December 22nd, 1998
Sent in by Lynn O'Shea In a Memorandum for Correspondents, dated
December 22nd, 1998, the Defense Department announced the accounting for
three servicemen missing in Southeast Asia.
The servicemen are: Capt.
Thaddeus E. Williams Jr., Mobile, Ala., and Spc. 4 James P. Schimberg,
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, both officers were lost in North Vietnam in 1965.
The name of of a u.s. navy officer is being withheld at the request of
his family.
According to the DOD Memo - " In August 1993 a joint team of specialists
from the U.S. Joint Task Force - Full Accounting and from Vietnam
interviewed two Vietnamese informants in a local village near the
suspected crash site. One of the villagers said he had recovered bone
fragments, two identification tags and Williams' identification card in
1979. He recalled that one of the identification tags contained a name
beginning with "S." The joint team flew an aerial survey of the
suspected crash location, but found no evidence of the loss."
"The following month, one of the informants met with the team again and
presented them with identification tags with both Williams' and
Schimberg's name affixed. He also turned over the bone fragments he
claimed were those from the crash."
"Anthropological analysis of the remains and other evidence by the U.S.
Army Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii established the
identification of both Williams and Schimberg. Mitochondrial DNA
testing was used to help confirm the identifications."
To the Williams and Schimberg families, we hold you in our hearts and
prayers during this difficult time and we truly hope you now have the
answers you have waited so long for.
Did you notice - For the first time in almost 1 year DOD has
acknowledged the use of mt-DNA testing. Unfortunately, we have to
question the DOD phrase "to help confirm the identifications." We also
question the shading of the DOD Memo regarding the JTF-FA investigation.
National Alliance of Families
