Tribute to LCDR Michael Speicher, USN POW/MIA

Artwork courtesy of POW Network

Captain Michael "Scott" Speicher, USN

Operation Desert Storm

MIA: 18 January 1991

KIA/BNR: May 1991

MIA: 10 January 2001

Status Changed to Missing/Captured: 11 October 2002

LCDR Michael Speicher memorialized at Arlington National Cemetery
Section H Headstone #517

Name: Michael Scott Speicher
Rank/Branch: Lt.Cdr./US Navy
Unit: USS SARATOGA
Age: 33
Home City of Record: Jacksonville FL
Date of Loss: 17 January 1991
Country of Loss: Unknown
Loss Coordinates:
Original Status: Missing in Action
Status Changed to KIA/BNR May 1991
Status changed BACK to MIA 01/10/01
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: FA18

Other Personnel in Incident: (none missing)

Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 09 March 1991 from one
or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources,
published sources, interviews. Update by the P.O.W. NETWORK.

Photo Courtesy of the Blue Angles Assoc.

USS Saratoga (CV-60)

Persian Gulf War POW/MIA Accountability Act of 2001 (S-1339)
The Speicher Bill

Military Searches For Gulf War Pilot
Associated Press
January 12, 2004

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Military search crews have returned to the site where Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher's fighter jet crashed 13 years ago, while captured Iraqi officials, including Saddam Hussein, are being questioned about the fate of the missing flier.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who has worked to get answers for Speicher's family and friends, said crews are actively looking for the Jacksonville man, whose plane went down Jan. 17, 1991, about 100 miles north of the Saudi Arabian border.

The FA-18 Hornet was the first jet shot down in the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq.

Navy officials said crews have checked more than 50 sites, including hospitals, prisons, security archives, homes and the crash site, said Lt. Mike Kafka, a Navy spokesman. "The Navy remains extremely interested in information regarding Capt. Speicher," he said.

Nelson said he was heartened when he heard Saddam and other high-level Iraqi officials had been questioned about Speicher, although Saddam has denied knowledge of Speicher's fate.

Kafka said all detained officials and hundreds of lower-level officials, civilians, defectors and refugees have been questioned.

"Sooner or later, somebody is going to talk," said Nelson, who believes Speicher could still be alive. "I hope so. With each passing day, it diminishes that possibility."

Recently, crews revisited the crash site for the first time since 1995. At that time they found the canopy, wings, unexploded ordnance, but the cockpit was missing. Nelson said he could not comment on what, if anything, was found in the second search.

Some believe Speicher was killed when a surface-to-air missile knocked his fighter jet from the sky. There was evidence, however, that he ejected from his damaged aircraft.

Speicher was 33 when he was shot down. He held the rank of lieutenant commander at the time; he has since been promoted to captain. His wife, Joanne, has remarried and his children are now teenagers.

His status changed from missing in action to killed in action, but in 2002 it was changed again to missing-captured. A marker has been placed on an empty grave at Arlington National Cemetery.

"We hold out hope that Scott is still alive," Speicher's cousin, Teresa Engstrom of Minneapolis, said in an e-mail. "Failing that, I would hope that the family and all those wonderful supporters can at least know what happened."

'Secret' Report Adds to Mystery

By Timothy W. Maier

When someone leaked to the Washington Times last month the so-called "secret two-page Pentagon report" that suggested U.S. Navy aviator Capt. Michael Scott Speicher died when his F-18 Hornet was shot down Jan. 17, 1991, the feisty Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) figured it was a message to back off of his crusade to find out what had happened to the pilot still missing from the Persian Gulf War. An infuriated Nelson slammed the pessimistic news story in the Times, claiming it was full of faulty information, such as labeling as a liar an Iraqi defector who claims to have seen Speicher alive. Nelson demanded to see the Pentagon report.

But, to his surprise, the Pentagon told him straight out that there is no Pentagon report. After a little more digging Nelson's staff learned that this two-page document, dated June 23, actually was written by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) - which also repeatedly had debunked stories that U.S. servicemen were left behind in Vietnam. "There was nothing new in the report," insists Nelson, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who helped push Speicher's promotion last year to captain. The DIA report rebukes allegations by an Iraqi defector known as "2314" who claims to have given Speicher a ride to a Baghdad hospital. The report says the assessment that Speicher survived the crash primarily is based on information provided by "2314," although Nelson insists there are more witnesses and more intelligence information, such as the recovery of the American pilot's flight suit, which when put together lead to a probability that Speicher survived. The DIA's bleak picture appeared to suggest Speicher probably died in the fiery crash.

It's not the first time Speicher has been presumed dead. Vice President Dick Cheney, who was the defense secretary in 1991, reported the pilot's death as the first casualty of Gulf War I. The Pentagon assured Speicher's family a full search-and-rescue mission had been launched but they later learned the assurance was a lie [see "Turning Their Backs on Speicher," May 27, and "Forgotten Flier," June 17, 2002]. At present a specialized search team of 15 personnel at the DIA, the CIA and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency are interrogating Iraqi prisoners and surveying Saddam Hussein's known prisons for clues in hopes of finding Speicher.

The DIA report conflicts with an earlier CIA report delivered to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in March 2001. The CIA report stated, "Iraq can account for Lt. Cmdr. Speicher, [but] is concealing information about his fate." It also claimed Speicher ejected with at least an "85 to 90 percent chance of surviving. ... We assess Speicher was either captured alive or his remains were recovered and brought to Baghdad." It was the CIA report that forced president Bill Clinton to change Speicher's status from killed in action to missing in action/captured (MIA) - 10 days before Clinton left office on Jan. 11, 2001. The DIA report also fails to mention that the Iraqi defector, who claimed to have driven Speicher to Baghdad, had passed two lie-detector tests. Instead the report says he will be given a lie-detector test.

"Somebody is leaking disinformation that is incorrect," says Nelson, who made a trip to Iraq in July and visited a cell in Hakmiya Prison in Baghdad where Speicher's initials, M.S.S., were carved into a wall of a prison cell. "He didn't die in the crash. I truly believe that someone is trying to kill the Speicher investigation," the Florida senator insists.

Sources familiar with the DIA report say the analysis in the two-page document did not come from senior intelligence officials but nonetheless was handed to Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The DIA report amounted to field observations but did take into account some recent findings - including one set of the M.S.S. initials etched onto the Baghdad prison wall in cell 46, Insight sources say. The report did not take into account another set of initials that were discovered, M.J.M., which some believe represent his two children, Meghan and Michael, and his former wife, Joanne, who remarried after being told her husband was killed in action. She has declined this magazine's request for an interview.

According to the DIA report, the defector known as 2314 worked for Saddam Hussein's special security organization and claims he saw Speicher alive in 1998. The DIA report claimed, "None of the information provided by 2314 has proven accurate." Witnesses cited by 2314 to support his story have denied the defector's account. One called him a "born liar." Two physicians, his supervisor and a psychiatrist whom 2314 said would confirm his story since have been interrogated and denied having any knowledge that 2314 saw Speicher in 1998. All four passed lie-detector tests.

However, the DIA report also notes that an Iraqi prisoner reported to U.S. Marines that he heard two prison guards discussing the "U.S. pilot," providing enough doubt for Nelson to continue his campaign to find or account for Speicher.

Pentagon sources say Nelson's high-profile approach of holding press conferences and posting pictures on his Website of himself pointing at the initials found in the prison cell have created an adversarial relationship between the senator and the Pentagon. Says one senior official, "Nelson is handling this just as badly as Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) handled the Vietnam MIA issue."

Asked if he was being a publicity hound, as suggested by senior Pentagon personnel, Nelson snapped, "I am doing this for the family. And I am not going to stop until I get some answers!"

Family attorney Cindy Laquidara of Jacksonville, Fla., also takes offense at what she considers cheap shots at Nelson. "I asked him to go over there," she says. "They should be mad at me." Laquidara adds that many news stories have been riddled with falsehoods, including allegations that it may not be Speicher's flight suit that was recovered and that he may not have ejected. "It is his flight suit. It's not alleged. It's his," she says, noting that witnesses have identified it as belonging to Speicher. "And he did eject!" The aviator's Hornet was found with the seat ejected. Laquidara also expresses anger that the Pentagon has done little to advertise or promote the $1 million reward for information that helps to solve the Speicher mystery.

Congressional sources close to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and also outspoken on the Speicher case, tell Insight they believe the timing of the "Pentagon report" may indicate a backlash to Nelson's "political showboating" as compared to Roberts' persistent but low-key approach. That might help explain the sea of negative reports, such as that investigators searched 50 prisons and seven graves but found nothing. Even in the prison cell where Speicher's initials were found a genetic test of hair recovered from a drain proved it did not belong to the missing pilot. While forensic scientists continue to test other material taken from that cell, Nelson doesn't expect a breakthrough from that trail. "I wasn't surprised that they didn't find anything. The cell looked clean to me," Nelson says. "It looked like someone had gone in there and cleaned and scrubbed the cell."

Nelson believes there still is a secret underground prison system being run by Saddamist holdouts that may contain not only Speicher but also hundreds of missing Kuwaiti prisoners. In late August about a dozen Kuwaiti prisoners were freed, but no one seems to know what happened to the 600 others reportedly still being held, Nelson says. Roberts, however, thinks Speicher may be being moved about as Saddam's trophy prisoner. Asked if he saw any evidence on his recent trip to Iraq suggesting that Speicher still is alive, Nelson replied, "No. But I didn't see any evidence that he was not alive." In fact, one piece of evidence that has raised hopes is a 90-page Iraqi document found in a prison in July. The report, dated January 2003, lists prisoners of war (POWs) being held, and Speicher is among those named. While it remains unclear whether the names of those so listed include the subsequently deceased, the Pentagon still is analyzing these records along with thousands of other POW-related files.

Former officials from Iraq continue to claim Speicher is dead, but few believe they are telling the truth. Saddam attempted as early as March 1991 to pass off the remains of someone else as Speicher, but DNA tests proved otherwise. In fact, officials now are retesting that DNA to determine if the unidentified body was that of a Gulf War I veteran who may have died a month after Speicher was shot down. According to a 90-page document turned over to a U.S. intelligence officer by an Iraqi general, those remains belong to an American pilot. The retesting also comes at a time when Speicher's family has been considering asking that the remains be tested again to rule out any possibility it is Speicher.

In the meantime, both Roberts and Nelson plan to press for congressional hearings to determine who is at fault for the failure to make a timely and thorough search for Speicher. "We would certainly encourage John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the [Senate] Armed Service Committee, to hold hearings. We are constantly in his ear. And I will tell you that if Speicher is not found, I am not walking away - never," Nelson vows.

Timothy W. Maier is a writer for Insight.

August 15, 2003

Navy now believes pilot died when shot down in 1991

By Robert Burns
Associated Press

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 Friday.

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 remains.

Just hours after Speicher was shot down on the opening night of the 1991 war, the Pentagon declared him killed in action. But in January 2001 the Navy changed his status to missing in action, reflecting an absence of evidence that he died in the crash. Last October, the Navy changed it again, to missing-captured, indicating a belief that the Iraqis had taken him alive.

In March 2001, U.S. intelligence agencies said in a report to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Speicher probably ejected safely from his plane and it was struck by a missile.

“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.

One U.S. official said Friday that investigators are now 99 percent certain that prewar intelligence reports indicating that Speicher was being held in prison were based on faulty information.

Invading U.S. forces in April reported finding the initials “MSS” scratched into a cell wall in an Iraqi prison, fueling speculation that Speicher had been held there at some point. But preliminary tests on hair found in the cell’s drain showed it did not match Speicher’s DNA, and officials do not believe the MSS initials were put there by Speicher.

In December 1995 a team of U.S. experts searched the crash site with the Iraqi government’s permission. They found wreckage of Speicher’s aircraft but no sign of the pilot other than a flight suit that the Iraqis said they found at the site. 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.

Speicher, of Jacksonville, Fla., was 33 years old when he was shot down. He held the rank of lieutenant colonel at the time; he has since been promoted to captain.

Senator is optimistic about missing Navy pilot July 10, 2003

By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

    Evidence is finally being found that can help investigators determine if Navy Capt. Scott Speicher, who was shot down over Iraq in 1991, is in fact alive and where he is now, according to a senator who just returned from Iraq.
    "New evidence has been produced ... that is classified, but that gives me reason to be optimistic for the first time in several weeks that I have been pessimistic. That doesn't say that he's alive, but that says that we're beginning to get evidence that, in fact, we might be able to find out," said Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Democrat.
    Mr. Nelson told fellow members of the Armed Services Committee yesterday that a process is now in place for processing information about Capt. Speicher.
    The naval aviator was initially listed as the first casualty of the first Gulf war, having been shot down during fighting on Jan. 17, 1991, but his status was later changed to missing-captured.
    A military team on the ground in Iraq has been charged with determining Capt. Speicher's fate. But there had been little to go on since April, when the initials MSS — possibly for "Michael Scott Speicher" — were found on the wall of the Hakmiyah prison in Baghdad.
    Mr. Nelson visited the cell and made a tracing of the initials, which were carved about 1/4 inch deep in the wall of the cell. Above those initials is carved "MJN."
    Mr. Nelson said forensics experts still haven't concluded whether the initials were in fact carved by Capt. Speicher, and Mr. Nelson and Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican, both said the process has been too slow.
    The promising new information that made Mr. Nelson optimistic is classified, he said, so wouldn't talk about specifics.
    Mr. Roberts said the new information is coming from people and documents, rather than "working at sites that have been looted and vacant for a long period of time."
    "The fact that it is mentioned in documentation and by people we can then go and see and get information from, if in fact we can locate them, is a very positive sign," Mr. Roberts said.
    "In addition several other reports that were very negative were not proven reliable," he said.
    Still, despite the new information, both senators said there hasn't been enough new information for them to come to any conclusion on Capt. Speicher's fate.
    "I certainly hope we're going to find him and bring him home, but we just don't have any evidence yet," Mr. Nelson said.

By JOHN J. LUMPKIN

.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (April 23) - American investigators in Iraq have found what may be a clue to the only American missing from the first Gulf War: the initials of Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher, etched into a prison wall in Baghdad.

It is unknown who scrawled the letters ``MSS'' into a cell wall in the Hakmiyah prison, said U.S. officials, or whether the letters had anything to do with the missing pilot.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said an informant had also reported that an American pilot was held at that prison in the mid-1990s.

A joint team of officials from the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency is in Iraq, searching for clues to Speicher's fate.

Lt. Cmdr. Speicher, an F/A-18 Hornet pilot from Jacksonville, Fla., and three other pilots flew off the USS Saratoga for a bombing run over Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991, the first night of the war. During the mission, another Hornet pilot saw a flash and lost sight of Speicher.

The next morning, the Defense Department announced that Speicher's plane had been downed by an Iraqi missile. Several months later the Pentagon classified the pilot as killed in action, but changed that last year to ``missing in action, captured.''

Intelligence reports from several sources led to the change, officials said.

Iraq officials have said Speicher was killed in the crash.

Speicher's flight suit was found at the crash site and there have been persistent intelligence reports about a U.S. pilot held in Baghdad.

Only one U.S. service member remains listed as missing from the second Iraq war - Army Sgt. Edward J. Anguiano, 24, of Brownsville, Texas, who disappeared after his convoy was ambushed March 23.

04/23/03 19:27 EDT

The Last POW
He Was Shot Down in '91 and Declared Dead. Today the Pentagon Is Not So Sure.

By Jennifer Frey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 17, 2003; Page C01

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.

