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To: ALL

From: Bob Necci & Carol Hrdlicka, Andi Wolos
(POW-MIA FaxNetwork)

Re: Missing Persons Authorities

Date: November 10, 1997

CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 1119
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 1998
(House of Representatives - October 23, 1997)

Improvement of missing persons authorities applicable to Department of Defense (sec. 599)

The House bill contained a provision (sec. 568) that would restore provisions pertaining to U.S. prisoners of war, those missing in action, and unaccounted for persons, enacted in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1996 (Public Law 104-106) and subsequently repealed by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997 (Public Law 104-201). Specifically, the section would expand the scope of current law by:

(1) Making it applicable to Department of Defense civilians and contractors accompanying armed forces in the field;

(2) Establish a 48-hour suspense for the commander's initial report of a missing person's status;

(3) Require the theater component commander's involvement in the initial assessment of a missing person's status;

(4) Require the status of persons who were last known alive to be reviewed every 3 years for 30 years following initial report;

(5) Re-establish criminal penalties for the knowing and willful withholding of information from a missing person's file;

(6) Restore the requirement that a status review board (when making determinations of death) must provide a description of the location of body, if recovered, and, if the body is not identifiable, a certification by `a practitioner of an appropriate forensic science that the body recovered is that of the missing person;' and

(7) Restore the ability of certain persons to request status reviews of a limited number of Korean War cases.

The Senate amendment contained no similar provision.

The Senate recedes with an amendment that would expand current law:

(1) Making it applicable to certain Department of Defense civilians and contractors in direct support of or accompanying armed forces in the field;

(2) Require that an advisory copy of a missing person report be provided to the theater component commander;

(3) Require that if a body is recovered, and is not identifiable by visual means, a certification by a forensic pathologist that the body recovered is that of the missing person is required before the status may be changed;

(4) For pre-enactment cases, define `new information' as information found or received by the primary next of kin, member of the immediate family or a previously designated person or information that is identified in records of the United States that is relevant to the case of one or more unaccounted for persons, and require that such information be credible before a new file is created;

(5) Require that the identity of the counsel for the missing person be made known to the primary next of kin or the previously designated person, and permit the primary next of kin or the previously designated person to provide information to the counsel of the missing person in connection with the initial review board;

(6) Require that an extract of any debriefing report be placed in the file of every missing person mentioned in the report; require that an extract of such debriefing reports be made available to family members of missing persons, or if the reports are withheld, notify the family that such information exists; and

(7) Require that, if as allowed by law, classified information is withheld from the file of a missing person,the notice of that withholding be made reasonably available to the families of the missing person.