A U.S. Army forensic team, hastily airlifted to the site, unearthed 23 bodies, from which it took “samples” before reburying them. Mystery No. 1: what samples? The story at the time (repeated last week by a spokesman at the U.S. military HQ in Afghanistan) was that these were tissue samples, bound for the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, where DNA would be extracted to identify the dead. Previous samples from Afghanistan had been sent there in February. “But we never got the Tora Bora material in May,” says institute spokesman Chris Kelly. Mystery No. 2: where are the Tora Bora samples? A spokesman at U.S. Central Command’s Tampa, Fla., HQ says his info was that they went to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command in Washington, D.C. “Not us,” says CIC spokesman Marc Raimondi. “We don’t have those sort of facilities.” Dead end? Not quite. The small world of forensic pathology is abuzz with the rumor that the Tora Bora remains were taken secretly to the FBI lab at Quantico, Va., and that the FBI has called in the Smithsonian because among the remains is a skull. Too Gothic? “I will just confirm that the lab is working on items recovered from that area,” says FBI spokesman Paul Bresson. “They are currently performing analysis on some things that have been recovered from over in that area. But I don’t want to get into specifics.” Has the FBI called in the Smithsonian? “It is not at all uncommon for us to collaborate with the Smithsonian and the work of [forensic expert] Dr. [Douglas] Ubelaker on many cases that come through our lab,” says Bresson. Is there a skull? “There wouldn’t be anything we would be able to share as far as specific items that might or might not have been recovered,” says Bresson. Over to the Smithsonian. Ubelaker, curator of anthropology at the Smithsonian, is a renowned forensic sleuth and consultant to the FBI. His specialty is the reconstruction of faces from skull fragments. Ubelaker declined to speak. “He has a rule that he won’t comment on active investigations,” says Smithsonian spokesman Randall Kremer, adding: “He does keep his work secret. Not even we here know.”