They said goodbye to him nearly 12 years ago, here at Cecil Field, now home to corporate jets and commuter airlines. It was a naval air station back then, Scott Speicher's home base. Hundreds came to the funeral. A funeral without a body. There was the grieving widow, Joanne, who had married him at this same place, 71/2 years before. His fellow pilots. His two small children. His father. His friends.

He was, the story went, the first U.S. serviceman to be killed in the Gulf War, a Navy pilot shot down on the first night of the attack, his F-18 crashing into the Iraqi desert below. It was Jan. 17, 1991. The next morning, during a televised news conference, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney reported that the first night of strikes had involved a "single casualty." It was, he clarified, "a death."

Yet more than a decade later, as Americans are buoyed by the televised images of prisoners of war safely rescued in another Iraqi war, a special joint unit from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency is trying to solve the mystery of Scott Speicher. In January 2001, prompted by an accumulation of evidence acquired over several years, the Navy took the extraordinary step of reclassifying Speicher as "missing in action." (Last October, his status was further changed to "missing/captured.") There was, the Navy determined, no evidence to show that Speicher was dead. And there now was enough evidence to indicate that he could still be alive, a prisoner of war.

"The objective is to find out whatever we can about what happened to him," says one U.S. official with knowledge of the mission, which also involves recovering information on Kuwaiti soldiers missing since the first Gulf War. "We think the Iraqi government knows what happened. Our goal is to find out precisely what they know."

So these days -- this war -- have blurred into one long moment of truth for those who have loved, missed, mourned and hoped for Speicher over the past 12 years. For his family, which has pushed the government to reassess Speicher's case -- and long hoped for this mission to find him. For the high school friends who formed the Free Scott Speicher association last spring, and now jump at the ring of their cell phones, desperate for news. For the fellow pilots who feel angry -- betrayed, almost -- that no rescue mission ever took place, that their military never went looking for the guy they knew, from his Navy call sign, as Spike (the family name is pronounced "Spiker"). For Navy Capt. Mark I. Fox, who headed to the Gulf, to this war, still holding onto memories of his friend, the one he last saw on that fateful night in 1991.

And for his neighbors, his teachers and his fellow citizens of Jacksonville, who have hung signs, plastered bumper stickers on fire trucks, held rallies. Prayed.

"I think that there will be an accounting for him, whatever it is, in the very near future," says Bob Stumpf, a retired Navy officer who flew with Speicher the night of the crash and saw the flash in the sky when his plane was hit. "There's no doubt in my mind that we'll know, finally, what his fate is."

Time Passes, Stands Still

He would be 44 now. His children, babies when he shipped out in August 1990, are now teenagers. His wife remarried -- a decision she made at a time when everyone still believed her first husband was dead -- and her new husband, who has his own history with Speicher, has been leading the push to find out what happened to him.

His father has passed away. At the church where he taught Sunday school, red pansies and white snapdragons bloom at the base of a memorial to him, one marked with an American flag. At Arlington National Cemetery, there is a marker with his name.

Since his file has been reopened, he has been promoted twice, and is now a captain.

He is remembered, though, as the man he was 12 years ago. Speicher went to his high school reunion three days before he left for the Gulf. He was, friends say, the envy of the class -- a handsome, talented pilot with a beautiful wife and beautiful kids. He was admired.

Now those same friends wait and hope. It is a Tuesday night, in the middle of the war, and they are gathered around a low table in a hotel lobby, one of their trademark bumper stickers ("Free Scott Speicher" on a background of red, white and blue) in front of them. They have formed an organization: They have business cards, ranking officers, monthly planning sessions. They are talking about Speicher when their cell phones and beepers go off in quick succession.

MSNBC is reporting that a POW has been rescued. Alive.

There is a rush for the hotel bar, for the big-screen televisions. Channels are changed, baseball games disappear from the screen.

"We've been on pins and needles since this war started," says Nels Jensen, noting the distracted, anxious faces of his friends.

It is complicated for them, this war. They didn't embrace it simply because it might bring them their resolution. It's not that they are opposed to it, either -- no one is saying that. But they see other soldiers taken prisoner, see bombs falling on the country where Speicher might still be, and it makes them shudder.

"There are only two scenarios and regardless, we'll know what happened," says Jim Stafford, who used to sit next to Speicher in high school ("alphabetical order, you know," he explains) and who still has the postcard he received from the Gulf, one Speicher posted a few days before his plane went down.

"But if we don't get Scott Speicher back alive, it's a tragedy."

"And even more so," Debbie Isaac adds, softly, "if he ends up getting killed during all this turmoil, after surviving for so long. That's the sad part."

There is a buzz in the room. Jessica Lynch's face has flashed up on the television screen. For the group, there is a mixture of disappointment and elation, a sense of relief that one family's pain is over, mixed with their own nagging frustration.

"We couldn't expect it would be him," Isaac admits.

She is worried, they all are, that someone in Saddam Hussein's regime might use Speicher now as a pawn. But the recent safe return of seven more POWs -- all in relatively good health -- is a comfort. Their release came after a tip from local Iraqis. And that is the greatest hope that Speicher's friends now hold out -- that he, too, is being held somewhere and, now that Hussein's regime has been toppled, someone will come forward with the information.

"We're just so glad to get these other people back, too," says Stafford, who was again anxiously watching the news last Sunday morning, waiting for the rescued POWs to be identified. "And we're still holding out hope for Scott. We believe, very strongly, that he was alive before this all started."

They all grew up here, in a part of town thick with military families. Several had fathers who were Navy men. They remember sitting in the classroom, seeing a chaplain and an officer come to the door, take away a classmate to deliver some bad news.

They can't help but think of the Speicher children.

"My dad was gone for six months," Isaac says. "But he came home. Their dad has been gone for 12 years."

They started the organization after hearing more and more news reports suggesting that Speicher may not have died, news reports that dominated class reunion discussion. They wanted answers. They wanted accountability. So the group staged rallies, came to Washington to march under a "Free Scott Speicher" banner, distributed the bumper stickers, contacted local media.

"If you know Scott, you can't give up," Stafford says. ". . . We may not get the answer we want, but we're not going to stop until we get one."

A Backup Steps Forward

He wasn't supposed to go. Not on that first mission, not that first night. Speicher was the spare, the guy who hovered in the background, and went into action only if something went wrong with one of the other planes.

He went to his commander and begged. He was persuasive.

"The last time I saw Spike, he was manning up for the flight in which he was lost," Fox wrote in a recent e-mail from the aircraft carrier USS Constellation, his memories of that night still strong. "He had gone out of his way to fly on that particular strike."

There were two formations of five planes each involved in the mission. Stumpf was in Speicher's sister squadron. He remembers being en route to his target, the sky lighting up with surface-to-air missiles.

"Then there was one flash that appeared to be brighter," Stumpf says. "It sort of lit up everything."

Then it sank to the desert floor.

Stumpf didn't know what it was. But when he got back to the USS Saratoga, his carrier, and heard that Speicher was missing, it all came together.

"At that point, I assumed he was on the ground, that he ejected, and he was either being rescued or in the process of evading the enemy while waiting to be rescued," Stumpf says.

Within 24 hours, his commander was in his stateroom, asking for his coordinates when he saw the flash. It made sense to him. They were trying to pinpoint where to go looking for Spike. Most pilots who eject from that type of plane survive.

"They're supposed to go," Stumpf says. ". . . They should have gone."

It is, after all, the military code: No one gets left behind.

Only it isn't that simple. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War -- when there were so many losses on search-and-rescue (SAR) missions -- the military had become much more careful about launching them. On that night, the commander says, he had to weigh issues such as communication, geographic locators, any evidence that the pilot survived the crash and, above all, the prospects of a successful mission against the level of risk to the officers who would be deployed.

