Scott Speicher: Dead or alive?

http//www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,930790,00.html

End in sight to riddle of missing US airman
Military officials confident they will discover fate of pilot lost in 1991 war

Lawrence Donegan in San Francisco
Sunday April 6, 2003
The Observer

As endgames of this Gulf war are played out, there are hopes that the advance into the heart of the Iraqi capital will also bring an end to one of the enduring intrigues of the previous conflict - the whereabouts of US airman Michael Scott Speicher.

In 1991 Lieutenant Commander Speicher from Jackson, Florida, was part of the first air mission over Iraq. The F-18 fighter pilot took off from the deck off the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga on 16 January - and flew into a 12-year mystery.

In the confusion of heavy anti-aircraft fire as well as air-to-air missile attacks from Iraqi jets, two other navy pilots on the bombing raid saw a bright explosion. When Speicher, then 33, failed to return to the ship, they assumed his plane had been destroyed by enemy fire.

The then US Defence Secretary Dick Cheney went on television to announce that the US had suffered its first casualty in the war. The pilot was given a tomb in the Arlington National Cemetery. His home town mourned him with a vigil and a memorial. His wife, Joanne, wept and hugged their two children, Michael, one and Meghan, three.

But within a few years doubts about Speicher's fate began to emerge. The US received intelligence reports indicating the F-18 had not been destroyed but had crash-landed and its pilot had ejected. In 1996 his bloodstained and discarded flight suit was found by a Red Cross mission while the Iraqi authorities continued to deny they had either found a body or taken a prisoner. 'He was probably eaten by wolves,' was one official's remark.

A series of intelligence reports and accounts by Iraqi defectors during the Nineties bolstered the belief among former military colleagues and political figures that the pilot may have survived. By the time Speicher's wife was informed, in 1996, she had remarried - even more awkwardly, to Speicher's best friend, Buddy Harris.

The reports were taken seriously enough for the then President Bill Clinton to announce in January 2001 that Speicher had been reclassified from Killed in Action to Missing in Action. 'We have some information that leads us to believe he might be alive,' Clinton said at the time. As a result of this announcement Joanne Speicher Harris once again began to receive his monthly salary of $6,313.

The reasoning behind Clinton's decision became clear a couple of months later with the publication of US intelligence which stated 'We assess that Iraq can account for Captain Speicher, but that Baghdad is concealing information about his fate.' The report concluded that the navy pilot had survived the loss of his aircraft and was 'either captured alive or his remains were recovered and brought to Baghdad.'

There were further developments in early 2002, when an Iraqi defector interviewed by Dutch intelligence services claimed to have seen Speicher alive and in good health, but that he now walked with a limp and had facial scars. He also alleged that on the day after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington in September 2001, the American pilot was moved from Baghdad to a military facility in case of US reprisals.

A further change in the pilot's status was announced soon afterwards by US Navy Secretary Gordon England who said he now considered him MIA - captured - effectively declaring him a prisoner of war of the Iraqi regime.

A fresh navy inquiry into the affair concluded that the recovery of Speicher's flight suit, the tampering of wreckage from the F-18 and Iraq's past history of detaining PoWs for years (earlier this year Iraq returned around 100 prisoners taken captive during the 1980-88 war with Iran) all 'continued to suggest strongly that the government of Iraq can account for him'.

As recently as last month US intelligence agencies reported that a US pilot believed to be Speicher had been seen alive in Baghdad. The Defence Department recently confirmed reports that a Special Operations team was dispatched into Iraq before the start of the current conflict with the specific purpose of trying to track down the airman.

Orders have been given to a unit on the ground in Baghdad now to make finding him a priority.

Julie Speicher, the airman's cousin and one of the leading lights of the Friends Work to Free Scott Speicher campaign group, said there was no doubt in her mind that the Iraqi government had been holding him captive for the past 12 years. 'I think they grabbed him when he came down. I really think he's alive,' she said, adding that his release would be a great day for the Speicher family.

For his friend, and now stepfather to his two children, Buddy Harris, the situation is difficult but surmountable. He has said that he sat Speicher's children down and told them 'The worst thing that's going to happen is that somebody is going to come back into your lives who loves you more than anything else. Having more than one person love you can't be bad.'

Navy Changes Gulf War Pilot Status

By Matt Kelly

.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Navy has changed the status of Gulf War pilot Scott Speicher from missing in action to missing-captured, Sen. Pat Roberts said Friday.

A defense official confirmed that Navy Secretary Gordon England had approved the change in status, which had been in the works for months.

Speicher, a Navy F-18 pilot who was shot down over Iraq on the opening night of the Gulf War in January 1991, initially was listed as killed in action, with no body recovered. But in January 2001, the Navy changed his status to missing in action, given an absence of evidence that he died in the crash.

Iraq says Speicher was killed in the crash.

Roberts, R-Kan., and other members of Congress have been pressing the Pentagon this year to change Speicher's status. Some in the Navy had worried that declaring Speicher captured would be seen as a political move as part of President Bush's drive to win support for possible military action against Saddam Hussein.

The change in status ``sends a symbolic message to the Iraqis, to other adversaries and most important to the men and women of the armed forces that we will accept nothing less than full disclosure of circumstances surrounding the missing and captured,'' Roberts said.

Though not mentioning Speicher by name, Bush has referred in several recent speeches to a U.S. pilot still missing in Iraq.

There is no known physical evidence that Speicher was captured, but U.S. intelligence agencies believe it is a possibility. It is widely believed inside the Navy that Iraq knows more about Speicher's fate than it has acknowledged.

Last year, U.S. intelligence agencies said in a report to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Speicher probably ejected from his plane and survived the shootdown. ``We assess Lt. Cmdr. Speicher was either captured alive or his remains were recovered and brought to Baghdad,'' the report said. In either case, the Iraqi government has concealed information about his fate, it said.

In July, the State Department sent a diplomatic note through the International Committee of the Red Cross asking whether the Iraqi government can offer new details about Speicher.

In a July 8 letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he agreed with Powell's suggestion that a note be delivered ``to confirm Iraq's intention to provide new information.''

In March, Iraq offered to meet with U.S. officials in Baghdad to discuss the case.

A U.S. excavation team visited the crash site in 1995, finding aircraft debris but no human remains. U.S. officials have said the site was tampered with because reconnaissance photos showed part of the plane removed, then returned, before the excavation team arrived.

                      Pilot believed alive, held in Iraq 
03/11/2002

                      By Bill Gertz
                      THE WASHINGTON TIMES

U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained new information indicating Iraq is holding captive a U.S. Navy pilot shot down during the Persian Gulf war, The Washington Times has learned. 

