Kansas City, Mo. ? A meeting organized by the Department of Defense POW/ Missing Personnel Office drew about 120 people hoping to hear updates about missing friends and relatives.

The office holds updates annually, in Washington, D.C., and at other locations across the country. About 14,000 families of the missing are given overviews of ongoing recovery efforts in Europe, Korea, Russia, China, Japan and other countries.

The families have one-on-one meetings with casualty officers from the different service branches in the hope of getting answers about their individual family members. Technicians collect DNA samples to be used in identification of remains.

Saturday’s meeting was the first update for Tom Klingner, Roeland Park, Kan., whose brother, 1st Lt. Michael Klingner, has been missing since April 6, 1970. Michael Klingner probably died in Laos when his F-100 jet fighter rammed into a hill and exploded, possibly hit by ground fire. His wingman witnessed the crash during the Vietnam War and didn’t see a parachute.

But the Air Force pilot’s body was never recovered, despite another search of the site 10 years ago. One clue, a small piece of cloth carried by pilots in different conflicts, was found in Vietnam’s Hue Military Museum in May 1992.

The cloth contains identification information that investigators think could lead to Vietnamese veterans who might know where to search for Michael Klingner’s remains. A recovery team, including an archaeologist, might return to the site to do excavations in 2008.

Klingner said he was surprised and thankful to learn about the scope of the effort.

“It’s pretty amazing what they’ve done over the years,” Klingner said. “It would be nice to have closure, to bring him home and put him to rest where he belongs, not some jungle in Laos.”

About 88,000 Americans remain missing from conflicts ranging from World War II to the present. About half were lost at sea, with no chance of recovery.

The Defense Department has a $100 million-a-year effort to locate the others. Some are interred in U.S. cemeteries but unidentified. Nearly 3,000 unknown service members are at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, mostly deaths from Pearl Harbor and Korea. New science is allowing those remains to be identified.