Gulf pilot supposedly POW, captured in Iraq?

[David]

fnaWife2AFVV

Registered to :Sep 26, 2001
Messages :198
From :
Posted 11-03-2002 at 11:07
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Now, keep in mind this IS Matt Drudge......
Quote:
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Gulf war pilot believed alive, captive in Iraq
http://www.drudgereport.com/
Drudge Report

Gulf war pilot believed alive, captive in Iraq.. MORE... U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained new information indicating Iraq is holding captive a U.S. Navy pilot shot down during the Persian Gulf war, The Washington Times is reporting on Monday... Developing...


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MORTARDUDE

Registered to :Aug 23, 2001
Messages :429
From :Bartlett, TN. C.S.A.
Posted 11-03-2002 at 12:21
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I wasn't aware of any MIAs from that war.
What kind of BS is this ????



Larry


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usmcsgt65

Registered to :Jan 03, 2002
Messages :49
From :Las Vegas, NV
Posted 11-03-2002 at 21:46
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It was from Matt Drudge. He cannot get stories straight. Now, he cannot get them in the right century.
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Semper Fi


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phuloi

Registered to :Aug 24, 2001
Messages :358
From :Sequim,Wa.
Posted 12-03-2002 at 00:33
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Hold on guys.This report did not originate with Matt Drudge...Heard the same story on FOX..and read it in the paper...Off to investigate..
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War is fear cloaked in courage...... Westmoreland...Peace..Griz


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sfc_darrel

Registered to :Jan 19, 2002
Messages :128
From :
Posted 12-03-2002 at 00:46
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U.S. officials downplay report on Navy pilot in Iraq

March 11, 2002 Posted: 1:58 PM EST (1858 GMT)
[Michael Scott Speicher]
Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher's aircraft was shot down on the first day of the Iraqi air war in 1991.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. officials Monday downplayed a published report that a Navy pilot initially thought to have been killed in action during the Persian Gulf War might be alive and held in Iraq.

The report in Monday's Washington Times said the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency received new information several months ago from British intelligence about Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher.

A Pentagon source told CNN that new information came from a former Iraqi citizen who did not have firsthand knowledge of Speicher's fate. The Pentagon has an active investigation to determine what happened to the pilot, officials said.

The Washington Times reported that U.S. intelligence officials said the British information came from someone who had been in Iraq and had learned that an American pilot was being held captive in Baghdad.

Last year, based on information from an Iraqi defector, the Navy changed Speicher's status from killed in action/body not recovered to missing in action, the newspaper reported.

However, few U.S. officials are said to believe Speicher is alive, and several said the latest intelligence adds little to what is already known about his fate.

Speicher's F/A-18 Hornet was shot down on January 17, 1991, the first day of the air war over Iraq. He was placed on MIA status the next day.

Several U.S. officials who talked to CNN dismissed the Washington Times article.

"We've had a number of leads over the years," one Pentagon official said. "This is among the slimmest."

Another U.S. official said, "If Scott Speicher were still alive, Saddam Hussein would have brought him out for propaganda."

He added, "We get reports all the time that we check out."

The United States continues to seek a full accounting from Iraq about what happened to Speicher, but one official said the assumption is that he died shortly after the crash.

On May 22, 1991, after a Navy status review board found "no credible evidence" to suggest Speicher had survived, the pilot's status was changed from missing in action to killed in action.

In December 1995, working through the International Committee of the Red Cross, investigators from the Navy and Army's Central Identification Laboratory entered Iraq and conducted a thorough excavation of the crash site.

In September 1996, based on a comprehensive review of evidence accumulated since the initial killed-in-action determination, the Navy secretary reaffirmed the presumptive finding of death.

CNN Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre contributed to this report.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/03/11/nav...raq/index.html


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You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once. Robert Heinlein


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sfc_darrel

Registered to :Jan 19, 2002
Messages :128
From :
Posted 12-03-2002 at 00:52
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Or old news report ...
New Evidence On First Gulf War MIA

Indicates Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher
Survived Shootdown

U.S. Veteran Dispatch
By Linda Bordner
September 1999

"The first American to fall in the Persian Gulf War remains the last to be accounted for." With these words, Tim Weiner concluded a 1997 New York Times article regarding the fate of Michael Scott Speicher, U.S. naval pilot missing since his January 16, 1991 flight over Iraq.

Newly released evidence now increases opinion that Lt. Commander Speicher landed alive in the Iraqi desert. A July, 1999 letter by a Secretary of Defense deputy assistant revealed for the first time some details of the F-18 crash site investigation conducted in 1995.
[Michael Speicher]

The search was sparked when a military officer from Qatar, an emirate along the Saudi border, appeared one day at the American embassy with startling news. He told of leading a hunting party for wild game into western Iraq, where he came upon the wreck of a U.S. fighter jet.

Realizing its significance, he took photos, including the identification numbers of the craft and the plane's canopy. Presenting the irrefutable evidence to embassy officials, along with the location of his find, he also remarked on seeing an ejection seat in the area.

Faced with the Qatar encounter publicity, the Pentagon was prodded into engaging exploration and recovery consideration. Time seemed of the essence. If the U.S. could beat the Iraqi to the site, invaluable evidence might be gleaned from the remote scene.

The dilemma: Call Iraqi attention to the site by asking permission to enter, thus literally handing them a map to Speicher's last known location, or conduct a secret run into the territory to seek and recover whatever could be found. Washington chose the latter route. The Red Cross was employed to politely ask Sadaam if they could please go have a look, detailing exactly where they wished to explore.

Little information was gleaned at the site itself. The Red Cross team allowed into the western Iraq location by Sadaam Hussein to search the wreckage had been delayed for months by the Iraqi government. By the time they gained access to the desert crash scene, they found, not surprisingly, an excavated site.

Debate over whether to engage a covert mission to search for the missing pilot had been overridden by General John Shalikashvilli, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to the Tim Weiner report. Timothy G. Connolly (then principal assistant deputy of Defense for special operations.) quoted the general's claim that the risk for military search teams was too high:

"I do not want to have to write the parents and tell them that their son or daughter died looking for old bones."

The "old bones" the general referred to was Lt. Commander Michael Speicher. His father called him Scotty. At 33, the naval pilot was married with two infant children, ages one and three. His minister remembered him as a Sunday School teacher who could often be found on his knees telling Bible stories to his pre-school class.

Weiner noted that Mr. Connolly had tried unsuccessfully to win approval for the secret military approach. He explained getting diplomatic permission from Iraq for a Red Cross expedition would insure there would be nothing left at the site to find, once the regime was alerted.

Sure enough, after some six months of stalling by Iraqis, the Red Cross team was finally allowed to visit the site. As Fredrick Smith, assistant secretary for international security affairs, chose to put it:

"It appeared that people had been there before we arrived."

Among those who had argued for covert military use, was no less than four-star Admiral Stan Arthur, leader of allied naval forces in the Gulf War:

"We know there was an ejection attempt. I thought he bailed out. I was adamant we get back in there."

Although still visible on recent surveillance flights, the commander's ejection seat was gone when the team arrived. No "old bones" were anywhere to be found, either.

No one seemed surprised that the site had been "sanitized." Briefed by Red Cross officials following their meeting with Iraq to describe the requested destination, Mr. Smith documented that "Iraqis listened intently; took copious notes."

There was one surprise, however, that even Pentagon officials had not calculated on. While in the desert, The Red Cross team met up with Bedouin nomads. Among items they gave the search team were a flight suit and flight data recorder from Speicher's F-18.

Since that expedition in 1995, the Pentagon has remained silent about these findings, or what studies of the flight suit revealed. Until now. In the July, 1999 letter from a deputy assistant secretary of defense to the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen (NAFRAMS), a new bit of information was released.

Acknowledging that the wreckage in western Iraq was confirmed as Speicher's F-18, the deputy assistant added that the condition of the flight suit indicated the pilot had been cut out of the suit. This, four years after recovery of the suit, and eight years after the crash, finally supports Admiral

Arthur's belief the lt. commander had indeed ejected from his craft.

No mention was made of the data recorder obtained at the same time. Piecing together "facts" as released by the Pentagon, is as frustrating as trying to play a game of Clue, where a card is only allowed to be turned face up once every few years.

