Washington - Workers exhumed remains from the Tomb of the Unknown overnight, cutting open the site for the first time to try to identify the Vietnam War veteran buried there using DNA tests, military officials said yesterday.
A crane lifted the steel casket from an underground crypt in the tomb at Arlington National Cemetery after workers sawed through granite paving stones and removed the marble facing covering the grave, officials said. After a solemn ceremony presided over by US Defence Secretary Mr William Cohen, the remains were taken in a hearse to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, where they are to be examined by forensic anthropologists in preparation for mitochondrial DNA tests.
Mr Cohen ordered the unprecedented exhumation last week after relatives of Lieut Michael Blassie, an air force pilot killed in 1972, asked for the DNA tests, insisting that other evidence pointed to his being the unknown.