British intelligence provided the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) with the new information several months ago, and intelligence officials said it could assist in the ongoing investigation into the fate of Navy  Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher.

Cmdr. Speicher was declared killed in action in 1991 after his F-18 Hornet was shot down over Iraq. But last year he was re-classified as "missing in action" by the Pentagon, based on information from an Iraqi defector.

According to U.S. intelligence officials, the British intelligence information was based on an additional intelligence source — someone who had been in Iraq and  said he had learned that an American pilot is being held captive in Baghdad.

The British report stated further that only two Iraqis were permitted to see the captive American pilot: the chief of Iraq's intelligence service, and Uday Hussein, son of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The new intelligence has led some Pentagon officials to believe Iraq is holding Cmdr. Speicher prisoner.

One U.S. official said the new agent offered to identify the exact location in Baghdad where the American is being held and also offered to obtain a photograph of the prisoner.

A defense official said the new information is not related to an earlier report from an Iranian pilot who was repatriated recently to Iran and said that he had seen an American held prisoner in Iraq. "That was checked out, and the intelligence community didn't find anything about it," the defense official said.

President Bush has been briefed on the new intelligence on Cmdr. Speicher and the likelihood of an American POW in Baghdad is being factored into U.S. policy toward future operations against Iraq, the officials said.

DIA spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Jim Brooks said the Speicher case is "an active investigation." The agency "investigates and continues to investigate all reports regarding the Speicher case." He declined to comment further on specific reports on the case.

A White House spokesman could not be reached for comment.

It could not be learned if the Bush administration is taking steps to contact the Iraqi government about Cmdr. Speicher. However, U.S. intelligence agencies are continuing to gather information on the case, the official said.

The CIA sent a notice to Congress Feb. 4 saying it had obtained new intelligence related to Cmdr. Speicher and is expected to provide more information in a briefing that could come as early as this week, one official said.

A U.S. intelligence report from March 2001 stated: "We assess that Iraq can account for Cmdr. Speicher but that Baghdad is concealing information about his fate."

The report, ordered by the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated that Cmdr. Speicher "probably survived the loss of his aircraft, and if he survived, he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis."

The report stated that Cmdr. Speicher's aircraft was shot down by an Iraqi jet firing an air-to-air missile, and that the jet crashed in the desert west of Baghdad.

An unclassified summary of the report, "Intelligence Community Assessment of the Lieutenant Commander Speicher Case," was obtained by The Times.

The intelligence community report said that after the Gulf war cease-fire, Cmdr. Speicher was not among the 21 U.S. military personnel released, nor were his remains returned.

The new intelligence information bolsters an earlier report from an Iraqi national. In 1999, an Iraqi defector reported to U.S. intelligence officials that he had taken an injured U.S. pilot to Baghdad six weeks after the Gulf war began. He identified Cmdr. Speicher in a photograph as the pilot.

Based on the defector report and pressure from Sen. Robert C. Smith, New Hampshire Republican, the Navy changed Cmdr. Speicher's status from killed in action to missing in action on Jan. 11, 2001.

The intelligence community report stated that during an investigation of the crash site in 1995, Iraqi officials provided investigators with a flight suit that appeared to be the one worn by Cmdr. Speicher. The flight suit had been cut.

The intelligence report concluded that the pilot "probably survived the crash of his F/A-18."

"We assess Lt. Cmdr. Speicher was either captured alive or his remains were recovered and brought to Baghdad," the report said.

Mr. Bush has called Iraq one of three "axis of evil" states, and there have been intelligence reports indicating Iraq may have supported the September 11 attacks.

The government of the Czech Republic monitored a meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence officer and Mohamed Atta, regarded by U.S. investigators as a ringleader for the September 11 attacks.

Senior Pentagon policy-makers have said Iraq should be the next target for U.S. anti-terrorism operation.

Cmdr. Speicher was the pilot of a Navy F-18 jet that was shot down by enemy fire on Jan. 17, 1991, the first day of combat operations in the Gulf war.

Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney said during a news conference that same day that the pilot had been killed, and the Navy declared Cmdr. Speicher killed in action five months later.

The intelligence community report said that Iraq's government learned that the pilot was declared dead and as a result felt it probably did not have to account for him at the end of the war.

At first the Pentagon believed Cmdr. Speicher's aircraft was hit by either a ground- or air-fired missile and broke up in flight.

But the aircraft was later found intact and its canopy was found some distance from the crash, a sign the pilot had ejected.

The CIA also was told about the capture of an American pilot in the early 1990s but dismissed the information as coming from an unreliable agent, the officials said. The agency later acknowledged its dismissal was an error, U.S. officials said.

National Alliance of Families
For The Return of America's Missing Servicemen
World War II - Korea - Cold War - Vietnam - Gulf War

Dolores Alfond - 425-881-1499
Lynn O'Shea --- 718-846-4350
Web Site http://www.nationalalliance.org
email -- lynnpowmia@prodigy.net

Here are two important stories.  The above article is from the Washington Times regarding Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher.  The second article from CNN.com contains the Pentagon debunking.

#####################

Before the ink was dry on this story the debunking began....

CNN.com - U.S. officials downplay report on Navy pilot in Iraq - March 11, 2002

March 11, 2002 Posted: 8:10 AM EST (1310 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. officials Monday downplayed a published report that a U.S. Navy pilot thought to have been killed in action during the Persian Gulf War might be alive and held in Iraq.

The report in Monday's Washington Times said U.S. intelligence agencies had received new information about Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher. Navy Secretary Richard Danzig last year changed Speicher's status from Killed in Action/Body not Recovered to Missing in Action. But one U.S. official said Monday, "If Scott Speicher were still alive, Saddam Hussein would have brought him out for propaganda."

Another official said, "This story has been out once or twice already."  The official said he had no knowledge of any recent information to support the idea, including and beyond the time span the newspaper cited.

Speicher's F/A-18 aircraft was shot down by enemy fire on January 17, 1991, the first day of the air war over Iraq. He was placed on MIA status  the next day.

On May 22, 1991, following a secretary of the Navy status review board  that found "no credible evidence" to suggest he had survived, his status  was changed to Killed in Action/Body not Recovered.

In December 1995, working through the International Committee of the Red Coss, investigators from the Navy and Army's Central Identification Laboratory entered Iraq and conducted a thorough excavation of the
crash site.

In September 1996, based on a comprehensive review of evidence accumulated since the initial determination, the secretary of the Navy reaffirmed the presumptive finding of death.

But over the years since that determination was made, the Navy and the U.S. government consistently have sought new details and continued to analyze all available information to resolve Speicher's fate.  This additional
analysis, when added to the information considered in 1996, underscored the need for a new review.

