POW-MIA Seminar

It's my pleasure to welcome each of you to today's seminar. We're honored to have so many dedicated advocates, department, and auxiliary leaders, volunteers, and veterans joining us today. Your commitment to serving America's disabled veterans continues to strengthen our organization and more importantly improve the lives of those who who have sacrificed for our nation. Thank you. Today's seminar is designed to be informative, engaging, and interactive. At the conclusion of today's presentation, there will be an opportunity for questions and discussion. We encourage everyone to participate, ask questions, and take advantage of the expertise that has been assembled here today. Before introducing our keynote presenter, Miss Jennifer Walsh, and our honorable guest, Carolyn Smith, I want to recognize the distinguished committee that has worked to make this seminar possible. To my right, Donald Peak Jr. has devoted more than five decades to serving both his country and fellow veterans. Don enlisted in the United States Army in 1970 and served until 1973. Following his military service, Donald served as a commissioner for the Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs, led the Indie Vet House, a nonprofit supporting veterans, and has completed specialized peer support and addiction recovery training to better assist those facing difficult challenges. Donald is a past state commander of Indiana 2018 and 19 and currently is on the commanders and agitants executive committee se uh since 2025. His decades of leadership, compassion, and service continue to make a lasting difference in the lives of veterans and their families. Thank you, Donald. Joining Donald is Thomas Kit to my left, department service officer for the DAV Department of Nebraska. Tom grew up on on a Montana farm where he learned the value of hard work before serving 21 years in the United States Air Force. During his military career, he worked as an aircraft engine mechanic, maintenance instructor, quality assurance inspector, and supported strategic air command operations. After retiring from the Air Force, he turn continued to serving our nation through 16 years in federal civil service before joining the disabled American veterans. Since becoming a department service officer in 2013, Tom has assisted thousands of veterans and their dependence throughout Nebraska and the surrounding area in securing the benefits they earn through military service. He has also helped preserve military history by restoring a Vietnam era eighth cavalry helicopter and reuniting five members of its original crew with that aircraft more than 50 years after their service. This memorial is phenomenal. If you have a chance and you're in Omaha, please see it. >> I'll give you a tour. >> Thank you for everything you do, Tom. >> Thanks. Also serving on today's committee is Layman Rose to my right, a respected leader within the disabled American veterans whose dedication to mentoring service officers and supporting veterans continues to strengthen our organization. Layman is a former Marine >> who served in Vietnam in 1968 and 69. He's a former commander of the Department of Florida in 24 and 25. He served on multiple national uh committees. His experience, professionalism, and commitment to ensuring veterans receive quality representation have made him a valued member of this seminar team. Thank you, Layman. And he's not going to want me to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway. Finally, Justin Hart. He's the man in the back walking around making sure this seminar goes without air. He's the assistant national service director for the disabled American veterans. Justin's commitment to serving veterans comes from personal experience. While serving in Iraq in 2003, his Humvey struck an anti-tank mine, throwing him from the vehicle and leaving him seriously injured. During his own recovery and transition from military service, he experienced firsthand how complex the VA claims process could be. With the help of DAV, he successfully navigated that process. And today, he has dedicated his career to ensuring other veterans receive that same level of professional assistance. As assistant national service director, Justin helps oversee DAV's nationwide network of national service offices, supervises professional service staff, and supports training and quality assurance for those representing veterans before the Department of Veterans Affairs. His leadership has helped strengthen DAV's ability to serve hundreds of thousands of veterans and their families each year. Justin's a true leader and we are lucky to have him as our representative with DPAA. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please join me in recognizing Donald Peak, Tom Kit, Layman Rose, and Justin Hart for their outstanding leadership and dedication to America. [applause] It's now my distinct honor to introduce our featured speaker this afternoon, Miss Jennifer C. Walsh, principal deputy director for the Defense PM MIA accounting agency, or as we know them, DPAA. As the principal deputy director, Miss Walsh serves as the second ranking official within the agency and works alongside the director in leading one of the department's most solemn and meaningful missions, as she described this morning, to provide the fullest possible accounting of our nation's missing service members from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Persian War, and more recent wars and conflicts. She is responsible for helping formulate agency policy, overseeing business development, and expanding outreach initiatives that support families and fulfill our nation's enduring commitment to those who had never returned home. The Defense PIA accounting agency refers to this mission as the sacred obligation. Those are simply not words. They define the very purpose of this agency. and were actioned as presented this morning with bringing home a record number 231 of our brothers and sisters last year. DPAA explains that this sacred obligation reflects our nation's moral promise to every man and woman who has worn the uniform that no one who made the ultimate sacrifice will ever be forgotten or left behind. It's a commitment to search for those who remain missing, to recover and identify them whenever possible, and to finally provide answers and closure to the families who have waited sometimes for generations. Miss Walsh brings extraordinary experience to this sacred mission. Before joining DPAA, she served as the Department of Defense performance improvement officer and director of administration and management where she led efforts to improve efficiency, accountability, and innovation across the Department of Defense. She also served as the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, held numerous senior leadership positions when the off within the office of the under secretary of defense for policy and served on the faculty of both the college of international security affairs of the national war college at the national defense university. Her career has encompassed homeland defense, mission assurance, countering weapons of mass destruction, technology, security policy, strategic communications, and strengthening defense relationships with allies throughout Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East, Asia, and the Western Hemisphere. Miss Walsh is a graduate of the prestigious National War College, earned a master's of public affairs from the Lynden B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and received her Bachelor of Arts from the Louisiana Scholars College at Northwestern State University. Earlier this year, while