National Alliance of Families
For The Return of America's Missing Servicemen
10th Annual POW/MIA Forum
Wyndham City Center Hotel
Washington, DC
June 17 - 19, 1999
Day Two
Noted Researcher Roger Hall was the first guest up after the dinner break. Through the years, Roger has been a help to the families of missing servicemen in that when he would find something in the National Archives he would hand it over to the family in question.
Now get comfortable, folks, because the following is rather involved. During the Senate Select Committee Hearings on POW/MIA Affairs, the Central Intelligence Agency provided some documentation to back-up some of the open -and closed- testimony.
Despite two presidents and four presidential executive orders, the CIA refuses to declassify POW/MIA documentation. Roger has identified approximately 40,000 documents that the CIA has yet to release to the Library of Congress. Roger has filed a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] suit against the Central Intelligence Agency.
No one has successfully sued the CIA before.
Now, there may be those who think that there is a hidden agenda here, or that Hall is using the moeny collected for other things. But Roger has been forthcoming about what he has collected as well as the expenditures that he has incurred thus far.
In order to understand the expense involved, one must understand the procedures involved.
In civil litigation, even at the federal level, a suit is filed and the Court examines whether there is enough evidence for the suit to proceed. In a criminal trial, this would be similar to a grand jury investigation, but not quite. The plaintiff, or in this case Hall, shows the Court some of his evidence. The respondent, or in this case the Central Intelligence Agency, can contest that evidence--which makes this unique to a grand jury proceeding. (In grand jury proceedings, only the prosecution presents enough evidence to show that there is reasonable cause to proceed against a defendant.) The judge in the civil trial then decides if there is reasonable cause for the civil suit to proceed.
Usually, each side is allowed three uncontested adjournments. That is, they are allowed to request that the particular hearing on that given day be postponed until such and such a date. Usually it is due to a conflict in lawyer scheduling.
Not only is the CIA attorneys defending this action, but so, too, are Department of Justice attorneys. Roger has one attorney.
If anyone has had dealings with attorneys, you know that they can argue the most mundane points. And they take forever to argue these points. And that adds up to "in court" time. "In court" time is the most expensive charge that lawyers have.
The next phase is discovery. Each side must provide the other with the gist of their case. The witness list, the documents that will be used as exhibits; the meat of the case. Both the plaintiff and the respondent has to provide each other with an evidence list that will be used to prosecute and defend against. As I understand it, this has been done in this particular matter.
Then there are pre-trial motions. Everthing for stating arguement against allowing certain evidence in to arguing why the case should move forward to the limiting of the number of questions that can be asked on a specific piece of evidence to arguing against the way certain questions can be asked. This is a long, arduous process. And all of it "in court" time.
Motions can also be rather wordy. And at the end of the day each side should have a transcript of the record so that they can tighten up their arguements. You must purchase the trial transcripts by the page. In New York City, for example, I believe it is something like $1.00 per page. Now that might not sound like a lot, but understand that each line is double spaced, and it is numbered usually 1-30, so there are 30 lines indented to approximately two inches on each page. The daily trial transcript can add up to hundreds of dollars. The CIA and Department of Justice use tax dollars to supply them with trial transcripts. Roger Hall's attorney uses money that Roger has had donated to get their copies of transcripts.
In some cases there is a motion made to surpress evidence. A hearing is conducted, much like a mini-trial, and the arguement is put forth as to why said evidence should not be allowed in, or surpressed. Both sides present their case specifically to this motion to surpress. As motions go, a motion to surpress is the most fought for and against motion, sometimes argued over the course of days, before the Court rules in favor of or against said motion.
Roger does all the copying, collating and stapling himself. Or with the help of others..all volunteers. That helps keep the cost down somewhat, but it does not make a dent when you figure on "in court" time.
After the motion calendar is heard, the hearing regarding depositions gets under way. During the discovery phase, a witness list is given. There are witnesses which the plaintiff wants to depose and there are witnesses that the respondent wants to depose. The plaintiff witnesses butress the plaintiff's case and the respondent witnesses butress the respondent's defense.
The CIA will fight a long, protracted and expensive fight to keep some of those that Roger wants to depose off the witness list, so there will be several days of "in court" time that will have to be paid for just to argue in favor of keeping certain witnesses from getting excused from participating. In some cases, these witnesses may hire attorneys themselves and they will argue against having to be deposed. This is another arduous and costly part of the trial.
Because we are talking Central Intelligence Agency, some of the witnesses are all over the country, maybe the world. Roger's attorney will have to fly to wherever these witnesses are to depose them. It is rather costly--one of the most expensive parts of the case.
Not only do you have travel arrangements to make, you must also pay for a stenographer locally. Someone who will record the deposition. And after the depositions are taken, you pick the depositions that will make the strongest case.
Once you decide which of the depositions you are going to submit to the Court, you then have to have a trial date firmly set and then you must make travel arrangements for your witnesses. You incur the expense of their travel yourself. In this case, Roger must be prepared to put his witnesses in a hotel for several days depending on what they are going to testify to under direct and cross examinations. Remember, attorneys can prolong a trial by examining the most minuscule portion of their depositions. And most people who are deposed are not actually called to the witness stand for several months. Most likely, their story will differ then their deposition. Granted not to a large degree, but some lawyers will jump on a variance and make an issue over the fact that several months before you said you saw such and such and now you are saying you had seen such and such.
Remember President Clinton? Remember, depending on what "is is?" Well, that's lawyering for you.
At the present time, Roger has only $10,000.00 to be used for depositions. The rest of the money has gone for the filing fees of the suit, court costs, stenographic minutes of the court sessions - or trial transcripts- his attorneys "in court" time not to mention the costs for drawing up motions, researching cases, etc.
All of this takes money. He needs a minimum of $25,000.00 in reserve for the depositions alone. The entire case should cost between $40,000.00 and $50,000.00. Roger can account for every dime. Anyone wishing an accounting can contact Roger from this page.
Central Intelligence and Department of Justice Attorneys are doing everything possible to stall this case that the Court has ruled is valid and should move forward. Quite simply, they are trying to outspend Roger. Blitz him and his attorneys with motions, forcing them to answer them as well as to defend against some of the motions in court. "In Court" time. A colloquial for what some firms call Billable Hours.
If they can outspend Roger, this case will go away. They won't have to respond and they won't have to be held accountable and they won't have to release all the documentation that the Central Intelligence Agency has relative to the POW/MIA issue.
Sure, Roger tells us that he needs cash in order to do this. It is an old song that we all have become familiar with. There will be some that will claim that the suit is useless or that it is too costly or that they will take a wait-and-see approach.
To them I say the wait-and-see approach has gotten us nowhere all these years. It is time to be part of the solution rather than by broadcasting little or no support you become part of the problem. The Central Intelligence Agency has documents on American Prisoners of War from the Korea and Vietnam Wars. It is time that they shared these documents with the families of those who are missing from those wars. If you claim to be an advocate of the POW/MIA issue, if you claim to be a pro-unrepatriated POW proponent, then do not waste your time with a wait-and-see approach. Dig in and be part of this precedent setting case.
Let's show the government of the United States that we can all come together and that we can beat them at their own games.
If Roger Hall looses this suit it will not be because of any hidden agenda or dark sinister plan to make money, it will be because too many of us took a wait-and-see approach and we waited too damned long and saw the suit crash and burn.
Pretty much like some pilots who crashed into a mountainside in Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam and were left to languish.
Roger won't want to hear your apology, we won't want to hear your apology. "If" you are wrong, being the first to apologize won't change the fact that because you withheld your support [and others did too because you withheld yours] one of the best chances we ever had at gleaning a smoking gun slipped through our fingers because our government was able to outspend us. If we do not support Roger Hall and this lawsuit then I submit that we should really examine our own hidden agendas. I submit that we are just spinning our wheels and beating our chest and living life as victims rather than taking charge and not allowing them to victimize us.
And since we in this issue have such a propensity for placing blame, if Hall looses this suit because he does not have the funding to properly prosecute it, then I submit that the blame for loosing such is no further than the mirror on our own walls.
You now have somewhat of an understanding as to what it will take in order for Hall to be successful in this insurmountable endeavor. If Hall is successful, then we all are successful. If we can pry the fingers of the CIA away from their documents, every agency that people file FOIAs against will have to think twice before playing with their redaction pens. Think about all the documents that we have gotten through the years with [source], [name], [date] and the like. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to find who [source], [name] and [data] are?
National Security is not and should not be involved here. They should not be able to invoke National Security because it is 25 plus years after the fact. We should be able to view this documentation. If Hall's suit is successful, and we have every indication to believe it will be, then we will have this documentation.
Roger Hall with Joe Milliner
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Joe Milliner, former Prisoner of War during WWII and father of POW/MIA from SE Asia William Milliner, pledges his support in the matter of Hall versus The Central Intelligence Agency, United States of America.
Donate to this. It's tax deductible and it is precendent setting. It's the right thing to do. If you are willing to donate toward this very worthy effort, please E-mail Roger Hall from here.
The final guest of the evening was Dr. Samuel Dunlap, noted Forensic Anthropologist.
Dr. Dunlap was a forensic anthropologist with CIL-HI [Central Identification Labratory-Hawaii] before falling out-of-grace and getting the boot. He took us through the fact that during his tenure, the person in charge of CIL-HI was not a doctor. He called himself a doctor, but he was not a doctor. He did not have credentials. This was in the mid-80's.
More importantly, though, he took us through the pre-mtDNA identification process. He agrees that mt-DNA testing is a good tool to assist in identifications, but it should not be used as the sole means of identification.
Dr. Dunlap also advised that CIL-HI continues using methods that are not sanctioned by the American Society of Anthropologists, but, he tells us, since the ASA does not do anything to force compliance, CIL-HI is free to use whatever anthropological "mumbo-jumbo" it wants.
We talked about bone chip identifications and group identifications. He told us that if we went into court with the data supplied by CIL-HI, the Court would not recognize the identification. (We know from past suits that the Court will not litigate the case, claiming that it has no jurisdiction over military matters.)
We specifically talked about all the tooth chip identifications. The 1/2 teeth identifications. He assured us that none of those identifications are "legal" in the sense that they would not hold up to legal scrutiny. None of those particular identifications would stand upion Court if a Court would have the courage to accept jurisdiction.
Dr. Dunlap took questions from the audience. Unfortunately, the diskette used for taking photo's of the question and answer session was bad and they did not come out.
Next was the presentation of Activist of the Year. Larry Price of The Last Firebase was awarded the Activist of the year award.
Joe Jordan gave the award to Larry for larry's outstanding effort at manning the Last Firebase. The last Firebase is the only 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week, 365-day-of-the-year PoW/MIA Vigil in the US, possibly in the world. It is situated on the mall, in front of the Reflecting Pool, opposite the Lincoln Memorial in between the Vietnam Veteran's and Korea War memorials.
It is staffed by unpaid volunteers led by Ted Sampley. Price is the volunteer who has manned the Last Firebase more than anyone else and he's done it for years.
Larry is not one for being in the spotlight, so Ted Sampley accepted the award on Larry's behalf.
It is Larry's type of activism that shows the rest of us the meaning of committment and dedication. Well done, Larry!
Click here for Day Three
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