Based on the review, Danzig concluded that Speicher's status should be MIA, and the change was made in January 2001.

By Christine Spolar
Tribune foreign correspondent

March 12, 2002

WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence agents are working to corroborate new information from an Iraqi defector that an American pilot shot down over Iraq a decade ago is alive and imprisoned by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, government sources said.

New evidence about the Navy pilot, Michael Scott Speicher, surfaced in late January. President Bush and top advisers in the State and Defense Departments were informed by intelligence agents that a one-time high-ranking military adviser to Hussein, who defected earlier this year, has information that the American pilot was alive as of January.

Speicher, who would be 44 today, was classified killed in action from 1991 until January 2001. The CIA, the Navy and President Clinton reviewed what were considered serious gaps in intelligence analysis concerning the Speicher case. On Jan. 10, 2001, based on evidence that the pilot survived the crash and was seen in Iraq, Speicher was reclassified as missing in action.

The Iraqi defector first spoke earlier this year to Dutch intelligence about an imprisoned American pilot in Iraq. According to sources, the defector told interrogators that the American pilot in prison was in good health but walks with a limp and has facial scars.

The defector has been deemed credible through his descriptions of both Speicher, whom he did not name, and his knowledge of prisons where the pilot is thought to have been held, sources said.

Bush is kept informed about the case, and Secretary of State Colin Powell is "very much engaged," according to another well-placed source.

The imprisonment of Speicher, the first American lost in the war against Iraq in 1991, would have a powerful effect on, if not trigger a powerful reaction from, the Bush administration, which had made clear it wants Hussein ousted.

Attempts to verify the defector's claims intensified in February, sources said. Public comments by the administration regarding Iraq sharpened within the same week, including Powell's statement that the United States was weighing ways to topple Hussein.

The defector said the pilot had been held at Iraqi Intelligence Headquarters, the same building that the United States bombed in 1993 in retaliation for an assassination attempt on President George Bush, the father of the current president and the leader of the 1991 allied coalition against Iraq.

The defector told intelligence agents that the pilot was moved to a military facility on Sept. 12, the day after Islamic terrorists hijacked American airliners and drilled them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Iraqis feared reprisals from the United States and wanted to safeguard their captive, the defector told his interrogators.

The defector said only a handful of Iraqis are aware of the pilot's existence, and that Hussein and his son, Qusay, closely monitor his well-being, sources said.

Interest from administration

The case of Michael Scott Speicher appears to have a special resonance for the current administration. Bush's father led the allied force coalition in the gulf. Powell then was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Vice President Dick Cheney was secretary of defense.

Cheney's role is particularly sensitive because, during the first press briefing after the first strike in 1991, Cheney declared Speicher dead. That announcement was both premature and problematic for the military, which at the time was seeking information about the downing of Speicher's plane.

"This is important to them," said one source knowledgeable about the White House interest in the case. "The people in charge then are the people in charge now."

The Speicher case continues to generate interest in the Senate, which has been conducting an investigation on intelligence lapses in the case. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), a member of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee, wrote to the Pentagon in February that Speicher should be listed as a prisoner of war.

Roberts said in his letter that changing the status would better reflect unanswered questions about the "exceptional and compelling" case of the missing fighter pilot.

"If Capt. Speicher lives, we must make every effort to attain for him the freedom he has so long been denied. His case reaffirms to our nation, albeit somewhat belatedly, that we will never abandon our soldiers even if some embarrassment falls to our government," Roberts wrote to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Declared missing in action

Speicher was listed as killed in action from May 1991, four months after the war. He was reclassified as missing in action--in an unprecedented decision by the Navy--nearly 10 years later, in January 2001.

The change in status occurred in the last days of the Clinton administration. Congressional inquiries and extensive media reports raised serious questions about whether the airman, in fact, had died after his F/A-18 was hit by enemy fire over Iraq.

The New York Times first reported that Speicher's shattered plane was discovered in the desert in 1993 by a Qatar source and that the Joint Chiefs of Staff balked at embarking on a secret mission to recover the body. The newspaper reported that a mission, conducted with Iraq's knowledge, was not completed until late 1995. No evidence of the pilot was found, it was reported.

CBS' "60 Minutes II" later reported that in the days and weeks after the shootdown in 1991, U.S. forces never searched for Speicher because they believed the plane to be a total loss. The CBS program noted that investigators who went to the crash site in 1995 had found no human remains or other evidence that Speicher had died.

The network also revealed that American military and intelligence circles were grappling with some startling new information in 1999. There was another Iraqi defector, who was interrogated by American intelligence and passed multiple polygraph tests, who claimed he had driven a pilot who fit Speicher's description to a military facility outside Baghdad during the first week of the war.

CIA acts after broadcast

The CIA analysis was ordered within weeks of the broadcast and, in December 2000, a classified accounting of the Speicher case was sent to the Navy, the National Security Council and Clinton.

The 100-plus page document, which remains classified, asserted that Speicher's jet was hit by an Iraqi air-to-air missile, that there was a successful ejection and that the Iraqi source who described driving him after the shootdown was credible.

In a seven-page declassified version of facts released last year, the CIA asserted that Speicher probably survived being shot down, and "if he survived, he was almost certainly captured by the Iraqis."

As a result of Speicher's reclassification to missing in action in January 2001, the United States sent a formal demarche to Iraq demanding information about him.

Clinton: He `might be alive'

In a radio interview then, Clinton said that Speicher "might be alive" and "if he is . . . we're going to do everything to get him out."

Iraq rebuffed inquiries about Speicher and indicated, as Iraqi officials had told reporters, that he might have been eaten by wolves in the desert.

Inquiries by the United Nations and the Tripartite Commission responsible for missing soldiers from the gulf war provided no new information.

Late in 2001, the Iraq government issued its first written response to the Tripartite Commission, denying knowledge of Speicher.

Speicher, a lieutenant commander at the time of the war, has been promoted to commander in the past year, and, more recently, to captain.

His wife, who has since remarried, and children have been compensated with back pay for their loss over the past decade. The family has maintained a strict silence on the case.

Copyright (c) 2002, Chicago Tribune

Senator suspects pilot alive in Iraq
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A  member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said yesterday he suspects a Navy pilot shot down over Iraq in 1991 is alive and being  held captive as the State Department said Baghdad has ignored U.S.  requests for information about the pilot's fate.

Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican, said in an interview that he has asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to classify Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher as a prisoner of war, instead of missing in action. The Pentagon changed Cmdr. Speicher's status last year from killed to missing in action.

