News-Info-Alerts

Re: Speicher Book

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: July 23, 2002

"New book says missing Gulf War pilot still alive, hidden in Iraq
BY WES SMITH
The Orlando Sentinel

ORLANDO, Fla. - KRT NEWSFEATURES

(KRT) - There is a tombstone in Arlington National Cemetery bearing his name and the date of his death.

Florida State University, his alma mater, named a building to honor his memory eight years ago.

And his wife in Jacksonville, Fla., advised of his death, remarried a decade ago and started a second family.

But relatives of U.S. Navy Captain Michael Scott Speicher and the author of a new book about him say there is mounting evidence that the Persian Gulf War pilot is alive and being held captive as a "trophy prisoner" by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

"We believe that the evidence is overwhelming that he is alive. There have been several sightings over the last two years, though his whereabouts are classified," said Richard Adams, a nephew and family spokesman. "It is my opinion that he is being held as a trophy prisoner until Saddam feels he needs him."

Last week, the Bush administration made another cautious move in the tortuous diplomatic game born of the lingering mystery surrounding the first United States soldier believed killed in the Gulf War - a Navy pilot who is now the only official MIA in military files.

Speicher was 33 years old with two young children at home in Jacksonville when his fighter jet went down in the first hours of battle over Iraq in January 1991. Because of reports by other pilots that there had been a ball of flame near the position of his plane - and because there was no radio contact from him - Speicher was classified as killed in action.

But within four years of his disappearance, there were increasing reports that Speicher may have successfully ejected and parachuted to the desert floor.

The Pentagon reclassified Speicher as missing in action early last year at the urging of family members. U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, pushed for the reclassification. Earlier this year, he asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to go a step further and officially list Speicher, who was born in Kansas, as a prisoner of war. The request is under consideration.

In his letter to Rumsfeld making the request, Roberts noted that an intelligence community assessment of the Speicher case concluded that the pilot "probably survived the loss of his aircraft, and if he survived, he was almost certainly captured by the Iraqis."

Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declined an invitation July 8 to meet with Iraq officials in Baghdad to discuss Speicher's case. They will instead request that the Iraqis, who have long claimed the U.S. pilot died in the Western Iraqi desert crash of his plane, provide them with any fresh information they might have to offer. If such information is provided, State Department officials may meet with their Iraqi counterparts in Switzerland at a later date.

To an outsider unfamiliar with the many intrigues of the Speicher case, this may have seemed like yet another feint in a hope-deprived diplomatic dance. But Adams said he, other family members and friends of "Spike" Speicher welcomed the news even of an opportunity denied.

"This has been in limbo since Iraq made the offer last March and I think it is positive that the talks are now moving forward through the State Department. Any dialogue is good dialogue at this point," Adams offered.

What he and U.S. officials did not say is that the slow movement on the diplomatic front is only the most public aspect of ongoing efforts to resolve this mystery and to either win the long-denied freedom of Scott Speicher himself, or to bring home his remains and offer some belated peace to his loved ones.

"If he was killed in action it was because it was what he loved to do and we are prepared to handle that," said Adams. "The hardest thing was going to the memorial and burial service without a body. I've been to Arlington a couple times to his tombstone but I've never gotten a sense of closure because I know his body is not there."

The mystery of Speicher's disappearance is the subject of the book "No One Left Behind," an analysis of the pilot's mysterious disappearance. It was written after eight years of research by former U.S. Naval Reserves intelligence officer Amy Waters Yarsinske of Norfolk, Va.

The 38-year-old author, an expert in contemporary and historical naval aviation, drew her conclusions from interviews with government and military officials, diplomats, pilots, Iraqi defectors and informers.

Her book concludes there were multiple cover-ups and mistakes made by military and government officials dealing in the Speicher case, including:

_The military's Joint Recovery Command Center claimed never to have received word that Speicher and his plane were missing on the night of the strike, hampering the search and rescue operations from the start.

_Attempts by a Bedouin tribe to return a pilot thought to be Speicher were repeatedly ignored over a three-year period by the Clinton administration and U.S. intelligence in the region.

_Information that the pilot may have ejected was not passed on to the Special Operations Command Center in charge of search and rescue.

_There has not been adequate investigation of suspicions that friendly fire may have caused Speicher's F/A-18 Hornet to crash.

_The pilot's name was not placed on the Red Cross list requesting repatriation of any captured Coalition personnel from the Iraqis, so that even if they did have him or his remains, they weren't required to give him up.

_The military initially overlooked the fact that body remains turned over to the U.S. by Iraq failed DNA tests to identify them as Speicher.

_A recovered flight suit alleged to have been Speicher's was lost in 1997, taking with it a crucial piece of evidence.

U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said mistakes may have been made, particularly right after Speicher's disappearance, in part because of the heat of battle.

"There was no ground search but the decision at the time was based on witness statements about what happened to his aircraft and the fact that there were no immediate signs that he survived," Lapan said.

Lapan noted that he and others in the Pentagon assisted Yarsinske in her research for the book though they do not share her conclusion that Speicher is still alive.

Yet, even while claiming uncertainty about Speicher's fate, the Pentagon has taken the unusual step of continuing to issue promotions to the missing pilot. Since his disappearance, he has been upgraded from the rank of lieutenant commander to commander and, just last week, to the rank of captain.

"We have continued to gather intelligence about Capt. Speicher but we do not know with certainty whether he is dead or alive and we really can't talk about the type of information we have because it comes from intelligence gathering," the Pentagon spokesman said. "Ultimately, it is our responsibility to provide a full accounting whether he is dead or alive."

Among those featured prominently in Yarsinske's book is Speicher's fellow pilot, Albert "Buddy" Harris, who married his friend's wife after Speicher was declared killed in action.

Yarsinske writes that Harris obtained access to classified files on Speicher's case while working at the Pentagon before officials there realized that he was married to the missing pilot's wife. Yarsinske said Harris has become a behind-the-scenes activist in the drive to determine what happened to his friend. He is now retired from the military and living near Jacksonville with Joanne, their two children and the two children of Scott and Joanne.

Neither Harris nor his wife, the former Joanne Speicher, will talk to the media about the book or Speicher's case, said Cindy Laquidara, the family attorney who is also chief deputy general counsel for the city of Jacksonville.

Joanne Speicher has stayed out of the spotlight with few exceptions since her husband was shot down in order to protect her children. Laquidara offered that family members are "quite angry" about the author's suggestions in the book that if Joanne Speicher had taken a more activist role her husband's disappearance might have been given greater priority after the Gulf War.

"I don't know how anybody can criticize Joanne," the attorney said. "She has tried to believe in her government. Each time something has come up she has tried to work with them."

Laquidara offered also that family members have purposely tried to remain positive and refused to be critical of the military or the U.S. government in the 11 years since Speicher disappeared.

"There will be plenty to criticize about the handling of this someday but we are focusing on getting Scott back," she said. "Once that is done, we will focus on helping make sure this doesn't happen again."

© 2002, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.)."