Missing In Action

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This article is about the term. For the film, see Missing in Action (film). For the arcade game, see Missing In Action (arcade game).

Missing In Action (abbreviated MIA), is a term (dating from 1946) referring to a member of the armed services who is reported missing following a combat mission and whose status as to injury, capture, or death is unknown. The missing combatant must not have been otherwise accounted for as either killed in action or a prisoner of war.

1 The Kerry POW/MIA Committee
2 POW/MIA Issue Today
3 MIA in Iraq
4 Colloquial usage
5 External links

[edit] The Kerry POW/MIA Committee

During the late 1970s and 1980s the friends and relatives of unaccounted for American GIs became politically active, requesting the U.S. government reveal what steps were taken to follow up on intelligence regarding last known alive MIAs and POWs. When initial inquiries revealed important information had not been pursued, many families and their supporters asked for the public release of POW/MIA records and called for an investigation.

Serious charges were leveled at the George H. W. Bush administration regarding the POW/MIA issue. The Defense Department, headed by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, had been accused of covering up information and failing to properly pursue intelligence about American POW/MIAs. *When John Kerry's Courage Went M.I.A. In 1991,Vietnam veteran U.S. Senator Robert C. Smith introduced a resolution to create a Senate Select POW/MIA Committee. Kerry was eventually named chairman, and was joined on the committee by Senator and former POW John McCain, who had been a strong opponent of the creation of a Senate Select POW/MIA Committee. Six live sighting investigators hired by the committee unanimously concluded that the live sighting intelligence through 1989 showed Vietnam and Laos were still holding American prisoners. Controversy erupted when Kerry ordered the report of the live sighting investigators to be shredded along with all of their personal notes. Committee staffer Jon McCreary, on loan from the Defense Intelligence Agency, filed a memorandum on the shredding incident. That memorandum is declassified and is available at the National Archives.^{[citation needed]} Journalist Sydney Schanberg, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for some of his Southeast Asia coverage during the Vietnam War, described Kerry’s actions in a February 24, 2004 article for the Village Voice:

“He gave orders to his committee staff to shred crucial intelligence documents. The shredding stopped only when some intelligence staffers staged a protest. Some wrote internal memos calling for a criminal investigation. One such memo—from John F. McCreary, a lawyer and staff intelligence analyst—reported that the committee's chief counsel, J. William Codinha, a longtime Kerry friend, "ridiculed the staff members" and said, "Who's the injured party?" When staffers cited "the 2,494 families of the unaccounted-for U.S. servicemen, among others," the McCreary memo continued, Codinha said: "Who's going to tell them? It's classified."

Kerry defended the shredding by saying the documents weren't originals, only copies—but the staff's fear was that with the destruction of the copies, the information would never get into the public domain, which it didn't. Kerry had promised the staff that all documents acquired and prepared by the committee would be turned over to the National Archives at the committee's expiration. This didn't happen. Both the staff and independent researchers reported that many critical documents were withheld.” Another committee area that drew criticism was the secret behind the scenes dealings with members of the George Bush Sr. administration and Kerry’s office. A declassified State Department memo shows that, even before the first set of hearings, Democrat Kerry’s office secretly contacted Republican Secretary of State Eagleburger’s office in an attempt to prevent Smith (who was known for asking tough questions) from becoming co-chairman, and instead asked that McCain be made co-chairman.^{[citation needed]} One memo that became a matter of public knowledge during the committee showed members of the Defense Department (the Secretary of Defense at the time was Dick Cheney) secretly working with Kerry’s office to script an upcoming hearing on the explosive topic of satellite imagery.^{[citation needed]} For an in-depth discussion of additional collaboration, see the August 3rd, 2004 Village Voice article "Brothers-in-Cover-up, When Kerry worked with Cheney on Vietnam P.O.W.'s" by Sydney H. Schanberg.

Perhaps the most shocking public revelation^{[citation needed]} during the committee was the admission by three former Secretaries of Defense that American POWs had been left behind in Southeast Asia. While the committee disagreed about whether POWs were still alive, as reflected in the minority and majority reports of the committee, all committee members agreed that the evidence was compelling but did not reach a degree of proof. The committee issued a number of unanimous recommendations regarding the pursuit of evidence, many of which were never implemented.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] POW/MIA Issue Today

Families have complained that POW/MIA records were not all released by the U.S. government.^{[citation needed]} In 2006, the National Alliance of Families found 1992 documents discussing the admission by Vietnam of capturing a number of missing Americans. The National Alliance contacted the families they could locate, and found that the Vietnamese admissions had been concealed from the families by the U.S. government.^{[citation needed]} The U.S. and Vietnamese governments had given every indication to the families that the men had been killed in their loss incidents. The names of the captured men and more details about the concealment can be found in newsletters of the National Alliance of Families—available on their website. According to the 1989 Intelligence Authorization Act, next-of-kin are to be provided live sighting records in a prompt manner. ^{[citation needed]} A bill including criminal penalties for deliberately withholding POW/MIA records in violation of the law unanimously passed the House of Representatives in the 1990s. However, as also reported by Sydney Schanberg, such penalties were stripped from the law due to the efforts of former POW John McCain. ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] MIA in Iraq

During the Persian Gulf War of 1991, an American pilot named Scott Speicher was reported as MIA after his F/A-18 was shot down in northern Iraq. In 1997, a Defense Department document leaked to the New York Times showed that the Pentagon had not been forthcoming with information previously requested by U.S. Senator Rod Grams.^{[citation needed]} Senator Grams publicly accused the Pentagon of misleading him, and joined with Senator Bob Smith in calling for an investigation by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. That investigation is ongoing. Much intelligence regarding Speicher's fate remains classified.^{[citation needed]} In the lead up to the Second Persian Gulf War Speicher's status was changed from Missing in Action to Missing-Captured, a move that suggested he was alive and imprisoned in Iraq.^{[citation needed]}

A small number of coalition soldiers went missing in action in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. In one prominent case, an American soldier of Lebanese background, Wassef Ali Hassoun, went missing and claimed to have been captured. He later turned up in Lebanon, and was flown home to the U.S. It was soon discovered Hassoun made the kidnapping story up, and Hassoun is currently a fugitive.^{[citation needed]}

US Army Sgt. Keith Maupin from Batavia, Ohio, was captured by insurgents in April 2004. He was allegedly executed in June 2004. A video showing Maupin's alleged execution was broadcast on Al Jazeera but the U.S has not confirmed Maupin is dead. He is still listed as MIA.