News-Info-Alerts

Re: Speicher - MSS Initials Reportedly Found on Baghdad Prison Wall

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: April 24, 2003

"1991 POW Pilot's Initials Said Seen in Cell

NewsMax.com
Thursday, April 24, 2003
A U.S. military search team has found Navy pilot Scott Speicher's initials -- MSS -- scratched into the wall of a cell in a Baghdad prison, NBC News has reported, citing unidentified U.S. officials

Speicher has been variously listed as the first casualty of the Gulf War or missing in action since being shot down over Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. His fate has been the subject of much speculation as well as Congressional interest.

A U.S. search team reportedly found Speicher's initials scratched into the wall of a Baghdad prison cell. However, spokesmen for the Pentagon and the U.S. Central Command said they had no information about the initials.

Speicher was initially listed as killed in action after his F-18 Hornet strike fighter was downed in the opening hours of the war. Later, the Navy changed his status to missing in action because of an absence of evidence that he died in the crash.

U.S. authorities have previously said that they had no intelligence that would indicate his current location or if he was still alive.

As late as March 25, 2002 Iraq invited the U.S. to send a team to Baghdad for talks on the fate of the missing pilot.

"Iraq is ready to receive any American team, accompanied by U.S. media, in order to discuss and document this issue under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross," said a statement issued at that time by the now defunct ministry of foreign affairs in Baghdad.

But a spokesman for the ministry added that Iraq believes the pilot is dead. "We have nothing to add to the findings of a previous U.S. team which visited Iraq in 1995 and concluded that the pilot was dead."

Quoting the spokesman, the state-run Iraqi News Agency said that in Dec. 1995 the U.S. team had visited "Iraq's western desert where Speicher's plane was downed, checked the wreckage and confirmed his death."

The spokesman said another team searched the area in 1993, using helicopters equipped with advanced radars but only found the wreckage.

The Pentagon had listed the 33-year old pilot as the first casualty of the Gulf War in 1991, and re-affirmed that finding in Sept. 1996, following the 1995 visit to the crash site, which it said was carried out by investigators from the Navy and Army’s Central Identification Laboratory.

However, in Jan. 2001, Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig changed the U.S. position and re-designated Speicher as missing in action. Subsequently, the State Department sent a formal application to Baghdad asking for more information about him.

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