Word: mia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Sometimes the actions of grieving relatives can inadvertently assist scam artists in Indochina. Over the years, a number of MIA families have arranged for printed flyers to be distributed across Southeast Asia seeking information about their missing loved ones. Those provide pictures and personal information that unscrupulous operators use in the manufacture of phony dog tags and doctored photographs...
Meanwhile, a number of MIA organizations in the U.S. keep the issue alive by spreading unsupported allegations about supposedly missing Americans. While they may not manufacture false leads themselves, some have been known to make outrageous claims. Among them...
...National League of Families, the largest group representing close relatives of MIAs, accused 14 of the self-styled MIA rescue groups, including Operation Rescue, Homecoming II and Skyhook II, of distributing "false or distorted information" or supporting "counterproductive" activities. "It's a mystery how these guys have survived," says League of Families official Louise Van Hoozer, the sister of an Air Force pilot shot down in Vietnam. "All the leads offered by these guys evaporated...
...main reasons for the MIA industry's persistence was the government's initially sluggish effort to get to the bottom of the mystery. For years, the Pentagon turned over the question of missing Americans to defense-intelligence agencies more accustomed to concealing secret information than to guiding bereaved relatives through a thicket of classified and often conflicting reports. This heavy-handed approach not only angered relatives of missing servicemen but also fueled the suspicion and frustration that the MIA industry exploits...
Sensitive to criticism that they once acted too slowly to resolve the MIA riddle, Pentagon investigators beginning with the Reagan Administration have taken a more aggressive stance, seeking quickly and publicly to investigate all reports of MIAs, even from the most dubious sources...