News-Info-Alerts

Re: US Senate Group Leaves for Speicher Fact Finding Mission

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: January 17, 2003

"Capt. Scott Speicher Nelson, Roberts on trip to find out about Speicher

By RON WORD
Associated Press Writer


JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- A group of U.S. senators, including Florida's Bill Nelson, is leaving Saturday for the Middle East, hoping to learn the fate of missing Navy pilot Scott Speicher, whose plane was shot down over Iraq on the first night of the 1991 Gulf War.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, will help lead the 10-senator group. He has tried with Nelson to learn what happened to Speicher, an F-18 pilot from Jacksonville who was originally declared killed in action, but was later reclassified as missing in action and then captured.

Recent intelligence reports, Nelson said, indicate Speicher might be alive.

"This could be our best chance to find out what really happened," Nelson said Friday.

The group will receive diplomatic, military and intelligence briefings prior to the possible outbreak of war with Iraq. The exact itinerary is not being announced.

"Because of the sensitive nature of the trip, the countries and the times we'll be visiting are being kept classified, but I can tell you that at each step Pat Roberts and I will be taking up the Speicher issue," Nelson said.

Officials won't say if the group will visit Iraq or Kuwait, where officials from those countries and the Red Cross will meet next week to discuss the fate of hundreds of Kuwaitis who have been unaccounted for since the war.

An official from the Kuwaiti Embassy assured Nelson Friday that Speicher would be at the top of the agenda.

Some of the information that Speicher might be alive and still be held came from interviews with Iraqi defectors and a 1995 analysis of the wreckage of Speicher's plane and flight suit.

Nelson said a possible war with Iraq could complicate getting information on Speicher.

"On the eve of a military conflict, this makes it very difficult if he is alive when you are dealing with someone like Saddam Hussein," Nelson said.

Speicher's family in Orange Park is hopeful Nelson and Roberts can pry loose information about him, their attorney said Friday.

"We're very pleased the senator has called and told us he was on the way," attorney Cindy Laquidara said. "We have a lot of confidence and a lot of hope."

Laquidara said the family is pursuing two strategies in seeking information on Speicher -- one if there is a war and one is there is not a war.

"If there is a war, it will be more difficult for us," she said.

She said she could not discuss those strategies.

Nelson traveled to the Middle East last year and lobbied U.S. allies in the region to help find information about Speicher.

There's a rally scheduled today in Jacksonville to mark the 12th anniversary of Speicher being shot down over Iraq. He had been initially declared dead, but subsequent military and intelligence information led the Navy to change his status first to missing in action and last year to captured.

© 2003 The Associated Press"