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b. The Mindset to Debunk. The mindset to "debunk" is alive and well. It is held at all
levels, and continues to pervade the POW-MIA Office, which is not necessarily the fault
of DIA. Practically all analysis is directed to finding fault with the source. Rarely has
there been any effective, active follow through on any of the sightings, nor is there a
responsive "action arm" to routinely and aggressively pursue leads. The latter was a moot
point, anyway, since the Office was continuously buried in an avalanche of "ad hoc"
taskings from every quarter, all of which required an immediate response. It was
impossible to plan ahead or prioritize courses of action. Any real effort to pursue live
sighting reports or exercise initiatives was diminished by the plethora of "busy work"
projects directed by higher authority outside of DIA. A number of these grandiose
endeavors bordered on the ridiculous, and -- quite significantly -- there was never an
audit trail. None of these taskings was ever requested formally. There was, and still is, a
refusal by any of the players to follow normal intelligence channels in dealing with the
POW-MIA Office.
c. Duty, Honor and Integrity. It appears that the entire issue is being manipulated by unscrupulous people in the Government, or associated with the Government. Some are using the issue for personal or political advantage and others use it as a forum to perform and feel important, or worse. The sad fact, however, is that this issue is being controlled and a cover-up may be in progress. The entire charade does not appear to be an honest effort, and may never have been.
d. POW-MIA Officers Abandoned. When I assumed the Office for the first time, I was somewhat amazed and greatly disturbed by the fact that I was the only military officer in an organization of more than 40 people. Since combatants of all Services were lost in Vietnam, I would have thought there would at least be a token Service representation for a matter of the "highest national priority." Since the normal mix of officers from all Services is not found in my organization it would appear that the issue, at least at the working level, has, in fact, been abandoned. Also, horror stories of the succession of military officers at the 0-5 and 0-6 level who have in some manner "rocked the boat" and quickly come to grief at the hands of the Government policy makers who direct the issue, lead one to the conclusion that we are all quite expendable, so by extrapolation one simply concludes that these same bureaucrats would "sacrifice" anyone who was troublesome or contentious as including prisoners of war and missing in action. Not a comforting thought. Any military officer expected to survive in this environment would have to be myopic, an accomplished sycophant, or totally insouciant.
e. The DIA Involvement. DIA's role in the affair is truly unfortunate. The overall Agency has generally practiced a "damage limitation drill" on the issue, as well. The POW-MIA Office has been cloistered for all practical purposes and left to its own fortunes. The POW Office is the lowest level in the Government "efforts" to resolve the issue, and oddly for an intelligence organization, has become the "lightening rod" for the entire establishment to the matter. The policy people manipulating the affair have maintained their distance and remained hidden in the shadows, while using the Office as a "toxic waste dump" to bury the whole "mess" out of sight and mind to a facility with limited access to public scrutiny. Whatever happens in the issue, DIA takes the blame, while the real players remain invisible. The fact that the POW-MIA Office is always the center of an investigation is no surprise. Many people suspect that something is rotten about the whole thing, but they cannot find an audit trail to ascribe blame, so they attack the DIA/POW-MIA "dump", simply because it has been placed in the line of fire as a cheap, expendable decoy.
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