News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Status Change For Speicher

Date: January 10, 2001

"Navy Changes Status of Gulf War Pilot

In an unusual move, the Navy has changed the status of a Gulf War pilot from killed in action to missing in action. Now the State Department is demanding more information on the pilot's crash from the Iraqi government.

In an unusual move, the Navy has changed the status of a pilot shot down in an F-18 fighter on the opening night of the 1991 Gulf War, from KIA to MIA.

Tonight a Defense Department official told ABCNEWS, "We have reason to think he survived the ejection."

Navy Secretary Richard Danzig notified the family of Lt. Cmdr. Michael Speicher today, according to officials at the office of Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., who has long challenged the Pentagon's official "finding of death" for Speicher. The officials discussed the matter on condition they not be identified. Pentagon officials confirmed the information.

Speicher, 18, of Jacksonville, Fla., was shot down over Iraq (north of Baghdad) on Jan. 17, 1991 during an air-to-air battle with an Iraqi fighter. He was the first American lost in the war and the last still unaccounted for. His wingman reported two balls of fire. He said he saw one when he thought the plane had been hit and another when the plane hit the ground. There was never any communication from the ground so, at that point, Speicher was listed as "killed in action, body not recovered."

In 1995 U.S. investigators visited the crash site and knew instantly that the Iraqis had been there. Investigators said they found the site had been excavated.

Demands on Iraqi Government

A State Department official sent a new diplomatic note to Baghdad demanding the Iraqi government tell all it knows about Speicher's fate.

Last March, Smith and Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn., asked Danzig to change Speicher's status to missing in action, reflecting evidence of doubt about whether he survived the crash. Smith met with Danzig again Dec. 20 on the matter, officials said.

In a letter dated Dec. 18, Sandy Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser, told Smith a recent intelligence assessment "has stimulated a high-level review of this case -- several new actions are under way and additional steps are under intense review."

Berger's letter did not specify what actions were contemplated.

The late Adm. Mike Boorda, then the chief of naval operations, approved the official "finding of death" on May 22, 1991. That action changed his official status from missing in action to killed in action.

In September 1998, after efforts by Smith and Grams to learn more about what U.S. intelligence agencies knew of Speicher's fate, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was given a classified chronology of the agencies' activities on the matter.

Questioning Plane Crash Death

"We strongly believe that the information contained therein supports the request we are making of you with this letter," Smith and Grams told Danzig in a letter last March. They did not cite any specific evidence, which is classified secret.

The senators said they were informed March 12 by the Defense Department's POW-Missing Personnel Office that its position on whether the available evidence indicates Speicher perished in the crash of his plane is, "We don't know."

Smith and Grams have said before that Pentagon officials initially told them evidence had not been found to indicate that Speicher could have survived the crash. However, in May 1994 - more than three years after Speicher went missing - Pentagon officials indicated in a secret memorandum that a U.S. spy satellite had photographed a "manmade symbol" at the crash site earlier that year. Some military officers said they interpreted the symbol as a sign that the Navy pilot might have survived the crash.

Speicher was the only American killed on Iraqi territory whose remains were not recovered.

A plan was devised in 1994 to conduct a covert operation into Iraq to search the crash site for clues to Speicher's fate, but it was scrapped in December 1994 by Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The general ruled the risk of casualties was too high to justify the secret mission.
ABCNEWS' Lisa Stark and The Associated Press contributed to this report.