Search for Scott Speicher - update

[TracGunny]

January 11th - 10:12 pm ET
Military search crews trying to determine fate of Navy pilot shot down in first Gulf War
RON WORD
Associated Press Writer

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."

On the Net:
Friends Working to Free Scott Speicher:
http://www.freescottspeicher.com/

http://wire.jacksonville.com/pstories/us/20040111/1793143.shtml

[TracGunny]

Wednesday, October 6, 2004 Story last updated at 6:15 p.m. on Wednesday, October 6, 2004

By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON - No clues to the fate of missing Navy pilot Capt. Michael Scott Speicher have surfaced since a U.S. search team left Iraq in May, a senior U.S. officer said Wednesday.

Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Joseph J. McMenamin, military commander of the Iraq Survey Group, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that results of the effort in Iraq have been turned over to the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is writing a report on the 13-year Speicher case.

McMenamin did not detail his group's findings. Other officials have said previously that no evidence was found to determine conclusively whether Speicher had ever been in captivity in Iraq.

Speicher was shot down in an F/A-18 over central Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991, the opening night of the Gulf War. His remains were never recovered. Speculation arose over the years - including during the months leading up to the latest Iraq war - that he was being held by the Iraqis.

The Iraqi government under President Saddam Hussein maintained from the start that Speicher died when his plane was shot down.

"The Speicher team exhausted all in-country leads regarding the fate of Captain Speicher," McMenamin said. "No new leads have been developed since their departure." He added that the Pentagon would "immediately pursue any new leads or data generated in Iraq on the status of Captain Speicher."

Later, however, under questioning by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., McMenamin said some leads could not be pursued to their end because of the security threat posed by the Iraq insurgency.

"It's extremely difficult to get about in parts of the country right now to follow up on some of those leads," McMenamin said. He did not say whether this was why the search team left in May.

McMenamin said some items missing from Speicher's aircraft, including his identification badge and pistol, have yet to be found. Other items were discovered when the crash site was searched some years ago. Searchers went back to the site after the fall of Baghdad last year.

McMenamin indicated he believed there are people in Iraq who know where the missing items can be found.

"It involves tracking down people somewhere in the country. Some are afraid to come forward. They're there. It's just going to involve getting to them and finding them and finding out what the answers are," he said.

Nelson, who has taken a special interest in Speicher because the pilot moved to Florida from the Kansas City, Mo., area when he was a teenager, asked McMenamin what he should tell Speicher's family in Jacksonville, Fla., to assure them that the matter is not closed.

"The only thing I would be able to tell the family is that we will not give up looking for him," McMenamin replied. "If that gives them false hope, it shouldn't. As time goes on and the situation (inside Iraq) stabilizes it will give us better access to people, maybe people will be more forthcoming."

The family's lawyer, Cindy Laquidara, said the family understands that the government "has not turned up any new information."

She added, "We are confident we will have a resolution and a final unassailable answer to what happened to Captain Speicher."

The search for evidence on Speicher was a lesser-noted mission of the Iraq Survey Group, whose primary effort was focused on the search for weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq. McMenamin testified briefly as part of a broader presentation on the survey group's weapons findings.

The Navy has changed its position on Speicher's status over the years. Hours after his plane went down, the Pentagon declared him killed in action. Ten years later, in January 2001, the Navy changed his status to MIA, citing an absence of evidence that he had died.

In October 2002 the Navy changed his status from missing in action to "missing-captured," although it has never said what evidence it has that he was in captivity.

In announcing that decision, Navy Secretary Gordon England wrote at the time, "I have no evidence to conclude that Captain Speicher is dead.

England also wrote, "While the information available to me now does not prove definitively that Captain Speicher is alive and in Iraqi custody, I am personally convinced the Iraqis seized him sometime after his plane went down."

Copyright Associated Press.
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/apnews/stories/100604/D85I6ONO0.shtml