News-Info-Alerts

Re: Speicher - DPMO On Hot Seat

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: July 11, 2002

"Inside the Ring Washington Times

Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough

Notes from the Pentagon.

Speicher update
     The Pentagon's Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office is on the hot seat. Critics say the office is dragging its feet in responding to an Iraqi government offer to allow a delegation of U.S. officials to go to Iraq and investigate the case of missing Navy pilot Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher.

      Pentagon officials tell us the office, known as DPMO, has been put in charge of handling the Speicher case.

     The Iraqi government announced on its official radio in March that it would allow a team of U.S. investigators to visit Iraq to resolve the case of Cmdr. Speicher. He was declared killed in action after his aircraft was shot down over Iraq in 1991. Then last year, Cmdr. Speicher was reclassified as missing in action based on new intelligence.

     The White House and Pentagon both have said through spokesmen that they are interested in determining the fate of Cmdr. Speicher.

     But three months later, the Pentagon, through DPMO, has not given any response to the Iraqis, we are told.

     Larry Greer, a DPMO official, said the Iraqi invitation "is still being evaluated" and the office is waiting to hear from senior Pentagon officials about what to do next.

     Meanwhile, Congress is growing impatient. The Senate last week passed an amendment to the defense-authorization bill requiring written reports on the Speicher case every three months.

     "It's apparent that we, as a nation, haven't done all we can to find out what happened to Scott Speicher," said Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Democrat, who sponsored the amendment."