Missing in action is a status assigned to a member of the armed services who is reported missing following combat and may be injured, captured, or dead.

US armed forces

The term was first used in America in 1946 to refer 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. Its American abbreviation (not commonly used elsewhere) is MIA.

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. In 1991, Vietnam veteran U.S. Senator Robert C. Smith introduced a resolution to create a Senate Select POW/MIA Committee. Senator John 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.^[1] Controversy erupted when Kerry ordered the report of the live sighting investigators to be shredded along with all of their personal notes.^[1] Committee staffer Jon McCreary, on loan from the Defense Intelligence Agency, filed a memorandum on the shredding incident. 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.^[1]

Some argue that it is likely that prisoners taken by Vietnam are not alive today. They argue these prisoners would most likely have been killed and buried, to prevent their discovery. They argue that intelligence data is now out-of-date; such prisoners would be costly for the Vietnamese government to house, feed, and guard; and their existence, if discovered, would damage Vietnam's emerging economy.

Others emphasize that the United States has a responsibility to the men to determine their fate, and it should not be assumed that Vietnam executed all of the Americans. They point out that Vietnam has brought up the billions of dollars the U.S. promised in war reparations when the U.S. has asked about the fate of the missing. They feel that the U.S. government should release all intelligence related to the POWs, and that the Vietnamese government should be required to reveal what they did with the American prisoners.

POW/MIA issue today

Families have complained that POW/MIA records were not all released by the U.S. government. 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. The U.S. and Vietnamese governments had given every indication to the families that the men had been killed in their loss incidents. However, at least one MIA, San Dewayne Francisco was reported to be alive by a North Vietnamese newspaper which was confirmed by radio transmissions by Francisco immediately after his aircraft crashed. ^[3] 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 timely manner. However, as can be seen by numerous statements by POW/MIA family members, such information has been concealed in the past. 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.

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. 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. 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. However, he has not been found and there is no proof that he is still alive.

A small number of coalition soldiers went missing in action in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. In one prominent case, a US Marine 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.^[4]

US Army Sgt. Keith Maupin from Batavia, Ohio, was captured by insurgents on April 9, 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 captured. On October 23, 2006 US Army soldier Spc. Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie was captured by insurgents and is listed as missing-captured. A $50,000 reward is being offered by the US government for information leading to his recovery. On May 12, 2007 a US Army observation post was overrun by Iraqi insurgents, four American and one Iraqi soldier were killed, three other US Army soldiers were captured. They were Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., Pvt. Byron W. Fouty and Spc. Alex R. Jimenez. Pfc. Anzacks' body was found in the Euphrates River South of Baghdad on May 23, 2007 bearing signs of torture. One June 4, 2007. the ISI claimed that they killed Fouty and Jimenez and also claimed that their bodies are buried and will not be returned to their families. Since the war began 4 US servicemen are still listed as MIA.

Colloquial usage

MIA is sometimes used in American English to describe difficulty finding something. "The TV remote is MIA." - it is less often used in this context in UK English, where the equivalent phrase is "gone AWOL".

See also

• KIA – Killed In Action
• WIA – Wounded in action
• POW – Prisoner Of War
• Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command

Notes

External links

• A look at John McCain on the POW/MIA Issue
• Brothers-in-Cover-up When Kerry worked with Cheney on Vietnam P.O.W.'S
• A look at John McCain on the POW/MIA Issue
• Current status of MIA's from the Vietnam War
• Report of the State Senate Committee on POW/MIA Affairs at the Library of Congress
• U.S.-Russia Joint MIA/POW Commission