News-Info-Alerts

Re: Speicher Status Change

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: October 13, 2002

"Gulf War pilot’s status now missing-captured

By Matt Kelley Associated Press

The Navy has changed the status of Gulf War pilot Michael Scott Speicher from missing in action to missing-captured, Sen. Pat Roberts said Friday.

A defense official confirmed that Navy Secretary Gordon England had approved the change in status, which had been in the works for months.

Speicher, a Navy F-18 pilot who was shot down over Iraq on the opening night of the Gulf War in January 1991, initially was listed as killed in action, with no body recovered. But in January 2001, the Navy changed his status to missing in action, given an absence of evidence that he died in the crash.

Iraq says Speicher was killed in the crash.

Roberts, R-Kan., and other members of Congress have been pressing the Pentagon this year to change Speicher’s status. Some in the Navy had worried that declaring Speicher captured would be seen as a political move as part of President Bush’s drive to win support for possible military action against Saddam Hussein.

The change in status “sends a symbolic message to the Iraqis, to other adversaries and most important to the men and women of the armed forces that we will accept nothing less than full disclosure of circumstances surrounding the missing and captured,” Roberts said.

Though not mentioning Speicher by name, Bush has referred in several recent speeches to a U.S. pilot still missing in Iraq.

There is no known physical evidence that Speicher was captured, but U.S. intelligence agencies believe it is a possibility. It is widely believed inside the Navy that Iraq knows more about Speicher’s fate than it has acknowledged.

Last year, U.S. intelligence agencies said in a report to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Speicher probably ejected from his plane and survived the shootdown. “We assess Lt. Cmdr. Speicher was either captured alive or his remains were recovered and brought to Baghdad,” the report said. In either case, the Iraqi government has concealed information about his fate, it said.

In July, the State Department sent a diplomatic note through the International Committee of the Red Cross asking whether the Iraqi government can offer new details about Speicher.

In a July 8 letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he agreed with Powell’s suggestion that a note be delivered “to confirm Iraq’s intention to provide new information.”

In March, Iraq offered to meet with U.S. officials in Baghdad to discuss the case.

A U.S. excavation team visited the crash site in 1995, finding aircraft debris but no human remains. U.S. officials have said the site was tampered with because reconnaissance photos showed part of the plane removed, then returned, before the excavation team arrived.

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. "