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Captain Speicher may yet be alive
Members of Saddam Husseinâs deposed government âknow the whereaboutsâ of a Navy pilot shot down on the opening night of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, a Navy review board asserts in a new report on the case.But the three-member panel said it could find no evidence of Capt. Michael Scott Speicherâs fate. Navy Secretary Gordon R. England agreed Wednesday to the boardâs recommendation that Speicher continue to be listed as âMissing/Capturedâ in Navy records. The review board, the second such team to review Speicherâs status, said American authorities should press the new Iraqi government to âincrease the level of attention inside Iraqâ to the case . Speicher, who was based at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, was the first American lost in the 1991 war. The Pentagon initially listed him as killed in action but his remains were never located and there have been persistent, though unconfirmed, reports that he was seen alive after the crash. In 1995, an American search team found the wreckage of Speicherâs plane and recovered a flight suit in the desert. The Navy changed Speicherâs status to missing in January 2001 and said it continues to search actively for him or his remains. Investigators believe he survived the attack on his F/A-18 Hornet and ejected from the plane and that he either was captured alive or his remains were taken to Baghdad by Iraqi forces. Saddamâs government always argued that Speicher was killed when his plane crashed. Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-09-09 |
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