News-Info-Alerts

Re: Speicher Trip Postponed

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: January 18, 2003

"Trip to Resolve Fate Of Pilot Delayed

By RON WORD
The Associated Press

JACKSONVILLE -- A group of U.S. senators including Florida's Bill Nelson, hoping to learn the fate of missing Navy pilot Scott Speicher, postponed a trip to the Middle East on Friday because of unfinished Senate business in Washington.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., called Nelson's office to say the trip would have to be delayed while Congress tries to resolve the unfinished spending bill for the current budget year, which will now drag on into next week, said Dan McLaughlin, a spokesman for Nelson's office.

McLaughlin said the contingent will wait until the Senate's next recess in mid-February to organize another trip to look into the fate of Speicher, whose plane was shot down over Iraq on the first night of the 1991 Gulf War.
The week of Feb. 17 is the next scheduled break for Senate business.

"It likely will be Tuesday night before they get finished, so rather than have a truncated trip, they would schedule on the next recess," McLaughlin said.

Speicher, an F-18 pilot from Jacksonville, 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.

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

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

Copyright 2003 The Ledger"