Saddam plays dumb on fate of Navy pilot Scott Speicher

[thedrifter]

Saddam plays dumb on fate of Navy pilot Scott Speicher
By LISA HOFFMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
Dec 16, 2003, 05:21

One of the first things U.S. forces grilled Saddam Hussein about after his capture was the fate of missing Navy pilot Scott Speicher.
Those hoping the deposed Iraqi despot would say the captain was still alive and in custody somewhere in Iraq were disappointed when Saddam denied knowledge of the man who has been missing since his strike fighter crashed in Iraq 12 years ago during the first night of the Persian Gulf War.

"He said he didn't take any prisoners," Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Monday. "He said he didn't know what happened."

U.S. troops combing Iraq since April for answers in the mystery of Speicher's disappearance also have come up empty, according to Pentagon officials. Interrogations of captured Iraqi officials have yielded little information, and seized documents appeared to indicate the Iraqi leadership had no idea what happened to him, as well.

But Speicher's family and friends are not ready to give up on Speicher, of Jacksonville, Fla., who was 33 when shot down on Jan. 17, 1991.

"He's a bona fide liar," Speicher friend Nels Jensen told a Jacksonville TV station Monday. "This is a golden hour in getting Scott back."

Speicher is the only military pilot still unaccounted for after Operation Desert Storm. His F/A 18 was shot down on the first night of the war.

The Pentagon declared him killed in action despite the fact that no conclusive evidence of his death has been found. Iraqi officials have insisted Speicher was never a prisoner and produced remains they claimed were his. But U.S. forensic testing proved they were not.

A 1995 search of the crash site by U.S. investigators found a flight suit and aircraft wreckage, but no evidence Speicher had been buried there.

After prodding from family members and a report from U.S. intelligence agencies that he might have been captured, the Navy changed Speicher's status to "missing in action/captured."

Hopes were raised soon after the March invasion of Iraq when the initials "M.S.S." _ which were thought to refer to the pilot's full name, Michael Scott Speicher _ were found scratched into the wall of a Baghdad prison. But tests on hair found in the cell's drain showed they were not a match.

Monday, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said he was pleased the Pentagon had kept their promise to make inquiries about Speicher a top priority. Nelson, who traveled to Iraq to pursue the case, said others might come forward with more information now that Saddam is in custody.

"We owe it to the family of Scott Speicher to finally resolve his fate," Nelson told reporters.


SHNS reporter Joel Eskovitz contributed to this report.


(E-mail Lisa Hoffman at HoffmanL@shns.com or visit www.shns.com.)

© Copyright 2003 by Capitol Hill Blue


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Sempers,

Roger

[Sparrowhawk]

thoughts that came into my mind.

What happened to that Navy Pilot?

Perhaps, we'll never know.