Navy to review case of missing Gulf War pilot
From Mike Mount
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The secretary of the Navy has ordered a panel to review the status of Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, a Navy pilot who was shot down on the first night of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
Speicher, then a lieutenant commander, was flying an F/A-18 on the night of January 17, 1991, when he crashed in western Iraq.
Speicher's status was originally "killed in action" but has been changed twice, in 2001 and 2002. Navy Secretary Gordon England will ask a Navy panel to look at changing Speicher's status from "missing/captured" to "killed in action, body not recovered," Pentagon officials said.
England made the decision based on a new Defense Intelligence Agency report on the search for Speicher. The document contained no new information on Speicher's fate.
Officials believed he had been killed in the crash of his fighter. But in 1994, hunters in Iraq found the wreckage of his plane and subsequent investigations indicated Speicher had survived when he ejected the crash.
Among the evidence was Speicher's flight suit, which was found near the wreckage. It showed no signs of a crash impact, as it would have if the pilot had been in the plane when it hit.
Iraq released 21 U.S. military personnel after the war, and all U.S. and coalition airmen downed over land were accounted for, with the exception of Speicher.
Iraqi officials during the Saddam Hussein regime steadfastly maintained that Speicher, 33 at the time, had been killed on that first night of the war.
However, in 2002, England wrote in a memo: "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."
Speicher was promoted to captain in 2002.
