thedrifter
08-27-03, 08:03 AM
08-22-2003
Guest Column: Pentagon Abandoning Capt. Speicher - Again
By Lynn O’Shea
Less than four months after major combat operations in Iraq ended, the Pentagon is now engaged in another operation - to rid itself of a thorny and controversial POW/MIA mystery from the 1991 Gulf War, the fate of missing Navy pilot Capt. Michael Scott Speicher.
A wealth of evidence that emerged over the past decade strongly indicates that Speicher survived both the shoot-down of his F/A-18 Hornet on Jan. 17, 1991, and more than a decade of imprisonment in Iraq. As a result, the Navy reclassified his status from Killed in Action to Missing in Action, then last year, from MIA to “missing-captured” (as current Department of Defense statutes and missing person directives do not use the term Prisoner of War).
So why is it that unnamed Pentagon officials are now attempting to con the news media into declaring Speicher dead once more?
Those Pentagon officials who believe that Speicher was never held captive in Baghdad or anywhere else, and died at or near his crash site and is buried in the desert of Iraq, are engaged in a campaign to leak selective pieces of information to bolster that theory.
Other officials inside the government, who are trying to do an honest investigation into the Speicher case - and the POW/MIA issue in general - must be experiencing the same level of frustration as the relatives of the missing serviceman. That sense of frustration has led one well-placed government source to contact our organization, the National Alliance of Families. He has confirmed our worst suspicions that the Pentagon is simply trying to get rid of the Speicher “problem” by walking away from it.
What our source confirms is that, once again, powerful officials in the Pentagon are gripped by the “mindset to debunk” - a general belief that since (as they believe) the POW is dead, any information suggesting otherwise is bogus and must be discredited.
The source, who I will call Buddy, was blunt: “I could go on and on … but you can see through the smoke and mirrors and the spin - those in government who should have led the charge all along to account for Speicher have been swayed by the naysayers, or on their own have come to believe that he died long ago.”
A first sign that the Pentagon’s abandonment of Michael Scott Speicher was underway came in The Boston Globe last fall, four months before the U.S. military invaded Iraq and toppled the regime there. Key quotes and passages from the article, published on Nov. 11, 2002, included:
* “Many intelligence and military officials assert that Speicher is almost certainly dead.”
* “All the signs that the military has say he’s dead.”
* “There is a conflict between the evidence that says he's alive and the evidence that says he’s not alive …. ”
* “Speicher appeared to have escaped his stricken Hornet, but what happened to him afterward remained unknown. ‘We think he survived the ejection but he died afterward …. ’ ”
Similar news coverage has suddenly appeared in the past two weeks, signaling that the Pentagon intends to rebury the Speicher case. Dissecting various articles, it appears that the Pentagon is basing the shift in position on three assumptions:
* The initials, “M S S,” found scrawled on a cell wall, in Hakimiyah Prison
in Baghdad, do not belong to Michael Scott Speicher
* DNA testing done on material taken from the cell does not match that of Speicher’s.
* Information provided by an Iraqi source who passed a polygraph test, putting Speicher in that cell, could not be confirmed.
While Pentagon sources say the search for Speicher continues in Baghdad, the new focus of the investigation has returned to the desert crash site.
While the Pentagon has discredited the alleged live sighting of Speicher at the Hakimiyah Prison, we must ask: What about the other reported sightings of Speicher?
The Pentagon has not been able to explain away the claim by an Iraqi defector who escaped to Jordan, who told American investigators that in the first days of the 1991 Gulf War, he had driven an American pilot from the desert to Baghdad where he was taken by the Iraqi authorities. The U.S. pilot, the defector said, was alive, alert and wearing a flight suit. The defector pointed Speicher out in a photo lineup, and passed two lie detector tests.
According to Buddy, “The one source that claimed to have been held with Speicher and fed him on a daily basis stated they had been held for 10 years in the underground prison; that individual was released and left Iraq.”
