Good morning . I'm Larry Zilliox , Director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat and today's podcast . We have an extra special guest . Sean Everette is the Media Relations Chief for the Defense POW MIA Accounting Agency , and I have been wanting to have somebody from their agency on the show for quite a while . I ran into them down on the mall this past summer and I really just thought the mission was incredible , and I'm certain that a lot of listeners just aren't even familiar with what they do . So , Sean , welcome to the podcast .
Sean EveretteThank you very much .
Larry ZillioxI appreciate you having me on . Let's start a little bit about your background and how you became involved with this little known , tiny part of DOD .
Sean EveretteYeah Well , so a little bit of my background . I've actually been in three of the now five services DOD services . I started off in the Navy back in the 90s , got out of the Navy in 99 . I was in the Air Force Reserve for about two and a half years , but then I did 15 years active duty in the Army and retired from the Army just a couple of years ago . As to how I got involved with DPAA , quite frankly , I got lucky . My very last duty station in the Army was with DPAA . Quite frankly , I got lucky . My very last duty station in the Army was with DPAA's public affairs team and I spent a little over three years there , retired at the end of 2022 . And then , almost a year to the day after I retired from the Army and left DPAA , I came back to DPAA as a government civilian again on their public affairs team .
Larry ZillioxWow , well , that is luck , because there's not many positions open , and boy , that's really , that's great .
Sean EveretteYeah , I consider myself very fortunate , kind of right place , right time or right availability at the right time to get that position . And then the fact that they had another , that they had a civilian position open up relatively quickly after I retired , was , just like I said , another stroke of luck , another stroke of luck . So you know , I feel very , very fortunate to have been able to come back to the agency , because it's really the only place that I wanted to come back in the government and work for after I retired from the Army .
Larry ZillioxYeah , I mean , it's clearly an organization with a well-defined mission and one that is so , so important to so many families of fallen service members .
Sean EveretteSo if you would just kind of give us a brief overview of the mission of the organization , yeah , so DPAA , the Defense POW MIA Accounting Agency , our mission is to recover , our research , recover , identify and return home to their families All Americans still missing from our past wars and conflicts dating all the way back to World War II . So that includes Vietnam , Korea , the Cold War and then , of course , World War II . There are more , are a little over 81,000 Americans still missing from all of those past wars and conflicts and you know , and it's our solemn promise not only to those service members but to those service members' families , to find them and bring them home .
Larry ZillioxAnd so there's no current POWs held anywhere in the world . Is that correct ? That is correct . Okay , and are there MIA soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan ?
Sean EveretteNo , actually there are not . There are still six from our original Gulf War operations back in the early 90s . But as far as the more modern stuff , everything that happened in the 2000s , so far there are no MIAs for many of that .
Larry ZillioxWhich says a lot for a service creed that , if you serve , do you understand that ? No man left behind ?
Sean EveretteExactly , and that , yeah , part of the warrior ethos is never leave a fallen comrade , and we have gotten , as a DOD , as the military branches have gotten very , very good at being able to keep that promise in the moment .
Larry ZillioxYeah , at being able to keep that promise in the moment . Yeah , and that goes all the way back to Vietnam and the Sante raid and trying to recover prisoners of war , and I mean our branches will go to no end to especially recover POWs , but also the remains of fallen soldiers . This is something that's close to my heart . I have worn a MIA POW bracelet since 1972 for a Master Sergeant , mike Scott . He was an Army Special Forces Sergeant who at the time of his disappearance in 1969 , he was on a small little bird Well , actually it was a little light observation plane that was circling over a downed helicopter when he was shot down . Him and his pilot have gone missing and never recovered , never found , and I still wear this to this day .
Larry ZillioxOur listeners are familiar with some of the work that you do . One of our previous guests on the podcast is Colleen Shine , with Sons and Daughters in Touch , and your agency helped recover her father's remains from Vietnam . And could you tell us and I found it really interesting One of the things you said was to research , and I think that's so important because right after the Vietnam War they were missing , unaccounted for . Soldiers and families were just being taken to the cleaners with phony dog tags and they were trying to find their loved ones and there was a lot of fraud in Southeast Asia . But when you guys get information about a possible site where soldiers may be found , tell us a little bit about all the research that goes into trying to verify that .
