News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: US : Iraq Has Pilot, Dead or Alive

Date: March 15, 2001

"U.S.: Iraq Has Pilot, Dead or Alive
By CAROLYN SKORNECK, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence agencies say an American pilot shot down over Iraq during the Gulf War was either captured alive or his remains were recovered by the Iraqis.

Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher of Jacksonville, Fla., was lost when his Navy F-18 Hornet was shot down Jan. 16, 1991, in a dogfight with an Iraqi fighter jet during the first few hours of the war. He was the first American lost in the war.

"We assess that Iraq can account for Lt. Cmdr. Speicher but that Baghdad is concealing information about his fate," said an unclassified CIA summary of a report by the intelligence community. "Lt. Cmdr. Speicher probably survived the loss of his aircraft, and if he survived, he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters Friday, "We have a very real interest in his circumstance, if he's alive — indeed, in knowing about his circumstance even if he's not alive. And one would hope and pray that he is alive. We do not know."

"I have not seen any intelligence on this in the last week," Rumsfeld said.

The intelligence analysis was completed March 27, 2001. The unclassified summary was released after The Washington Times obtained a copy and reported on it this week.

Speicher was the first American lost in the war and the only one still unaccounted for. In May 1991, the military declared him killed in action, and the Navy confirmed that in 1996. Without explanation, the Navy changed Speicher's status to missing in action on Jan. 11, 2001.

"Iraqi leadership owes the United States information about the status of military personnel that are unaccounted for since the Persian Gulf War," Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday. His committee had requested the analysis.

The summary of the report said the Iraqi regime "made it a high priority to capture enemy personnel or recover remains inside Iraqi-controlled territory, and Baghdad would have thoroughly investigated the matter until the pilot was captured or the remains recovered."

In February 1995, an International Committee of the Red Cross team asked the Iraqi government for permission to investigate an F/A-18 crash site in Iraq, but permission was delayed until that October. The ICRC team gave Iraqi authorities the approximate crash location Dec. 9, 1995, and traveled to the site the next day.

The team found evidence that within one month before its arrival, the Iraqis had "excavated the cockpit area of the wreckage and removed all significant cockpit debris," the report said.

Analysis of the wreckage by U.S. Navy experts concluded that "Speicher initiated the ejection sequence, jettisoned the canopy, and likely ejected from the stricken aircraft prior to the crash," the study found.

"We do not know if Lt. Cmdr. Speicher survived the ejection sequence or subsequent landing, but the lack of crash-site evidence of Lt. Cmdr. Speicher's death, U.S. Navy statistical data associated with F/A-18 incidents, and the condition of the returned flight suit suggest that he probably survived the crash," the report says.

On Jan. 11, 2001, the day Speicher was declared MIA, U.S. officials said more than one informant had told 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 sightings were in 1991 and 1992, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity."