Electronics Technician First Class Elden H. Luffman, Jr.. USNR

Dear Petty Officer Luffman:

Thank you for your August 10, 1997, electronic letter to President Clinton regarding the Vietnam War prisoner of war/missing in action (POW/MIA) issue. You requested information on Army Staff Sergeant Dennis L. Gauthier who is unaccounted for from that war. Your letter was forwarded to the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), the Department of Defense (DoD) agency responsible for this issue, and we are pleased to reply.

Sergeant Gauthier was lost on October 31, 1969, during combat in a remote province of South Vietnam. Members of his platoon testified that he was killed by a direct hit from an enemy rocket propelled grenade. Regrettably, neither his nor another soldier's remains could be recovered due to heavy enemy pressure which forced the withdrawal of his unit. Several days later, an American reconnaissance platoon returned to the area and located the remains of the other soldier. Although the team searched for three days, Sergeant Gauthier's remains could not be found. It was believed that due to the condition of his remains, Sergeant Gauthier may have been mistakenly identified by enemy forces as one of their own and buried. Despite our investigation into this case, we have been unable to locate Sergeant Gauthier's remains. If you would like to learn more information about Sergeant Gauthier and our efforts to account for him, his records are available to the public at the Library of Congress (LoC). I have enclosed a fact sheet on how to research POW/MIA information at the LoC.

Over the past several months, our agency has received a number of inquiries from concerned citizens that are similar to yours. Each letter has phrasing indicating that the United States Government abandoned many of our men at the end of the Vietnam War and is doing nothing now to find these men or their remains. Nothing can be further from the truth.

President Clinton, like Presidents Reagan and Bush, has designated the POW/MIA issue a matter of the highest national priority. The Department of Defense is fully committed to accounting for our fellow countrymen, and our actions have produced major inroads into obtaining the fullest possible accounting for our unaccounted Americans. We have more than 500 people in Washington, Hawaii, Southeast Asia, and Russia who are working full time on this mission. In addition to the men and women of this office, members of the Joint Task Force Full Accounting (JTF-FA) and the United States Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii (CILHI) serve in the field to find the information that will permit us to account as fully as possible for missing Americans.

While operations in Southeast Asia are the sole focus of the JTF-FA, the mission of the CILHI is worldwide. Recent operations to recover remains from Russia, North Korea. China. The Netherlands, New Guinea, New Caledonia, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Burma, and Tibet illustrate the United States Government's commitment to recover American remains wherever they may be located and to determine the fates of all our unaccounted for Americans.

At this writing, there are 2,1 16 American servicemen who remain unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. There also are more than 8,100 unaccounted for Americans from the Korean War; approximately 78,750 from World War 11; and 3,350 from World War 1. We know that most of these men were killed in action, and the combat situation at the time of their deaths prevented American forces from recovering their remains. Regrettably, as is the nature of combat, there are many cases in which we simply do not know, and may never know what happened to the men.

Since 1988, American teams have completed more than 2,000 investigations and excavations in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to account for Americans lost during the Vietnam War. As a result of our commitment to the fullest possible accounting, since 1973 the remains of 467 Americans have been recovered, identified, and returned from Southeast Asia with full military honors.

To learn more about our efforts to account for our unaccounted for Americans, you should contact our Internet site at www.dtic.mil/dpmo. This site contains weekly updates detailing our current operations worldwide.

Our office has made it our mission to personally meet with family members of unaccounted for servicemen without having them incur the high cost of traveling to Washington, D.C. Each month, members from our office travel to a city or town deemed most convenient for family members to meet. During these informal meetings, we personally address family members' concerns and update them on the status of our efforts to provide the fullest possible accounting.

Thank you for your concern for Sergeant Gauthier. We in the DPMO and other DoD agencies who work this issue daily, the majority of whom are military or former military, are committed to the mission of accounting for all our countrymen. Unfortunately, we may never be able to provide all the answers to ease the pain for all the families. However, we will continue to strive to do so.

Sincerely,

Charles W. Henley

Director, Legislative and External Affairs
Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office

Enclosure:
As stated

White House Liaison Office
Army casualty office