There was no communication from Speicher, no radio contact. (However, it was later determined that the type of radio Speicher had been issued did not fit into his flight suit pocket and likely would have been lost during ejection.) No signs of light as search planes flew over the area. Geographic locators were iffy -- they had the information from Stumpf and other pilots but couldn't spot any wreckage on the ground. And Speicher's wingman reported he had not seen an ejection before the plane was hit.

Adm. Stan Arthur was the man who had to make the call. The prospects for a successful recovery mission -- and the prospect that Speicher was even still alive -- were too slim, he decided, and the risks that would be taken by a SAR team were too great.

"It's one of those decisions where you don't like to do it, you don't want to do it, but it's the right decision," Arthur says. "And even today you know it's the right decision. But knowing what you know now, it just makes it all the tougher to realize that everything wasn't exactly as we thought. Or doesn't appear to be."

And so he, too, waits and hopes. And remembers.

"Never a day goes by," he says, his voice heavy.

Finding Peace, Then Love

When her husband's plane went down over Iraq, Joanne Speicher was a 31-year-old mother of two small children -- Michael, then 3, and Meghan, a year old. She had met Scott at Florida State University, married him in 1983. She was a Navy wife, living in a gray ranch house in a southwest Jacksonville neighborhood where it is routine for residents to look up and see planes coming in for a landing at the base a few miles away.

It was Jan. 18, one day after the war began, when Joanne heard the knock on the door. There was an officer, bearing news. A week later, a telegram arrived via Western Union:

"It is with much regret that I confirm the missing in action status of your husband LT Michael Scott Speicher," read the missive, all in capitals. "He is being listed in this status because his aircraft failed to return following combat action against the forces of Iraq on 17 January 1991. Efforts to locate him have been unsuccessful."

By then, though, the words -- "missing in action" -- held little hope. He was dead, the government had said so. Joanne had questions about what exactly had happened to him, of course. But she had told her children that Daddy wasn't coming home.

When the war ended and the POWs were repatriated, Speicher was not among them. The government didn't ask for him; it asked for remains. The ones the Iraqis turned over, officials would later learn, did not match Speicher's DNA. On May 22, 1991, after an official review of the evidence available at the time, the Navy officially declared Speicher "killed in action, body not recovered."

That summer, in the only public interview she has given on the subject, Joanne told Ladies Home Journal that she believed that her husband had died instantly that night, when his plane exploded in midair. Believing that made it possible for her to go on.

"I'm at peace," she told the magazine in the June 1991 issue. "I feel like it's over, and he is in a better place. I would have been angry if he died in a car crash. This was his life, and Scott wouldn't have wanted it any other way."

Over time, she fell in love again.

His name was Albert Harris, but he was known to everyone as Buddy. He had been Scott's closest friend, a fellow Navy pilot. Devastated by Speicher's death, Harris began spending more and more time with the Speicher children, playing the role of surrogate father. And, as he would tell NBC's Tom Brokaw in an interview in February, "the light kind of came on around the same time as to the possibilities."

They married on July 4, 1992, 18 months after Speicher's plane went down. Asked by Brokaw how people felt about the situation, Harris admitted there were moments when he and Joanne had doubts, but their friends were encouraging.

"They thought it was great," he said.

Together, they had two children, and all four siblings started to go by the last name Speicher-Harris. They moved into a new home, alongside Doctor's Lake, with a basketball hoop out front and big, leafy trees to shade the lawn. They were their own family now.

Then Harris began to get word of intelligence reports casting doubt on Speicher's death -- or, at the very least, on the assumption that he had died when his plane had been hit. And he and Joanne began to wonder: What if Scott is still alive?

It was, of course, a terribly awkward situation. But, as Harris has said publicly a few times, they both felt that they needed to do everything they could to find answers and, perhaps, bring Speicher home. There was a need to put public pressure on the government to resolve the situation, to give them answers, and to do that, they needed to get Scott's story out there. But, from the beginning, Joanne had been fiercely protective of the family, particularly her children. The marriage and the delicate situation it had created made the desire for privacy only stronger.

Still, they hired an attorney, Cindy Laquidara, a family friend who took the case without charge. She facilitated their contact with the Defense Department and the media. Harris gave some interviews, as did Joanne's nephew, Richard Adams. At times, the delicacy of the situation was extraordinary. When Harris was asked how he and his wife would handle it if Scott returned safely, he told Brokaw, "My blanket answer is we're going to have one heck of a 'welcome home' party, and we'll go from there. We'll -- we'll work it out."

And even though the public scrutiny hurt, the family did what it could to keep Speicher's story alive.

Now, though, the search for Speicher is finally happening. The government is seeking answers with resolution a priority. And, once again, the family has asked for privacy. All interview requests are being denied, Laquidara says.

"They made decisions to get on with their lives based on what the government told them," Stafford says. " . . . But I can tell you they both love Scott very much, and they've been working hard to bring him back.

"I can't imagine the problems that it's caused them," he continues, "and I don't know what's going to happen" if Speicher comes back. "And I don't care. That's not my business. It's really nobody's business."

Stafford's voice is rising now, clearly inflected by the struggle he knows the family is facing -- and his desire to protect them from outsiders who will want to muck around in their personal lives.

"The story is," Stafford says, "that we left a guy behind over there and he's suffered in prisons for over 12 years and he needs to come home. The government needs to wade through its mistakes and problems and correct [them]. And we all need to leave the family alone."

The Case for Hope

"This is a human drama of gargantuan proportions," says Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). "The fact that those children were told that their father was dead, and then years later the Department of Defense changes his status to missing in action, then changes his status to missing/captured -- you can imagine the trauma that that family is going through."

In 1993, the wreckage of Speicher's plane was found. In 1995, the Defense Department, along with the Red Cross, which had negotiated with the Iraqi government for permission to enter the country, went to the site to hold an official investigation. They found part of the plane's seat as well as Speicher's flight suit, clearly put there recently because it did not appear weathered by four-plus years of exposure in the desert. They determined that he had ejected from the plane and survived.

Then came the intelligence reports. Iraqi informers who claimed to have seen an American pilot at different times, in different locations. It was difficult, if not impossible, to determine the veracity of the claims.

Then, in 1999, an Iraqi defector told intelligence officers that he had driven an American pilot to Baghdad early in the war. He picked out Speicher's picture. He passed lie detector tests. Of all the reports, one official now says, this was the one that most caught their attention, because it seemed the most credible.

Politicians got involved. Then-Sen. Bob Smith from New Hampshire was an early advocate. Later, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) took up the cause. Then Nelson. They wrote letters, demanded hearings.

In 2000, "60 Minutes II" did a damning investigation, exposing mistakes in the Pentagon's handling of the incident and highlighting evidence that indicated Speicher might be alive.

And in January 2001, the Navy -- faced with what one official called "an accumulation of evidence" that Speicher might be a POW and absolutely none that indicated his death -- changed his status.

Two months later, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence received a report on Speicher. "We assess that Iraq can account for LCDR [Lt. Cmdr.] Speicher but that Baghdad is concealing information about his fate," said an unclassified CIA summary of the analysis. "LCDR Speicher probably survived the loss of his aircraft, and if he survived, he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis."

Roberts now says that "people should be court-martialed" over the way Speicher's case was handled, but he also recognizes that now is not the time to place blame.

"I don't think a hindsight, 20/20, finger-pointing exercise will really help Scott right now," Roberts says. "There will be enough time for that once we get him on the tarmac."

On the surface, it may seem somewhat incredible that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would have an American pilot in captivity, would tell virtually no one, and would hold him -- and not kill him -- for years. But that is exactly what he has done in the past. In April 1998, as part of an exchange of prisoners between Iran and Iraq, Hussein released an Iranian pilot, Hussein Raza Yashkuri, who had been captured 18 years before, at the start of Iran-Iraq war.

It is stories like that one that keep hope alive for everyone from Speicher's family to Speicher's friend Fox, whose ship, the Constellation, was ordered back to home port just a few days ago, the major fighting now over. In his e-mail, Fox said that he still thinks about Speicher, still prays for him. He also keeps a "Free Scott Speicher" bumper sticker in his stateroom.

He may have gone off to fight another Gulf War, but a lingering ghost from the first haunts him still

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.'

Team to search for pilot lost since first Gulf war

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

     Creating the special unit comes as U.S. intelligence agencies reported last week that an American pilot believed to be Capt. Speicher was spotted alive in Baghdad earlier this month.
     A classified intelligence report circulated to officials March 14 stated that Capt. Speicher was seen as he was being moved in Baghdad, although officials said the sighting could not be confirmed.
     The joint program by officials of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, U.S. Central Command and other agencies also will conduct a nationwide search of Iraq for terrorists and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, said Lt. Cmdr. James Brooks, a DIA spokesman.
     "The intelligence community has established a unit to do a country-wide discovery, exploitation and interrogation effort to identify and disrupt terrorist operations; and to identify, examine and eliminate [weapons of mass destruction]," Cmdr. Brooks said in a statement.
     "Another function is to determine and resolve the fate of Capt. Speicher," Cmdr. Brooks said.
     Capt. Speicher was declared killed in action after his F-18 jet was shot down by a missile over Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991.
     Later, intelligence reports indicated that his plane had crash-landed and that Capt. Speicher had ejected. His flight suit was later found during a Red Cross mission to Iraq.
     Several intelligence reports from the 1990s also indicated that Iraq was holding an American pilot believed to be Capt. Speicher, and in 2001 the Navy reclassified him from killed in action to missing in action.
     In October, Navy Secretary Gordon England changed the status again to "missing in action, captured," effectively declaring Capt. Speicher a prisoner of war.
     The Navy determined at the time that wreckage from the F-18, the recovery of Capt. Speicher's flight suit, Iraqi tampering with the downed plane and recent intelligence "continues to suggest strongly that the government of Iraq can account for him."
     Baghdad has denied that it was holding Capt. Speicher and invited a U.S. team to visit Iraq last year to investigate. The Pentagon and State Department declined the offer.
     U.S. officials hope the ouster of Saddam Hussein in the U.S.-led war will produce definitive proof on whether Capt. Speicher is a prisoner or whether he died in captivity.
     Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters yesterday that finding terrorists and deadly unconventional weapons are among eight key U.S. objectives in Iraq.
     Mr. Rumsfeld said the United States hopes to "identify, isolate and eventually eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems, production capabilities, and distribution networks."
     U.S. forces also will "search for, capture, drive out terrorists who have found safe harbor in Iraq."
     The troops also will "collect such intelligence as we can find related to terrorist networks in Iraq and beyond" and intelligence on "the global network of illicit weapons of mass destruction activity," the defense secretary said.
     Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview that he and other interested members of Congress have "come a long way from where we were," a reference to bureaucratic resistance to pursuing the Speicher case.
     "Every hearing we have, every [congressional delegation] we have, we always mention this issue," said Mr. Roberts, whom intelligence agencies brief regularly on the Speicher case.
     The Kansas senator said the Pentagon's Defense Prisoner of War Missing Person Office and the DIA are working on a new assessment of the case, based on the numerous intelligence reports that indicate Iraq is holding an American pilot.
     "We're talking about a considerable number of people [in Iraq] who say they've seen an American POW," Mr. Roberts said.
     The senator said he is holding out hope for the day when "we see him getting off an airplane" as a free man.
     Saddam has admitted holding some POWs for decades. On Tuesday, Iran and Iraq exchanged about 200 prisoners captured by each side during their eight-year war in the 1980s, according to reports from official Iranian and Iraqi news services.
     The Washington Times disclosed in March 2002 that U.S. intelligence agencies had new information indicating that Baghdad was holding an American pilot believed to be Capt. Speicher.
     A U.S. intelligence report produced in March 2001 stated that "we assess that Iraq can account for Capt. Speicher, but that Baghdad is concealing information about his fate."
     The report also stated that Capt. Speicher was "either captured alive or his remains were recovered and brought to Baghdad."
     It also concluded that Capt. Speicher "probably survived the loss of his aircraft, and if he survived, he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis."

Associated Press Newswires

> Saturday, March 22, 2003

> Family of missing Navy pilot lost in 1991 hope new war in Iraq may

determine

> his fate

> By RON WORD

> JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - The family of a Navy pilot shot down over

Iraq

> in 1991 hopes the latest war against Saddam Hussein's regime may help

> resolve lingering questions about what happened to the missing

aviator.

> U.S. troops will be looking for evidence of Lt. Cmdr. Scott

> Speicher's fate as they move throughout Iraq, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson

> said before the latest conflict began.

> Speicher and three other pilots flew off the USS Saratoga for a

> bombing run over Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991. Another FA-18 Hornet pilot saw

> a flash and lost sight of Speicher.

> The next morning, the Defense Department announced that Speicher's

> plane had been downed by an Iraqi missile. The Pentagon has classified

> the pilot as "missing in action, captured"; Iraq officials said

> Speicher

was

> killed in the crash.

> "I know that we're going to be looking for him big time as we go

> into Iraq," Nelson said. "The flip side of that is if you're Saddam

> Hussein, and if you have Scott Speicher alive, you're probably going

> to use him for propaganda purposes or for some kind of shield. So, we

> just don't know."

> Nelson, a Florida Democrat and a member of the Senate Armed Services

> and Foreign Relations committees, has urged the Pentagon to make

> finding Speicher a priority. He has worked with Sen. Pat Roberts, a

> Kansas Republican, on the Speicher issue.

> Lt. Cmdr. Paula Storum, a Navy spokeswoman in Washington, said she

> could not discuss operational details, but said, resolving Speicher's

> fate "is always a priority for the Navy and its leadership."

> An attorney for Speicher's relatives, Cindy A. Laquidara, said

> Wednesday that she could not discuss any possible rescue plans the

> government may have to free the pilot. She said the family would not

> be available for comment, fearing it might complicate his case.

> "Our goal is to bring Scott home after 12 years," she said.

> Speicher's flight suit was found at the crash site and there have

> been persistent intelligence reports about a U.S. pilot held in

> Baghdad. He is only case still unaccounted for from the war.

> Speicher was declared killed in action several months after the

> crash.

The

> Navy redesignated him missing in action last year on the basis of what

> officials said were intelligence reports from several

sources.

> Former high school classmates and former Navy pilots who flew with

> Speicher have formed Friends Working to Free Scott Speicher. They have

> staged rallies and put up signs reading, "Free Scott Speicher" around

north

> Florida on billboards and in store windows.

> Dow Jones International News

> Saturday, March 22, 2003

> US Team To Search Iraq For US Pilot Lost In '91 - Report

> NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- U.S. defense and intelligence agencies have

formed

> a special unit that will go into Iraq and search for Capt. Michael

> Scott Speicher, a missing U.S. Navy pilot believed to have been held

> captive in Iraq since 1991, the Washington Times reported Saturday on its Web site.

> The report said a classified intelligence report circulated to

officials

> March 14 said Speicher was spotted alive in Baghdad earlier this month

> as

> was being moved, though officials said the sighting couldn't be confirmed.

> The joint program by officials of the Defense Intelligence Agency,

> the CIA, the U.S. Central Command and other agencies will also conduct

> a nationwide search of Iraq for terrorists and chemical, biological

> and nuclear

weapons,

> the report said, citing DIA spokesman Lt. Cmdr. James Brooks.

> Speicher was declared killed in action after his F-18 jet was shot

> down by a missile over Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991. In October 2002, the

> Navy changed his status to "missing in action, captured," effectively

> declaring Speicher a prisoner of war, the Times said

> Baghdad has denied holding Speicher.

> Reuters English News Service

> Monday, March 17, 2003

> VIETNAM: FEATURE-Dogs enlist in hunt for elusive Vietnam war dead.

> By Christina Toh-Pantin

> HON DAT, Vietnam, March 18 (Reuters) - On July 3, 1966, David Joseph

> Phillips's fighter jet was hit by automatic weapons fire during a

> mission over Vietnam.

> He has been listed as missing in action ever since.

> His case is like many from the Vietnam War in which investigators often

> have to work with very little information to try to locate remains.

> In Phillips's case, a witness told provincial authorities he had

retrieved

> and buried body parts but the witness has since been rendered silent

> by a stroke. Now investigators for the first time are using sniffer

> dogs. An estimated 1,889 U.S. personnel are listed as missing in

> Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China from the Vietnam War. About 58,000

> Americans were

killed

> in

> the conflict, while Hanoi says three million Vietnamese died. The

> search in Hon Dat, a rural area of rice and fruit farmers in

> southernmost Kien Giang province, is one of the tough cases,

> classified as an "isolated burial" of the suspected remains of

> 32-year-old Phillips. "After the dogs scanned the area, the dogs

> actually alerted us to this

one

> place," anthropologist Sam Connell said, patting the patch of dirt

> next to

> 12-by-12 metre (40 ft by 40 ft) pit being scoured for bones, personal

> effects and wreckage fragments. The dogs have stirred up hope among

> the volunteers of the Joint Task

Force

> Full Accounting whose mission since 1992 has been to recover Vietnam

> War

era

> remains from Southeast Asia.

> But it took a year of delicate negotiations before the government in

Hanoi

> allowed the MIA team to bring in the dogs to assist in cases that have

> bee

> particularly elusive.

> On loan from the Rhode Island state police, German Shepherds Maximus

> and Panzer were put to work in February on seven cases in four central

> and southern provinces believed to house the remains of 12 U.S.

> military personnel.

> BREAKTHROUGH

> It was considered a breakthrough in the often thorny aftermath of the

> war won by the northern communists against the U.S.-backed South. The

Vietnamese

> call

> it the "American war".

> Like hundreds of others before, the mission in Hon Dat, a former Viet

Cong

> stronghold, involves hard manual labour of digging, transferring

> buckets

> dirt and sifting for clues in hot weather. A dozen U.S. military

> members

are

> on this team.

> About 35 villagers have been hired for the bucket brigade and

> sifting,

with

> the Americans who have been trained to recognise bones doing the

> digging, which is taking place in an orchard. But even the experts are

> sometimes fooled.

> "We had some nice looking roots that we thought were remains,"

> Connell said. Since 1992, some 566 sets of suspected U.S. military

> remains have been repatriated from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. From

> Vietnam alone, the

figure

> is

> 349.

> By about a week into the dig, the team had uncovered pieces of

> wreckage but no human remains. Near the pit, tiny yellow flags dot the

> ground where the jet was reported to have crashed.

> Captain Octave MacDonald, the team leader, who has been on a dozen MIA

> missions, concedes it can be disappointing to go away from a site without

> having found any traces of a serviceman. But he believes the effort should

> not stop.

> "I'd like to think that if I fall in combat that my brothers will come

out

> there looking for me," he said.

> The Vietnamese say they hope their own dead might also be recovered

during

> the process and that they sympathise with the families of MIAs. "We

> know that relatives of those who died in Vietnam are waiting for

their

> remains," said Nguyen Van Hung, a Kien Giang province official.

> Associated Press Newswires

> Saturday, March 15, 2003

> Colorado group hopes to persuade North Korea to return USS Pueblo By

> COLLEEN LONG

> FORT LUPTON, Colo. (AP) - The growing crisis in North Korea opens

> old wounds for Al Plucker.

> Thirty-five years ago, Plucker was a young navigator aboard the USS

Pueblo

> when it was captured off the coast of North Korea. Plucker and his

> crewmates were tortured and humiliated during 11 months in captivity

> before they were released.

> Today, the Pueblo remains docked in Nampo on North Korea's west

> coast, where visitors hear a briefing from two North Korean sailors

> who took part in the capture and watch video recordings, the Korean

> Central

News

> Agency has said.

> The news agency in 1999 quoted visitors as saying that the spy ship

"bears

> witness to the U.S. imperialists' history of aggression on Korea."

> Plucker, 56, other survivors and supporters want to bring the ship home.

> They have lobbied the Bush administration and Congress to make its

> return part of any negotiations with North Korea.

> "It was our responsibility, it was our ship," he said. "It would give

all

> us crew a peace of mind if we knew it was on our home ground."

> A spokesman at North Korea's U.N. delegation in New York would not

comment

> on the Pueblo.

> Sitting in the kitchen of his home on a turkey farm near this tiny

> town about 30 miles north of Denver, Plucker thumbs through scrapbooks

> of news clippings about the crisis as he vividly recalls his ordeal.

> At 21, Petty Officer 3rd Class Plucker had just competed three tours

> in the Vietnam War when he was assigned to the U.S. Navy vessel.

> On Jan. 23, 1968, he had just gotten off duty when North Korean

> torpedo boats surrounded the Pueblo and opened fire, killing one

> sailor and wounding 10.

> Plucker said the captain tried to avoid capture while the crew

> burned

top

> secret papers, but North Korean forces boarded the ship and brought it

> ashore.

> The 82 crew members were taken to two military bases near Pyongyang

where

> they were beaten, tortured and left malnourished, Plucker said. At one

> point, he weighed about 98 pounds.

> "We would get an apple, and we'd keep it for weeks under our beds,

> just peeling away a tiny piece at a time, because we were just so

> hungry," he recalled. "You'd count grains of sugar, that's how

> starving

you

> were."

> The sailors were crowded into barracks. Often they were forced to

> sit silently in small chairs at a table for days at a time.

> North Korea claimed that the ship was inside its waters. The U.S.

> government said the Pueblo was in international waters.

> The hostages were released two days before Christmas. The Navy

considered

> a court-martial for the ship's commander, Navy Cmdr. Lloyd M. "Pete"

> Bucher for letting the Pueblo fall into enemy hands without firing

> shot and for failing to destroy much of the ship's classified

> material. He was never brought to trial.

> Plucker, who received a Purple Heart and a POW medal, returned to

> Colorado, attended college and married. He has spent the past 30 years

> raising turkeys.

> He acknowledged that returning the ship to the United States would

> not erase all his memories, but believes it would help put some of the

> nightmares to rest.

> "I was 21 years old then, just a kid," he said. "And my youth,

everything,

> was taken away. I've been too serious ever since."

> Plucker and a group of supporters have been meeting for about 18

> months to draft letters to U.S. leaders and North Korean officials

> requesting the return of the ship, whose namesake is a city about 100

miles

> south of Denver.

> "The committee feels this could be the one little olive branch that

shows

> the North Korean government is trying to work with us," said Paulette

> Stuart, a member of Puebloans for the Return of the USS Pueblo.

> "Relations could improve by this token."

> Last year, former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Donald P. Gregg

delivered

> to North Korean officials a letter from The Pueblo Chieftain Publisher

> Robert Rawlings and other group supporters asking for the ship's

> return.

> He said a deal to return the Pueblo was hinted at in an Oct. 3

> letter in which Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan invited him to

> visit Pyongyang. When he met with Kim, Gregg said he was told that the

> climate

had

> changed and it was no longer an option.

> Gregg said it was clear the North Koreans were referring to U.S.

> allegations that North Korea was secretly pursuing a program to

> produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.

> The White House disclosed that the North Koreans had acknowledged

> the secret program, and the Bush administration has refused to resume

> any negotiations until the program is eliminated.

> Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., is planning to reintroduce a

> resolution in Congress to ask North Korea to return the ship.

> "It would be a very diplomatic thing for them to do; it would be a

thawing

> of very frigid relations," Campbell said. "But the chances are getting

> worse, not better."

> As global tensions rise, the Pueblo group's hopes are dimming.

> "Of course, our efforts are determined by negotiations by U.S with

> North Korea," Rawlings said. "And it doesn't look good for us, or for

> negotiations right now."

Team to search for pilot lost since first Gulf war
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Defense and intelligence agencies have formed a special unit that will go into Iraq to search for Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, a missing U.S. Navy pilot believed to have been held captive in Iraq since 1991. Top Stories

     Creating the special unit comes as U.S. intelligence agencies reported last week that an American pilot believed to be Capt. Speicher was spotted alive in Baghdad earlier this month.
     A classified intelligence report circulated to officials March 14 stated that Capt. Speicher was seen as he was being moved in Baghdad, although officials said the sighting could not be confirmed.
     The joint program by officials of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, U.S. Central Command and other agencies also will conduct a nationwide search of Iraq for terrorists and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, said Lt. Cmdr. James Brooks, a DIA spokesman.
     "The intelligence community has established a unit to do a country-wide discovery, exploitation and interrogation effort to identify and disrupt terrorist operations; and to identify, examine and eliminate [weapons of mass destruction]," Cmdr. Brooks said in a statement.
     "Another function is to determine and resolve the fate of Capt. Speicher," Cmdr. Brooks said.
     Capt. Speicher was declared killed in action after his F-18 jet was shot down by a missile over Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991.
     Later, intelligence reports indicated that his plane had crash-landed and that Capt. Speicher had ejected. His flight suit was later found during a Red Cross mission to Iraq.
     Several intelligence reports from the 1990s also indicated that Iraq was holding an American pilot believed to be Capt. Speicher, and in 2001 the Navy reclassified him from killed in action to missing in action.
     In October, Navy Secretary Gordon England changed the status again to "missing in action, captured," effectively declaring Capt. Speicher a prisoner of war.
     The Navy determined at the time that wreckage from the F-18, the recovery of Capt. Speicher's flight suit, Iraqi tampering with the downed plane and recent intelligence "continues to suggest strongly that the government of Iraq can account for him."
     Baghdad has denied that it was holding Capt. Speicher and invited a U.S. team to visit Iraq last year to investigate. The Pentagon and State Department declined the offer.
     U.S. officials hope the ouster of Saddam Hussein in the U.S.-led war will produce definitive proof on whether Capt. Speicher is a prisoner or whether he died in captivity.
     Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters yesterday that finding terrorists and deadly unconventional weapons are among eight key U.S. objectives in Iraq.
     Mr. Rumsfeld said the United States hopes to "identify, isolate and eventually eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems, production capabilities, and distribution networks."
     U.S. forces also will "search for, capture, drive out terrorists who have found safe harbor in Iraq."
     The troops also will "collect such intelligence as we can find related to terrorist networks in Iraq and beyond" and intelligence on "the global network of illicit weapons of mass destruction activity," the defense secretary said.
     Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview that he and other interested members of Congress have "come a long way from where we were," a reference to bureaucratic resistance to pursuing the Speicher case.
     "Every hearing we have, every [congressional delegation] we have, we always mention this issue," said Mr. Roberts, whom intelligence agencies brief regularly on the Speicher case.
     The Kansas senator said the Pentagon's Defense Prisoner of War Missing Person Office and the DIA are working on a new assessment of the case, based on the numerous intelligence reports that indicate Iraq is holding an American pilot.
     "We're talking about a considerable number of people [in Iraq] who say they've seen an American POW," Mr. Roberts said.
     The senator said he is holding out hope for the day when "we see him getting off an airplane" as a free man.
     Saddam has admitted holding some POWs for decades. On Tuesday, Iran and Iraq exchanged about 200 prisoners captured by each side during their eight-year war in the 1980s, according to reports from official Iranian and Iraqi news services.
     The Washington Times disclosed in March 2002 that U.S. intelligence agencies had new information indicating that Baghdad was holding an American pilot believed to be Capt. Speicher.
     A U.S. intelligence report produced in March 2001 stated that "we assess that Iraq can account for Capt. Speicher, but that Baghdad is concealing information about his fate."
     The report also stated that Capt. Speicher was "either captured alive or his remains were recovered and brought to Baghdad."
     It also concluded that Capt. Speicher "probably survived the loss of his aircraft, and if he survived, he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis."

Subject: Speicher > Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 19:08:44 -0500 > From: "Lynn O'Shea" <lynn@nationalalliance.org> > The following appeared on Newsmax today. > > Pray for Speicher > John LeBoutillier > Thursday, March 20, 2003 > > Of all the things we hope to soon see - for example, Saddam and his sons > either in U.S. hands or dead - none is more important than the rescue from > an underground cell of Michael Scott Speicher, the Gulf War's first casualty. > > Back in January of 1991, when Navy pilot Speicher was shot down in Iraq on > the first day of the Gulf War, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and > then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Colin Powell immediately declared > him "dead." No investigation; no search teams; no attempt to discover what > had happened to our pilot. > > It was not until several years into the Clinton administration that more > evidence came to light. Indeed, it looked as if Speicher had survived the > shootdown - and had been driven in a truck to Baghdad. A steady stream of > Iraqi defectors subsequently reported the same thing: A U.S. pilot - > presumably Speicher - was being kept in an underground prison complex at > Salman Pak under the personal control of Saddam's elder son, Uday. (This is > the same suburban Baghdad location where hijackers have been trained in a > jet easily visible to satellites passing overhead.) > > Only this past summer did the Bush administration finally acknowledge the > likelihood that Michael Scott Speicher may very well still be alive. Now > comes the key question: Will he still be alive after we take down the > Saddam Hussein government? What will the butcher and his two butcher sons > do to poor Speicher? Will they try to use him as leverage to gain their own > freedom? Or will they kill him to avoid yet another certain 'war crimes' > trial? Will we prosecute those who have been holding him all this time? > > Let us pray that we soon see the following TV scene: a group of Delta Force > troops emerging from some underground facility with a living Michael Scott > Speicher. When - and if - that wonderful day comes, then another series of > questions will loom: How could we ever have left him there in the first place? > > Why was no effort made the day he was shot down to rescue him? Why were > Cheney and Powell so quickly willing to write Speicher off? If indeed > Speicher has been held alive against his will for 12 years, what exactly > has our intelligence community known about it? > > If they say that they did not know, then we need to find out exactly why > they didn't know. What do we spend over $60 billion a year on intelligence > gathering for? And then comes an even bigger question: If Speicher has been > alive all this time, what of the U.S. POWs from the Vietnam War? What has > happened to them? Has the same shoddy disregard for their fates also > corrupted the truth about their survival? > > A lot rests on the next few days.

New reports say Iraq holding U.S. pilot

By Bill Gertz

THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://washingtontimes.com/national/20030110-48937660.htm

The Defense Department recently obtained additional intelligence stating that a missing Navy pilot is alive and being held by the Iraqi government, according to U.S. officials. Top Stories The intelligence officials believe that the reports refer to Navy Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, whose status was changed to “missing/captured” by the Navy in October.

The reports, received in November, state that Iraq is holding a U.S. pilot and has moved the pilot among 18 locations in the country, according to officials familiar with the documents. The reports said the pilot was being treated by a doctor. The officials could not say how reliable the reports are or whether they represent “circular reporting” — new reports based on old intelligence information from the same source or similar sources.

A spokesman of the Defense Intelligence Agency said that it receives such dispatches several times a year. “We investigate every single one,” the spokesman said, without providing details. Cindy Laquidara, a Florida lawyer who represents Capt. Speicher’s family, said in an interview that she recently spoke to an Iraqi defector who reported seeing a captive U.S. pilot in Iraq.

The defector is one of at least three Iraqis who reported that Baghdad is holding an American pilot from the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Mrs. Laquidara said she believes the recent reports are based on the defector’s statements. The intelligence officials said the latest information bolsters earlier reports indicating that Iraq has been holding an American pilot since the war.