"The bottom line is there is no evidence he was killed when his aircraft was shot down in 1991," Mr. Roberts said. "On the contrary, there are numerous reports that indicate he could be alive."  State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Iraqi  government has not replied to U.S. diplomatic appeals asking for information about the fate of Cmdr. Speicher.

A formal diplomatic note was sent to Baghdad in January 2001 asking for  information about the pilot. The issue also was raised in diplomatic meetings with Iraqi officials in Geneva, Mr. Boucher said.

On Friday at a meeting of diplomats in Geneva known as the Tripartite Commission, U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait Richard Jones told Iraqi officials: "Iraq continues to shirk its responsibility to answer the many unresolved
questions about Cmdr. Speicher's fate."

Sen. Robert C. Smith, New Hampshire Republican and member of the Armed Services Committee, said he has been tracking reports on the Speicher case for more than five years.

"Unfortunately, we have not yet accounted for Commander Speicher, but I will continue to work with the administration to determine his fate," Mr. Smith said through a spokesman. "We must vigorously pursue every lead for the sake of Commander Speicher and his family. We owe him nothing less."

Pentagon officials are expected to brief Congress on the case as early as today.  The administration and congressional officials were responding  to a report in yesterday's editions of The Washington Times that  said new intelligence information was uncovered in the last several months indicating Cmdr. Speicher is being held prisoner in Iraq.

Cmdr. Speicher was declared killed in action in 1991, but his status was changed last year to missing in action. It was an  unprecedented action and put the Pentagon in the position of  possibly having left behind an American at the end of the Gulf war.

A spokesman for the Iraqi mission to the United Nations could  not be reached for comment.

Mr. Roberts, in a Feb. 14 letter to Mr. Rumsfeld, stated that a recent U.S. intelligence community assessment of the case concluded that Cdmr. Speicher "probably survived the loss of his aircraft and if he survived, he almost
certainly was captured by the Iraqis."

"This strongly suggests the more appropriate designator or status of POW," Mr. Roberts stated in the letter. "I believe the status of POW sends a symbolic message not only to the Iraqis, but to other adversaries, current and future - and most importantly to the men and women of the U.S. armed forces and the American people."

Mr. Roberts said in the interview he discussed the Speicher case with President Bush three weeks ago, and that the president assured him the case is "very high on his agenda."

The possibility of an American POW in Baghdad also is complicating U.S. efforts to expand the war on terrorism to Iraq,  U.S. officials said.   Mr. Roberts said the Pentagon has put together a special team  of officials to investigate the case.

The senator also noted that various intelligence reports about  an American pilot held in Iraq "tend to add up."  Asked if he believes Cmdr. Speicher is alive, Mr. Roberts said:   "I can't say conclusively that he's there, but that's not the point.  They can't say conclusively he's not alive, and the presumption is  they must aggressively pursue every avenue of this case."

Intelligence officials said reports that Cmdr. Speicher is alive in Iraq have been surfacing since 1991, when two Iraqi  nationals told the CIA that Iraq was holding an American pilot. The CIA dismissed the information as coming from unreliable sources.

In 1995, Cmdr. Speicher's F-18 aircraft was found and an investigation team went to the site and determined that the pilot ejected before it crashed. Iraq also provided Cmdr. Speicher's  flight suit at that time.

Then in 1999, an Iraqi defector reported driving an American pilot to Baghdad six weeks after the war started. That report eventually led to the reclassification of Cmdr. Speicher as missing in action.

Several months ago, the Defense Intelligence Agency and CIA obtained new information from a foreign intelligence service stating that a person who had been in Iraq had learned that an American pilot was held by the Iraqis. The source said the pilot's only   visitors were Saddam's son Uday and the chief of Iraqi intelligence.

Some intelligence officials yesterday sought to play down the new intelligence information by claiming that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would not have kept secret the fact that an American pilot  was captured and would have used the pilot for propaganda purposes.

Other intelligence officials said Saddam is just as likely to have kept secret its possession of a U.S. prisoner of war. These officials note that Saddam's government held one Iranian pilot as a prisoner of war for 17 years, all the while denying it held any Iranian prisoners of war.

See the National Alliance of Families website for the ENTIRE newsletter.....

             Posted on Tue, Mar. 19, 2002

             U.S. pilot shot down in Gulf War reportedly seen in Baghdad in 1998
             BY DAVID GOLDSTEIN
             Knight Ridder Newspapers

             WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Iraqi dissidents say that Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, the former Kansas City, Mo., resident shot down and reported killed during the Gulf War in 1991, was seen alive as
recently as four years ago.

             A member of the London-based Iraqi National Congress, who asked to remain anonymous, said in an interview with The Kansas City Star that the group has information that Speicher was being held  prisoner by the Iraqi government and was last seen in 1998 at a military hospital near Baghdad.

             The Iraqi National Congress is a group of Iraqi defectors and other opponents of the Iraqi regime. It was organized with help from  the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1990s and favors the overthrow of Iraq President Saddam Hussein. Although it has support from the top levels of the Bush administration, some experts on the region question its reliability.

             The group's information on Speicher, a 33-year-old Navy pilot reported killed in the war's first night of combat, is the second suggestion in a week that he might still be alive, or was for several years. 

             A report surfaced last week that British intelligence had passed on information from a third party who allegedly had said Speicher  was alive and being held captive.

             Several former national security and intelligence officials say that intelligence from the Iraqi National Congress, however, should be treated with caution because of its fervent anti-Hussein agenda. 

             "Some of their information is good; a lot is not good," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of counterterrorism for the CIA. "There is no way to distinguish between the two. It's like a long river; some depths are deeper than others. It's not reliable."

             Several skeptical former officials also said that at a time when the United States is openly courting support for a strike against Iraq, the dissidents have an interest in demonizing Hussein even more.

             Raising the possibility that Speicher may be his prisoner aids their cause, they said.

             Former CIA Director James Woolsey said he has been "reasonably satisfied" with the information provided by the Iraqi defectors that he has dealt with in the past. Woolsey, a supporter of the Iraqi National Congress, noted that his law firm represents officials involved with the group, but that he recuses himself from those cases.

             The Speicher investigation also received some attention in Congress Tuesday at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

             In response to a question from Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said: "Our conclusion is that we don't  know for sure what happened to (Speicher). But the Iraqis do know, and we certainly do not exclude the possibility that he could be 
alive and still be held captive."

             That was the finding in a report prepared a year ago by the intelligence community. An unclassified version of the report,  which began circulating last week, concluded that Speicher "probably survived the loss of his aircraft, and if he survived, he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis."

