DOD's POW/MIA Mission: Capability and Capacity to Account for Missing Persons Undermined by Leadership Weaknesses and Fragmented Organizational Structure
Published: 2013-08-01T00:00:00

Fast Facts:

Highlights:
section_title: Why GAO Did This Study
paragraphs: This testimony discusses GAO's findings and recommendations about DOD's missing persons accounting mission from our recently issued report, DOD's POW/MIA Mission: Top-Level Leadership Attention Needed to Resolve Longstanding Challenges in Accounting for Missing Persons from Past Conflicts. DOD reports that more than 83,000 persons are missing from past conflicts in Vietnam, Korea, the Cold War, the Persian Gulf, and World War II. Since the early 1970s, DOD has identified the remains of and accounted for approximately 1,910 persons. Several DOD components and organizations, collectively known as the missing persons accounting community, have a role in accounting for missing persons. Between 2002 and 2012, DOD accounted for an average of 72 persons each year. In 2009, Congress established an accounting-for goal in Section 541 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. This act required the Secretary of Defense to provide such funds, personnel, and resources as the Secretary considers appropriate to increase significantly the capability and capacity of DOD, the Armed Forces, and commanders of the combatant commands to account for missing persons, so that the accounting community has sufficient resources to ensure that at least 200 missing persons are accounted for annually, beginning in fiscal year 2015.The law also added all World War II losses to the list of conflicts for which DOD is responsible, thus increasing from about 10,000 to 83,000 the number of missing persons for whom DOD must account.
In 2012, in a committee report to accompany a bill for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013, the House Armed Services Committee mandated that GAO review DODs efforts to increase its capability and capacity to account for missing persons. GAO will focus on three key issues identified in the report, specifically: (1) the accounting communitys organizational structure, (2) the lack of clarity regarding community members roles and responsibilities, and (3) DODs planning to meet the statutory accounting-for goal.
section_title: What GAO Found
paragraphs: The department's response to the accounting-for goal established in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 brought into sharp relief longstanding disputes that have not been addressed by top-level leaders, and have been exacerbated by the accounting community's fragmented organizational structure. Leadership from the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Pacific Command have been unable to resolve disputes between community members in areas such as roles and responsibilities and developing a community-wide plan to meet the statutory accounting-for goal. Further, the accounting community is fragmented in that the community members belong to diverse parent organizations under several different chains of command. With accounting community organizations reporting under different lines of authority, no single entity has overarching responsibility for community-wide personnel and other resources.
While the Department of Defense (DOD) is working to revise its existing guidance and develop new guidance, the roles and responsibilities of the various members of the missing persons accounting community are not all clearly articulated in existing DOD directives or instructions. GAO has previously reported on the need for collaborating agencies to work together to define and agree on their roles and responsibilities. DOD has established several directives and instructions related to the missing persons accounting program. However, none of this guidance clearly delineates the specific roles and responsibilities of all the organizations comprising the missing persons accounting community in the four key areas that GAO examined for the July 2013 report: (1) equipment and artifact identification and analysis, (2) research and analysis, (3) investigations, and (4) family outreach and external communications. Disagreements over roles and responsibilities where the guidance is broad or vague enough to support different interpretations has led to discord, lack of collaboration, and friction among the community's members, and particularly between the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) and Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC).
While DOD has made some progress in drafting a community-wide plan to increase its capability and capacity to meet the statutory accounting-for goal, as of June 2013 DOD had not completed a community-wide plan. GAO has previously reported that overarching plans can help agencies better align their activities, processes, and resources to collaborate effectively to accomplish a commonly defined outcome. However, GAO's July 2013 report found that community-wide planning to meet the accounting-for goal established by Congress has been impeded by disputes and by a lack of coordination among members of the missing persons accounting community, with the DPMO and JPAC developing two competing proposed plans, neither of which encompassed the entire accounting community.

