Government analysts are studying a mysterious photo that according to relatives shows three American pilots who never returned after they were shot down over Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.
"In coordination with the State Department, we are undertaking urgent activities to follow up on this report," Defense Department spokesman Gregg Hartung said Tuesday.The grainy, poorly resolved picture shows three men holding a sign with a strange message. Some of the numbers on the sign are formed in a style that seems distinctly European. And just where the picture came from is unclear.
John Isaf of the American Defense Institute, a private organization based in Alexandria, Va., said retired Navy Capt. Eugene McDaniel, who heads the institute, received the picture last November.
McDaniel declined to reveal where he got it, saying only that it came from "sources over there," according to Isaf.
McDaniel, 59, was shot down over North Vietnam and repatriated in 1973 after six years in a prisoner of war camp. A decade later he founded the American Defense Institute and the American Defense Foundation to promote a strong defense policy.
Isaf said McDaniel was able to identify the three men in the photo by circulating it at a recent meeting of the National Alliance of Families, an organization of relatives of those listed as missing in Southeast Asia.
Hartung said the picture was delivered to Assistant Defense Secretary Carl Ford at a meeting with the three families on July 12. He said the families "firmly believe" the photograph "depicts their missing family members."
"I can tell you that the photo is currently being analyzed by the full range of technical means available to the department through a number of different government agencies," the Pentagon spokesman said.
The American Defense Institute said the families, whose names and addresses it declined to provide, identified those in the picture as:
-Air Force Col. John Leighton Robertson of Seattle, shot down Sept. 16, 1966, over North Vietnam. Listed as missing in action, he would be 60 years old if alive.
-Air Force Maj. Albro Lynn Lundy Jr. of Sherman Oaks, Calif., shot down Sept. 16, 1966, over Laos. Listed as killed, he would be 58 if alive.
-Navy Lt. Larry James Stevens of Canoga Park, Calif., shot down Feb. 14, 1969, over Laos. Listed as missing in action, he would be 50 if alive.