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Last Updated March 10, 2004

Skeleton in Laos may be lost CIA airman

(AP) -- The discovery of a skeleton in a remote corner of Laos may mark the beginning of the end of a fabled chapter of the Cold War, when an American soldier of fortune known as "Earthquake McGoon" became a household name for his daring exploits in China and Southeast Asia.
The recent finding by a U.S. task force has raised hopes for identifying James B. McGovern, or possibly his co-pilot, Wallace A. Buford of Ogden, Utah, who were shot down in 1954 in the last days of the French Indochina war.

"That's incredible that they were able to find something after 48 years," said McGovern's nephew, James McGovern III, of Perth Amboy, New Jersey.

James McGovern, 31, a 260-pound former World War II fighter ace from Elizabeth, New Jersey, and 28-year-old Buford were flying under secret contract to the CIA when they were killed on May 6, 1954. Their C-119 Flying Boxcar was about to drop an artillery gun to beleaguered French colonial troops at Dien Bien Phu when the plane was riddled by ground fire, staggered 75 miles southward into Laos and crashed near a river. Dien Bien Phu surrendered the next day to Vietnamese communist forces led by Ho Chi Minh, spelling the end of France's colonial era in Indochina and setting the stage for the "American war" in Vietnam a decade later.
		McGovern and Buford disappeared while flying a C-119 "flying boxcar" like this one.

The discovery of remains came after three previous surveys of the area and a site excavation last September produced no results. The latest effort was based largely on information from about a dozen eyewitnesses to the crash.

"Earthquake McGoon"		The bones found are those of only one person, according to officials involved in the case. Determining which one -- McGovern, Buford or a French flight engineer who also died in the crash - - could take weeks or months of forensic analysis at the Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii. The remains were flown to Hawaii on Tuesday. The name of the French victim is not known, but investigators said it may be in CIA or French government records. Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, spokesman
for the Hawaii-based Joint Task Force-Full Accounting -- an arm of the Defense Department -- said the U.S. embassy in Paris, France, is pursuing the matter. "If it's the Frenchman, we'll do something to get him back into French hands," O'Hara said.

O'Hara also said there was "no doubt that we have the right site and the right plane." Debris found at the site was consistent with a C-119 cargo plane, he said.

The searchers also collected about 15 pounds of wreckage to be given to the CIA's museum.

A dental bridge was found, which could rule out the remains being Buford's. The pilot's brother, Roger Buford, of Kansas City, Kansas, said that "to my knowledge, Wally didn't have a bridge."

Recovering the remains of McGovern and Buford has been a priority for the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting, which since 1992 has scoured jungles in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia searching for Americans missing in action and presumed dead.

The latest search, lasting nearly a month and plagued by heavy fog and rain in rugged terrain, was welcome news for relatives of the two pilots.

A saloon owner in China nicknamed McGovern "Earthquake McGoon" after a hulking hillbilly character in the popular "L'il Abner" comic strip. Buford was a former bomber pilot who left engineering studies in Kansas to sign up with Civil Air Transport, a private airline founded in China in 1946 by Gen. Claire Chennault, who earlier organized the famed Flying Tigers volunteer group.

The airline was owned by the CIA -- a fact that was officially secret for decades, until declassified in the 1990s.
 

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