Scientists DNA Tested the Tomb of the Unknowns — The Pentagon Already Knew Who Was Inside

On May 11, 1972, Air Force First Lieutenant Michael Joseph Blassie was shot down over An Loc, South Vietnam on his 138th combat mission. Five months later, a patrol recovered his remains — along with his ID card. That card was lost in transit. And twelve years after that, a president of the United States awarded the Medal of Honor to a casket the government already had the means to identify. This is the story of how political pressure turned a known man into an unknown soldier — how one officer defied a direct order to destroy all evidence, hid the proof inside the tomb itself, and why a family spent fourteen years unknowingly paying their respects to their own son. Funeral Report covers the institutional, forensic, and human dimensions of death in America. Subscribe. #TombOfTheUnknowns #VietnamWar #MichaelBlassie #ArlingtonNationalCemetery #MilitaryHistory #UnknownSoldier #FuneralReport #ForensicScience #DNAIdentification #AmericanHistory #Pentagon #VietnamVeterans