             Baghdad has discounted those reports. Iraq claimed that he "was devoured by animals, and no remains were found," the report stated.

             Officials from the Red Cross did not investigate the crash site of Speicher's F/A-18 Hornet until 1995, although the area had been located years before. The report stated the officials "found evidence that the site had been expertly searched within one month prior to the team's arrival."

            It stated that Navy experts concluded that Speicher had ejected before the crash. The canopy of his jet was found, but not the ejection seat. The experts determined that Speicher had "at  least an 85 to 90 percent chance of surviving" the flash and explosion that brought down his plane.

             In the interview with The Kansas City Star, the Iraqi National Congress member said that the group's intelligence indicates that when Speicher emerged from the crash, he was found and "beaten" by local villagers.

             "Saddam put a $25,000 reward for each killed pilot," the congress member said.

             He said that Speicher was held by the Iraqi intelligence service and at some point transferred to the Rashid military hospital outside Baghdad where he spent four months, according to their information.

             "The last time he was seen alive was 1998," the dissident said. Two years ago, the Pentagon reversed field after nine years and reclassified Speicher as "missing in action" from "killed in action." Roberts has been urging the Pentagon to declare him a prisoner of war.

             Several former intelligence and national security officials questioned whether Speicher could still be alive.
             "Why on earth would Saddam keep this guy alive for any amount of time?" said one former Iraq expert for the government who asked not to be identified. "He is nothing but a massive liability. Alive, he is a walking, living breathing (pretext to attack) for the United States. If he is still alive, my heart goes out to him. I'm sure he's sitting there, hoping that `they're trying to get me out of here.' "

             © 2002, The Kansas City Star.
             Visit The Star Web edition on the World Wide Web at http://www.kcstar.com
             Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

Speicher case draws new focus, passion
Navy pilot shot down in Gulf War 
By Paul Pinkham 
Times_Union staff writer 

They've been here before, the family and friends that love Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher and the Jacksonville Navy community that calls him a hero.

Too many times.

In the 11 years since the Cecil Field fighter pilot from Orange Park was shot down over Iraq and pronounced killed in action, the shadowy reports have surfaced every few years.

Like in 1995, when the family was told his FA_18 Hornet jet had been found with evidence he ejected and survived.

Like in 1999, when an Iraqi defector told investigators he drove an American pilot to Baghdad about a month after the Persian Gulf War began.

Like last year, when President Clinton said Speicher "might be alive" and the Pentagon took the unprecedented step of changing his status to missing in action.

Each time, there's been a flurry of news coverage and diplomatic sabre_rattling about ending the mystery. Then the case fades to the background again.

Will this time be different? Speicher's family thinks so. "It feels different," said Speicher's nephew, Richard Adams of Austin, Texas. "After Sept. 11, we have a different feeling in this country now. We're sending a lot of boys over there, and we need to let them know we're not going to leave anyone behind. Scott's definitely a symbol of that."

Adams said the family has never had this many government agencies working on the case. Even President Bush has addressed the issue, saying he wouldn't put it past Iraq President Saddam Hussein to hold an American hostage for 11 years. 

"This time is different because there has begun to be activity starting to pressure - both publicly and clandestinely  - Iraq for information," said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D - Fla.

But media critic Mark Crispin Miller, who wrote an op -ed piece for The New York Times on the Speicher case in 1995, calls the current attention "propaganda" designed to build support for U.S. military action against Iraq.

"The media, which has been eager to join the war on terrorism, is not being sufficiently critical in this case," said Miller, a professor of media studies at New York University. "Why is Scott Speicher being turned into this sort of hostage from a Rambo movie?" 

History or mystery?

As America braced for war in late 1990, several newspapers, including the The Florida Times - Union, published a wire service map showing U.S. ship deployments in the Gulf. Scott Speicher, a graduate of Forrest High School on the Westside, was outraged and wasn't shy about sharing his feelings with a reporter from his hometown paper. The map gave away strategy, he said, and pilots would get shot down.
 
His words were tragically prophetic.

On Jan. 17, 1991, the opening night of the war, U.S. bombers lit up the nighttime sky over Baghdad. The operation was considered a success. 

But Speicher, 33, didn't return with his squadron to the USS Saratoga. He never radioed for help. Fellow fliers returning to the carrier said they saw an explosion near Speicher's jet over the western Iraqi desert. They had no way of knowing they were part of the opening pages of a mystery that would remain unsolved more than a decade later. 

A few months later, the Pentagon formally told Joanne Speicher that she was a widow and the couple's two children fatherless. She wouldn't know for four years that questions already were surfacing about her husband's fate. For example, DNA testing showed human remains Iraq gave to the United States, purported to be those of an American pilot named Mickel, weren't Speicher.

Joanne Speicher was still unaware of the questions in December 1993, when Speicher's crash site was located in the desert. It was 14 months before the family was told and 24 months before investigators went to look at the site. Navy analysts concluded Speicher probably ejected and survived the initial crash, but in September 1996 the Pentagon reaffirmed its classification of Speicher as killed in action.

“In Scott's case, the more you look at it, the more you realize that we left somebody behind and we made some mistakes," said U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R - Kan., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Then there was an attitude thing that really bothered me. They had  reached a conclusion, and they weren't going to go back in and accept any further intelligence.

"The more dots you connect, the more you become convinced that not only did we leave somebody behind but also that he survived the crash." 

'What happened?'

That was unacceptable to Roberts and U.S. Sen. Robert Smith, R - N.H., both veterans who fervently subscribe to the "leave no man behind" credo.

"One of the questions we always get back from abroad is why would Americans care so much about one person," Roberts said. "It gets to our values."

For Smith the issue was personal. His own father died in a military plane crash in the Chesapeake Bay in 1945. "I'm glad they didn't stop looking because he was one of two remains that were found," said Smith, a Vietnam veteran and outspoken proponent on POW -MIA issues. "If something happened to me, I'd want my government to find out what happened." 

Smith, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said he began receiving intelligence reports in 1995 that Speicher might have survived the crash. In 1999, he began pressuring the Pentagon to change Speicher's status to missing in action. Roberts joined the effort soon after and began pressuring the intelligence community.

In 2001, days before leaving office, Clinton announced the Pentagon had changed Speicher's status to missing in action, making him the only American from any war still officially declared MIA. An intelligence report requested by the Senate concluded that Speicher probably survived and was captured. Intelligence officials didn't buy Iraq's explanation that Speicher was eaten by wolves in the
desert.

"Every pilot wants to have the security of knowing that if he's shot down, his buddies are coming to get him," Nelson said. "It appears we did not honor that with Cmdr. Speicher."

