Re: We Know a Plane Crashed Here...

Date: May 30, 2004

"CBS News: 60 Minutes II
Broadcast Wednesday, May 19, 2004

MABREY: Today, thousands of American families hope and pray that their lovedones serving in Iraq and Afghanistan will return home safely.But imagine if 90,000 of our servicemen and women simply vanished. That'show many Americans remain - unaccounted for from World War II, Korea andVietnam -their families haunted for decades by the uncertainty of how and where theydied. Were they killed instantly in a plane crash, or were they takenprisonerand tortured?

Incredibly, today, some of those families are finally getting answers. Armed with new DNA Technology - the ability to unlock an old mystery with a mere fragment of bone - the Defense Department is dispatching teams of investigators to former battlefields to search for and bring home our dead. We met up with one of those teams in Vietnam, as they tried to fulfill the military's pledge to its soldiers that it will leave no one behind. Today, Vietnam is at peace, the scars of war buried beneath a fresh jungle canopy. But American soldiers are returning to this once-enemy territory, not with guns and napalm, but with shovels and picks. They're from the joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, and they've come to search for the remains of two Air Force pilots whose plane crashed in this jungle more than 35 years ago. The team consists of a dozen military specialists and one civilian. On this mission, it's 32-year-old Sabrina Taala (ph), who's the anthropologist leading the excavation.

You're sifting, looking for what?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We know a plane crashed here. Now we're looking for items that would indicate that individuals were in the plane at the time it crashed, because if we can find evidence that shows that, then we can be sure that nobody punched out, survived and something else happened.

MABREY: And was a prisoner of war or.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Exactly.

MABREY: Like any archeological dig, the work is painstaking and requires scores of laborers. The team hired 120 Vietnamese villagers, who hiked a couple of hours every morning to reach the site. First, they cleared away the trees. Then, Sabrina Taala (ph) laid out a grid the size of half a football field. Battling 100-degree-plus heat, poisonous snakes and the deafening drone of locusts, the team will spend over a month out here moving a mountain, one bucket at a time, and sifting through each clump of dirt, inch by inch.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we pass it through quarter inch mesh screen, and Americans - and locals help them - look for any items that might be relevant.

MABREY: Such as?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Anything that might be life support, anything that looks like it belongs to a plane and not the earth, anything that they think might be bone, although if they found something like that, they would call me over. And then they take anything that they find and they throw it in one of these buckets, and then we analyze it when they're done. MABREY: The military has 18 teams like this one, and a budget of over $50 million a year, to search for remains of soldiers all over the world. Here in Vietnam, through smiles and interpreters, the two groups work side by side as if they'd never been enemies, which is surprising, considering the job they're doing out here: searching for the remains of Lieutenant Colonel Donald Casey and First Lieutenant James Booth, two Air Force pilots sent here to bomb these mountains 35 years ago. Forty-two-year-old Casey was a career military man who'd already served during World War II, Korea, and had done one tour in Vietnam, when he volunteered to go back. Casey's wife, Kitty (ph), now 75, remembers the day he left their home in Florida.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We were saying good-bye, and he said, Kitty (ph), and I said, yes, and he said, if anything happens to me and my wingman comes home and tells you I'm dead, believe him, he said, and start a life for yourself immediately.

MABREY: They were the words of a veteran flyer who'd seen so many young wives wait for husbands who were never coming back. Casey's mission was to bomb targets along the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail, an effort to stop Vietcong troops and supplies from infiltrating the south. And so, on the evening of June 23, 1968, he climbed aboard his F4D Phantom, but not before recording a message to his wife and their three children.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And he said, there's a USO tour here tonight, and all the young guys want to go see the girls. And he said, so, since I'm the old man, I'm going to take this night flight. He said, I miss all of you so much I feel as if my heart will break. And he said I feel like it will be an eternity before I see you again. And with that, the tape clicked off.

MABREY: Minutes later, Casey and Booth took off on their bombing run. They were never heard from again. With the pilots lost deep in enemy territory, it was too dangerous to send in search-and-rescue teams. Donald Casey and James Booth were classified as Missing In Action. Days after the crash, the wingman called Kitty Casey (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And one of the first things I said to him, I said, Bob, is Donald alive, and he said, no.

MABREY: Did you still have hope even after you talked to the wingman?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, well, you always have hope.

MABREY: But you had no funeral.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

MABREY: So even though he was a hero, he served in World War II, in Vietnam, did he receive the accolades that he deserved?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, not from the civilian population. No one really cared.

MABREY: But the United States military never stopped caring. So when relations with Vietnam began improving in the early 1990s, JPAC started trying to locate Casey's crash site. In the Vietnamese archives, they found photographs taken in 1968, believed to be the wreckage of the plane. Witnesses also led a team to this ravine, but it wasn't until last summer that the digging finally began. On the day we visited the site, evidence about Casey and Booth was sparse, just a few chunks of twisted metal. Is that disappointing when you get to the end of a day and you've got metal and you don't know where it's from?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. No. This is just - this is part of the process. We can't come out here and find something great every day. MABREY: What is it like on the days when you are finding things?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It really does make the bad days worthwhile. You can go 29 days and find nothing but dirt, not even one tiny piece of metal. But if you get that one item that you can link to somebody - a personal effect, an I.D. tag, a watch, a ring - it makes it all worthwhile. It makes weeks and weeks and weeks of work worthwhile.