Another version of the Speicher case emerged in a lawsuit.( See story Gulf War MIA's Widow Suing Motorola - Charges Radio Failure Caused Casualty in this issue) According to the suit, a Qatar military officer found desert nomads selling parts of the F-18 in a market bazaar. They supposedly led the officer to the site, where he took photographs as proof of his find.

From the beginning, the Pentagon's claim that Speicher's fighter had "disintegrated in mid-air" conflicted with the military's own accounts. "Man-made symbol" sightings from the air near the site, in the traditional E & E format for "escape & evade" meant a soldier in enemy territory seeking rescue by his own.

In fact, how does a plane, having "disintegrated in mid-air," even have a crash site, complete with ejection seat and data recorder? The letter offers the condition of the suit and equipment as proof Speicher was "probably severely injured or dead when these items were removed."

One must wonder at the rationale that allows for "old bones" of a pilot listed "killed in action" from a "disintegrated" craft, still capable of scrawling E & E in the desert for his comrades to read from surveillance photos years later!

If Americans who still care about their vanished soldiers have to wait four years to be told the young Sunday School teacher was cut out of his flight suit, how many years until they are told what the data recorder revealed?

Although no official statement was made, Weiner quoted an unidentified officer familiar with the project:

"The evidence showed the pilot successfully ejected from the aircraft."

Alliance chairwoman Delores Alfond described the letter's contents as " a breakthrough," adding, "Saddam could be holding a live American prisoner of war. If they have the flight suit, he's got to have been in it."

Ironically, the U.S. government named the diplomatic mission sent to learn Michael Speicher's fate "Promise Kept." Alfond, a long-time POW/MIA activist whose brother is still missing from the Vietnam War, knows firsthand the despair POW/MIA families from other U.S. wars still suffer. For them, the words "Promise Kept" from the government rings hollow.

"They say finding our missing servicemen is a top priority, but their reactions show this isn't so. But its really about what the State Department considers a priority, not concern for American servicemen left behind after the shooting has stopped."

"It's disgraceful that we didn't go in under cover to pick up any evidence found by the hunter. By the time we waited around six months for Sadaam Hussein to let them in, there wasn't anything left to find."

And what about the senior officers involved in the decision to write off a naval pilot waiting in the desert for his country to rescue him? How well do they sleep at night?

Weiner lets key players in that fateful decision explain their stand.

Admiral Arthur retired after the Gulf War, but the war of words he waged to send a covert mission for his downed pilot must echo in the ears of those who ignored his plea. From retirement, he tried to explain the atmosphere surrounding the debate:

"The warriors believed they had a responsibility. You lose one of your own, you go back and find him. The more modern concept was that you can't take the risk of a loss."

A general officer, speaking to Weiner on condition of anonymity:

"This mentality of 'no losses' has more ramifications than people realize. The idea that we can do everything so well that we shouldn't ever suffer a loss or casualty invades everything. It keeps you from doing what's necessary."

The secretary deputy, Timothy Connolly, also pleaded for military recovery. His argument at the time included the Army Ranger's creed "I will never let a fallen comrade fall into the hands of the enemy." Weiner learned Connolly subsequently left the Pentagon for a teaching job. Connolly stated:

"Our senior civilian and military leaders were simply too afraid of the possibility of failure, however remote, and refused to allow this pilot's comrades to go into Iraq and bring him home. I wish I could tell you it was any more complex than that, but it wasn't."

Retired General Shalikasvili reiterated his belief in a written statement:

"I concluded that there was no overwhelming need to put our soldiers at risk to covertly search a three year old crash site when the Red Cross option was available." He also said, "To send America's sons and daughters into harm's way is the most serious recommendation a military leader can make. This is a sacred trust."

Apparently the sacred trust rule applies only to those standing on safe ground, not to those sons and daughters fallen and forgotten on foreign soil.


http://www.usvetdsp.com/speic_ev.htm
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You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once. Robert Heinlein


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phuloi

Registered to :Aug 24, 2001
Messages :358
From :Sequim,Wa.
Posted 13-03-2002 at 13:44
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March 12, 2002


Senator suspects pilot alive in Iraq
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


A member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said yesterday he suspects a Navy pilot shot down over Iraq in 1991 is alive and being held captive as the State Department said Baghdad has ignored U.S. requests for information about the pilot's fate.


Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican, said in an interview that he has asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to classify Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher as a prisoner of war, instead of missing in action. The Pentagon changed Cmdr. Speicher's status last year from killed to missing in action.
"The bottom line is there is no evidence he was killed when his aircraft was shot down in 1991," Mr. Roberts said. "On the contrary, there are numerous reports that indicate he could be alive."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Iraqi government has not replied to U.S. diplomatic appeals asking for information about the fate of Cmdr. Speicher.
A formal diplomatic note was sent to Baghdad in January 2001 asking for information about the pilot. The issue also was raised in diplomatic meetings with Iraqi officials in Geneva, Mr. Boucher said.
On Friday at a meeting of diplomats in Geneva known as the Tripartite Commission, U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait Richard Jones told Iraqi officials: "Iraq continues to shirk its responsibility to answer the many unresolved questions about Cmdr. Speicher's fate."
Sen. Robert C. Smith, New Hampshire Republican and member of the Armed Services Committee, said he has been tracking reports on the Speicher case for more than five years.
"Unfortunately, we have not yet accounted for Commander Speicher, but I will continue to work with the administration to determine his fate," Mr. Smith said through a spokesman. "We must vigorously pursue every lead for the sake of Commander Speicher and his family. We owe him nothing less."
Pentagon officials are expected to brief Congress on the case as early as today.
The administration and congressional officials were responding to a report in yesterday's editions of The Washington Times that said new intelligence information was uncovered in the last several months indicating Cmdr. Speicher is being held prisoner in Iraq.
Cmdr. Speicher was declared killed in action in 1991, but his status was changed last year to missing in action. It was an unprecedented action and put the Pentagon in the position of possibly having left behind an American at the end of the Gulf war.
A spokesman for the Iraqi mission to the United Nations could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Roberts, in a Feb. 14 letter to Mr. Rumsfeld, stated that a recent U.S. intelligence community assessment of the case concluded that Cdmr. Speicher "probably survived the loss of his aircraft and if he survived, he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis."
"This strongly suggests the more appropriate designator or status of POW," Mr. Roberts stated in the letter. "I believe the status of POW sends a symbolic message not only to the Iraqis, but to other adversaries, current and future ? and most importantly to the men and women of the U.S. armed forces and the American people."
Mr. Roberts said in the interview he discussed the Speicher case with President Bush three weeks ago, and that the president assured him the case is "very high on his agenda."
The possibility of an American POW in Baghdad also is complicating U.S. efforts to expand the war on terrorism to Iraq, U.S. officials said.
Mr. Roberts said the Pentagon has put together a special team of officials to investigate the case.
The senator also noted that various intelligence reports about an American pilot held in Iraq "tend to add up."
Asked if he believes Cmdr. Speicher is alive, Mr. Roberts said: "I can't say conclusively that he's there, but that's not the point. They can't say conclusively he's not alive, and the presumption is they must aggressively pursue every avenue of this case."
Intelligence officials said reports that Cmdr. Speicher is alive in Iraq have been surfacing since 1991, when two Iraqi nationals told the CIA that Iraq was holding an American pilot. The CIA dismissed the information as coming from unreliable sources.
In 1995, Cmdr. Speicher's F-18 aircraft was found and an investigation team went to the site and determined that the pilot ejected before it crashed. Iraq also provided Cmdr. Speicher's flight suit at that time.
Then in 1999, an Iraqi defector reported driving an American pilot to Baghdad six weeks after the war started. That report eventually led to the reclassification of Cmdr. Speicher as missing in action.
Several months ago, the Defense Intelligence Agency and CIA obtained new information from a foreign intelligence service stating that a person who had been in Iraq had learned that an American pilot was held by the Iraqis. The source said the pilot's only visitors were Saddam's son Uday and the chief of Iraqi intelligence.
Some intelligence officials yesterday sought to play down the new intelligence information by claiming that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would not have kept secret the fact that an American pilot was captured and would have used the pilot for propaganda purposes.
Other intelligence officials said Saddam is just as likely to have kept secret its possession of a U.S. prisoner of war. These officials note that Saddam's government held one Iranian pilot as a prisoner of war for 17 years, all the while denying it held any Iranian prisoners of war




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War is fear cloaked in courage...... Westmoreland...Peace..Griz