Sean EveretteYeah , well , research is that is the first step towards finding and identifying any missing service member when we get tips , especially there in Southeast Asia for the Vietnam War . We have three different detachments in Southeast Asia that their main focus is the Vietnam War . We have one in Vietnam , one in Laos and one in Thailand that does a lot of work in Cambodia and their , like I said , their focus is primarily Vietnam . And so , and then we also have Vietnam analysts who work here in the States , both in DC and at our facility in Hawaii , dc and at our facility in Hawaii . But when they get you know , when they get a lead , they will , you know , they'll do everything that they can to follow up on that lead . You know , digitally or from afar , but then they will also go to the country and they will do , they will look into and they will do . They will look into , look into the lead and try to talk to people in person and try to to find clues and find direction for people to point them to the place where service members may be missing or Americans may be missing , and you know .
Sean EveretteSo it's something that can take a long time , something that sometimes you know , sometimes the lead is a good lead . Sometimes the lead is not a good lead , you know . Sometimes it's true , it just unfortunately can't , doesn't really further the case , and sometimes it's just people , you know , unfortunately trying to get attention or wanting to kind of , like you said , wanting to get something out of the US government . But you know , our people have become pretty good at being able to tell and , like I said , we send investigation teams into Southeast Asia all the time to follow up on these leads . So you know it's something we take very seriously .
How big is the agency ? How many people are assigned to it ?
Sean EveretteSo we have over 700 people who are employed by the agency . There's a good mix of military and civilian , and then we also have a number of contractors and we partner with more than 100 different organizations across the country and across the world really to be able to bring other skills , whether it be research skills or investigation or recovery skills or equipment that we may not have . But so we're a little over 700 ourselves for our worldwide mission , but with those people we're able to partner with a bunch of different organizations and really I feel like for our size punch above our weight .
Larry ZillioxYeah , it's just a . It's an incredible mission . I really , really applaud everybody who works there . The 20th September 20th was National POW MIA Recognition Day . Did you guys have an event for that ?
Sean EveretteYeah , as a matter of fact . So at the Pentagon the Secretary of Defense hosted a National POWMI Recognition Day event that we had a part in helping plan and a lot of us were there . And then in Hawaii we hosted a National POWMI Recognition Day event at the National Memorial Cemetery at the Pacific there in Honolulu and as part of that there was also a rosette ceremony for Vietnam War IDs . So I don't know how many of your listeners are familiar with the Courts of the Missing there at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific . That's where all of the people , all the service members missing from the Pacific Theater , so that would include Vietnam and Korea and then also World War II . They have their names , kind of like the Vietnam War Memorial in DC . They have their names on the Courts of the Missing there at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific .
Sean EveretteThe missing there at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific and the rosette ceremony was for basically to catch up with the rosettes next to the names of Vietnam , uh , vietnam service members . You mentioned Colleen Shine . Her and , uh , her organization had a part in that . Um , the American Battle Monuments Commission , who keeps up with the courts of the missing , and they , they hosted the courts of the missing . They hosted that part of the ceremony and then we had a bigger ceremony around that for National DWMIA Recognition Day .
Larry ZillioxWell , how do you refer to ? Do you call them cases ? Say you have somebody , a lead comes in , somebody's assigned an analyst starts to work it . It goes somewhere , it doesn't go somewhere . How many of those kind of cases are your people working at any one time ?
Sean EveretteIt's a lot , I would probably say in the hundreds , if not thousands , throughout a year . And I only say that because of the way cases work , because of the way that the investigation works or that leads or clues work , or any of that kind of stuff , our historians and analysts can't , unfortunately , stick with , necessarily stick with a case from beginning all the way to okay , we found , you know , we found this guy . And they only work on that one case . There's really it's more of , I guess , kind of like projects , um , in a way that they they work a geographical area , or they work a specific conflict , um , or they work a geographical area for a specific conflict in regards to World War II , because that is literally all over the globe .
