News-Info-Alerts

Re: Pentagon Continues to Receive Intel

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: October 15, 2002

"Pentagon changes status of pilot missing during Gulf War

BY STEPHEN J. HEDGES Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - The Pentagon on Friday reclassified the status of a Navy pilot whose F/A-18 fighter jet disappeared during the Persian Gulf War as "missing/captured," concluding that he ejected from his plane over Iraq and was likely taken captive.

Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, whose plane crashed on the first night of the 1991 gulf war, was once listed as dead and was later classified by the Navy as missing in action.

But in a memorandum directing the change in Speicher's status, Navy Secretary Gordon England wrote, "I am personally convinced the Iraqis seized him sometime after his plane went down. Further, it is my firm belief that the government of Iraq knows what happened to Capt. Speicher."

Speicher's fate has for years been a matter of speculation, and Speicher's family and members of Congress have pressed the Pentagon to take more aggressive measures to determine what happened to him on Jan. 17, 1991. His plane went down after being struck by an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile about 150 southwest of Baghdad.

Lt. Cmdr. Pauline Storum, a Navy spokeswoman, said that listing Speicher as missing/captured "does not mean that we have proof that he is alive or is in Iraqi hands today. It does suggest that we believe the Iraqi government has a great deal of knowledge" about Speicher's fate.

The Iraqi government contends that Speicher died when his plane crashed.

The change in Speicher's status occurred hours after the Senate and House passed a resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force against Iraq. As such, the decision to reclassify the downed flyer, after years of uncertainty, is certain to take on political overtones.

In recent days President Bush and members of his administration have been assembling a list of grievances against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in an effort to garner international support for his removal. They have mentioned Speicher's case as part of that bill of particulars, though they have not used the pilot's name.

Speicher's case and the recognition of war prisoners held by Iraq are noted in the resolution Congress passed this week authorizing the president to use force against Iraq if he determines such action to be appropriate.

Members of Congress who have championed Speicher's cause said that Friday's change was not related to growing tensions with Iraq but instead to increasing evidence that Speicher did not die in the crash and that he may still be alive.

"It is the beginning of a recognition by the Department of Defense that they have made some errors," said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. "Through a series of mistakes we left a downed pilot. And then through mistakes, they declared him killed in action, and then they started to make amends for that by changing the status to missing in action.

"I think now this is finally getting around to the truth."

The Pentagon has struggled with Speicher's disappearance since the nighttime mission over Iraq. Speicher was classified as missing when he did not return as scheduled, and a Navy board changed that finding to "Killed in Action/Body Not Recovered" in May 1991.

Still unsure what happened, the Pentagon dispatched a Navy-Army investigative team to Iraq in December 1995. Working under the aegis of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, the team examined the crash site of Speicher's F/A-18, and concluded that Speicher had ejected from his plane. The team discovered a Navy flight suit near the crash scene and, as England's memo states, "the flight suit's condition indicated that the aviator wearing it was not in the aircraft at ground impact."

U.S. officials said the teams suspected that Iraq had seized the flight suit from Speicher after his capture and later planted it in the desert before the investigation team's visit.

The team also "determined that the cockpit area had been expertly excavated before the . . . team's arrival. All significant debris was removed."

The Navy, however, continued to consider Speicher killed in action, but pressure to change that designation intensified after September 1998, when the Senate Intelligence Committee received a classified briefing on the crash. In January 2001, then-Navy Secretary Richard Danzig officially changed Speicher's status to missing in action.

Iraq has refused to participate in discussions about war prisoners, including those captured from Kuwait, since 1996. But last summer it unexpectedly invited U.S. officials to Iraq to discuss Speicher's case.

The State Department replied with a note, sent through the Red Cross, inquiring whether Iraq had new information about Speicher, according to Greg Sullivan, a department spokesman. Iraq has not responded, and the prospect of a meeting to discuss the pilot has dwindled, he said.

In his memo, England explained that his decision to change Speicher's status was based on the evidence found at the crash scene during the 1995 examination, and the belief that Iraq has yet to account for Speicher's whereabouts. In recent years, sightings of Speicher have been reported by Iraqi defectors and a Kuwaiti intelligence official, though the State Department's Sullivan said such reports cannot always be trusted.

Storum said the change in Speicher's classification was based not just on crash evidence but on more recent evidence received by the Pentagon.

"The U.S. government continues to receive intelligence and other information regarding Speicher's status," Storum said. "Essentially, the decision today is based on that cumulative information."

© 2002, Chicago Tribune."