News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Clinton Counsels Caution

Date: January 15, 2001

"Clinton Cautions on Gulf War Pilot
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. intelligence agencies have received unverified reports over several years that an American believed to be Lt. Cmdr. Michael S. Speicher, the Navy pilot initially presumed to have died in a shootdown over Iraq in 1991, was seen alive as a prisoner after the war, according to U.S. officials familiar with details of his case.

The officials, who spoke on condition they not be identified, stressed Friday that they knew of no evidence that 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.

Speicher initially was declared by the Pentagon to have 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 a Pentagon press conference 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 on 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.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said in a telephone interview Friday that briefings he has received as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee have convinced him there is credible evidence that Speicher could still be alive.

"There's no question about that," Robert said, referring to the existence of evidence. He said he could not discuss the evidence without jeopardizing U.S. intelligence sources.

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.

A plan was devised 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 that the risk of casualties was too high to justify the mission.

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.

Also found, about two miles from the crash site, was Speicher's flight suit. A Pentagon report later said the flight suit apparently had been cut off the pilot."