Disclosure of the additional information on the pilot comes as the U.S. military continues to send thousands of troops to the Middle East as part of a buildup of forces for any operation against Iraq. The prisoner-of-war case has complicated the Bush administration’s effort to use the threat of military force to pressure Baghdad into disarming its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

The officials said any U.S. military action against Iraq is likely to be preceded by covert operations to find and rescue Capt. Speicher inside Iraq, if he is still alive. There also are concerns among some Pentagon officials that Saddam Hussein might try to exploit the issue of the missing pilot in a standoff with the United States. Iraq might reveal that it has the pilot and then threaten to execute him if U.S. forces invade. Mrs. Laquidara said she had contacted Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations about Capt. Speicher late last year and was told that Baghdad is willing to make a “humanitarian gesture,” which she interpreted as meaning that Iraq may turn over the pilot or his remains.

“The Iraqis expressed a willingness to help me get answers to what happened, and where he or his remains are,” Mrs. Laquidara said. “They did not admit that they have him, only that they would help. “We feel that there is an urgent need to resolve the case” before any conflict erupts, she said. Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and incoming chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview that he has been pressing the Bush administration to resolve the Speicher case, as preparations for war are under way.

Information obtained recently from congressional staff visits to the region indicate that “more and more there are signs that an American POW is in Iraq,” Mr. Roberts said. He said that with Iraq facing attack, Saddam may be more willing to help resolve the case. “I think we have a window of opportunity now, and we should do everything we can to use that” to find out about Capt. Speicher, Mr. Roberts said. He sent a letter to Saddam on Monday appealing for Baghdad’s help. Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Democrat, told reporters last month that a conflict with Iraq will make it more difficult to resolve the fate of Capt. Speicher.

“The clock is ticking,” Mr. Nelson told the Jacksonville, Fla., Times-Union. “Once the balloon goes up in a hot war, it’s going to be a lot more difficult to get information. For the Defense Department to keep dragging their feet, as they have in the past, that time is over.” Baghdad said last year that Capt. Speicher was dead and invited the U.S. government to send a team of investigators to look for him. The Bush administration balked. The State Department and Pentagon chose, instead, to send a diplomatic note seeking more information.

In October, the Navy changed the status of Capt. Speicher to “missing in action, captured.” It was the second time since 2001 that the Navy changed the downed pilot’s status. He was initially declared killed in action after the F-18 jet he was flying was shot down over Iraq in January 1991. That was later changed to “missing in action” in 2001 and finally “missing/captured.” The status changes followed an investigation revealing that Capt. Speicher survived the F-18 downing by ejecting and numerous intelligence reports indicating that Iraq was holding a pilot from the Gulf war.

Navy Secretary Gordon England stated in a memorandum issued Oct. 11 that the status change does not mean Capt. Speicher’s location is known. He said that if the Iraqis are holding Capt. Speicher, “he is entitled to prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Convention and would have been entitled to that status from the first day he came under Iraqi control.” He also said that if Capt. Speicher is alive, “he is a prisoner of war.” President Bush said in a speech in September to the United Nations that Iraq had failed to account for missing prisoners, including a pilot.

Mr. Bush signed legislation into law in October aimed at helping to resolve Capt. Speicher’s case. The Persian Gulf War POW/MIA Accountability Act amended earlier law on missing military personnel. The new legislation gives the attorney general the power to grant refugee status to any Iraqi or Middle East national who “personally delivers into the custody of the United States government a living American Persian Gulf War POW/MIA.

Senators Press Saddam on Gulf War Pilot

By LIBBY QUAID
.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two senators are asking Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for more information about Gulf War pilot Michael Scott Speicher, whom the U.S. Navy declared captured a decade after listing him as dead.

Speicher's F/A-18 was shot down on the opening night of the Gulf War in 1991. The military originally said Speicher died but changed his status last fall, given the absence of evidence he was killed in the crash.

``It's not only for Scott; it's for every person who wears the uniform,'' said Sen. Pat Roberts, the new Senate Intelligence Committee chairman. ``This is the culmination of the longest effort to raise the absolute belief in the value of individual life, because we left somebody behind.''

The Navy changed the pilot's status last fall under pressure from Roberts, R-Kan., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and other lawmakers. The senators said Monday they want to meet with Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Al-Douri, to talk about Speicher.

In a letter Monday, Roberts asked Saddam for the meeting and for help ``in effecting humanitarian release of our lost pilot if he remains alive, or obtaining conclusive information regarding his fate if he does not.''

Roberts concluded that Speicher must be alive after getting a series of classified briefings on the case.

Nelson said time is running out to learn Speicher's fate, as the Pentagon presses ahead with a massive military buildup in the Gulf. President Bush said Monday that Saddam does not appear to be complying with U.N. demands that he disarm, ``but he's got time.''

``If we get into a hot war with Iraq, all bets would be off on getting any kind of information or, if he is alive, of getting him out,'' Nelson said.

A spokesman for the U.N. representative did not immediately return a phone call seeking a comment on the senators' request for a meeting. Iraq claims that Speicher was killed but has not turned over any remains.

The senators maintain that Pentagon officials did not adequately investigate Speicher's fate and stalled in changing his status even after new intelligence surfaced.

They first got involved in part because Speicher's family lived in the Kansas City area and moved to Florida when he was a teen-ager.

Navy News Special

Navy changes status of Capt. Michael Scott Speicher

Date: 11 October 2002

Secretary of the Navy Gordon England today announced a revision to the status of Navy Captain Michael "Scott" Speicher, the F/A-18 pilot who has been unaccounted for since his plane was shot down over Iraq on the opening night of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Secretary England has remained very involved with the Speicher case since his first days in office, and has been kept abreast of any developments in the U.S. government's understanding of what happened to this Navy pilot. Based on that information, and building on the significant status revision made last year by then-Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, Secretary England has decided that the "Missing - Captured" category is the most appropriate designation for Captain Speicher.

Secretary England's official memorandum outlining his reasons for this decision is also posted here.

Pilot once thought dead now listed as ''captured''

Capt. Michael ''Scott'' Speicher

By DALE EISMAN, The Virginian-Pilot
© October 12, 2002

WASHINGTON -- The Navy's civilian leader said Friday that he believes Capt. Michael ``Scott'' Speicher was captured by Iraqi forces shortly after his F/A-18 Hornet was shot down on the first night of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and that Iraq's government is withholding information on Speicher's fate.

Navy Secretary Gordon R. England said he has changed Speicher's status in service records to ``missing/captured.'' Available evidence indicates that if Speicher is alive ``he is a prisoner of war,'' England added.

Speicher had been listed since early last year as ``missing in action.'' ``The information available to me now does not prove definitively that Capt. Speicher is alive,'' England said in a memorandum released to reporters. But he also has ``no evidence to conclude that Capt. Speicher is dead.''

Speicher was declared killed in action shortly after his plane was downed on Jan. 17, 1991. But no remains were ever found, and a search of the crash site in 1995 turned up a flight suit believed to have been Speicher's.

The inspection team that located the suit ``determined that the cockpit area had been expertly excavated'' before the team's arrival, England wrote.

Iraq claims Speicher died in the crash. England noted Friday that statistics of F/A-18 mishaps indicate that 90 percent of the pilots involved survive ejection from the plane, but 70 percent are injured.

England's action Friday was hailed by a spokeswoman for the flier's family and by two U.S. senators who've pressed the Navy and the Bush administration to redouble efforts to locate Speicher.

``We think it's about time. We asked for this change more than a year ago,'' said Cindy Laquidara, a Jacksonville, Fla., lawyer who represents Joanne Harris, Speicher's widow.

``It should not be up to the serviceman to prove he is alive,'' Laquidara added.

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts said England's declaration ``adds credibility and urgency to efforts to secure Capt. Speicher's release. It 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.'' President Bush has alluded to the Speicher case in several recent speeches calling for international action to disarm Iraq and replace dictator Saddam Hussein. The president has argued that Iraq's refusal to account for Speicher is another indication of Saddam's disregard for international law.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Reach Dale Eisman at icemandc@msn.com or (703) 913-9872.