With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to see flaws in Furue’s analysis, which has been criticized as too pedantic, relying heavily on numerical averages with scant attention to the individual variations in bone size that make each human unique. Some people have long arms for their height; others have short arms and long legs, as was the case with Blassie. And while the wear and tear on bones is generally a good guide to the age of their owner, the method relies on guesswork and personal judgment and is therefore imprecise. If the dead person engaged in a lifetime of vigorous sports—as Blassie did—his bones would appear to be older than their true age, according to Robert Mann, deputy scientific director of the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii. “Some people’s bones don’t fit the expected pattern,” he wrote in Forensic Detective, in which he reviews the handling of Blassie’s case. “Although forensic anthropology is founded in science,” Mann wrote, “there is still some art and subjective professional judgment to it. One always has to be aware of the limited degree of precision inherent in drawing conclusions about a dead person’s biological profile based on skeletal features.”36
As for the conflicting blood type produced by Furue’s tests, such assessments, though considered reliable when they were made, have since been shown to be less than perfect, producing dependable results about 67 percent of the time.37 Mann noted that the single hair provided for Blassie’s blood test may have been compromised by five months’ exposure to Vietnam’s lashing rains and acid soil. If there was chemical degradation, Mann suggested, it could have produced a false reading for type O blood.38 There was also a pertinent chain-of-custody question: when did the anomalous hair attach itself to the flight suit? If it was not Blassie’s, it might have been picked up at almost any point on his peripatetic journey, from the jungle to the helicopter to Tan Son Nhut to Thailand to Hawaii. Finally, even if one accepted Furue’s anthropological conclusion, what did the physical evidence from Blassie’s crash contribute to his story? Furue did not say. At least eight other servicemen disappeared near An Loc and had not been found.39
One of these, Army Capt. Rodney Strobridge, crashed in an AH-1G Cobra helicopter near the site of Blassie’s loss on May 11, 1972, the same day the St. Louis airman disappeared. This introduced another wrinkle into an already difficult case: Strobridge’s physical profile matched Furue’s analysis for height, age, and blood type. But other physical evidence from the wreck pointed to an A-37 Dragonfly, the only such aircraft that went down in the area and the only one equipped with a parachute and the distinctive one-man life raft like those found with Blassie’s remains.40 In his report, Furue dutifully listed the raft along with other recovered equipment, but he failed to consider their significance, or to invoke the testimony of witnesses such as Hess and Calhoun, who had seen Blassie’s identification card before it disappeared.41
In the end, Mann concluded, Furue had too little evidence in 1980 to say whether the remains in the lab belonged to Blassie or to someone else, a state of affairs that should have kept the pilot’s name associated with his remains and invalidated his candidacy as the Vietnam Unknown.42 In fairness to Furue, who died in 1988, it should be noted that he thought the identity of X-26 could be established by further recovery missions in Vietnam, where new evidence might turn up.43
By the early 1980s, however, key officials of the Reagan administration evinced little patience for more investigation, having satisfied themselves that suitable remains were available if only the Central Identification Laboratory could be prodded to produce them. “President Reagan and Caspar Weinberger [secretary of defense] wanted to go forward with it, as a way to honor those who served and as a way to reach closure on the Vietnam era,” recalled John O. Marsh Jr., who as secretary of the Army became Reagan’s point man for the Vietnam initiative. “The process was held up because some of the people in the forensic area began to have second thoughts about it,” said Marsh. The former congressman from Virginia had no such qualms. “It’s what the American Legion, the VFW, the Congress, and President Reagan wanted to do, as a way to help heal the divisions from the war. My role was to jump-start the process.”44
To that end, Marsh traveled to the Army’s Hawaiian lab in 1982 to gather firsthand information about remains that might qualify for Unknown status. By this time the possible candidates were down to the last four—Blassie and three others recovered from Southeast Asia. Having borne more delay than he thought to be reasonable, Marsh made his move on June 16, 1982, declaring that the time had come to make the selection and bury the symbolic warrior from Vietnam.45
“We have remains which meet the legal requirements for the Unknown,” Marsh told Weinberger that day. “After careful consideration, I have concluded that the interests of the Nation are served best by proceeding with the anonymous selection and subsequent interment of a Vietnam Unknown from these candidates. This coming Veterans’ Day, November 11, 1982, would be an appropriate date since the World War I Unknown was also interred on Armistice Day.” In keeping with tradition from World War II, Marsh proposed that the three runner-up candidates be buried at sea to preclude their later identification.46
Marsh’s proposal ignited howls of protest from the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, who believed that the action was premature. “We are opposed to the interment of any remains now held,” Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the league, wrote Weinberger in July. “Perhaps the Army should respond to Congressional inquires with … a clear statement that qualified remains are not available and may never be due to technical expertise attained.” She presciently warned against “interring an individual who may be identified at some point in the future.”47 Her note set off alarm bells in the Reagan White House, where Richard T. Childress, a Vietnam veteran and influential member of the National Security Council staff, sided with Mrs. Griffiths. Pointing out that the Unknown contenders might be identified in the future, he cautioned against rushing the process, which could be perceived as nakedly political. “We simply can’t have the public believe we created an unknown for interment,” Childress told William P. Clark, Reagan’s national security chief.48 Faced with these objections, Weinberger delayed the selection so that the forensics laboratory could narrow its list of Unknown candidates.49
