Pentagon Abandoning Capt. Speicher - Again [Archive] - Marine Corps

thedrifter

08-27-03, 08:03 AM

That is certainly possible. But let’s look at another possibility, one the Pentagon and news media have chosen to ignore.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, who has pursued the Speicher case, has described the prison cell as a “hell-hole.” Various media reports have described its sanitary facility as a hole in the ground with a drain over it. From our understanding, the hair tested for DNA came from that drain.

The source put Speicher in that cell in the mid-1990s. Do we have absolute proof that no one else occupied that cell after Speicher? Is it not possible that Speicher’s genetic material may have been washed away by whatever other genetic material followed it through the drain and into that hole?

How does the failure of a DNA match prove Speicher was not in that cell? Is it not possible Speicher was in that cell, and left his initials but that his genetic material did not survive in the cell?

The Pentagon seems disinclined to consider that possibility.

“I think you see what is happening with the government responses,” Buddy explained. “There is no evidence of this or that. There is a reason for that. Since Speicher became an issue in the mid-1990s, the position of those [Pentagon officials] in the issue assigned responsibility to determine his fate has been that he was lost in the aircraft crash in 1991.”

“So they can say well in advance of any investigation that there is no evidence of his being alive, since they maintain he died previously,” Buddy continued. “Does that make sense? If no one believed in the DNA evidence, again, how could there be such evidence if he died, they would be willing to say rather quickly that there was no evidence he was held in the cell.”

There is still much that can be done in Iraq to unearth the truth of what happened to Speicher.

“Further interviews in Baghdad of former Iraqi officials have failed to surface any information as to the status of Speicher, but have revealed the names of a number of other officials who would know what happened to him,” Buddy told me. “If the team remains vigilant in its pursuit of information on Speicher, they will find out what happened to him, or determine where he is.”

But given the Pentagon’s deplorable conduct in the hunt for Michael Scott Speicher - a pattern that echoes its mishandling of the Vietnam POW/MIA issue - one is forced to wonder how seriously the Pentagon will treat any new leads.

Lynn O’Shea is Research Director of the National Alliance of Families, a nonprofit advocacy group of relatives of servicemen missing in action. She can be reached at lynn@nationalalliance.org.

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=174&rnd=76.86359495762146

Sempers,

Roger
:marine: