Navy: Iraqis Know MIA Pilot's Whereabouts
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
(09-08) 12:38 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Navy has been unable to determine whether Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher, the fighter pilot shot down over Iraq in January 1991, is dead or alive, but it decided to
keep his official status "missing/captured" and intensify investigative efforts.
Navy Secretary Gordon England on Wednesday approved the findings and recommendations of a Navy board of inquiry, which concluded that "elements of the former Iraqi regime know the whereabouts of Captain Speicher."
The board's report said this conclusion was based on the fact that some years after Speicher's F/A-18 fighter was shot down over the Iraqi desert on the opening night of the Gulf War the former Iraqi government turned
over items from the aircraft and a flight suit. The report did not say who in the former regime of Saddam Hussein is believed to have knowledge about what happened to the pilot after he was shot down.
The Iraqi government maintained from the start that Speicher perished at the site where his F/A-18 crashed after being hit by an Iraqi air-to-air missile. No evidence to contradict that has surfaced since the fall of
Baghdad in April 2003, but the new Navy inquiry concluded there was no credible evidence of his death, either.
The Navy has changed its position on Speicher's status over the years. Hours after his plane went down in the desert, the Pentagon publicly declared him killed in action. Ten years later, the Navy changed his status to missing in action, citing an absence of evidence that he had died. In October 2002, the Navy switched his status to "missing/captured," although it has never said what evidence it had that he ever was in captivity.
Members of the Navy board of inquiry, whose report was made public Thursday, did not go to Iraq or conduct their own investigation. They considered the findings of an initial Navy inquiry in May 1991, plus a report that was filed after a search of the crash site in 1996, and subsequent Navy deliberations on the case as well as a March 2005 intelligence report based on search efforts inside Iraq after Baghdad fell in 2003.
The head of an intelligence agency POW/MIA analytical group briefed members of the Navy board of inquiry in June, but details from that briefing were not made public because the information is classified secret.
The board recommended, and England agreed, that the Pentagon should work with the State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the Iraqi government to "increase the level of attention and effort inside Iraq" to
resolve the question of Speicher's fate.
It did not elaborate on how this should be done. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who has pressed the Navy on this matter for years, said in a statement hursday that he would ask Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for
details on how the Speicher search will be intensified.
Among the board's findings: "That Captain Speicher likely ejected from the aircraft and may have been captured by Iraqi forces." Also, given that the Iraqi government turned over a flight suit and other items associated
with Speicher's aircraft years ago, the board concluded that some members of the former Saddam regime know Speicher's whereabouts.
"In view of the above findings, the board concludes as to the current whereabouts and status of the person that the person is missing/captured," the report said.
A Pentagon team assigned to search for evidence of Speicher after the fall of Baghdad completed its efforts in May 2004. Marine Brig. Gen. Joseph J. McMenamin, who led the search team, told Congress afterward that
all in-country leads regarding the pilot's fate had been exhausted.
McMenamin added, however, that some leads could not be fully pursued because of the security threat from the Iraq insurgency. Another problem, he said, was that nomadic Bedouin tribesmen who may have information of
value are difficult to find. And some who might have information about Speicher may be intimidated by the threat of retribution by members of the former Saddam regime who are still at large.