If you are willing to lie about this, you cannot be trusted about anything. Counterintelligence starts with demanding the truth from the inside out, and then ruthlessly going after the real insider threat: those who feel they can lie to their own.
Pentagon Uses ‘Phony’ Ceremonies for MIAs, with Planes that Can’t Fly
Government ‘Big Lie’ Plays Horrific Joke on U.S. Veterans and Their Families
By Bill Dedman, Investigative Reporter, NBCnews.com
HONOLULU — A unit of the U.S. Department of Defense has been holding so-called “arrival ceremonies” for seven years, with an honor guard carrying flag-draped coffins off of a cargo plane as though they held the remains of missing American service men and women returning that day from old battlefields.
After NBC News raised questions about the arrival ceremonies, the Pentagon acknowledged Wednesday that no honored dead were in fact arriving, and that the planes used in the ceremonies often couldn’t even fly but were towed into position.
The solemn ceremonies at a military base in Hawaii are a sign of the nation’s commitment to returning and identifying its fallen warriors. The ceremonies have been attended by veterans and families of MIAs, led to believe that they were witnessing the return of Americans killed in World War II, Vietnam and Korea.
The ceremonies also have been known, at least among some of the military and civilian staff here, as The Big Lie.
Photos behind the scenes show that the flag-draped boxes had not just arrived on military planes, but ended their day where they begin it: at the same lab where the human remains have been waiting for analysis.
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‘Acutely dysfunctional’
After NBC News requested permission to attend an arrival ceremony in July, JPAC canceled the ceremony. It hasn’t held any ceremonies since April, scheduling and canceling them repeatedly.
The Pentagon spokesperson said the commander of JPAC, Army Maj. Gen. Kelly K. McKeague, authorized in April the renaming of the ceremonies “to more accurately reflect the purpose of these events.” However, public affairs staff at JPAC, which organized the events, continued to call them “arrival ceremonies” on into the summer, and until Wednesday they were still identified that way on the agency’s website. (That page of the JPAC website was renamed to “honors ceremonies” on Wednesday.) The Pentagon would not answer when asked when Gen. McKeague and other military officers became aware that the public was being misled.
Read full story with photographs.
