behind is a cruel joke played on the MIA families.
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Post by dmether on Aug 28, 2014 8:27:02 GMT 8
I'm not saying that JPAC doesn't have problems, nor am I defending everything it has done, but get your facts straight: "The DoD's POW/MIA office budget for 2013 was about $21 million...JPAC on average has been bringing home 72 remains a year. Congress directed the Pentagon in 2010 to ramp up so that it could average about 200 a year by 2015."
Also take into consideration that over the years the easy recovery cases were done first, meaning that as time goes on JPAC is going after harder and harder cases while it's budget is reduced. And in 2003 it began to actively search for WWII MIA's as well, which the POW/MIA organizations hadn't done before.
I wore the uniform, both Army and Air Force, for 22 years. JPAC isn't a disgrace and it's members serve proudly. The problem isn't it's members, who are mostly enlisted military, many are combat veterans, and do the best job they are able to do (and yes, they are proud to work for JPAC). The problem is the civilian leadership. Perhaps we can keep that in mind and keep the two separate.
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Post by dmether on Aug 28, 2014 8:45:12 GMT 8
One example; Major Funck, West Point graduate and Army Airborne Ranger. Multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not ashamed to have worked for JPAC.
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Post by JohnEakin on Aug 28, 2014 9:08:06 GMT 8
No, David, get YOUR facts straight. Here's a few to start with www.gao.gov/assets/660/655916.pdfAnd, yes, we've all drawn combat pay, but not all of us have sold out and try to defend the swine that dishonor true heros and lie to their families.
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Post by dmether on Aug 28, 2014 11:59:43 GMT 8
"JPAC is a disgrace to all who have worn the uniform and a stain on the memory of the fallen." Again, I'm not defending the leadership of JPAC, but to smear everyone who has been assigned there, and are proud of the work they did, as having "sold out" and are "swine" because you don't like how the organization is run is in itself a pretty disgraceful thing to do.
Are these men swine: The U.S. casualties on-board a helicopter that crashed in 2001 in Vietnam while looking for the remains of Americans killed in the war- U.S. Army Lt. Col. Rennie M. Cory Jr., U.S. Army Lt. Col. George D. Martin III, U.S. Air Force Maj. Charles E. Lewis, U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Steven Moser, U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Pedro J. Gonzales, U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Tommy J. Murphy, and U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Robert M. Flynn
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