News-Info-Alerts

Re: Gulf War Pilot Saddam's Secret POW?

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: March 16, 2002

"Tue 12 Mar 2002
Gulf war pilot Saddam's secret PoW?

Paul Gallagher
A US NAVY pilot presumed dead 11 years ago when his F-18 fighter aircraft was shot down during the first hours of the Gulf war may still be alive and a prisoner in Iraq.

Lieutenant Commander Michael Speicher, 33, disappeared in January 1991 when his plane crashed into the desert over western Iraq. His fate has remained unknown ever since.

As the US edges towards another confrontation with Saddam Hussein’s regime, fresh evidence has now emerged that the Iraqi leader could have secretly kept Lt-Cmdr Speicher as a hostage for more than a decade.

British intelligence officials are reported to have passed on information to the CIA in the last few months that a US pilot, believed to be Lt-Cmdr Speicher, is being held in Baghdad.

The MI6 report said the pilot is at a secret location and only two Iraqis are permitted to see him - the chief of Iraq’s intelligence service and Uday Hussein, the son of Saddam.

According to the Washington Times newspaper, the Pentagon is taking the report seriously and President George Bush has been informed.

US military chiefs are understood to be including the possibility that their man will be used as a human shield in the plans they are drawing up for renewed operations in Iraq.

Saddam employed the tactic of parading civilians and captured pilots before the television cameras in an attempt to ward off the US-led bombardment in the lead-up to the Gulf war.

President Bush yesterday marked the six month anniversary of the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington by urging domestic support for an expanded war on terrorism, widely expected to include an attack on Iraq.

The vice-president, Dick Cheney, visited Tony Blair for talks at Downing Street where a renewed war against Saddam was top of the agenda.

When Lt-Cmdr Speicher was shot down in 1991, President Bush’s father, George Bush senior, was president and American forces were engaged in a conflict against an enemy kept at arm’s length.

Lt-Cmdr Speicher was the first US pilot to be shot down, on the opening day of the war on 17 January, 1991. His F-18 Hornet failed to return to the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga and the pilots of other US planes in the area saw a flash in the sky which they assumed was his aircraft exploding.

No wreckage could be found in a search of the region at the time and Lt-Cmdr Speicher was listed as "killed in action, no body recovered". During the hostilities, Iraq sent the US government a pound and a half of flesh saying it came from a pilot called "Michael".

Although DNA tests proved it could not have been from Lt-Cmdr Speicher’s body, the father-of-two was presumed dead and given a memorial stone at the Arlington military cemetery in the US.

At the end of the Gulf war, Iraq released all 21 of the US military personnel which they were known to be holding and the country denied any knowledge of Lt-Cmdr Speicher’s fate.

Three years after the war ended, interest in the case was rekindled when a group of men from Qatar on a hunting expedition in western Iraq stumbled on his wrecked aircraft and news of their discovery was channelled back to the US government. Spy satellites which photographed the site saw what was described as a "man-made symbol" on the ground close to the plane, suggesting Lt-Cmdr Speicher had ejected before the crash and made an attempt to attract the attention of any passing rescuers.

Pentagon officials considered launching a covert operation which would drop a special forces unit at the site to look for further evidence of what had happened to Lt-Cmdr Speicher. The plan was vetoed by General John Shalikashvili, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said he could not ask servicemen to risk their lives "looking for old bones".

Two years later, a team of Red Cross investigators was allowed to visit the site, with the permission of Saddam, and found the canopy of the plane more than a mile from the rest of the debris, giving further weight to the theory Speicher had ejected.

In 2000, an Iraqi defector said he had picked up an injured US pilot from the desert six weeks into the Gulf war and driven him to Baghdad. He identified the man as Lt-Cmdr Speicher from photographs.

The defector’s evidence led to the Pentagon last year taking the unusual step of reclassifying their pilot as "missing in action". A leaked US intelligence report stated: "We assess that Iraq can account for Cmdr Speicher [sic] but that Baghdad is concealing information about his fate."

It added that the pilot "probably survived the loss of his aircraft and if he survived, he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis".