News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Reports Claim Speicher Survived

Date: January 14, 2001

Reports Say Navy Pilot Was Alive
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A U.S. Navy pilot initially presumed to have died in a shootdown over Iraq during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 was seen alive in Iraqi custody afterward, according to unconfirmed reports reaching intelligence officials in recent years.

The officials, speaking Friday on condition of anonymity, stressed that they knew of no evidence that Lt. Cmdr. Michael S. Speicher was still alive, although President Clinton said "we're going to do our best to find out if he is alive and, if he is, to get him out."

Clinton said he did not want to raise false hope.

"We do not have hard evidence that he is alive," the president said.

The Defense Department declared initially that Speicher died in the shootdown. Another American pilot who saw Speicher's F-18 Hornet jet explode in the air reported that it was hit by an air-to-air missile and that he did not see Speicher eject. A combat search and rescue mission was planned but not executed, and the crash site was not found until after the war.

Shortly after then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney told reporters on the night of the shootdown that Speicher had died in the crash, the Pentagon declared him to be "missing in action." In May 1991, the Navy approved a "finding of death," in the absence of evidence that he had survived, and he was switched to "killed in action."

The KIA status was reaffirmed by the Navy in 1996.

The U.S. officials said more than one informant had reported to U.S. intelligence agencies that an American thought to be Speicher was being held prisoner in Iraq after the war ended in March 1991. The reports were received over a period of several years but the sightings were in 1991 and 1992, the officials said. The veracity of the reports is uncertain, but they are credible enough to lead American government officials to think Speicher probably survived the Jan. 16, 1991, crash.

The Clinton administration on Wednesday sent a diplomatic communication to Baghdad demanding an accounting, officials said.

Clinton commented on the Speicher case Thursday, after the Navy announced that Navy Secretary Richard Danzig changed the Navy pilot's status from "killed in action" to "missing in action," based on unspecified "additional information and analysis."

"We have some information that leads us to believe that he might be alive and we hope and pray he is," Clinton said in an interview with CBS. "But we have already begun working to try to determine whether, in fact, he's alive; if he is, where he is and how we can get him out and we're going to do everything we can to get him out."

Clinton's comments went beyond the brief Navy statement, and on Friday the president sought to dampen expectations.

"I agreed with the decision to take his name off the killed-in-action list and put it on the missing-in-action list," Clinton said from the White House. "I think it was the right decision, but I don't want to raise false hopes here."

The U.S. intelligence informants whose sightings correlate with Speicher did not refer to him by name, the officials said. They described an American, and in more than one case referred to an American military pilot or U.S. Navy pilot. Other aspects of the physical descriptions seemed to fit Speicher, the officials said.

Speicher is the only American lost in Iraqi territory who has not been accounted for. After the war, the Iraqi government turned over remains that it said were Speicher's, but DNA analysis and blood testing showed it was not him.

Speicher, of Jacksonville, Fla., flew his F-18 off the carrier USS Saratoga on the opening night of the war and went down west of Baghdad. He apparently was attacked by an Iraqi MiG-25 fighter. His crash site was not located until April 1994.

In December 1995 an International Committee of the Red Cross team excavated the crash site with Iraq's permission. Wreckage from Speicher's aircraft was found and the team reported that there had been previous digging at the site."