The story heated up again this year when British intelligence reported on another Iraqi defector, a former military adviser to Saddam, who said he knew of an American pilot still held in Baghdad. Reports that the pilot was moved to a more secure facility after Sept. 11 because Saddam feared retaliation for terrorist attacks in Washington and New York, only fueled speculation.

"All of a sudden, it was a series of reports that came in ... that made me think, 'You don't suppose ...''' Roberts said. "Without any clear evidence that he's dead, you have to presume he's alive."

'Find an answer'

Miller doesn't buy it. Despite the intelligence report, he said his research shows Speicher's jet exploded in midair. "I find it hard to believe that Scott Speicher survived that incident, but I can see the propaganda value of making him seem to be a sort of MIA," Miller said. "It has a great deal to do with the renewed pressure to merit some kind of military action against Iraq.

The revival of interest in the Speicher story is one piece of this drive to focus on the perfidy of Saddam Hussein." Others in Washington have quietly speculated the same thing. But Cindy Laquidara - the family's attorney, who has remained in constant contact with Pentagon, State Department and intelligence officials in Washington - dismissed that theory.

"You don't bomb a country because they're holding one of your guys. You go and get your guy," she said. "Each piece of information for the past 3 1/2 years has gotten more detailed so that people can't discount it."

Laquidara said a turning point was the involvement of Smith and Roberts, who "forced the creation of a committee that had all the staff people on it."

"They said 'go find us an answer,' " she said. Also making the timing right is the fact that Syria is normalizing relations with Iraq, and Kuwait is pressuring Baghdad for the release of 400 Gulf War POWs it still holds, Laquidara said. Nelson has talked to the leaders of Syria and Lebanon, asking for their help in determining what happened to Speicher. The Pentagon currently is mulling its response to an Iraqi invitation, made earlier this month through the Red Cross, for U.S. officials to come to Iraq and investigate Speicher's disappearance.

"This is one attempt by them to call the U.S. bluff on this case," Miller said. "They wouldn't do it otherwise." Nelson, Roberts and Smith said they worry about raising false hopes for Speicher's family in Orange Park. But they remain committed to finding answers.

"I pray every day he's alive," Smith said. "What we know is Saddam Hussein has the answer."

Times_Union staff writers Rachel Davis and Matthew I. Pinzur contributed to this report.
Staff writer Paul Pinkham can be reached at (904) 359_4107 or  ppinkham@jacksonville.com.

Sunday, in Insight Magazine the magazine section of the Washington Times. 

Forgotten Flier Posted May 27, 2002
By Timothy W. Maier

A decade ago Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher was the forgotten man. The
33-year-old U.S. Navy pilot, whose friends called him "Spike," was shot
down in his F-18 Hornet over west-central Iraq on the first night of the
Persian Gulf War on Jan. 17, 1991. No heroic search-and-rescue missions
were launched. No one even asked what happened.

Until now.

Prompted by long-held secret intelligence and eyewitness reports that claim
Speicher survived the crash and was taken to a Baghdad hospital, Sen. Pat
Roberts (R-Kan.), a former Marine and senior member of the Senate Select
Intelligence Committee, fired off a stern letter in February to Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld requesting that Speicher be reclassified a
prisoner of war (POW). If granted, it would mark the second time Speicher's
status has been changed. In 1991 the Navy reclassified him from killed in
action (KIA) to missing in action (MIA). "I believe he is a POW," Roberts
tells Insight.

Insight sources say the Roberts letter has created a firestorm at the
Pentagon pitting stubborn elements in Undersecretary of Defense for policy
Doug Feith's policy shop, who oppose reclassification, against senior
ranking Pentagon officials, who believe Speicher indeed may be a POW.
Feith's people drafted a letter to Roberts outlining reasons why the
senator's request should be denied, but Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz refused to sign off on it, snapping that Roberts is correct.

In the meantime, Iraq has issued an open invitation to send a delegation to
investigate the Speicher case. Policymakers "have frozen it, and it's not
going anywhere," according to a senior Pentagon source. "Once the
policymakers get something, it goes into a black hole."

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) recently warned on the Senate floor that Iraq's
offer could be just a charade, but that he hopes President George W. Bush
will appoint a "high-level delegation" to ask some hard questions. "For
example, this eyewitness account that he was driven to the hospital from
the crash site ¯ what hospital?" asked Nelson. "Let's see the records of
the hospital. If he was released from the hospital, where was he sent? Was
he sent to prison? What prison? Let's see the records of that prison. Let's
see the tangible evidence so we can know the fate of Cmdr. Scott Speicher."

With no movement on whether a delegation will be sent, there is concern
that Speicher will be forgotten again. "The U.S. military has a creed among
pilots that when you have to punch out, you are going to have a rescue team
that will come get you," Nelson told the Senate. "Against all odds, they
will come, try to find you and get you out alive. This awful question hangs
over the Cmdr. Scott Speicher case that we abandoned him."

While Nelson has tried to raise awareness, Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell
(R-Colo.) is trying to get cosponsors for his Persian Gulf War POW/MIA
Accountability Act (S 1339), which would provide asylum to defectors who
might help bring Speicher back alive. "Under this bill, if Lt. Cmdr.
Speicher were found alive and returned home, the person who helped him, as
well as his family, would be granted refugee status in the United States,"
Campbell says. So far, he has attracted just nine cosponsors.

Evidence that Speicher survived the downing of his plane has been available
for years. An unclassified CIA report issued in 2001, entitled
"Intelligence Community Assessment of the Lt. Cmdr. Speicher Case," is
based on intelligence data nearly a decade old. The report, ordered by the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, found: "Iraq can account for Lt.
Cmdr. Speicher * [but] is concealing information about his fate. Speicher
probably survived the loss of his aircraft, and if he survived he almost
certainly was captured by the Iraqis."

The report says Speicher ejected with at least an "85 to 90 percent chance
of surviving." It says Baghdad's "efforts to recover coalition airmen
downed over Iraqi-controlled territory were highly successful. * We assess
Speicher was either captured alive or his remains were recovered and
brought to Baghdad."

The CIA report contradicts a decade of lies and deceit concerning the fate
of Speicher. Sources familiar with intelligence briefings on the matter
characterize the case as a "conspiracy of incompetence" in which a series
of mistakes and failures to share intelligence led to the abandonment of a
Navy pilot considered to be one of the best aviators in the gulf war.

The first mistake was made in 1991 when, on the basis of the early
evidence, then-defense secretary Dick Cheney declared Speicher to be dead.
The pilot had not signaled for help through his radio and had failed to
turn on his emergency-locator transmitter, which downed pilots routinely
turned off out of fear the Iraqis would pick up the signals. Witnesses did
not see a parachute ¯ only a fireball that they assumed had consumed
Speicher and his Hornet.

