DPAA Numbers Are a Lie

I am going off on a rant here, so please bear with me… The DPAA fiscal year 2023 has come to a close. Every year I look at the DPAA identification stats to see how many actual identifications were made for the fiscal year to determine if they have come close to reaching the Congressionally Mandated 200 IDs a year. COVID is not an excuse for 2023.

Like previous years, 2023 was a huge disappointment with DPAA claiming on their Famweb link to have accounted for 111 WW2, 38 Korean War and 4 Vietnam MIAs. A grand total of 153 MIAs claimed by DPAA to have been identified in FY 2023. (Screenshot below taken 9/28/23 from https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaFamWeb)

So now let’s look at the real numbers from their “Recently Accounted For” link and exported to a CSV file where we can sort the data by Identification Made Date or Family Notified Date. Regardless of how we sort the data in both columns, DPAA’s official statement on this page reads:

• To respect the next-of-kin, individuals are only considered “Accounted For” when (1) DPAA has made the identification, and (2) the next-of-kin has been notified.
• Numbers reflected throughout the DPAA website will reflect numbers for Accounted For regardless if next-of-kin has been notified. https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaRecentlyAccountedFor

I have attached the spreadsheet exported from DPAA’s website and for FY 2023 (Oct 1, 2022 through Sept 30, 2023) if sorted by IDENTIFICATION DATE, the DPAA only has a total of 64 identifications made for FY 2023. If we sort it by FAMILY NOTIFICATION DATE, the DPAA lists the total as 75.

This is not even close to the total 153 MIAs they claim to have identified this FY 2023 on their public facing site.

Now let’s look at the DPAA FY 2023 budget. DPAA was allocated roughly $150 Million to complete their mission for FY 2023. Let’s just say for a minute the DPAA spreadsheet data was incorrect and they did identify 153 MIAs this year. The rough estimate dollar figure per identification breaks down to roughly $980,000.00 per identification.Now take the actual data of 64 IDs! That is a rough estimated $2.4 Million (yes I said $2.4 Million) per identification made and the DPAA has truly never reached the mandated 200 identifications per year!

Don’t take me wrong here, but every penny spent to bring our MIAs home to their family is money well spentin my book and has to continue! I’d rather see this TAXPAYER money go to bring our boy’s home instead of lining the pockets of foreign governments, paying for the war in Ukraine or for the job security of our DPAA bureaucrats that at the current rate of identifications, it will take them well over 300 years. The whole idea behind DPAA is to swiftly work themselves out of a job, not sit on tens of thousands of cases using every excuse they can come up with as to why it cannot be done! All of us are after accountability for both our MIAs and our Taxpayer dollars aren’t we? I am proud of our men and women who have made it their mission to help recover our MIAs! The issues we see with the way DPAA operates comes from the policy makers.  

Now let us talk about what this all means to the families of our Nation’s Missing in Action. First I am going to take a snapshot look at of just those WW2 MIA’s (a closed group of MIAs buried as Unknown) that were identified in FY 2023 from the Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines. A total of 4 men were identified in FY 2023 out of over 100 Cabanatuan MIAs that were disinterred FIVE YEARS AGO (FY 2018) from Manila and were finally identified this year. Less than 40 Cabanatuan Unknowns have been identified since the Eakin lawsuit in 2014 (BataanMissing.org). Just a reminder, some of these WW2 MIAs still have siblings that are still living, waiting to see their brother finally identified and brought home. Because of their age, they don’t have many years left waiting on DPAA to get the job done!  

As a volunteer researcher and forensic genealogist who has privately worked on the Cabanatuan cases and being personally responsible for over 350 families being contacted that have provided Family DNA to the AFDIL to have their loved one identified - this is a kick in the face to these families for the DPAA to have officially only identified 4 of them this year! There are still  1090 Cabanatuan Unknowns yet to be identified and it has taken DPAA 5 years to identify these 4. DPAA will claim that these Cabanatuan POW Camp remains were treated and therefore it will take them additional time to sequence the chemically treated remains for a MITOCHONDRIAL DNA samples (outdated technology) from the remains to match up with the family DNA that is already on file BEFORE the disinterment took place! Again, this is not a true statement about the remains being chemically treated and they are using outdated DNA technology.

Those of us researchers who are in the trenches working the Cabanatuan cases have proof of this and we have proof that using more modern DNA technology takes less than a few months for a nuclear DNA sample being extracted from these WW2 degraded remains to having a positive identification of the MIA made and this is without a Family Reference Sample (FRS) DNA being provided to the AFDIL before the remains were disinterred! These identifications can be (and have been) made using a genetic genealogist using public genetic databases! All this comes at an estimated cost of less than $50,000 per identification made if we include the disinterment and transportation of the remains! If you are interested in this information, please email me and I will pass you on to the researcher who has headed up this private project and can tell you more!

Now for my Vietnam War families - What does all this mean to you? We all know a great amount of DPAA’s funding is tied up in the operation of their two labs and the WW2/Korean War cherry picked identifications of those buried as Unknowns (and they still cannot make the 200 IDs using these easy cases). You all know the low hanging fruit has been picked and finding our Vietnam War MIAs (and those they chose to identify without any remains) is getting harder to do. By FREEING up TENS Of MILLIONS of dollars being used on WW2 and Korean War unknowns cases (by DPAA utilizing private accredited DNA labs along with the public genetic databases) this would allocate these dollars to additional research, investigations and recovery teams being directed to Southeast Asia while there is still some remains to possibly recover.

I’m personally calling out to all of our POW/MIA families/supporters to share this out to your contacts and to contact me so I can point you into the right direction. Let’s organize ourselves into one voice to work TOGETHER to hold DPAA fiscally and responsibly accountable to our Missing in Action. It is going to take our LOUD voice WORKING TOGETHER to get this done in our lifetime! I look forward to hearing from you all and working together in a unified voice for our MIA’s. Please feel free to reach out to me to discuss this in detail.

Below are the actual FY 2023 DPAA IDs made.