This book, the second of a two-volume series entitled POW/MIA Accounting, summarizes the final four of the author’s seven-year association with the U.S. government’s program to account for military service members who went missing during America’s historic conflicts. Based on hundreds of primary source documents including email and records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, this volume is an unprecedented description of the extent of political interference in the science of human skeletal identification. The narrative in Volume 2 derives from the author’s four-year experience as a member of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command’s (JPAC) Central Identification Laboratory located at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on Oahu, Hawaii.

This book is an insider’s account of the search for missing American servicemen who became trapped in the Soviet Union and the US government’s efforts to free them or discover their fates. The book, which is based on years of work as a consultant to the US government, includes archive research that took place in Russia and four other republics of the Soviet Union as the USSR broke apart. Volume I explores the history of missing American servicemen, with particular emphasis on thousands who were not accounted for during the Korean War and Cold War era. As US relations with Russia and North Korea become more intense, this book is an extremely timely resource for scholars, laymen, and policymakers.

Author asserts that the hopes of loved ones are kept alive by those who would exploit their sorrow.