News-Info-Alerts

Re: Senator Says Speicher Is Alive

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: September 15, 2002

"Senator says Navy officer reported killed in Gulf War is alive

By DAVID GOLDSTEIN The Kansas City Star

WASHINGTON - Sen. Pat Roberts says he now believes that Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, the first reported casualty of the Gulf War, is alive and being held in Iraq.

The Republican from Kansas said Thursday in an interview that recent intelligence data and other reports, including a book on the Speicher case, helped persuade him.

"If you add them all up, I think that's the conclusion," Roberts said.

The Senate recommended earlier this year that Speicher's rank be raised to captain. President Bush, in his speech about Iraq to the U.N. on Thursday, also referred to the possibility of Speicher being alive, although not by name.

Nor was the president as explicit as Roberts. But in listing the nationalities of the more than 600 prisoners that Iraq had agreed to release after the Gulf War, but who still remain unaccounted for, Bush said, "One American pilot is among them."

The president also appeared to make the settling of Speicher's fate one of the conditions that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein must meet to avoid war. Again, Bush did not refer to Speicher by name.

"If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown," Bush said.

Roberts, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been one of a handful of senators who have been championing the cause of Speicher, who grew up in Kansas City, for several years.

They were instrumental in getting the Pentagon to reclassify Speicher's status from killed in action to missing in action. Their current effort is aimed at changing his status to prisoner of war.

Up to now, Roberts has always carefully couched his view about Speicher's fate by saying, "He may be alive."

Speicher was 33 years old, with a wife and two young children, when his F/A-18 Hornet was shot down before dawn on Jan. 17, 1991, in the first few hours of the Gulf War. Questions have lingered ever since.

His crash site was not investigated until 1995, after which the CIA concluded that he probably survived. Earlier this year, British intelligence reportedly had information that he was alive. Iraqi officials labeled reports that he was alive and being held prisoner a "silly lie."

A book published this summer by a former naval intelligence officer concluded that the military, through both mistakes and purposeful neglect, never actively looked into the circumstances surrounding his crash.

Cindy Laquidara, an attorney for Speicher's former wife, Joanne Speicher Harris -- now remarried -- said she has seen much of the same information that Roberts has and could only say, "I can only tell you that there is still no information whatsoever that Scott has died."

To reach David Goldstein, Washington correspondent, call (202) 383-6105, or send e-mail to dgoldstein@krwashington.com."