section_title: Letter
paragraphs: Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to discuss GAO’s  findings and recommendations about the Department of Defense’s (DOD)  missing persons accounting mission from our recently issued report,  DOD’s POW/MIA Mission: Top-Level Leadership Attention Needed to  Resolve Longstanding Challenges in Accounting for Missing Persons  from Past Conflicts. DOD reports that more than 83,000 persons are  missing from past conflicts in Vietnam, Korea, the Cold War, the Persian  Gulf, and World War II. Since the early 1970s, DOD has identified the  remains of and accounted for approximately 1,910 persons. Several DOD  components and organizations, collectively known as the missing persons  accounting community, have a role in accounting for missing persons.  Between 2002 and 2012, DOD accounted for an average of 72 persons  each year. In 2009, Congress established an accounting-for goal in  Section 541 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year  2010. This act required the Secretary of Defense to provide such funds,  personnel, and resources as the Secretary considers appropriate to  increase significantly the capability and capacity of DOD, the Armed  Forces, and commanders of the combatant commands to account for  missing persons, so that the accounting community has sufficient  resources to ensure that at least 200 missing persons are accounted for   The law also added all World  annually, beginning in fiscal year 2015.War II losses to the list of conflicts for which DOD is responsible, thus  increasing from about 10,000 to 83,000 the number of missing persons  for whom DOD must account.
In 2012, in a committee report to accompany a bill for the National  Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013, the House Armed  Services Committee mandated that we review DOD’s efforts to increase   Our resulting  its capability and capacity to account for missing persons.report focused on DOD’s efforts to accomplish the missing persons  mission in accordance with the accounting-for goal established by  Congress. In my statement today, I will focus on three key issues we  identified in our report, specifically: (1) the accounting community’s  organizational structure, (2) the lack of clarity regarding community  members’ roles and responsibilities, and (3) DOD’s planning to meet the  statutory accounting-for goal. Our full report also discusses challenges in  other areas, such as processes for conducting operations outside of U.S.  Pacific Command’s (PACOM) area of responsibility, criteria for prioritizing  potentially recoverable missing persons, and communication efforts  among community members.
To identify and assess DOD’s efforts to accomplish its mission to account  for missing persons, we analyzed guidance and requirements, discussed  accounting efforts and the structure of the community with community  members, and surveyed accounting community members and other DOD  stakeholder or leadership organizations. Our work underlying this  statement was conducted in accordance with generally accepted  government auditing standards from June 2012 to June 2013. Those  standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient,  appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and  conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe the evidence  obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions  based on our audit objectives. Additional details on our scope and  methodology are contained in our recently issued report.
subsections: section_title: Background
paragraphs: Many DOD organizations, collectively known as the missing persons  accounting community, have a role in accounting for the missing, as  discussed below. The Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD   (PACOM) are the two top-level  Policy) and U.S. Pacific Commandleadership organizations in the accounting community.
USD Policy is responsible for developing, coordinating, and  overseeing the implementation of DOD policy to account for personnel  unaccounted for as a result of hostile acts. The Deputy Assistant  Secretary of Defense for Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Affairs,  who reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, is  responsible for, among other things, exercising policy, control, and  oversight for the entire process of accounting for missing persons;  monitoring and advocating for program funding requirements and  resources for the mission; and leading and coordinating related  communications efforts, such as the public outreach program.
The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) is  responsible for, among other things, overseeing archival research and  standardizing procedures for methodology and prioritization; rendering  final analytic judgments as to what constitutes fullest possible  accounting for each case by identifying possibilities for future action,  or determining when no further pursuit is possible; and defining,  maintaining, and enumerating accounting lists. The DPMO Director is  responsible for overseeing the execution of DPMO’s mission and  duties. The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Prisoner of  War/Missing Personnel Affairs serves as the DPMO Director and  reports to USD Policy in that capacity as well.
PACOM exercises authority over the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in  Action Accounting Command (JPAC), which is responsible for  conducting operations in support of achieving the missing persons  accounting mission. In 2003 JPAC was established as a Joint  Command by the merger of the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting with  the Central Identification Laboratory – Hawaii in order to achieve unity  of command, permanence of operational elements, and efficiency and  effectiveness in the use of DOD’s resources, as well as to strengthen  the command and control of military forces in achieving the fullest  possible accounting. JPAC’s functions include analysis, archival  research, investigations, recoveries, repatriations, identifications, and  reporting. The Central Identification Laboratory is the laboratory  component of JPAC.
The military services have a role, with their service casualty offices  serving as the primary liaison for families concerning missing persons  recovery and accounting. Officials from these offices also assist  families and help explain the methods used to account for their  missing loved ones. Additional activities include gathering family  deoxyribobucleic acid (DNA) reference samples, coordinating  responses to family inquiries and concerns, and maintaining family  contact information.
The past conflict accounting section of the Armed Forces DNA  Identification Laboratory conducts DNA analyses of remains of  missing persons from past military conflicts for JPAC and its  laboratory component, the Central Identification Laboratory, and  maintains the past conflict accounting family reference sample  database, to include processing of all DNA references. The Armed  Forces DNA Identification Laboratory is part of the Armed Forces  Medical Examiner System, which reports to the Army Surgeon  General.
The Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory provides technical and  analytical support to the accounting community, and is primarily  tasked by JPAC’s Central Identification Laboratory to analyze and  identify life science equipment-related artifacts that have been  recovered and may potentially be related to missing persons cases.  The Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory is part of the Air Force  Materiel Command.
In addition to these members of the missing persons accounting  community, many other organizations play a role in the missing persons  accounting process, including the Office of the Under Secretary of  Defense for Personnel and Readiness, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs  of Staff, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and  the State Department. In addition, family and veterans organizations  serve as constituency groups to the accounting community.
section_title: Accounting Community’s Fragmented Organizational Structure Exacerbates Weaknesses in Leadership
paragraphs: The department’s response to the accounting-for goal established in the  National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 brought into  sharp relief longstanding disputes that have not been addressed by top- level leaders, and have been exacerbated by the accounting community’s  fragmented organizational structure. As I will describe in more detail later  in this statement, leadership from the Under Secretary of Defense for  Policy and Pacific Command have been unable to resolve disputes  between community members in areas such as roles and responsibilities  and developing a community-wide plan to meet the statutory accounting- for goal. Further, the accounting community is fragmented in that the  community members belong to diverse parent organizations under  several different chains of command. With accounting community  organizations reporting under different lines of authority, no single entity  has overarching responsibility for community-wide personnel and other  resources. For example, although the Deputy Assistant Secretary of  Defense for Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Affairs has statutory  responsibility for policy, control, and oversight of the entire accounting  process, JPAC—which performs investigations, recoveries,  identifications, and other key functions—falls under the authority of  PACOM, rather than reporting to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of  Defense for Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Affairs. As a result, no  single entity can implement or enforce decisions without obtaining  widespread consensus. We have previously reported that having a single  designated leader is often beneficial because it centralizes accountability  for achieving outcomes and can accelerate decision-making.
Concerns have arisen over the years, both within and outside of DOD,  with regard to whether the current organizational structure of DOD’s  missing persons accounting community enables the community to most  effectively meet its mission. For example, a 2006 Institute for Defense  Analyses study concluded that significant improvements could be made  by increasing the lines of coordination in the accounting community and  recommended that the community acknowledge DPMO as the leader in  the accounting effort. The study also described some of the problems  associated with the current organization; for example, that DPMO does  not have tasking authority over the other organizations, and that while  there are multiple lines of authority, no one organization has effective  authority over execution of the entire mission.
In our July 2013 report, we found that a majority of accounting community  and DOD stakeholder organizations believe that an alternative  organizational structure for the accounting community would be more  effective. We administered a questionnaire asking representatives from  each accounting community organization whether various options for  reorganizing the missing persons accounting community could improve  the community’s ability to meet its mission. One question asked  respondents to rank five organizational options that would best enable the  accounting community to meet its mission. We found that 12 of the 13  survey respondents who answered the question ranked an option with a  more centralized chain of command as the most effective in enabling the  accounting community to achieve its mission. Ten of these 12  respondents ranked the current organizational structure as the least  effective or second least effective option for achieving the mission of the  accounting community.
