Sponsors (14)
Official title: Provide for the creation of the missing Armed Forces and civilian personnel Records Collection at the National Archives, to require the expeditious public transmission to the Archivist and public disclosure of missing Armed Forces and civilian personnel records, and for other purposes.
Introduced November 19, 2025 by Michael Dean Crapo · Last progress November 19, 2025
The bill significantly improves families' and historians' access to missing personnel records and creates centralized, enforceable review and disclosure processes, but it does so at substantial taxpayer cost and with risks to national security, personal privacy, and potential legal and diplomatic complications.
Families of missing service members, veterans, and current/former military personnel will gain substantially faster and clearer access to records about the fate or status of missing individuals through timelines, mandatory searches, and the Review Board's enforcement powers.
The federal government will centralize, preserve, and publish missing armed forces and civilian personnel records (a National Archives collection and indexes), improving historical preservation, public research access, and government transparency.
An independent, time‑limited Review Board with subpoena and review authority, plus required public reporting and congressional oversight, creates enforceable accountability, faster decisionmaking, and clearer institutional responsibility for locating and disclosing records.
Federal agencies and the National Archives — and therefore taxpayers — will face substantial new administrative and operational costs (searching, copying, review, redaction, data formatting, Board operations, reporting), increasing budgetary burdens.
The expanded disclosure regime increases risks of exposing sensitive national‑security information or operational details and could complicate diplomacy when seeking foreign-held records, potentially harming operations, sources, or relations.
Privacy and due‑process risks rise because broad disclosure presumptions, Board subpoena powers, and procedures that reduce judicial oversight could compel private parties to produce records or lead to unintended release of personal data.
Based on analysis of 15 sections of legislative text.
Creates a Review Board and requires federal offices to locate, certify, and transmit missing Armed Forces and civilian personnel records to a new NARA Collection for public access, subject to narrow exceptions.
Creates an independent Review Board and a new National Archives collection to locate, preserve, review, and publicly disclose federal records about missing U.S. Armed Forces and civilian personnel from December 7, 1941 through the law's enactment. It requires executive branch offices to search for, certify under penalty of perjury, transmit, and refrain from destroying or improperly withholding such records, while establishing narrow, evidence-based postponement rules for sensitive national security or privacy material. The bill sets up procedures for Board appointments, staffing, security clearances, and public schedules; empowers the Board to request the Attorney General and foreign governments to seek unsealing of relevant records (including grand‑jury material); authorizes necessary appropriations; and directs the Archivist to create a subject guide, metadata standards, and an online Collection for public access, with continuing congressional oversight by two specified committees.