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thedrifter
07-14-03, 07:37 AM
The article below carries a statement from a representative of Senator Bill Nelson and would seem to indicate that clues on Speicher have been found in other prisons. Let's hope this information is accurate.


Saturday, July 12, 2003
Intelligence officials work to learn his fate

By Paul Pinkham
Times_Union staff writer

On what would be Scott Speicher's 46th birthday today, U.S. intelligence officials are examining a 6_month_old Iraqi document that names the Jacksonville Navy pilot who disappeared over Iraq 12 years ago.

Aides to U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D_Fla., said yesterday intelligence officials and Arabic translators are poring through millions of pages of documents seized in Iraq in hopes of finding information about Speicher and weapons of mass destruction. Among those documents is a 90_page document dated in January that lists prisoners of war and includes Speicher's name.

Nelson's office said he met for several hours with Defense Intelligence Agency officials yesterday to discuss new evidence that might shed light on Speicher's fate.

The senator is "considerably more optimistic than he was before these briefings that we're going to learn what happened to Capt. Speicher," said Dan Shapiro, Nelson's legislative director, who accompanied him to Iraq last week and to the Pentagon briefing yesterday.

"They're finding evidence all the time. It's mounting and it's being translated," Shapiro said. He said Nelson is pressing the Pentagon to declassify some of the new information.

Speicher was declared dead the day after his F/A_18 Hornet was shot down over Iraq on the opening night of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. But subsequent intelligence determined he likely survived the crash and was captured. Last year, the Navy reclassified him as missing_captured, a designation similar to prisoner of war.

Officials cautioned that the 90_page document offers no evidence of whether Speicher is alive and might have been written either to provide an accounting of former Iraqi POWs or to confuse the U.S. military.

"I understand it to be a recent compilation of people in custody. ... I don't have an assessment yet of whether this is real information or planted information," said Cindy Laquidara, attorney for Speicher's family in Orange Park. "But I can tell you there is more information about Scott being alive and in custody." Laquidara said she has requested a copy of the document.

Nelson's office was more cautious. “His optimism is specifically aimed at resolving the case, not at whether Scott Speicher is still alive," spokesman Dan McLaughlin said. "What he wants specifically is for the military to provide answers to the family. ... This case needs to be resolved one way or the other."

Shapiro also said Nelson is impatient that forensic tests haven't been completed on evidence gathered from Hakmiyah prison in Baghdad, where Speicher's initials were found carved into a wall in April.

"They have searched every prison that they have reason to connect him with, and I believe they've found some evidence in some of them," Shapiro said. He wouldn't elaborate.

Lynn O'Shea
Director of Research
National Alliance of Families
for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen
World War II - Korea - Cold War - Vietnam - Gulf War

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Sempers,

Roger
:marine: