The Pentagon command tasked with identifying and recovering is riddled with problems and corruption, according to an internal military report obtained by the Associated Press:
The Pentagon's effort to account for tens of thousands of Americans missing in action from foreign wars is so inept, mismanaged and wasteful that it risks descending from "dysfunction to total failure," according to an internal study suppressed by military officials.
Largely beyond the public spotlight, the decades-old pursuit of bones and other MIA evidence is sluggish, often duplicative and subjected to too little scientific rigor, the report says. [...]
The report paints a picture of a Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, a military-run group known as JPAC and headed by a two-star general, as woefully inept and even corrupt. The command is digging up too few clues on former battlefields, relying on inaccurate databases and engaging in expensive "boondoggles" in Europe, the study concludes.
In one instance, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command was tricked by North Korea into exhuming remains planted there by the North Koreans. The group operates with dated, unreliable maps, and a "collapsed" process for obtaining bones and other identification materials, according to the AP.
The group does not even have a comprehensive, reliable database of the estimated 83,348 service members listed as missing from World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.