The Pentagon brass decided Speicher's fighter jet suffered a direct hit
from a surface-to-air missile. But Navy pilot Spock Anderson, who was on
the same mission, repeatedly told anyone who would listen that "it was a
MiG that shot Spike down." No one listened ¯ until it was learned the CIA
had concluded in its report last year that it was indeed an air-to-air
missile that downed Speicher. By then this intelligence finding had been
kept secret for nearly a decade.

Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media studies at New York University
who reviewed the shootdown, concludes that the Pentagon "got caught up in a
cover-up of his death" while pushing to get Congress to upgrade the F-18
Hornets. "The Pentagon played down that an Iraqi MiG shot down the plane
because the F-18 was up for a valuable contract renewal," Miller says.
"They would not want it out that a MiG shot down that plane." The contract
was renewed.

When the war ended, Speicher's name was not carried either on a POW or MIA
list. As a result, the fluke shootdown of a Hornet by a MiG and a
"subsequent cover-up could be the likely cause of his death today," Miller
says.

The Iraqi government did return 21 U.S. military personnel, but the CIA
intelligence-summary report says Iraq's government learned Speicher had
been declared dead and, as a result, felt it could keep him. To quiet
rumors, Iraq sent a "soft-tissue fragment and hair-bearing skin," which
Baghdad claimed belonged to a pilot named "Mickel." DNA analysis determined
the remains were not from Michael Scott Speicher.

Saddam Hussein's regime in time claimed Speicher was devoured by wolves.
Rather than question the latest story, the late Adm. Mike Boorda, then
chief of Naval operations, approved and signed a confirmation letter on May
22, 1991, declaring Speicher "killed in action, body not recovered." He did
not ask for further accountability.

The death declaration seemed final. Speicher's wife, Joanne, and their two
young children moved on with their lives. She remarried. Speicher's
children, Meghan, now 14, and Michael, now 12, embrace their father only in
memories and photographs, says family spokeswoman Cindy Lacquidara, a
Jacksonville attorney. The family declined Insight's requests for interviews.

"It's been extremely stressful for them," Lacquidara says. "They are trying
to maintain faith in the government to bring him home."

Speicher's nephew Richard Adams, 27, adds that his uncle would have been
the first volunteer to bring a veteran home. "Everybody liked him," Adams
says. "Scott was the best pilot in his squadron, a true leader, a devout
Christian and a role model. We need closure ¯ that's the bottom line."

In 1998 the Speicher family filed a lawsuit against Motorola, accusing the
electronics company of having made an inferior locator product that pilots
claimed was too large to fit a flight-suit pocket and risked being lost
when a pilot had to eject. "We dropped the lawsuit because it was
interfering with our relationship with the Pentagon," Lacquidara says.

Speicher meanwhile had received full honors at Arlington National Cemetery,
where a tombstone bears his name. Florida State University announced plans
to build the Scott Speicher Memorial Tennis Center. Speicher's church, Lake
Shore Methodist, where he taught Sunday school, built a memorial for the
pilot, whom the Navy will promote to the rank of captain in July.

The Pentagon, insisting he was dead, had closed the case in December 1991.
Then the unthinkable happened. In 1993, the hunting party of a Qatari
general tracking exotic animals in the Iraqi desert made a miraculous
discovery. It found Speicher's jet with the engines intact, making it
unlikely that his Hornet was struck by a ground-based missile and
supporting Anderson's claim that the aircraft was brought down by a MiG.
The hunting party took photographs of the find. The ejection seat and
canopy, or the bubble that covers the cockpit, were found erect a mile
away. An even more startling find was a pilot's flight suit abandoned near
the canopy. It was cut and slightly burned with small traces of what was
presumed to be blood.

The Qatari general immediately forwarded to U.S. military officials his
carefully shot pictures and a shard of metal with serial numbers, which
U.S. authorities identified as being from Speicher's F-18 Hornet. The
Pentagon then reviewed its 1991 satellite photos of the area and detected a
man-made symbol erected near the ejection seat. The symbol was one that
pilots are trained to leave behind when making a run for safe ground. It
did not match Speicher's assigned mark, but the Pentagon says it clearly
was hand drawn.

It was decided somewhere among the brass not to tell Joanne Speicher about
the find. No one believed her husband could have survived an Iraqi winter
in the middle of the desert with likely second-degree burns and possible
broken bones.

Yet, with so many unanswered questions, the United States quietly began
reviewing its options. It could send a covert team into the area or opt for
a diplomatic solution by working in tandem with the Iraqi government and
the International Committee of the Red Cross to find out the fate of
Speicher. The Clinton administration chose the latter ¯ much to the
disappointment of gulf-war veterans who were convinced this would only buy
time for Saddam's regime to bury evidence.

But Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is said
ultimately to have persuaded Clinton defense secretary William Cohen to nix
the covert operation. The general reportedly put it to Cohen in politically
correct terms: "I don't want to be the one to write letters home to parents
telling them that their son or daughter died looking for old bones."

Speicher's family had to be told now, because the story shortly would
become public. It also meant one of the crash investigators, Albert Harris,
had to confide to the Pentagon that in 1993 he had married Speicher's wife,
Joanne. Harris was determined to get to the truth behind what happened to
Scott ¯ for the sake of Joanne and the children.

When Speicher was shot down, his wife was told "everything had been done,"
Lacquidara says. "They were continuing to search." In 1991 the family was
given this message: "All - repeat: all - theater combat search-and-rescue
efforts were being mobilized." But in fact "there was no search,"
Lacquidara says. "They dropped the ball. A number of people did."

Briefed by Insight on the family's description of what happened, Sen.
Roberts replies: "That's pretty accurate. It's outrageous we told her there
was a search. We left somebody behind! He has got to be out there wondering
when on Earth his country is going to come and get him. I'm not saying
there was a cover-up, but there is considerable embarrassment to the
government. Our U.S. intelligence analysts showed clearly that he survived
the crash. I believe he survived the crash, was hospitalized and taken to
prison."

When the Red Cross team found the crash site, it brought more pain to the
Speicher family. They wondered why the Pentagon didn't bother to look at
the coordinates from its own 1991 satellite photo when the jet went down.
"You should always launch a search and rescue," Lacquidara says. "I just
don't believe it was too dangerous."

Instead the "search and rescue" was left to the beneficence of Saddam. In
February 1995, the Clinton administration formally asked permission from
Iraq to excavate the F-18 crash site, but Baghdad delayed the matter until
late October 1995. The Red Cross crash team finally was granted access to
excavate the site from Dec. 9-16, 1995.

