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CNN Live Saturday

Seven Americans Died in Helicopter Crash in Central Vietnam

Aired April 07, 2001 - 16:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DONNA KELLEY, CNN ANCHOR: We start today in Asia, with seven Americans among the dead in a helicopter crash in Vietnam that killed about 20 people. The helicopter was part of a joint U.S.-Vietnamese effort to find the remains of Americans missing in action from the Vietnam War.

For the latest, we go to CNN's national correspondent Eileen O'Connor. She's at the Pentagon -- Eileen.

EILEEN O'CONNOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Donna, the seven Americans were members of what's called the Joint Task Force Full Accounting, and their mission on this was a site survey. Now, published reports from the area, according to Vietnamese officials, say that the helicopter crashed some 200 miles south of Hanoi.

Pentagon officials say that they were members of the teams that go in and in this case, they were surveying a site, but these teams eventually would go in and also excavate various sites. In fact, President Clinton on his trip to Vietnam in November actually went to a site that they had already begun to excavate.

What they do, their mission is to try to look for the remains of Americans missing in action from the Vietnam War, and they go there, in this case they were doing a site survey, they go to places where they have evidence that perhaps there was a battle or perhaps a plane went down and they sift through to try to find remains.

Oftentimes, they'll find the remains of Vietnamese who were also killed in action. But in any event, they try to bring back any evidence of remains, send it back to Hawaii to the central identification lab there, and try to match up DNA with any information or DNA that they have from Americans who are known to be missing in action, and then they see if they can, in fact, identify those people and hopefully notify their loved ones.

We don't have any details about the seven Americans who were killed in this case on the site survey because they are still notifying the next of kin -- Donna.

KELLEY: All right, Eileen O'Connor, thanks very much from the Pentagon with that information.

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