Michael Linnington; DPAA chief wants closer ties to private groups
The Military Times reports that Michael Linnington, a recently retired Army Lieutenant General who took over the new Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency DPAA sees value in his agency partnering with non-government agencies and private groups who are searching for missing military personnel like his agency is supposed to find. That makes sense, since they’ve been at least as successful as the Defense Department’s folks. He claims that merging two agencies into one will be accomplished by the end of this year;
He has little experience in the MIA mission, but told The Associated Press last week that he knows its history is riddled with controversy as well as criticism from Congress and groups that advocate for families of the missing.
“I am aware of some of the reports on the dysfunction,” he said, referring to 2013 reports of deep conflict among multiple agencies previously assigned to the accounting mission.
“Whenever you have disparate organizations all focused in the same area, there’s going to be a natural tendency to step on each other,” he said.
I’m glad that he’s taking on this job, but my problem is that they’ve completely undone everything that was in place before and started from the beginning. Hondo can tell you that they’ve changed their website, so that it’s has been more difficult to find information on actual POWs, and it’s a more complicated process now just verifying a POW’s claims – but it’s been getting better since the changes began. However it’s easier finding news about recently identified remains than it used to be, so there’s that.
Having a combat veteran in the catbird seat who understands the importance of reclaiming our missing can only improve the agency, I suppose.
Category: Veterans in the news
He sounds much too forthright to keep the job for very long. The career bureaucrats will bludgeon him. He’ll submit or quit.
“Having a combat veteran in the catbird seat who understands the importance of reclaiming our missing can only improve the agency, I suppose.” Don’t know much about LTG(R) Linnington, but i can think of one example of having a combat veteran running a Gov agency that did not turn out very well at all.
Wow! The link to the press releases of recently identified U.S. Servicemen is fantastic! Each individual has their own story, well written; the history of their demise, history of the recovery, burial site and date of internment. Most importantly it is easy to use – not sure I could have found it without your help – but once found click and read. I found it very rewarding to know even at this late date – WWII and Korea our military still have not given up and are actually putting good use of tax dollars.
He was my BDE Commander back in ’03. I really have nothing to add other than that he looked odd driving that Mini Cooper way back when–he’s not exactly a small guy.
Why oh why did they saw the necessity to “reinvent the wheel”, will always be beyond me. Until that is, I consider…it’s the government.
So, does that mean more then a few every several years? What about the CAVES OF BONES the then Vietnamese Elderly people spoke about? Can’t remember the fella who showed a photo of the WALKING K in a corn or rice field and the tunnels and tunnels running through the jungle and mountainside.
Vietnam knows where our missing are, but being the chicken shits they are they offer us a few to keep imports and exports going.
Why not a combined search between both countries? It’s because they don’t wanna.