News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Backpedaling - No Hard Evudence

Date: January 15, 2001

"Clinton No Hard Evidence Pilot Alive, Search Is On

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton said on Friday he had no hard evidence that a fighter pilot shot down over Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War was alive, but said the United States would do its best to find out.

Clinton said he had agreed with the U.S. Navy's decision to change the status of Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher from "killed in action" to "missing in action," but added he did not want to raise false hopes.

"We do not have hard evidence that he is alive," Clinton told reporters at the White House. "We have some evidence that what had been assumed to be the evidence that he is lost in action is not so."

"And we're going to do our best to find out if he is alive and if he is, to get him out because as a uniformed serviceman he should have been released if he is alive."

The State Department said on Thursday the United States has written to the Iraqi government demanding an explanation of what happened to the pilot.

Navy Secretary Richard Danzig on Wednesday notified relatives of Speicher, who had been listed as killed since shortly after the war, Navy officials have said.

Speicher became the first American lost on the first day of the Gulf War when his Navy F-18 attack jet was apparently hit and crashed in a fireball during a battle with Iraqi jets on Jan. 17, 1991.

Although no wreckage was initially found, defense officials said Pentagon documents showed U.S. spy satellites more than three years later detected what was described as a man-made symbol at the crash scene. They declined to give details.

Although most of the information in the case is classified, officials said a flight suit that could have been Speicher's was more recently found lying on the surface of the desert.

In 1990, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered an invasion of neighboring Kuwait, triggering the Gulf War in which the United States led an allied force against Iraq."