MABREY: Everything that's found is sent to the Joint Accounting Command's laboratory at Hickam Air Force base in Honolulu. Scientific Director, Thomas Holland, and his team analyze every fragment. Holland showed us how they're trying to build a life from what's been found at the site we visited in Vietnam.

DR. THOMAS HOLLAND, SCIENTIFIC DIR., JPAC LABORATORY: We've got a variety of items here. This is part of an Air Force-issue survival vest, evidence that somebody was in that aircraft. We've recovered a number of fragments of a survival map. We've got fragments - these are boot eyelets. This is... MABREY: So nothing is too small?

HOLLAND: Nothing is too small.

MABREY: One of the most important items so far is the back of a watch.

HOLLAND: This is an item that would have been strapped to an individual. So when the issue then becomes, did they get out of the aircraft, this is a pretty good indicator that at least one of the individuals did not make it out of the aircraft.

MABREY: It'll take months to determine whether these items belonged to Casey or Booth. Meanwhile, what they're hoping to find is a piece of bone or a tooth that can be identified through DNA or dental records. Thomas Holland says all they're usually able to return to families is a few teeth or shards of bone. Is it hard for them because they're expecting, even after all these years, that they're going to have a body to bury?

HOLLAND: The problem is, when people think of skeletal remains, they think of skeleton, and they think of the skeleton that's hanging in the doctor's office. And that's not what they see. What they see are fragments the size of nickels and dimes and quarters, and it's very difficult for them to realize that this is what skeletal remains look like when they've been in the jungle for 30 years.

MABREY: How much is this a race against time?

HOLLAND: Oh, we're racing. We're racing the clock. In a few years, there will not be any remains left to recover.

MABREY: But for now, the lab is identifying remains at the rate of about two a week, including soldiers not only from the Vietnam War, but from Korea and World War II as well. So far, hundreds of families have been able to bury their loved ones. Sue Jenkins is one of the lucky few. Did you think this day would ever come?

SUE JENKINS, WIFE OF FALLEN VETERAN: No. So many years I didn't think it would ever come. And even now, it's just - it's hard to believe.

MABREY: Sue Jenkins came to the mission's headquarters in Hawaii because the lab identified the remains of Navy Lieutenant Denis Anderson. In 1968, Anderson and Jenkins were newlyweds, when the plane he was copiloting disappeared over Laos and he was listed as Missing In Action.

JENKINS: I remember walking down the street wondering if I was a widow or if I was married, and there's nobody to ask. You don't know, and, you know, it kind of leaves you in limbo.

MABREY: But two weeks after the plane disappeared, wreckage was spotted on a sheer limestone cliff. Anderson and the eight other crewmembers were reclassified as Killed In Action. The crash happened in such a dangerous location that, for years, the military said it couldn't get a team to the site. It seemed the crew's remains would never be recovered. Sue Jenkins put away her wedding ring and eventually remarried, but she always hoped that, someday, recovery teams would bring Denis Anderson's remains home, along with a missing treasure.

JENKINS: His wedding ring didn't come back in his personal effects, so I knew he must have had it on, even though they were told not to wear their wedding ring because, if you're captured, your captors would know you're married, and that's just one more thing they can torment you with. But when his remains - I mean, his personal effects came home and there was no ring...

MABREY: And his ring wasn't there...

JENKINS: .I thought, he wore it. I know he did.

MABREY: Sue Jenkins was right. It took six different attempts, but they did find what she was waiting for.

JENKINS: There it is. I got it just the other day. You bet. Oh, wow. It really is bent, isn't it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It really is. JENKINS: This is the one that matches it. Wow. And here I have both of them, so there's no doubt about it.

MABREY: What can you tell from looking at that ring?

JENKINS: I can tell that crash was pretty violent because the ring is all - it's not at all round anymore. It's amazing that all five little diamonds are still there and just shining brightly. MABREY: Along with the ring, scientific director Thomas Holland formally handed over the remains of Denis Anderson. It was just a couple of pieces of bone that she placed under a scarf, but even that was precious.

JENKINS: This is just the leftovers of a wonderful life, you might say.

MABREY: Jenkins then escorted Denis Anderson's remains to Washington, D.C. Last June, after 35 years, Lieutenant Denis Anderson and the eight other men on his plane were buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

JENKINS: He wanted to be buried here in a national cemetery, and I think he deserves that.

MABREY: But for Kitty Casey (ph), there can be no funeral yet. Two 30-day excavations ended without finding any remains. Now a third team is at the site continuing the search. What is it in the American psyche, though, that has kept us going back, 35 years after this crash, to look for the men like Donald Casey?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, it's just a wonderful country, to begin with. Could you imagine any other country doing it?

MABREY: No. And some would say what a waste of resources. What a waste of our energy and our money.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They would say that as long as the person wasn't theirs."