WHAT THE CHIEF RICK STONE AND FAMILY CHARITABLE FOUNDATION HAS ACCOMPLISHED AS OF 4/24/2024:
713 Family Reports
(Most recent: LTg Walter James Lahey)
Number of comprehensive “Family Reports” prepared upon request by the family members of missing American servicemen and servicewomen. The purpose of this research is to promote the education of family members and others by aiding in the recovery, identification, and return of these missing heroes. There is absolutely NO charge to the families of MIAs for the Foundation’s case investigations.
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219 MIA’s Identified & Returned Home
(Most recent: Private Richard Gordon Wright)
Number of missing American servicemen and servicewomen who have been recovered, identified, and returned home to their families after Foundation case investigations were completed on their cases. You may see specific information on MIA cases that were the subject of investigations by researchers and investigators at the Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation and who were recovered and returned home . Click on the “HEROES HOME AT LAST” link above.
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87 Podcasts On the Air
Most recent: “Why Can’t Jack Come Home?”: The Case of PFC John Cecil DeLillis
Number of podcast episodes of “NO HOME FOR HEROES” that have been produced and made available for FREE access on the internet. Click on the “NO HOME FOR HEROES” link above for a list of all available episodes.
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Click on the image above for a direct link to a story regarding a case investigation by the Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation courtesy of Fox News, Veterans Day, November 11, 2019
On 30 January 2015, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) was officially deactivated by the Department of Defense and a supposedly new agency, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), was created using most of same old management personnel from JPAC. The Defense Department’s efforts at reform followed a series of embarrassing scandals and damning revelations in reports and testimony before Congress concerning mismanagement and failures in the effort to identify missing war dead.
DPAA has shifted its focus from “identifications” to “accounting for” recovered remains that have been identified by others. The vast majority of current identifications of MIAs are completed by the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory using DNA comparisons.
According to DPAA, they have obtained “Family Reference Samples” (DNA) from only about 6% of the families of MIAs from WW II.
As of March 31, 2024, DPAA reported on their website that there are still 72,103 missing American servicemen and women from World War II.
DPAA has also posted on its website (screen shot below) that it “accounted for” just 37 MIA’s from World War II and 7 other MIA’s from all other wars during the first half of it’s Fiscal Year: 1 October 2023 thru 31 March 2024.
The vast majority of these 44 cases claimed by DPAA were actually made by the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory from remains previously buried in American cemeteries as “Unknowns.”
This is the SMALLEST number of “accounted for” MIA’s in recent memory. At this current rate, it is estimated that it will take DPAA over 900 years to “account for” all of our World War II MIA’s.
We really don’t know what DPAA’s actual budget was for Fiscal Year 2023 because the last year DPPA posted a budget figure on its website was Fiscal Year 2020: $169.532 million. And…DPAA continues to actively seek private donations for more money on their official government website.
The cost by DPAA to “account for” EACH MIA is approximately $1.92 million dollars!
The backlog of recovered sets of remains awaiting identification at the DPAA Laboratory in Hawaii is estimated to exceed 1,100 American servicemen and women who are stored in cardboard boxes in a storage room. The average time for identification after remains are received in the DPAA/JPAC laboratory was reported by an internal JPAC study to be eleven years.
Based on research completed by investigators from the Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation and submitted to the Navy’s Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), the U.S. Navy announced on 27 May 2022 that thirteen (13) sailors who were originally listed as “Missing in Action” from the sinking of the USS Indianapolis had been officially “Accounted For” as “Buried at Sea” in August 1945. To date, DPAA has not updated their records and continues to list the 13 Indy heroes as “unaccounted for.”
The Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation is NOT a corporation. We do NOT have “Inc.” at the end of our Foundation’s name. We do NOT seek and accept huge, multi-million dollar annual government contracts while claiming to be a “non-profit” that begs the public for money. The Associated Press reported in June 2019 that just one “non-profit” corporation had received a total of $12 million over the past few years from DPAA.
The Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation does NOT seek or accept any government funding nor do we pay salaries or “administration compensation” to anyone. The By-Laws of our Foundation insures that not one single penny is ever spent for “administrative compensation.” ALL members of the Foundation agree to serve without compensation.
The Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation’s research is based on documents we have lawfully obtained through hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests to various government agencies, two successful Federal civil lawsuits to obtain public records, information provided to us by family members and other researchers, online research of public records, or our own investigators’ research at the National Archives or the National Personnel Records Center. DPAA recently took almost three years to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records on just one set of recoveries which federal law requires to be provided in 20 days.
The Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation does NOT sell our reports or copies of government records to anyone. We do NOT sell memberships, battlefield tours, airplane rides, books with photographs of our ancestor’s skeletal remains, or hire telemarketers to solicit money. Some members of “non-profit” corporations shamelessly promote these multi-million dollar activities by SELLING books with false information and photographs of the skeletal remains of MIA’s to make a buck.
The Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation does NOT claim to recover or identify missing American servicemen and women. We do not conduct field excavations. Our mission is to provide research and investigative information to families of MIAs and/or government agencies upon request.
The Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation has repeatedly offered DPAA copies of our research files at no charge, including investigation details, photographs, and maps with the locations of missing American servicemen and women.
The Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation always stands ready to assist the Department of Defense by utilizing the advanced law enforcement investigative techniques we developed based on our “Random Incident Statistical Correlation (RISC)” biometric profiling system and other sophisticated technologies we have helped develop such as MissingPersonLink’s computerized “Cranial Facial Recognition Program (CFRP).”
The Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation has created extensive databases to enable our researchers and investigators to determine the names of “Possible, Probable, and Most Likely” matches of any remains recovered from World War II battlefields or those buried as “Unknowns” in American military cemeteries. When cases we have investigated are resolved with an official identification of a MIA by the Department of Defense, our Foundation is the first to offer thanks to ALL who were involved in the process and note the extent of our Foundation’s involvement in the case, which may have been large or small. In the famous words of Navy Commander Joseph Rochefort, whose team cracked the Japanese code that lead to a great naval victory at the Battle of Midway, “We can accomplish anything provided no one cares who gets the credit.” Amen.
Finally, the Board of Directors of The Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation would like to leave you with this anonymous quote which graced the office of our founder during his tenure at the Navy Department:
“POOR IS THE NATION THAT HAS NO HEROES…BUT SHAMEFUL IS THE ONE THAT, HAVING THEM, FORGETS.”
Copyright (C) 2012-2024 Chief Rick Stone & Family Charitable Foundation. All Rights Reserved.