While investigators in the Hawaii lab cranked up their review, a strange drama played out in Washington, demonstrating just how resentful some Vietnam veterans remained about their lack of recognition. At about five p.m. on March 23, 1983, as Arlington National Cemetery prepared to close for the day, a man in a business suit appeared at the Tomb of the Unknowns and stepped over chains separating the visitors’ area from the amphitheater terrace. The tomb sentinel on duty, Cpl. Michael Kirby, challenged the visitor. The man produced a small-caliber pistol, identified himself as an Air Force veteran who had seen duty in Vietnam, and began railing about his treatment upon returning home. Kirby backed away. Other tomb guards appeared, jumped the gunman from behind, and pinned him to the ground. The distraught man, who turned out to be a thirty-six-year-old car salesman from Virginia Beach, Virginia, was taken to the hospital, confined for treatment, and later released. It was true that he had served in Vietnam. He had driven to Washington intent on killing himself at the nation’s most famous military shrine. Tomb sentinels foiled his suicide, but the episode was a reminder of the war’s unsettled legacy and Arlington’s importance to those who still struggled with it.50
Burying a Vietnam Unknown would be an important sign of thanks from the nation, a sentiment that fueled the Reagan administration’s drive to fill the tomb—and soon. But instead of producing prospects for Vietnam honors, the Central Identification Laboratory began eliminating them. The first candidate to be withdrawn was a serviceman killed in 1970 and labeled as X-15. Much to the consternation of Pentagon officials, Johnie Webb refused to certify this combatant for Arlington honors because Webb suspected that the man’s identity would eventually be established. His skeleton was in the b
est condition of the four candidates—more than 90 percent complete. He had a full set of teeth, which would cinch identification if only his service records could be found in the coils and recesses of the military bureaucracy. Even without those files, X-15’s bones carried a tantalizing clue to his identity: three steel pellets were imbedded in his right arm, put there not by enemy action but most likely by an American-made claymore mine he had tripped. It was almost certainly the cause of his death. But his remains could not be associated with any of the twenty-five hundred servicemen still listed as missing. Prodded by Webb, the Army eventually produced a name, which led to the man’s dental records, which provided a perfect match with X-15’s teeth. The soldier, who had been erroneously listed as honorably discharged, proved to be an eighteen-year-old Army private from Michigan who had gone AWOL near An Khe, where he made his fatal misstep on the fringes of Camp Radcliff. He won a long-delayed ticket home for burial in 1983, at which point the case of X-15 came off the list of prospective Unknowns.51
“We came that close to putting a deserter in the Tomb of the Unknown,” Webb recalled, holding his thumb and finger a few millimeters apart. “We went on to the next three individuals.”52 The first of that trio, designated as X-32, turned out to be William McRae, an Army private killed in a helicopter crash near Long Binh in 1967 but misidentified in the chaos of that multi-fatality incident. Another victim from the same crash, thought to be McRae, was mistakenly sent home to McRae’s family in Boston. Years later, when Webb and his associates received a shipment of badly decayed remains from Vietnam, they discovered McRae’s dog tags in the box labeled X-32. The lab won permission to exhume the misidentified body from Boston, whereupon McRae took his rightful place in the cemetery at home. This closed the X-32 file, but it created a new mystery: who was the man mistaken for McRae? Until his identity could be established, scientists at the lab dubbed him “ Boston Billy,” a label that stuck until 2002, when investigators determined that he was Jerry Degnan, a civilian who trained helicopter pilots in Vietnam until 1967, when he died in the same Huey crash that killed McRae and jumbled their remains.53
With the mysteries of X-15 and X-32 settled, attention shifted to a third case, which involved a set of unidentified remains turned over to the United States by Laos. Since this recovery was, in the military argot a “unilateral turnover,” with no Americans involved in collecting or transferring the remains, the chain of custody failed to meet basic requirements of the 1973 law. “The pertinent law says that the remains must be an American fighting man who died in combat during this time period,” Webb said. “Since it’s a unilateral turnover, you have no information to meet the intent of the public law. My contention was that those remains did not meet the requirement. Won that argument. That brought us down to the fourth guy, the X-26 case. That one I lost.”54
With all other candidates eliminated, on March 16, 1984, Caspar Weinberger informed President Reagan that the Pentagon was ready to bury X-26 as the Vietnam Unknown on Memorial Day. “In 1982 we began an intensive effort to determine whether any of the remains in our possession are qualified for the Vietnam Unknown,” Weinberger reported. “We concluded that we have one set of remains which cannot be identified and which, although not as complete as we would like, meets the legal requirements for the Vietnam Unknown … The interment of a Vietnam Unknown is the highest honor our Nation can give to the Vietnam Veterans … I look forward to joining you in honoring those who faithfully served their Nation during those difficult times.”55
