News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci
(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Excavations and Identifications

Date: July 21, 1998

There has been and remains serious questions with respect to the excavation and identification procedures used by the USG. Needless to say many identifications have been curious at the very least and many families have contested the identification and won. The following is from the National Alliance. Something to think about.

"Site Salting -- When remains are recovered from Vietnam, they are usually in a very poor and fragmented condition. In most cases they are little more that shards of bone or fragments. Sometimes, nothing more than a tooth is recovered. We are told the poor condition of the remains is due to the highly acidic Vietnamese soil.

If the soil is so acidic as to almost completely destroy human remains, logic would follow that anything less sturdy, buried with the remains, would be destroyed in a much shorter time. This brings us to the case of Navy Lt. Daniel V. Borah.

In early 1996, rumors began to circulate that remains had been recovered in Quang Tri Province, of a pilot a full flight suit. Soon after, the Borah family was notified that Joint Task Force Full Accounting had recovered remains in a full flight suit, they believed to be Dan Borah.

According to a Vietnamese witness, Mr. Toan, who led JTF-FA investigators to the burial site, the pilot was found dead, in his parachute. He was buried nearby and all identification media was removed. According to Mr. Toan, Daniel Borah was buried in his flight suit on September 24th, 1972.

It would be 24 years, before Mr. Toan led JTF-FA investigators back to the alleged burial site. During the 40th Joint Field Activity, (March 23rd -- 31st, 1996) the grave site was excavated. Just as Mr. Toan stated, investigators found remains in a full flight suit. The remains consisted of three long bones, and various chips, shards and nineteen teeth. Due to their poor condition, none of the bones could be used for anthropological analysis.

The Central Identification Laboratory - Hawaii, (CIL-HI) determined that the nineteen teeth matched the records of Daniel Borah. Based on this dental "match" CIL-HI recommended the identification of the remains found, as those of Daniel Borah. CIL-HI ignored the fact that the dental matched was successful only if the teeth were moved to the other side of the mouth. The resolution of this case was pointed to with pride, as evidence of Vietnamese cooperation to resolve the fate of our Prisoners and Missing.

Now, the rest of the story! -- The Vietnamese planned to end the Borah case a full 19 months prior to the actual excavation. In November 1994, the head of the Defense POW/MIA Office, James Wold visited Vietnam. During his meeting with Mr. Cong, of the Vietnam Office Seeking Missing Persons (VNOSMP), Mr. Wold was told information on 5 cases would be provided by the end of the year. One of those cases was Daniel V. Borah .

Eight months after that promise, on August 14, 1995, Mr. Toan appeared, ready to led US investigators to the purported burial site.

The Discrepancies..... Dan Borah made voice contact with US aircraft while in his parachute. US planes picked up several short bursted "manual beeper transmissions," from the ground. Dan Borah was not dead in his parachute and he was alive upon landing. Borah's last radio transmission came from the ground. His last words to American forces... . "Gomer, all around..." Dead men don't send "manual beeper transmissions" or report there imminent capture."

What happened to Dan Borah after that, we can't say. We can say without a doubt that the full flight suit purported to hold the remains of Dan Borah did not lie in the acidic Vietnamese soil for 24 years.

The grave site was salted. While little is left of the bones, the flight suit is in near perfect condition. In the words of Kathy Borah Duez, sister of Dan Borah, "you could put that flight suit on and wear it on the street. The pants would barely fit me. They are too small to be Dan's. Dan tended to gain weight and we joked about him fitting into the cockpit. These pants would never fit him."

Kathy confirmed that all unit designations, patches, and the American flag had been carefully cut from the flight suit. Just as there is no evidence to prove the bone shards are Dan Borah's, there is no evidence to prove the flight suit is Dan's.

The acidic soil of Vietnam, which destroys bones, should have left nothing of the flight suit except perhaps the zippers. Instead, after 24 years in this highly acidic soil, this flight suit looks no worse than if it had been attacked by angry moths, in the back of a closet. Photographs of the flight suit are available on our website."