News-Info-Alerts

Re: Clues Lead to Missing Pilot

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: July 13, 2003

"Clues may lead to missing pilot
By Paul Pinkham | Morris News Service

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - On what would be Scott Speicher's 46th birthday Saturday, U.S. intelligence officials examined a 6-month-old Iraqi document that names the Jacksonville Navy pilot who disappeared over Iraq 12 years ago.

Aides to U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said intelligence officials and Arabic translators were poring through millions of pages of documents seized in Iraq in hopes of finding information about Capt. Speicher and weapons of mass destruction. Among those documents is a 90-page document dated in January that lists prisoners of war and includes Capt. Speicher's name.

Mr. Nelson's office said he met for several hours with Defense Intelligence Agency officials Friday to discuss new evidence that might shed light on Capt. Speicher's fate.

The senator is "considerably more optimistic than he was before these briefings that we're going to learn what happened to Capt. Speicher," said Dan Shapiro, Mr. Nelson's legislative director, who accompanied him to Iraq this month and to the Pentagon briefing.

"They're finding evidence all the time. It's mounting, and it's being translated," Mr. Shapiro said. He said Mr. Nelson is pressing the Pentagon to declassify some of the new information.

Capt. Speicher was declared dead the day after his F/A-18 Hornet was shot down over Iraq on the opening night of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. But subsequent intelligence determined he likely survived the crash and was captured. Last year, the Navy reclassified him as missing-captured, a designation similar to prisoner of war.

Officials cautioned that the 90-page document offers no evidence of whether Capt. Speicher is alive and might have been written either to provide an accounting of former Iraqi POWs or to confuse the U.S. military.

"I understand it to be a recent compilation of people in custody. ... I don't have an assessment yet of whether this is real information or planted information," said Cindy Laquidara, an attorney for Capt. Speicher's family in Orange Park, Fla. "But I can tell you there is more information about Scott being alive and in custody."

Ms. Laquidara said she has requested a copy of the document.

Mr. Nelson's office was more cautious.

"His optimism is specifically aimed at resolving the case, not at whether Scott Speicher is still alive," spokesman Dan McLaughlin said. "What he wants specifically is for the military to provide answers to the family.... This case needs to be resolved one way or the other."

Mr. Shapiro also said Mr. Nelson is impatient that forensic tests haven't been completed on evidence gathered from Hakmiyah Prison in Baghdad, where Mr. Speicher's initials were found in April carved into a wall.

--From the Sunday, July 13, 2003 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle

© 2003 The Augusta Chronicle"