Responses to our questionnaire also demonstrated a lack of confidence  about the current organizational structure among many community and  DOD stakeholder organizations. For example, 13 of the 14 survey  respondents indicated that the current organizational structure did not  enable or only somewhat enabled the community to develop the required  capability and capacity to achieve the accounting-for goal. In addition, 12  respondents indicated that the current organizational structure did not  enable or only somewhat enabled the community to collectively determine  necessary resources. Furthermore, 9 respondents indicated that the  current organizational structure did not at all enable the accounting  community to define and agree on their respective roles and  responsibilities.
In contrast, not a single organization we surveyed ranked the current  organizational structure as the most effective organizational option, and  only three organizations—USD Policy, PACOM, and JPAC—ranked the  current organizational structure as the second most effective  organizational option. Illustrating a disconnect between leadership’s  perspective and the rest of the community, only two organizations in our  survey—USD Policy and PACOM, the two top-level leadership  organizations in the accounting community—responded that the current  structure greatly enables appropriate senior leadership involvement. USD  Policy and PACOM stated that all of the organizational options, including  the current organizational structure, offer access to DOD senior  leadership. In addition, senior officials from these offices questioned  whether the benefit of reorganization would result in real change and  would be worth undergoing turmoil in the organization. While we  recognize that a reorganization may pose challenges, such as creating  the potential for short-term impacts on operations due to disruption, our  findings in our July 2013 report show that the majority of accounting  community members and other stakeholders lack confidence in the status  quo, and we believe that the potential benefits of reorganizing and/or  clarifying roles and responsibilities could outweigh those challenges.
We recommended in our July 2013 report that the Secretary of Defense  examine options for reorganizing the accounting community, to include  considering organizational options that provide a more centralized chain  of command over the accounting community’s mission. DOD concurred  with this recommendation, stating that it will consider options for  reorganizing the accounting community, ranging from maintaining the  status quo to consolidation of DPMO and JPAC, as well as examining  whether the Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory might also be included  in this consolidation. DOD explained that the consolidated organization  could be placed under the Office of the Secretary of Defense or a non- geographic combatant command to facilitate its worldwide mission and  avoid competition for resources with a geographic combatant command’s  war-fighting priorities.
section_title: DOD Guidance Does Not Clearly Articulate Roles and Responsibilities for All Accounting Community Organizations
paragraphs: While DOD is working to revise its existing guidance and develop new  guidance, the roles and responsibilities of the various members of the  missing persons accounting community are not all clearly articulated in  existing DOD directives or instructions. We have previously reported on  the need for collaborating agencies to work together to define and agree  on their roles and responsibilities. DOD has established several  directives and instructions related to the missing persons accounting  program. However, none of this guidance clearly delineates the specific  roles and responsibilities of all the organizations comprising the missing  persons accounting community in the four key areas that we examined for  our July 2013 report: (1) equipment and artifact identification and  analysis, (2) research and analysis, (3) investigations, and (4) family  outreach and external communications. Disagreements over roles and  responsibilities where the guidance is broad or vague enough to support  different interpretations has led to discord, lack of collaboration, and  friction among the community’s members, and particularly between  DPMO and JPAC. For example, JPAC views itself as having the lead on  operational activities, such as conducting investigation and recovery  missions, and JPAC officials expressed concerns with DPMO’s plans to  conduct some operational activities. Moreover, the lack of clarity in the  guidance has given rise to overlapping and fragmented efforts among  accounting community members. We have previously reported that  overlap in efforts may be appropriate in some instances, especially if  agencies can leverage each others’ efforts. In other instances, however,  overlap may be unintended, may be unnecessary, or may represent an  inefficient use of U.S. government resources. As described in table 1, in  implementing the accounting mission, we found that overlapping and  duplicative efforts have led to inconsistent practices and inefficiencies in  four key areas.
