Response letter from Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office
This is the letter that I recieved to my requests to what was being done to bring our POW's and MIA's home. This is the only response that I have recieved, after writing the President, Vice President, their spouses, and my senator and congressman.
Thank you for your July 13, 1999, email to President Clinton seeking information on Army Sargeant First Class Dallas R. Pridemore who is unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. Your letter was forwarded to our office because we are responsible for accounting for American personnel missing from our Nation's wars.
Sargeant Pridemore was lost on September 8, 1968, when he was reported kidnapped from a private residence in Saigon by communist guerrillas. American POWs who returned during Operation Homecoming never reported seeing Sargeant Pridemore or hearing his name mentioned in the North Vietnamese prison system or in the jungle prisons of South Vietnam in an effort to account for Sargeant Pridemore. Despite our efforts, he remains unaccounted for at this writing and we continue to investigate his loss. We are unable to provide you with more information regarding Sargeant Pridemore's case because his family has not consented for the public release of specific information regarding his loss in accordance with Public Law 102-190, commonly referred to as the "McCain Bill".
President Clinton, like Presidents Reagan and Bush before him, has declared accounting for our countrymen to be a matter of the highest national priority, and DoD has assigned more than 500 men and women to work this issue. The mission of our agency is to lead and oversee the DoD effort to locate, account for, and repatriate Americans missing or captured as a result of past, current, and future hostile actions. Operations to recover remains from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, North Korea, China, Armenia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Guinea, New Caledonia, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Burma, the Kuril Islands, and Tibet illustrate our Government's commitment to recover our war dead wherever they may be located and to determine the fates of all unaccounted-for Americans.
Since 1973, the remains of 529 American servicemen who were formerly unaccounted for from the Vietnam War have been repatriated, identified, and returned to their families for internment with full honors. DoD is vigorously working to account for the remaining 2,054 Americans who remain missing from that war. If you would like to learn more about our worldwide efforts to account for the more than 88,000 Americans who are missing from our Nation's wars since World War II, please visit our Internet web site at www.dtic.mil/dpmo.
Your support for Sargeant Pridemore and our efforts to account for him and all our war missing is appreciated. I hope this information is helpful to you and demostrates our commitment to the fullest possible accounting of our missing personnel.
Sincerely,
Charles W. Henley
Legislative and External Affairs
Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office
cc: Army Casualty Office
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