"U.S. doubts Iraqis ever held pilot"
www.timesdispatch.com...
BY ROBERT BURNS
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Aug 16, 2003
"WASHINGTON U.S. investigators searching in Iraq for clues to the fate of missing Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher, shot down on the opening night
of the 1991 Gulf War, have returned to an early hypothesis: that he died at or near the site where his F-18 fighter crashed.
A later theory - that he was captured alive and imprisoned in Baghdad - has been largely dismissed, based on postwar interrogations of Iraqi
officials, searches of the prison system and assessments of Iraqi government documents, three defense officials familiar with the search said
yesterday.
The idea that Speicher was a prisoner gained currency after intelligence reports in the late 1990s cited claims by Iraqi sources that an American
pilot was being held in Baghdad. Upon closer examination since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime those claims have unraveled, officials said.
The three defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators have not abandoned the search in Baghdad or reached any firm
conclusion about Speicher's fate. But they have found nothing so far to support the theory that Speicher had been held alive in an Iraqi prison.
This has taken investigators back to the theory that if he survived the shootdown Jan. 17, 1991, over west-central Iraq, then he most likely died
there shortly afterward, the officials said.
Some of the documents found since the fall of Baghdad indicate that Iraqi government officials were befuddled by continuing U.S. government inquiries
about the possibility of Speicher being held alive.
U.S. investigators deduced from this that the Iraqis had no knowledge of Speicher being held. That is consistent with Iraq's public position from the
start.
The Iraqis asserted that Speicher had perished in the crash, but they never produced his remains. In March 1991 the Iraqis returned a small amount of
human remains and identified them as a pilot named "Mickel," but laboratory tests revealed that they were not Speicher's.
Speicher, of Jacksonville, Fla., was 33 years old when he was shot down. He held the rank of lieutenant commander at the time; he has since been
promoted to captain.
In December 1995 a team of U.S. experts searched the crash site. They found wreckage but no sign of the pilot other than a flight suit. The Navy said
the flight suit was of the type and size Speicher would have worn, but tests have not established a firm link.
The site surveyors concluded from evidence available then that Speicher probably survived the shootdown."
