News-Info-Alerts

Re: Source "Speicher Died Of His Injuries", Family Att'y Says Otherwise

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: August 13, 2003

"Source: 'Speicher Died Of His Injuries'

Family Attorney Says Other Evidence Shows He's Alive

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- NBC News is reporting that the search for missing Navy pilot Scott Speicher was unsuccessful.


The network is reporting that after four months, investigators have "all but concluded that Speicher died of his injuries" when his plane was shot down on the first night of the first Gulf War.


The evidence found reportedly indicates that the Jacksonville native's body was buried in the desert and that he was never taken prisoner.


With regard to his change of status to "alive presumed captured," senior military sources tell NBC that "Pentagon officials demanded the change to further justify the war" in Iraq.

Channel 4 spoke with Speicher family attorney, Cindy Laquidera, who said there is an equal amount of evidence that Speicher survived his plane being shot down, and that in 1995 a search team found no evidence of him being buried near the crash site.


Last week, DNA tests on hair samples from the Baghdad cell where initials matching Speicher's were found etched in the wall turn out to not belong to Speicher.

Speaking last week to members of the American Veterans convention meeting in Orlando, Jerry D. Jennings, deputy assistant secretary of defense, said there was "no evidence" that places Speicher in the cell.

Jennings, the head of the Pentagon's search for missing Americans, vowed that Speicher remains a top priority for American forces in Iraq, where a $1 million reward is being offered for information about the missing pilot. Special teams of U.S. investigators are following every lead, he said.

"We will not cease these efforts until we ... have recovered him alive or have his remains," Jennings said.

The Pentagon declared Speicher killed in action when his FA-18 Hornet was shot down over Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991. A decade later, it changed his status to prisoner of war after an Iraqi defector and others reported that an American was being held in Saddam Hussein's prison system.

Speicher is the only military pilot still unaccounted for from the 1991 Gulf War.

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