News-Info-Alerts

Re: President Seeks Information On MIA Pilot

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: March 16, 2002

"Fri, Mar. 15, 2002
President seeks information on MIA pilot
Comrade: Flier possibly a captive
By Ron Word - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JACKSONVILLE - A pilot who was in the skies over Iraq when a missile downed Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher's FA-18 Hornet thinks his comrade survived the crash and could be held as a prisoner of war.

Retired Cmdr. Bob Stumpf, U.S. Sen. Bob Graham and President Bush are seeking a full accounting of the status of Speicher, a former Jacksonville resident who attended Florida State University. He was shot down Jan. 17, 1991, the first night of the Gulf War.

Speicher, 33, had been listed as the first casualty of the Gulf War, but reports of his being alive and imprisoned in Iraq have surfaced for years, leading the Pentagon to change his status last year from being killed in action to missing in action. His tombstone is over an empty grave at Arlington National Cemetery.

News reports this week said an Iraqi defector told intelligence officers about an American pilot being held and seen by only senior Iraqi officials.

"Emotionally and spiritually I believe he is alive," Stumpf said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "Only an extraordinary person could have endured physically and mentally under the conditions of his incarceration, but Scott is that type of man."

Stumpf was flying near Speicher as their FA-18 Hornets took off from the USS Saratoga and flew toward Baghdad to take out enemy defenses.

About eight minutes from their target, Stumpf saw a huge flash in the sky. He assumed it was a missile but didn't think any plane had been hit.

As the planes completed their mission and turned back to the Saratoga, all the pilots but Speicher checked in.

In a search of the crash site in December 1995, investigators found the canopy, which ejects with the pilot, spent flares and a survival kit. They also found a tattered flight suit. But no trace of Speicher was found.

'Scott is important'

Stumpf, former commander of the Navy's Blue Angels precision flying team, flew 22 combat missions in the Gulf War. He said the return of Speicher or his body is important.

"He represents a much more complex issue than just one MIA. Scott is important on many levels, not the least of which is our country's contract with its war-fighters, that they will not be left behind, physically or otherwise. We owe it to Scott - and all future fallen warriors - to do whatever it takes to get him back," said Stumpf, who lives in Pensacola.

At a news conference Wednesday, President Bush was asked whether he thought Saddam Hussein was holding Speicher.

"Wouldn't put it past him," Bush said.

Graham, D-Fla., is calling on the State Department to pressure Iraq for details on Speicher's fate.

"Iraqi leadership owes the United States information about the status of military personnel that are unaccounted for since the Persian Gulf War," Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said.

"With respect to the role of U.S. intelligence agencies, and what they have or have not learned to date about this matter, I am satisfied that they are pursuing vigorously intelligence leads concerning the fate of Commander Speicher," Graham said.

"Particularly now, as our country wages war on terrorism, our men and women fighting abroad, and their families need to have confidence that their country will do everything in its power to leave no American serviceman or woman behind."

"Emotionally and spiritually I believe he is alive. Only an extraordinary person could have endured physically and mentally under the conditions of his incarceration, but Scott is that type of man." "