Today, I will highlight one of those areas: equipment and artifact  identification and analysis. JPAC and the Life Sciences Equipment  Laboratory disagree about the laboratory’s roles and responsibilities for  equipment and artifact identification and analysis, and DOD guidance is  vague regarding those responsibilities. As a result, the interactions  between JPAC’s Central Identification Laboratory and the Life Sciences  Equipment Laboratory have been inefficient and ineffective and have led  to underutilizing government resources, as the following example  demonstrates. JPAC and Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory officials  disagree about roles and responsibilities in terms of which conflicts and  types of equipment the Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory can analyze.  JPAC officials told us it is unlikely that they would forward case work to  the Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory for conflicts other than Vietnam,  and that they do not send ground equipment remnants to the equipment  laboratory, regardless of conflict. Conversely, Life Sciences Equipment  Laboratory officials stated that their capabilities can support analysis of  cases for conflict periods ranging from World War I through current  military operations for all military services, and that their mission includes  analyzing artifacts recovered at aircraft crash or ground action loss sites.  Further, a 2004 memorandum of agreement between JPAC and the Life  Sciences Equipment Laboratory states that the Life Sciences Equipment  Laboratory has the capability to provide analysis for equipment from  World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, and current day conflicts.  Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory officials expressed concern that  JPAC and its Central Identification Laboratory are trying to exclude the  Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory from the accounting process by  downplaying its potential contributions. This example shows how the lack  of clearly defined roles and responsibilities has led to disagreements and  inefficient and ineffective interactions among community members.
Since 2010, DPMO has attempted to address issues surrounding the  accounting community organizations’ roles and responsibilities by  developing new guidance or revising existing guidance, but these efforts  have not been completed. DPMO has drafted a revision to DOD Directive  2310.07E and has also drafted a new DOD instruction to provide more  clarity with regard to roles and responsibilities. As of May 2013, however,  neither the draft instruction nor the revised directive had been finalized,  because the drafts had been stymied by disagreements among  community members regarding their respective roles and responsibilities  as stated in the drafts. Both DPMO officials and JPAC officials said they  have made progress in addressing these areas of disagreement, and  DPMO officials stated that they hoped to have the draft directive finalized  by September 2013 and the draft instruction published by March 2014.
Because the drafts of these documents are still under revision, it is  unclear whether the final guidance will clarify the roles and responsibilities  sufficiently to address the four areas of overlap and disagreement  summarized in table 1 above. Until DOD issues its revised directive and  new instruction that more clearly define the roles and responsibilities of all  the accounting community organizations, these areas of inefficient  overlap may continue, and the disputing factions within the accounting  community may continue to hinder future progress.
Consequently, we recommended in our July 2013 report that the  department revise and issue guidance to clarify roles and responsibilities  of accounting community members and negotiate a new memorandum of  agreement between the Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory and JPAC.  DOD concurred with both of these recommendations.
section_title: Development of Community-wide Plan Is Impeded by a Fragmented Approach to Planning and Disputes among Community Members
paragraphs: While DOD has made some progress in drafting a community-wide plan  to increase its capability and capacity to meet the statutory accounting-for  goal, as of June 2013 DOD had not completed a community-wide plan.  We have previously reported that overarching plans can help agencies  better align their activities, processes, and resources to collaborate  effectively to accomplish a commonly defined outcome. However, our  July 2013 report found that community-wide planning to meet the  accounting-for goal established by Congress has been impeded by  disputes and by a lack of coordination among members of the missing  persons accounting community, with DPMO and JPAC developing two  competing proposed plans, neither of which encompassed the entire  accounting community. In response to a December 2009 memorandum  from the Deputy Secretary of Defense directing the Deputy Assistant  Secretary of Defense for Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Affairs to  begin planning to meet the accounting-for goal, USD Policy and PACOM  allowed the development of these two competing proposed plans for  obtaining additional funding and resources to meet the mandated  capability and capacity. According to DPMO officials, neither the Joint  Staff nor USD Policy provided oversight or intervention in the  disagreement. These officials stated that such oversight and intervention  could have helped JPAC and DPMO to resolve their impasse by  improving communication, interaction, and cooperation. Both plans called  for increased capability and capacity and for a new satellite remains  identification laboratory located in the continental United States. However,  the two plans differed as to which organization would have control over  much of the increased capability and capacity, with each plan favoring the  organization that authored it. The other accounting community members  and their resource needs were not mentioned in either proposed plan.
The dispute concerning the competing proposed plans was resolved  through DOD’s Program Budget Review Process in January 2011, after  being assessed by a DOD-wide team led by DOD’s Office of Cost  Assessment and Program Evaluation. In a DOD resource management  decision, DOD programmed more than $312 million in proposed  additional resources over fiscal years 2012 through 2016 in support of  JPAC’s plan, including an additional 253 personnel—reflecting a greater  than 60 percent increase over JPAC’s 2011 level. However, key parts of  JPAC’s plan are not being realized. For example, JPAC has been unable  to conduct the number of investigation and recovery missions called for in  the plan, in part due to an inability to hire the additional personnel who  had been authorized and also in part due to the budget reductions and  expected furloughs associated with sequestration. As of May 2013, the  JPAC plan, which does not incorporate the larger accounting community,  is DOD’s only plan to increase capability and capacity to account for  missing persons.
While the community has taken some recent steps to draft a community- wide plan as directed by the 2009 memo from the Deputy Secretary of  Defense, we found that disagreements between JPAC and DPMO  hindered progress in developing the community-wide plan. According to  both DPMO and JPAC officials, the areas of disagreement included topics  such as (1) the division of research and analysis responsibilities between  DPMO and JPAC; (2) determination of the appropriate levels of effort for  each of the various conflicts; and (3) agreement on a policy to address  lower priority cases that have been on JPAC’s list of potential recovery  sites for a long time. As of June 2013, DPMO and JPAC officials said that  the areas of disagreement had been informally resolved and needed to  be documented. DPMO had developed a draft of the community-wide  plan, but DPMO officials explained that the draft would not be sufficiently  comprehensive to share for review among the community members until  it incorporated the informal agreements that have recently been resolved.  The officials stated that they now plan to finalize the community-wide plan  by the end of calendar year 2013.
In the absence of a community-wide plan, the members of the accounting  community have had varied success in independently identifying and  obtaining funds and resources to help meet the accounting-for goal.  Moreover, there is no community-wide process to provide resources for  the missing persons accounting mission. Each member organization of  the accounting community has its own processes for requesting  resources, because they belong to diverse parent organizations, and  these processes are not integrated or coordinated. Until DOD finalizes a  community-wide plan that addresses the resource needs of community  members as well as changes in planned operations, the accounting  community will be challenged to justify the resources it needs to increase  DOD’s capability and capacity to account for at least 200 missing persons  a year by 2015, and DOD’s ability to achieve that required increase may  be at risk.
We recommended in our July 2013 report that the department finalize the  community-wide plan to develop the increased capability and capacity  required by statute, with the support and participation of all community  members. DOD concurred with our recommendation. In total, our full  report contains nine recommendations with which DOD generally  concurred. The report also contains DOD’s comments, which state the  steps the department plans to take to implement our recommendations.
In conclusion, while we are encouraged that DOD generally concurred  with all nine of the recommendations in our July 2013 report, we note that  prompt action on the part of the department to address these  recommendations is critical, because the 2015 timeframe for DOD to  meet the accounting-for goal is rapidly approaching. Further, as time  passes, the information needed for missing persons recoveries continues  to deteriorate. Families have been waiting for decades to discover the  fate of their loved ones, and the weaknesses that we identified in DOD’s  capability and capacity to account for missing persons jeopardize the  department’s ability to provide some measure of closure to those families  whose loved ones are still missing as a result of their service to their  country.
Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member Davis, this concludes my prepared  remarks. I would be pleased to respond to any questions that you or other  Members of the Subcommittee may have.
section_title: Contacts and Acknowledgments
paragraphs: For future questions about this statement, please contact Brenda S.  Farrell, Director, Defense Capabilities and Management, at (202) 512- 3604 or farrellb@gao.gov. In addition, contact points for our Offices of  Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page  of this statement. Individuals who made key contributions to this  statement include Margaret Best, Assistant Director; Renee Brown, Terry  Richardson, Leigh Ann Sennette, Cheryl Weissman, Allen Westheimer,  and Michael Willems.
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