More Photos of Purported MIAs Surface : Vietnam War: A controversial researcher in Orange County says he has obtained a snapshot of a soldier who disappeared in 1971 showing that he is still alive.

More photographs purporting to show that American servicemen who vanished during the Vietnam War are still alive have surfaced, raising new questions about the government’s handling of the emotional POW-MIA issue as Washington prepares for new hearings on the subject.

A controversial Orange County-based POW-MIA researcher contends that some photographs he obtained from a Laotian source last year show that an Army Special Forces member who disappeared July 6, 1971, is still alive. A forensic scientist who compared the snapshot obtained by Jack Bailey with old photos of the long-missing Donald Gene (Butch) Carr said preliminary findings confirm Bailey’s contention.

Meanwhile, the parents of Navy pilot Daniel Borah Jr. say they are convinced that photographs obtained by a Nashville, Tenn., judge last year through Laotian sources show that their son, missing for 19 years, may still be alive.

Claims concerning Carr, Borah and three other missing American fliers whose images purportedly appeared in another photograph have sparked new interest on Capitol Hill. About a dozen senators have joined the list of co-sponsors backing legislation by Sen. Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.) that would create a select committee on POW-MIAs. That brings the total to 37, and significantly enhances the likelihood that the bill will pass.

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Hank Brown (R-Colo.) have separately announced that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will conduct its own investigation in hearings set for September.

On Thursday, the Senate Rules Committee will hold a hearing on Smith’s legislation. Among its witnesses will be Col. Millard A. Peck, who recently resigned in protest as head of the Pentagon’s office on POW-MIA issues, and a number of activists.

The photographs said to depict Carr and Borah surfaced publicly after the release last week of a poor-quality photograph that some believe shows three missing American fliers. Close relatives declared that the photo, bearing a cryptic message that appears to signify the date May 25, 1990, shows Air Force Col. John Leighton Robertson, Air Force Maj. Albro Lynn Lundy and Navy Lt. Larry James Stevens.

Senators have said the hearings will help resolve longstanding questions about the fate of 2,270 Americans who disappeared during the war and are presumed dead.

Longtime activists such as Bailey say they are hopeful that the hearings will prove that their concerns about POW-MIAs are based on reality, not merely wishful thinking and delusions. Skeptics point out that by selling bogus photos and other evidence, con artists have perpetuated belief that some Americans may have survived.

Bailey traveled to Washington on Tuesday in expectation of testifying Thursday. The POW-MIA sleuth, who has been criticized for deceptive fund-raising techniques, said he was willing to take a polygraph test to bolster his claims. “Damn it, I’m tired of my credibility being attacked,” Bailey said.

The 68-year-old retired Air Force fighter pilot, a veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam, said the snapshots he believes depict Carr as a POW represent only part of the evidence he has amassed on the POW-MIA issue since the United States disengaged from the war in 1973. Several pilots were under his command when they disappeared, Bailey said.

Bailey, who travels frequently between his Garden Grove base and Thailand, said that while working with Laotian refugees on the Thai border, he was told of a Caucasian named Gar held captive in Laos. As a precaution against possible fraud, Bailey said, he sent his “operative” back with a blue knit shirt and a camera and asked for a photo of the man wearing the shirt. Such a photo was returned.

Further research, Bailey said, indicated that Gar was Donald Gene (Butch) Carr of San Antonio. Carr, a 32-year-old captain in the Army Special Forces, was serving as an observer in an OV-10A Bronco flying over Laos on July 6, 1971, when the aircraft lost radio contact and apparently crashed.

Bailey said he contacted Carr’s survivors and was struck by the resemblance between his photo of a middle-aged man and those of the young Butch Carr. Carr’s former wife, Carol Collins, who has remarried, recently told the Ft. Worth Star Telegram that she did not believe the man was Carr.

But her son, Donald Carr Jr., said in a telephone interview Tuesday night that his mother now believes the picture is legitimate. As for himself, he said, “I’m not 100% positive. But I feel strongly that it’s him.”

The younger Carr, who was about 5 the last time he saw his father, said his uncle and aunt “are very convinced.” He said his uncle told him recently, “I’m here to tell you that’s definitely my brother” in the photo.

Asked why the man in the photo appears to be smiling, Bailey said that his understanding is that Carr had suffered brain damage in the crash.

Physical anthropologist Michael Charney, the director of the forensic science laboratory at Colorado State University, said a preliminary analysis comparing photographic images of the young Carr and Bailey’s photo are a positive match.

“It is him,” Charney said. “I can tell you that the picture taken recently is Carr. It fits with his face of 30 years ago.”

A different avenue led Daniel Borah Sr. to conclude that his Navy flier son who disappeared during a 1972 mission is still alive. A Nashville judge showed him about 17 photographs that supposedly had been spirited out of Laos, he said.

“It didn’t take too long to come up with the conclusion it was him. Maybe 15-20 minutes,” Borah said.

Judge Hamilton Gayden said he obtained the photos from his court officer, Khambang Sibounheuang, a Laotian immigrant with contacts to Laotian “freedom fighters.”

Gayden, 52, said he has been interested in the POW-MIA issues since a “cousin-in-law” was taken prisoner during the war. He said he published a novel in 1987 about a POW escaping from the communist forces and returning home.

Even as the new evidence is being brought forward, new doubts about the authenticity of the first photograph are being raised. Some of those come from sources who have been sympathetic to the cause of the POW-MIA activists. Privately, many of their main allies on Capitol Hill are also expressing skepticism.

Retired Army Col. William LeGro, chief of intelligence for the defense attache’s office in Saigon during the war, said, “I know people were left behind. There’s no doubt about it. I have seen plenty of evidence that convinced me that there were still prisoners alive in Southeast Asia.”

But he is skeptical of the photograph purporting to show Robertson, Lundy and Stevens.

“I don’t think it does much for the credibility of those of us who think there still are people left alive there. . . . I don’t think it’s a picture of three prisoners of war. . . . It doesn’t ring true to me, and I don’t think it helped the cause very well.”

LeGro added, however, that the picture said to be that of Navy Lt. Daniel Borah is “more credible.”

LeGro says, and several sources who were Vietnam-era servicemen agree, that the letters KBC that appear in that photo were a widely used South Vietnamese military postal code (similar to the APO that is on letters to U.S. servicemen). Noting that this code fell out of use in the mid-1970s, former Green Beret Stephen Sherman said that he believes the photograph has been doctored. Adding credence, he said, is that the second “9” in the date looks different from the first one.

Gayden said he has obtained a six-page document indicating that the message on the photograph is a code suggesting that the men in it have been sentenced to execution. The initials NNTK, he insisted, means “Next November to Kill,” and the bottom code is actually KBE 19, for “killed by enemy 19--” with the year to be filled in.

“We have a live witness in Thailand right now . . . willing to come to Congress to testify,” Gayden said.

Gayden has thus far declined to make public his document--which he claims identifies more than 20 live POWs-- but warned, “If it isn’t published by the government, we’re going to publish it.”

Harris reported from Los Angeles and Tumulty reported from Washington.