Sen. Robert Smith (R-N.H.), a senior member on the Senate Armed Services
Committee whose own father, a Navy pilot, was killed at the end of World
War II, was briefed by the Pentagon's POW/MIA unit about the excavation. He
was told the Red Cross team had found nothing to indicate Speicher
survived. Later, he received reports from the Pentagon's Inspector General
and the General Accounting Office, praising the intelligence agencies' role
regarding Speicher.

Case closed? Not quite. A few weeks later, Smith began to hear from his
intelligence sources claiming there was more to the story. He soon verified
both that there was no search for Speicher when he was shot down in 1991
and that there was evidence in hand that he had survived. "I was misled,"
he says. "I was lied to. There are people whose heads should roll for lying
to Congress, lying to me. But this isn't about me. The issue is let's bring
him home, let's get the answers."

In 1995 a series of crash-site experts ranging from aviation engineers to
anthropologists filed reports to the Pentagon. These reports were
classified, but information from other sources began to leak to Smith. Many
of the records ¯ some of which have been declassified and obtained by
Insight ¯ sharply contradict what Smith had been told. Crash investigators
reported Speicher's Hornet did not blow to pieces in the sky. The F-18 was
found right-side up, and many of its pieces (including the engines, which
had no entrance or exit wounds) were in a circle.

Investigators also determined the wreckage had been previously examined. A
pilot's jumpsuit was found along with straps of a parachute and such
survival items as an inflatable raft and a signaling flare. The flare
apparently had been lit on both ends at one time.

The jet's damaged memory unit revealed the flight had taken off Jan. 17,
1991, at 1:36 a.m. Seven minutes later it experienced a computer failure
that may have made as many as three missiles inoperative. Nearly two hours
later Speicher's ALR-67 radar-warning receiver went on, which may have
meant a complete failure of the radar system, making him unable to detect
threats from air or land. At 3:49 a.m. the pilot turned off his autopilot,
and a few seconds later the Hornet lost power after being struck.

Engineers reported the rocket motors that push the canopy off for ejection
had burn marks on the frame, which meant a good ejection had taken place.
Further evidence shows that up until Speicher's ejection at least 58
air-crew members had ejected from F-18s. Six were killed, but while the
others were injured from either the initial jolt or parachute landing, 52
survived.

In 1996, Congress received a partial briefing on the Speicher case ¯ just
enough details to support another Navy claim that he was killed in action.
When the case was closed again, Smith was livid. He, and later Sen.
Roberts, began pressing to have Speicher's status changed to MIA. Branded
by the Pentagon brass as a "troublemaker," Smith soon was taking heavy flak.

"The intelligence community trashed me" for poking around the Speicher
case, Smith tells Insight. "They told me it was 'unfortunate' and asked
what 'relevance' is it that he is alive or not? What relevance?! America
should not give up. We should leave no soldier behind. Period! We should do
our best whether he is dead or alive."

In December 1997, the New York Times published a story detailing previously
unpublished reports on the case. The article suggested that Speicher may
have survived the crash and that the Clinton administration deliberately
may have misled Congress about his fate. Smith fired off letters to the
secretary of defense and requested meetings with the Pentagon and POW/ MIA
offices. He also asked Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), then-chairman of the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to open an investigation into the
matter. Shelby promptly instigated a probe, ordering CIA Director George
Tenet to release computer files, documents, raw intelligence reports and
every detail the agency had on Speicher.

The probe was ongoing when an Iraqi defector came forward in 1999 with an
astonishing story. He claimed he had driven an American pilot from the
crash site to a hospital. Intelligence officials asked the defector to pick
the pilot out of a photo lineup. He selected Speicher. The defector passed
two lie-detector tests. When agents attempted to trick him by claiming
there was a huge reward for information leading to another pilot who was
shot down, the defector stuck to his story, saying Speicher was the only
one he had picked up.

With the defector's account as evidence, Smith continued pushing for a
change of status. He got it on Jan. 11, 2001, when Secretary of the Navy
Richard Danzig changed Speicher's status from KIA to MIA. No American
veteran in any war ever had been removed from the KIA list and declared MIA
instead. The Navy announced it quietly in a four-paragraph statement, but
it created a media frenzy. For the Speicher family it brought a new sense
of hope and monthly stipends of about $6,000.

President Bill Clinton replied to a flurry of reporters' questions by
saying, "We have some information that leads us to believe he might be
alive. And we hope and pray that he is. But we have already begun working
to try to determine whether in fact he's alive; if he is, where he is; and
how we can get him out." When reporters pressed Clinton he explained, "All
I want to say is we have evidence which convinced me that we can't ensure
that he perished. I don't want to hold out false hope, but I thought it was
wrong to continue to classify him as killed in action when he might not
have been."

Why did they wait nearly eight years after finding the Hornet to change
Speicher's status? Today, neither Smith nor Roberts have the answer. More
recently, Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reported that the CIA and
Defense Intelligence Agency had been provided with British intelligence
accounts claiming that Speicher was being held in a prison where he is
visited by the chief of Iraq's intelligence service and Uday Hussein, son
of Saddam. Britain has denied the report.

Would Saddam hold a prisoner that long? If history is any indication, the
answer is yes. On April 19, 1998, Iraq agreed to release prisoners of the
Iran/ Iraq war, which was fought from 1980 to 1988. Nearly 60,000 soldiers
were exchanged between the two countries. Iranian pilot Hossein Lashgari,
whose plane was shot down Sept. 18, 1980, in southern Iraq at the beginning
of the war, had been held for 17 years.

Professor Miller doubts Speicher is alive today. In fact, he and others on
the left have charged the administration with using the Speicher case to
gain sympathy for an invasion of Iraq. "I fully understand the emotional
desire by Speicher's comrades and loved ones to find him if he's alive,"
Miller says. "But I still don't think there is any reason he survived that
encounter. Why is all this coming up 10 years after the fact? You have to
be na*ve to think it is unrelated to the large, ambitious, war drive that
the government is now carrying out for a new invasion of Iraq."

Asked if it is a propaganda ploy, Roberts snaps, "That's bullshit. Those
charges are really out of line. They better not say that to my face."

Miller responds, "I'm not saying it isn't true. Truth can be used as
propaganda."

But if Speicher is alive and could be brought back to walk into Congress,
what might Roberts say? "I don't think I could find the words. I don't
know. I would be so overcome in tears that I would ask if this old Marine
could give him a hug. That's where it would be."

Timothy W. Maier is a writer for Insight.

Distributed through the P.O.W. NETWORK in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.