By Robert Burns
The Associated Press
10 April, 2003
WASHINGTON (AP) - In a highly unusual move, the Navy has decided to
change the status of Lt. Cmdr. Michael Speicher, shot down in an F-18
fighter on the opening night of the 1991 Gulf War, from killed in action
to missing, defense officials said.
Navy Secretary Richard Danzig notified the Speicher family of the
decision Wednesday, but as of Thursday morning Danzig had not yet signed
the paperwork changing Speicher's status, the officials said, speaking
on condition of anonymity.
Initial word of the Navy's decision came from officials in the office
of Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., who has long challenged the Pentagon's official
"finding of death" for Speicher. The officials discussed the
matter on condition they not be identified.
Pentagon officials said Danzig acted because of substantial evidence
that Speicher may not have died in the crash. The officials added, however,
that the evidence does not suggest that Speicher is still alive. Iraq
has never accounted for him.
"It's substantial in nature, in the totality," one official
said of the evidence. He would not elaborate. The official said the
State Department sent a new diplomatic note to Baghdad demanding that
the Iraqi government tell all it knows about Speicher's fate.
"We don't have a response from Baghdad," Philip Reeker,
a State Department spokesman, said Thursday.
He said similar U.S. notes would be sent Iraqi representatives at the
United Nations in New York and in Geneva, Switzerland.
"We do believe that the Iraqis hold additional information that
could help resolve the case of Commander Speicher, and they are obligated
to provide that information to us," Reeker said.
Last March, Smith and Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn., asked Danzig to change
Speicher's status to missing in action, reflecting evidence of doubt
about whether he survived the crash. Smith met with Danzig again Dec.
20 on the matter, officials said.
In a letter dated Dec. 18, Sandy Berger, President Clinton's national
security adviser, told Smith a recent intelligence assessment "has
stimulated a high-level review of this case - several new actions are
under way and additional steps are under intense review."
Berger's letter, which was provided to The Associated Press on Wednesday,
did not specify what actions were contemplated.
Speicher, of Jacksonville, Fla., went missing when his Navy F-18 Hornet
was shot down on Jan. 16, 1991, in an air-to-air battle with an Iraqi
fighter. He was the first American lost in the war and the last still
unaccounted for. Upon announcing the loss of Speicher that night, Dick
Cheney, defense secretary at the time, told a news conference he was
dead. A short time later the Pentagon changed his status to missing
in action.
On May 22, 1991, the Navy approved the official "finding of death."
That action changed his official status from missing to killed in action.
In September 1998, after efforts by Smith and Grams to learn more about
what U.S. intelligence agencies knew of Speicher's fate, the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence was given a classified chronology of
the agencies' activities on the matter.
"We strongly believe that the information contained therein supports
the request we are making of you with this letter," Smith and Grams
told Danzig in a letter last March. They did not cite any specific evidence,
which is classified secret.
The senators said they were informed March 12 by the Defense Department's
POW-Missing Personnel Office that its position on whether the available
evidence indicates Speicher perished in the crash of his plane is, "We
don't know."
Smith and Grams have said before that Pentagon officials initially
told them evidence had not been found to indicate that Speicher could
have survived the crash. However, in May 1994 - more than three years
after Speicher went missing - Pentagon officials indicated in a secret
memorandum that a U.S. spy satellite had photographed a "manmade
symbol" at the crash site earlier that year. Some military officers
said they interpreted the symbol as a sign that the Navy pilot might
have survived the crash.
Speicher was the only American killed on Iraqi territory whose remains
were not recovered.
A plan was devised in 1994 to conduct a covert operation into Iraq
to search the crash site for clues to Speicher's fate, but it was scrapped
in December 1994 by Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, then the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The general ruled the risk of casualties
was too high to justify the secret mission.
In 1995, U.S. crash site specialists from the Defense Department, working
with the International Committee of the Red Cross, entered Iraq with
President Saddam Hussein's permission. When they got to the crash site
they found it had been excavated, The New York Times reported in December
1997
