Sacred Crypt May Be Opened for DNA Test

The Pentagon is considering the drastic step of reopening the hallowed Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery to test whether the remains of an officially unidentified Vietnam veteran are those of a 24-year-old fighter pilot shot down in 1972.

Even then, some evidence suggested that the remains ceremonially laid to rest by President Reagan 14 years ago belong to 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie, a decorated flier still officially listed as missing in action.

This evidence has convinced some veterans’ activists that the Pentagon hid its knowledge of Blassie’s identity in 1984 to satisfy political pressure to find “unknown” remains of a Vietnam veteran--then in short supply--for interment at the tomb.

Pentagon officials insist that, at the time, evidence about the identity was simply inconclusive. But they acknowledge that with DNA testing techniques developed two years ago, they may now be able to determine whether the six bones interred in the tomb are Blassie’s--provided top officials decide to open the marble-capped crypt that is one of the nation’s most hallowed memorials.

The military’s search to identify lost service members “has taken us all over the world . . . , but we’ve never faced this kind of decision,” said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s POW-Missing Personnel Office.

And with many veterans’ activists strongly favoring a disinterment and others strongly opposed, “we have several imponderables to sort through over the next several weeks,” he added.

Blassie’s family, who erected a memorial for the pilot near their St. Louis home, want a scientific test of the remains.

“They want to know,” said a spokeswoman for the family, reached Monday night at the home of Blassie’s mother, Jean, in Florissant, Mo. “They believe the clues lead to the tomb.”

The Pentagon’s deliberations over the case were brought to light in a CBS “Evening News” report Monday night.

Blassie logged 137 combat missions in an A-37 attack jet before he was apparently hit by antiaircraft fire in May 1972 near An Loc, about 60 miles north of Saigon. Blassie, an Air Force Academy graduate, had begun his tour only five months earlier.

Many other U.S. servicemen were also believed lost in the same area.

Within several months, South Vietnamese troops had found six human bones at what appeared to be the site of the crash of an unidentifiable aircraft. They also found some clues: Blassie’s ID card; another laminated piece of identification, called a MACV Form 5, with his name on it; and some cash.

The identification cards suggested that the remains were Blassie’s. But, under the usual military procedures, they were not by themselves considered conclusive. This is because troops in Vietnam were sometimes known to give their papers to a buddy to hold, Greer said.

After the discovery, the remains and the various items found with them were to be shipped together to the U.S. military mortuary in Saigon. The six bones made it, but the other items, inexplicably, did not.

The remains were then sent to the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, where they were first officially listed as “believed to be those of Michael Blassie.” But without the evidence of teeth or other distinguishing remains, the lab could not make a conclusive identification.

Even so, the description remained until 1980, when the case took a sharp turn. A Defense Department board ruled that, in the absence of further evidence, the remains should be declared unknown. They were henceforth referred to as “X-26.”

In 1984, the Pentagon began looking for an unidentified veteran from the Vietnam War to add to the 67-year-old Tomb of the Unknowns, which holds remains of service members from World War I, World War II and the Korean War. Military and Reagan administration officials were eager to make a respectful gesture to Vietnam vets and to help heal the anguish of families whose loved ones were listed as missing in action--or, worse, who suspected their relatives were still prisoners of war.

Although 2,400 service members were officially listed as missing in 1984, only four sets of remains then at the Hawaii lab were officially “unknown.’ And with the continuing advances in identification research, there was official concern at the Pentagon that before long there might be no remains to put alongside the deceased from earlier wars.

Despite those concerns, however, the lab today includes remains of a number of veterans who are officially designated as “unknown,” officials say. They are likely to remain that way, officials say, because lab officials don’t know enough to try to match them with those of missing soldiers.

But concerns in 1984 about the dwindling supply of “unknown” remains fueled suspicions among some veterans’ activists that the Pentagon wanted to bury the bones quickly to solve a political problem.

Adding to the same suspicions was the Pentagon’s decision to destroy all records about the origin of the remains and how they were chosen for the monument.

Greer said this destruction of the records is standard procedure for any remains at the tomb, in keeping with the principle--engraved on the side of the sarcophagus--that the identities of those interred within are to remain forever secret. The white marble says in its inscription: “Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.”

But the selection procedure and other circumstances of the burial have stirred allegations among POW activists for years.

“The entombment of the Vietnam unknown was at the very best premature and at worst a politically expedient attempt to further close the books on the POW/MIA issue,” the U.S. Veteran Dispatch Archives, an activist organization, said in a 1996 report posted on the Internet.

Some veterans have asserted for years that the evidence shows the remains are those of Blassie, while others have contended they are those of other missing service members.

Pentagon officials have been thinking about further investigation since a broad 1995 study reviewed all 2,400 unsolved MIA cases to assess the chances that the newly available DNA testing could solve them.

Despite the political sensitivity of reopening the tomb, analysts recognized then that this case “might be a perfect candidate for further investigation,” Greer said.

The Blassie family has documents that may be of help and has promised to cooperate.

Greer said that by using mitochondrial DNA testing, researchers probably could determine whether the remains are Blassie’s. “The question now is, should we do it?” he said. “And that’s what’s under review.”

Another Pentagon official said that, given the sensitivity of the issue, the question probably will go to “the very top of the administration.”

The tomb, completed in 1931, was designed to honor the thousands of soldiers who fell in World War I but could not be identified.