Sean EveretteWe have different teams that work World War II in the Pacific and then different teams that work World War II in Europe , european or Mediterranean area , and so I would venture to say that it's probably not an exaggeration if our historians and analysts , you know , touch or at least work on a little bit . You know , more than a thousand cases total throughout the year . Yeah Well , I mentioned the exact number . Unfortunately I don't know that it would be possible because I'd have to almost go to every historian and analyst and be like how many cases have you worked , how many cases have you worked ?
Larry ZillioxYeah , I imagine it's a lot like police work . You put some time in investigating something , then you have to wait for analysis or something from the laboratory before you can continue . So you're on to another case and you have multiple caseload .
Sean EveretteAbsolutely yeah . So you're on to another case and you have multiple caseload . Absolutely yeah . As a matter of fact , it's very much cold case work , very similar to cold case work , that the police have to do , so , yeah .
Larry ZillioxWhat area , what geographic area on the globe have you recovered the most remains from ? Do you have any sense of that ?
Sean EveretteWell , we've recovered the most total , accounted for the most total from World War II as a conflict , but that's everywhere that World War II happened , so that's not missing from Vietnam , and we have accounted for 1,067 of those , so that's probably the most in a single geographic area . We actually just made our 700th Korean War ID just last week . So there's been 700 IDs from the Korean War . There's been 700 IDs from the Korean War and then , like I said , we've accounted for 1,652 service members from World War II . However , there's still more than 72,000 American personnel missing from that war . So the number of missing is exponentially larger for World War II than it is for Korea or Vietnam .
Larry ZillioxSure when you're attempting to recover , remains . So finally , you've gone through that process and the research is done . The leads have been followed up . You're in country . Do you find that you have problems with toast governments ? That in Vietnam you're having trouble , or Korea or someplace , or they helpful .
Sean EveretteIn the vast majority of cases they are extremely helpful .
Sean EveretteOur mission is a humanitarian mission and these other countries , their governments , recognize that and you know they use that as a way to to help build positive relations with us , with , you know , other countries who might be involved in in some of the , some of the work that we do .
Sean EveretteYou know it's a way to build diplomatic ties with all of these different countries . Vietnam is a perfect example of that . You know , back in the 70s and early 80s , when we started going into Vietnam to search for missing service members , you know we were still enemies with Vietnam . We hadn't the fighting had not been stopped for that long . But the Vietnamese government recognized the humanitarian nature of our mission and so allowed us to come in to search for our missing service members . And that mission , that humanitarian mission of DPA's predecessors , of DPA's predecessors , is what opened the door to normalizing relations and bringing about the strong relationship we have with Vietnam today . And so our mission to find these missing service members in all these different countries is a great way to be able to open diplomatic doors that might be hard to open otherwise .
Larry ZillioxWell , let me just give our listeners the webpage . I want everybody to go to the webpage . It's wwwdpamil M-I-L . Take a look at it . There's some really great material on there . It's probably going to be the first time I've directed our listeners to a webpage and told them not to bang on that donate button , so they'll be happy to visit that . Talk about budget . Is there is ? Is budgeting an issue , or do you ? Does the agency feel it has enough money from Congress and in the budget to fulfill its mission ? Or should our listeners be talking to their congresspeople about more money ?
Sean Everettemoney . Yeah , you know we . You know we have a very generous budget from Congress that allows us to work in 46 different countries across the across the U ? S and allows us to partner , like I said , with more than a hundred different organizations to be able to work in all of those countries . And so we , you know we have a a pretty pretty good budget . Now , like anyone , could we potentially do more with more money ? Yeah , of course you know , um , but at the same time , you know we're not we're definitely not over here complaining , oh , we don't have enough money . You know we have a budget to work with within and that's set by congress every year and but it still allows us to get out there and get into these other countries and do the work that we've been mandated to do and find those missing Americans .
When was the last time that you all repatriated the remains of a service member ?