presiding over the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Career Service Award Ceremony, I found this online. Miss Wall spoke about the meaning of public service, saying, "You've taken public service to another level. You're being recognized for your contributions that you delivered within and through your organizations, but that have consequence and positive ripple effects for so many around you, including larger communities outside of the department and outside of government. Well, these words resonate deeply with the mission of the disabled American veterans. Whether we are helping a veteran obtain earned benefits, advocating on Capitol Hill, transporting veterans to medical appointments, or supporting families of the missing, our work creates those same positive ripple effects throughout our communities and across this nation. This afternoon, Miss Walsh will share updates on the Defense PMI accounting ay's worldwide mission, recent recovery identifications, and ongoing initiatives. Following her pres presentation, she has grac graciously agreed to take your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in giving a warm DAV welcome to Miss Jennifer C. Walsh, principal deputy director of the defense PM MIA [applause] accounting agency. [applause] >> Good afternoon. It's great to see all of y'all here. This committee and you all are aware of what we at DPAA do and thank you so much for that kind introduction. Um, you know who we work with. I mean, you're part of that community. We're grateful for you and you know who we're all working for. It's our missing and their families. I will recap in this presentation some of the facts and figures provide that I provided this morning. I'll provide some greater insight into our team's focus and accomplishments, review recent, current, and upcoming events and initiatives. And I really want to make sure that we have more than enough time to hear from Carolyn Smith and her personal experience and her family's experience of knowing what it's like to live with someone who is unaccounted for from a prior conflict and then welcoming them home. Thank you. Okay, you saw this. If you were in the presentation hall this morning, you saw this slide already. So, I'll just recap real quickly. The numbers are daunting of how many personnel, US personnel are still unaccounted for. But I want you to know, and I can just tell by the feel in this room, your very presence, you, the DAV, DPAA, so many Americans, we are not daunted by this number. We are committed and we are doing everything we can to find our missing. The photos on the bottom left of this slide are just snapshots of what it's like to be on a field mission that DPAA runs. On the far left you can see some of our team members in the sifting process. So whether we are in aquatic or terrestrial um excavations, anything we pick up is going through a sifting process. We have experts that know what was the material used, what were all of the parts in the equipment that we believe our members were were serving in when they went missing. So we are looking for material items as well as human remains and we have experts that are just top-notch that can do that. The next photo in from the left is in one of our land missions and you can say see it is an archaeological dig. It is amazing what our fellow Americans are out there doing along with a lot of international partners. So through advocacy from any number of organizations and individuals, technology developments that we pioneer within our agency or that are pioneered from the private sector and their volunteering to be a partner with DPAA, the continuation of resources, your taxpayer dollars, and all types of partnerships, whether it is inind, in spirit or in person. All of these are essential to our delivering results and many of them are gamechanging. So our our mission and the results are what matters. But I do want to shine a little bit of a spotlight on your fellow Americans who are making this happen. They are military, civilian, and contractor personnel who are driven by and dedicated to this solemn mission. They have volunteered. They go where our research indicates our missing may be. They sometimes put themselves in harm's way because we ask them to go sometimes to dangerous or perilous environments. Because if we have research that the last known location of a service member was a plane crash that went into the side of the mountain, our f folks are going to that side of the mountain. They're going to look and they're going to do everything they can to find. We are in Europe, the Mediterranean region, the Indopacific regions and we have a very robust program of disinterment of cemeteries managed by the Veterans Administration and the American Battle Monuments Commission. We disenter service personnel who were previous who were buried as unknowns because we now have the technology the DNA technology >> where we can identify most of them. So our team of over 700 people represents an array of disciplines and expertise levels that truly are top-notch. We have our headquarters office in Arlington, Virginia. We have a forensics laboratory in Nebraska and we have our a laboratory and office building in Hawaii on Joint Base Hickham, Pearl Harbor. That's where 60% of our team operates from. We also have military detachments in Germany, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. So where we go? Well, where we have been and where we are right now in fiscal year 26 over 62 field missions. We have been or are in North America, the Pacific, Europe, Asia. We are making disinterments from a number of cemeteries around the world, including the US, Europe, and the Philippines. The last point on this slide talks about how we communicate and connect with families of the missing. You'll hear more about that from Miss Smith. [clears throat] We host every year family member update meetings where we can bring together the families of the missing. They can ask for a case review to meet with our experts to understand is there any new information, any research or any of the missions that you're going on this year close to where their family member is. We want those family members to know what we're doing, how we're doing, what more we need, or what different we're looking for so that we can give them answers and get one step closer to finding their family member. So, I'd like to provide you a little bit more granularity of what we are doing, who we're doing it with, and why it matters. 231 identifications in fiscal year 25. That was a record for sure. We were able to achieve that in part based on an increase in our budget for the two years prior. I mentioned this morning the facts of we did take a budget reduction like a lot of parts of the Department of War in fiscal year 26 and we are anticipating a further reduction in fiscal year 27. This is simply about a normal department of war process of prioritization. The department goes through very rigorous budget discussions and there are lots of hard choices. Fully understand that. So I am not here to complain because as I mentioned this morning I still recognize 160 million of our taxpayer dollars is a lot of money. But part of my job is to is to be able to correlate in those decision processes but also in communicating with you what is the cause and the effect. What is the correlation between the appropriation that we receive and then the mission results that we can deliver. So as I mentioned this morning in fiscal year 25 we were able to conduct 105 field missions. Fiscal year 26, we are conducting 62. And if our budget is at that $160 million appropriated level for fiscal year 27,