News-Info-Alerts

Re: Speicher Status Change Rumored

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 14, 2002

"U.S. Mulls POW Status for Pilot Lost in Iraq
By REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy may change the status of a pilot shot down over Iraq at the start of the Gulf War from ``missing'' to ``prisoner of war,'' although it has no new evidence suggesting he is alive, NBC News reported on Wednesday.

Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher was lost on the first day of the war when his Navy F/A-18 fighter jet was apparently hit and crashed in a fireball over Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991.

The United States initially listed Speicher as ``killed in action'' but changed that to ``missing in action'' in January 2001 in response to evidence that he might have survived the crash of his plane.

A U.S. intelligence report compiled last year and obtained by NBC News found that Speicher was either captured alive or his remains recovered and taken to Baghdad, NBC said.

``Navy Secretary Gordon England finds the evidence and the logic compelling enough to declare Speicher a POW,'' NBC reported, citing unnamed sources.

NBC said military officials insisted there was no new evidence to indicate that even if Speicher was captured that he was still alive. According to NBC, the officials claimed the Navy was under intense political pressure to make the change and that the pressure was coming from hard-liners in the Bush administration and in Congress to further justify an attack on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The decision on whether to change Speicher's status is expected within weeks, the network said.

A Navy spokesman did not immediately return phones calls seeking comment.

Iraq maintains that the American pilot died in the crash and has denied reports that he may be held captive. In April, Iraq invited the United States to send investigators to look into Speicher's fate.

A U.S. military team searched for Speicher's remains in 1995 but the mission ended inconclusively. The Jacksonville, Florida, resident was 33 when he went missing.

Copyright 2002 Reuters Ltd."