Buddy also told us, “The individual that reported feeding the pilot was talking to an individual outside Iraq when he made the claim, and the U.S. side never interviewed him. Another source said Speicher had a scar on his face from the aircraft loss incident, and that he walked with a slight limp.”
“Another source put him in another prison facility in downtown Baghdad, and underground, to which access was limited to a small number of people. These many, many source reports did not come from a single source, and there is no way they can claim the information is bogus.”
With regard to the alleged sighting at Hakimiyah Prison, Buddy stated:
“The source in question claimed a long time ago that he had seen Speicher in the early 1990s and may have been the one that passed two polygraph [test]s; however, some folks claim he was not telling the truth. In the meantime, there have been a number of different sources who claimed that Speicher was alive and being moved between facilities, which they identified. Some of those sources were deemed to be entirely credible, while others had no reason or motivation to lie.”
“I am afraid that questions within the government about the credibility of one source have tainted reporting by others,” he added.
After several Iraqis taken captive in the war denied that Speicher had been held prisoner, it became quickly clear that Pentagon officials arbitrarily opted to believe the naysayers, Buddy explained.
The Iraqi defector who had placed Speicher in Hakimiyah Prison passed his polygraph. The two Iraqis whom the source said could confirm his report, denied it and passed their polygraph tests. Obviously someone lied.
The question is, who was lying and why has the Pentagon assumed that those denying Speicher’s captivity are the only ones telling the truth? This is an especially important point, because U.S. investigators have admitted that captured Iraqis have proved very adept at beating the polygraph, telling lies shown by the polygraph as being truthful. Yet, the Pentagon gives weight to the involuntarily captured Iraqis over the voluntary Iraqi defector.
On another crucial point, the Pentagon previously reported that samples of genetic material taken from the cell that contained the initials, “M S S,” do not match samples for Scott Speicher. Their immediate conclusion is that Speicher was never in that cell and therefore he did not scratch the initials “M S S,” on the wall.
continued.....
Guest Column: Pentagon Abandoning Capt. Speicher - Again
By Lynn O’Shea
Less than four months after major combat operations in Iraq ended, the Pentagon is now engaged in another operation - to rid itself of a thorny and controversial POW/MIA mystery from the 1991 Gulf War, the fate of missing Navy pilot Capt. Michael Scott Speicher.
A wealth of evidence that emerged over the past decade strongly indicates that Speicher survived both the shoot-down of his F/A-18 Hornet on Jan. 17, 1991, and more than a decade of imprisonment in Iraq. As a result, the Navy reclassified his status from Killed in Action to Missing in Action, then last year, from MIA to “missing-captured” (as current Department of Defense statutes and missing person directives do not use the term Prisoner of War).
So why is it that unnamed Pentagon officials are now attempting to con the news media into declaring Speicher dead once more?
Those Pentagon officials who believe that Speicher was never held captive in Baghdad or anywhere else, and died at or near his crash site and is buried in the desert of Iraq, are engaged in a campaign to leak selective pieces of information to bolster that theory.
Other officials inside the government, who are trying to do an honest investigation into the Speicher case - and the POW/MIA issue in general - must be experiencing the same level of frustration as the relatives of the missing serviceman. That sense of frustration has led one well-placed government source to contact our organization, the National Alliance of Families. He has confirmed our worst suspicions that the Pentagon is simply trying to get rid of the Speicher “problem” by walking away from it.
What our source confirms is that, once again, powerful officials in the Pentagon are gripped by the “mindset to debunk” - a general belief that since (as they believe) the POW is dead, any information suggesting otherwise is bogus and must be discredited.
The source, who I will call Buddy, was blunt: “I could go on and on … but you can see through the smoke and mirrors and the spin - those in government who should have led the charge all along to account for Speicher have been swayed by the naysayers, or on their own have come to believe that he died long ago.”