Sean EveretteOh , it happens all the time , quite honestly . You know , like I said , last week , we just accounted for our 700th Korean War ID . We've got people in Papua New Guinea right now looking for , you know , doing more than one recovery mission , looking for War II service members . We almost always have teams in Southeast Asia , whether Vietnam , laos or Cambodia , looking for Vietnam missing . We just had , I think , a team just finished up with one of our joint field activities over there , because every time we go to Vietnam we partner with the Vietnamese government , we have a great partnership with them .
Sean EveretteAnd then you know , so it exactly when the last repatriation was , I honestly can't tell you , but we have them on a pretty regular basis , monthly , often more than once a month remains come in to either our facility in Hawaii or our facility just outside our at Offutt Air Force Base just outside of Omaha , nebraska . It remains come in to both of those places on a pretty regular basis . So , while I can't tell you exactly when the last time we've had a repatriation , I would I would bet money it's probably been within the last week or so .
Larry ZillioxYeah , yeah . Well , that's good . I mean , I didn't want to leave our listeners thinking it's something that's just not happening all that often , but it is happening frequently and tell us a little bit about the process . So the research is done , the leads come in , you have a number of people from your agency in-country and they recover the remains . Are they sent then to Hawaii or off it for DNA identification or what's that process like ?
Sean EveretteYeah , so once we have a set of remains whether we send a recovery team out and they found it in the field , or it came from a recovery team out and they found it in the field , or it came from a disinterment of an unknown at an American cemetery overseas or the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific there in Hawaii Once we have remains they will go to one of our two labs . Typically , everything from the Indo-Pacific area goes to our lab in Hawaii and everything from the European Mediterranean area goes to our lab in Nebraska , though there are some Indo-Pacific larger projects that take place in Nebraska . But once remains get into our lab or one of our labs , our forensic anthropologists pour over these remains and very meticulously catalog , measure , weigh all of those kind of things , and they do , you know , they do forensic analysis on these . We actually employ more forensic anthropologists than any other organization in the world and our people are very good at what they do and so they , like I said , they pour over these remains . Good at what they do , and so they , like I said , they pour over these remains , they catalog them , they evaluate them and use them to say , okay , this is , you know , this could have been a you know a white male roughly 20 to 25 years old that probably stood between you know . That probably stood between 5.8 and 5.10 . And they can get all of that from the analysis that they do . The remains have teeth . We have forensic odontologists or forensic dentists who will examine the teeth and the jaws and compare that to any records that we might have for those service members .
Sean EveretteUm , we also have other , um other things that we can do , such as isotope testing , which isotope testing can tell us where a set of remains were from like , where they , where that person grew , where in the world that person grew up . When you say you are what you eat , that is very true when it comes to isotope testing , and so by that kind of testing we can tell where in the world a person grew up , which helps a lot as far as when we recover remains that may not be of an American , or when remains that have been buried as an unknown were commingled , which means more than one set of remains buried in a single casket together . That can help differentiate that kind of thing . We also have things like chest radiograph analysis , which is basically your clavicle is unique to you , the same as say , but those x-rays show the clavicle and are in these service members' files and so we can do x-rays of the remains when we get them back and we can compare clavicles and help make a match that way . But those are just . Those are a few of the different lines of evidence that we can use to make an ID .
Sean EveretteBut the biggest line of evidence that we use is definitely DNA .
Sean EveretteNow we do not do our own DNA analysis .
Sean EveretteWe partner with the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System and their Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory , which is in Dover Air Force Base in Delaware . So we will take samples of the remains that we get and we will send those samples to our partners over at the DNA lab and they will do the DNA analysis on those samples , will do the DNA analysis on those samples and they also have the database of family DNA samples that the different services have collected from family members of the missing and so they'll do the DNA analysis on the remains that came from us and then they will compare that DNA to the family reference samples on file and use that and then give us the results and then we can put all of those lines of evidence together . So the anthropological analysis , dental analysis , if there was any , the different kinds of the isotope testing , the chest radiograph and then DNA analysis , and we can put all of those together and all those lines of evidence so that our medical examiner can make a determination that , yes , this is this particular service member .
Larry ZillioxI think , too , it's important that our listeners understand that rarely are you working with what many would consider a full set of skeletal remains . Very often , that's very true , it's just part of you know , a leg or an arm or a skull or something . But you don't have all that . It's not like TV . You don't have all that much sometimes to work with , right .
Sean EveretteI will tell you that the smallest amount of remains that I have heard of that led to an ID was a single tooth that was found at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory . Were able to get DNA out of it and make a match to that service member's two daughters .
Larry ZillioxHmm , and once that match is made and there's a finalization of all the work that you do , then the remains are turned over to the family .
Sean EveretteYeah . So the way that it works there is once we make an ID actually , once we make the ID , a lot of DPAA's work is done , because we will then tell the service for whichever service that particular service member belonged to , we will let the service know hey , we just ID'd this person . And each service has a past conflicts section in their mortuary affairs office that their sole mission is . Our mission is to find those still missing . And the services and their past conflicts branches are the ones who work with the families . They're the ones who do the genealogy to track down family members for cases that we're working on . They're the ones who keep in contact with the families and answer any questions the families have . And then , when we make an ID , they're the ones who go to the family and let them know hey , your loved one has been accounted for and has been identified . And then they help the families arrange for a funeral .
Sean EveretteSome families bring their loved one home and have them buried at a , at a cemetery near where you know the service members parents or wives or potentially children or what have you . Um , you bring them home to say the family cemetery . Others will choose to have them buried at arlington national cemetery here in washington dc . Some will be , especially if they were unknowns buried at Arlington National Cemetery here in Washington DC . Some will be , especially if they were unknowns buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii . They will have them sent back out there and buried , given a proper single burial out there . It really just depends on the family . But the services assist those families in helping them put that all together and pay for the travel to get to the , for the families to get to the funeral and so on and so forth . Nice .
Larry ZillioxWow . Well , it's just fascinating the work that you do . I really only have one more question for you , and it's OK if you haven't given this any thought . I just , every time I talk to a government agency , I kind of ask them this sort of same question what impact do you think AI might have on the work that you all do ?
Sean EveretteThat's a pretty good question . You know it's one of those things that I know we have a whole directorate within DPAA that I've sort of touched on a little bit . They're called partnerships and innovation . Part of that directorate is all the partnerships that know that they and our and our some of our partners are starting to look into ways that AI might be able to help us . I don't have any any definite .
Sean EveretteYou know we are definitely doing this , but I imagine you know AI can help with you know , information analysis and things like that and being able to find , helping find correlations and records and help out our historians .
Sean EveretteAnd this is all speculation on my part . I don't know exactly what , if any , ai innovations that are us or our partners are working on , but I think that there could be a place for AI in what we do , specifically more in the data analysis side of things . You know a computer can get through data way faster than a human does , but , um , you know it can , definitely , it could definitely find you know , correlations or or matches or thing , you know just things that it would take humans hours or days or weeks or months or maybe even years to find and pouring through all these records . If records are digitized , then you know which a lot of them are these days , then ai might be able to . You know which a lot of them are these days , then AI might be able to you know , to help us get through some of that . But again , that is purely speculation on my part . On Sean Everett's part , it is not , as this is not the official stance of DPAA on that . It's just what I feel like probably could potentially happen with AI for us .
Larry ZillioxYeah well , we're not going to hold you to that declare it to be new DOD policy , but I really appreciate that . Well , listen . I want to again direct our listeners to the webpage . It's wwwdpaamil . Check it out and a lot of great resources . You'll really get a good understanding of the mission . And it's a phenomenal thing that they do , and it's so important for the families , the Gold Star families to bring their loved ones home . So , sean , thanks so much for joining us .
Sean EveretteI really appreciate it . Larry , thank you very much for having us . I really appreciate it Like wow , I didn't even know the US did this or that you guys existed , and so being able to come and talk to you and help inform your listeners , you know , it's always a pleasure .
Larry ZillioxThat's great . Well , thank you so much and , for our listeners , we'll have another episode next Monday morning at 0500 . If you have any questions or suggestions , you can reach us at podcast at willingwarriorsorg . Until then , thanks for listening .