Weinberger said nothing about lingering doubts over X-26, or the associations with Michael Blassie. “Reagan wanted his Unknown,” said a historian at Arlington. “Nobody was going to stop it.”56
In Hawaii, however, Johnie Webb made one last try. “These remains should be disqualified for selection as the Unknown because of past and present name associations,” he wrote to Washington about the time of Weinberger’s announcement. Webb sketched out the tangled story of X-26 in his memo. Without naming Michael Blassie, Webb reminded his superiors that his case had been linked to a particular pilot who had been formerly assigned “Believed To Be” status. He listed the evidence found with Blassie, including the one-man raft, the flight suit, the parachute, and the vanished identification card. For good measure, Webb also mentioned another unnamed casualty associated with the X-26 remains; he was referring to Capt. Rodney Strobridge, who matched the anthropological profile from Blassie’s crash but not the other evidence from the site. Webb’s note, sent to an assistant secretary of the army, was supposed to be forwarded up the chain to John O. Marsh Jr.57 Marsh says he never saw the document. “If Johnie Webb had second thoughts, I never heard about it,” Marsh said recently. “He should’ve said something.”58 For his part, Webb avows that he did say something—and that Washington ignored his warning.59
Within five days of Weinberger’s letter to Reagan, Webb received orders to certify that X-26 could never be identified, an action that would clear the way for Blassie’s entombment.60 Against his better judgment, Webb produced the required document on March 21, 1984, certifying that the remains of TSN 0673-72 X-26 “failed to support a positive identification with any known casualty of Southeast Asia.” He continued:
All efforts since 4 November 1972 to establish a positive identification have proven negative. The portions of the recovered remains do not include the identification criteria that can be matched exclusively to an individual and it is highly improbable that continued identification processing would be successful. These remains are determined to be unidentifiable.61
Webb swallowed hard and signed his name. “I tried,” he recalled recently, “but the political pressure was such that I wasn’t going to win.”62 Webb told another interviewer that short of resigning under orders, he could do nothing further to prevent Blassie’s designation as the Unknown. “I didn’t have the horsepower … As an Army officer, my job was to advise. After the decision was made, I saluted and began carrying out the mission.”63
Now his mission was to prepare Blassie for his trip to Washington. In keeping with the tradition of the Unknowns, the Pentagon ordered Webb to surrender all original files relating to Blassie and to destroy all copies to guarantee the anonymity of the tomb.64 Webb dutifully obeyed the first part of this directive, but not the second: He kept copies of the Blassie dossier in the belief that they would be needed if the case was reopened. Webb was also asked to send the life raft and other physical evidence to Washington, where it would be destroyed with the original paperwork. Webb demurred, keeping all of the evidence with Blassie—which meant that man and artifacts would be buried together at Arlington.65
“These remains came in together with the material evidence,” Webb recalled. “I wanted to make sure everything stayed together. If the remains were going into the tomb, the artifacts needed to go to the tomb so that at some point there was the historical perspective on what came in with these remains.” Leaving nothing to chance, Webb monitored the preparation of Blassie’s bones, which were folded into an olive drab army blanket with the life raft, the parachute fragments, and other physical evidence. Webb watched as the blanket was fastened shut all around with safety pins to form a woolen envelope. He saw it go into the polished steel casket. He saw the lid eased shut and heard the lock click in place. Blassie was ready for the next stage of his journey, which commenced on May 17, 1984.66
For all the indignities Blassie had suffered, his passage from Hawaii to Washington constituted a sort of restitution. At Pearl Harbor, he was presented with flowers by a Medal of Honor winner, eulogized by admirals and generals, and given a place of pride aboard U.S.S. Brewton, the naval frigate that conveyed him past all the ships in Pearl Harbor while all rendered passing honors. He sailed across the Pacific Ocean with a Marine honor guard watching over him night and day, and on May 24 they sailed under Golden Gate Bridge, past the gleaming hills of San Francisco, and into moorings at Alameda Naval Air Station, where further honors awaited: a twenty-one-gun salute,
more eulogies, and fighter jets streaking overhead in the missing man formation. These rituals were but a warm-up for the round of state honors in Washington, where four days of tribute were planned, culminating with President Reagan’s Memorial Day speech.67 Among those who stood proudly with Reagan that day were Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Rep. John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, both of whom had worked tirelessly to win recognition for this forgotten war, which had finally earned its place at Arlington.68
This, at least, was the plan, and to a large degree it succeeded in calming the old ghosts of Vietnam. While Blassie slept in anonymity on the grand plaza of the amphitheater, dead comrades were found and restored to their families; an all-volunteer army replaced the draft; old enemies shook hands and made peace at home and abroad. New wars boiled up on the horizon. Reagan flew to California and disappeared into the shadowy world of Alzheimer’s. George Blassie died in St. Louis never knowing that his son had come home. Jean Blassie carried on but found it impossible to speak about her son outside of her family. Pat Blassie took her brother’s place in the Air Force and worked her way up the ranks, earning her captain’s bars by 1994, when all of a sudden the ghosts of Vietnam came rumbling back.69
On Hallowed Ground Page 30