A first sign that the Pentagon’s abandonment of Michael Scott Speicher was underway came in The Boston Globe last fall, four months before the U.S. military invaded Iraq and toppled the regime there. Key quotes and passages from the article, published on Nov. 11, 2002, included:
* “Many intelligence and military officials assert that Speicher is almost certainly dead.”
* “All the signs that the military has say he’s dead.”
* “There is a conflict between the evidence that says he's alive and the evidence that says he’s not alive …. ”
* “Speicher appeared to have escaped his stricken Hornet, but what happened to him afterward remained unknown. ‘We think he survived the ejection but he died afterward …. ’ ”
Similar news coverage has suddenly appeared in the past two weeks, signaling that the Pentagon intends to rebury the Speicher case. Dissecting various articles, it appears that the Pentagon is basing the shift in position on three assumptions:
* The initials, “M S S,” found scrawled on a cell wall, in Hakimiyah Prison
in Baghdad, do not belong to Michael Scott Speicher
* DNA testing done on material taken from the cell does not match that of Speicher’s.
* Information provided by an Iraqi source who passed a polygraph test, putting Speicher in that cell, could not be confirmed.
While Pentagon sources say the search for Speicher continues in Baghdad, the new focus of the investigation has returned to the desert crash site.
While the Pentagon has discredited the alleged live sighting of Speicher at the Hakimiyah Prison, we must ask: What about the other reported sightings of Speicher?
The Pentagon has not been able to explain away the claim by an Iraqi defector who escaped to Jordan, who told American investigators that in the first days of the 1991 Gulf War, he had driven an American pilot from the desert to Baghdad where he was taken by the Iraqi authorities. The U.S. pilot, the defector said, was alive, alert and wearing a flight suit. The defector pointed Speicher out in a photo lineup, and passed two lie detector tests.
According to Buddy, “The one source that claimed to have been held with Speicher and fed him on a daily basis stated they had been held for 10 years in the underground prison; that individual was released and left Iraq.”
Buddy also told us, “The individual that reported feeding the pilot was talking to an individual outside Iraq when he made the claim, and the U.S. side never interviewed him. Another source said Speicher had a scar on his face from the aircraft loss incident, and that he walked with a slight limp.”
“Another source put him in another prison facility in downtown Baghdad, and underground, to which access was limited to a small number of people. These many, many source reports did not come from a single source, and there is no way they can claim the information is bogus.”
With regard to the alleged sighting at Hakimiyah Prison, Buddy stated:
“The source in question claimed a long time ago that he had seen Speicher in the early 1990s and may have been the one that passed two polygraph [test]s; however, some folks claim he was not telling the truth. In the meantime, there have been a number of different sources who claimed that Speicher was alive and being moved between facilities, which they identified. Some of those sources were deemed to be entirely credible, while others had no reason or motivation to lie.”
“I am afraid that questions within the government about the credibility of one source have tainted reporting by others,” he added.
After several Iraqis taken captive in the war denied that Speicher had been held prisoner, it became quickly clear that Pentagon officials arbitrarily opted to believe the naysayers, Buddy explained.
The Iraqi defector who had placed Speicher in Hakimiyah Prison passed his polygraph. The two Iraqis whom the source said could confirm his report, denied it and passed their polygraph tests. Obviously someone lied.
The question is, who was lying and why has the Pentagon assumed that those denying Speicher’s captivity are the only ones telling the truth? This is an especially important point, because U.S. investigators have admitted that captured Iraqis have proved very adept at beating the polygraph, telling lies shown by the polygraph as being truthful. Yet, the Pentagon gives weight to the involuntarily captured Iraqis over the voluntary Iraqi defector.
On another crucial point, the Pentagon previously reported that samples of genetic material taken from the cell that contained the initials, “M S S,” do not match samples for Scott Speicher. Their immediate conclusion is that Speicher was never in that cell and therefore he did not scratch the initials “M S S,” on the wall.
continued.....