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Pentagon Recovers Remains Believed to be Howard Dean’s Brother
Associated Press. EFL

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said Tuesday it has uncovered remains from the site in Laos where Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean’s younger brother was believed to have been killed nearly 30 years ago.

The remains have not been officially identified, but were uncovered in a grave along with some of Charles Dean’s personal items, said Howard Dean’s campaign spokeswoman, Tricia Enright.

The candidate was notified of the discovery a few days ago, Enright said.

Charles Dean was a 24-year-old graduate of the University of North Carolina traveling the world when he and a companion, Neil Sharman of Australia, were arrested in Laos by the communist Pathet Lao.

The two were detained Sept. 4, 1974, during a trip down the Mekong River, and held in a small, remote prison camp for a few months before being killed. They apparently were suspected of being spies, although the U.S. and Australian governments said they were merely tourists and strongly protested their detention. . . .

Charles Dean, although a civilian, is considered by the U.S. government to have been a prisoner of war. The effort to recover the bodies of Dean and Sharman was coordinated by the Defense Department’s Joint Task Force Full Accounting.

A joint U.S.-Laotian team discovered the remains earlier this month in Bolikhamxai Province in central Laos, said Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon office in charge of POW and MIA issues. He said the remains are still in Laos and will be picked up by a U.S. Air Force plane in the next few weeks to be taken to the military’s identification laboratory in Hawaii.

. . .There are currently 1,875 Americans missing from the Vietnam conflict, including some civilians such as Dean, Greer said. He did not have a precise number of missing civilians but said they include government contractors, missionaries and those like Dean who had no connection to military operations.

The military tracks those missing Americans for two reasons: Government contractors deserve the same effort as military members and civilians need to be tracked so their remains aren’t mistaken for those of soldiers, Greer said.

"We track everybody who’s an American," he added.





Posted by: Mike 2003-11-18
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=21413