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Pilot behind enemy lines Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020312-2969672.htmhttp://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020312-2969672.htm
The Washington Times
www.washtimes.com
Senator suspects pilot alive in Iraq
Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published 3/12/2002
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.
Copyright © 2002 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
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