Gulf War Pilot still held in Iraq?

Ottomaton · Mar 11, 2002

This from the 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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Hmm... bizarre...

Looking for some sort of conformation, I did a daypop search and turned up this:

Gulf War 'Dead' Pilot Now MIA
NewsMax.com
Thursday, Jan. 11, 2001
Still cloaked in secrecy, the first American believed killed in the Gulf War – the last unaccounted for – has now been classified "missing in action."
According to the Associated Press:

After nearly a decade, the Navy changed the status of Lt. Cmdr. Michael Speicher, shot down in an F-18 fighter on the opening night of the 1991 Gulf War, to MIA.

The hopeful reassessment came under persistent pressure from two Republican senators who challenged the original classification of "killed in action" – Bob Smith of New Hampshire and Rod Grams of Minnesota.

The circumstances surrounding Speicher's disappearance as well as new evidence that purportedly allowed the MIA classification continue to remain under strict military secrecy.

All that Pentagon officials would say about why Navy Secretary Richard Danzig revised Speicher's status was that there is now evidence – "substantial in nature, in the totality" – that he may not have died in the crash.

Sandy Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser, told Smith, without further elaboration, that 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."

The State Department has now dispatched a new diplomatic note to Baghdad, demanding the Iraqi government tell everything it knows about Speicher's fate.

The Jacksonville, Fla., aviator was shot down Jan. 16, 1991, in an air-to-air battle with an Iraqi fighter.

More than three years after Speicher went missing, a secret Pentagon memorandum said a United States spy satellite had photographed a "manmade symbol" at the crash site earlier that year, indicating Speicher might have survived.

Late that year, 1994, Gen. John Shalikashvili, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, scrapped a covert operation into Iraq to search the crash site for clues as too great a casualty risk.

President Saddam Hussein granted permission for Defense Department crash-site specialists, working with the International Committee of the Red Cross, to enter Iraq in 1995.

The New York Times reported in December 1997 that when they reached the crash site they found it had been excavated.
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Notice both instances refer to 'navy pilot'. Also notice that the second article is dated over a year ago! I wonder whether this is going to simply be some sort of 'planned leak' of some sort of 'classified/top secret' type of knowledge that was only declassified as part of an effort to build up public sentiment for a war on Iraq?

Do you think that the gov't is calculating enough with info on its soldiers, something which has always been considered such a sacred trust to do something like that (see the Army operations to get the body of the Chinook gunner back in Afghanistan)? If so do you think it's an appropriate thing to do?

Ottomaton · Mar 11, 2002

Full story now, from the Washington Times:
It is the same person.

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 has learned.

British intelligence provided the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) with the new information several months ago, and intelligence officials said it could assist in the ongoing investigation into the fate of Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher.
Cmdr. Speicher was declared killed in action in 1991 after his F-18 Hornet was shot down over Iraq. But last year he was re-classified as "missing in action" by the Pentagon, based on information from an Iraqi defector.
According to U.S. intelligence officials, the British intelligence information was based on an additional intelligence source — someone who had been in Iraq and said he had learned that an American pilot is being held captive in Baghdad.
The British report stated further that only two Iraqis were permitted to see the captive American pilot: the chief of Iraq's intelligence service, and Uday Hussein, son of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The new intelligence has led some Pentagon officials to believe Iraq is holding Cmdr. Speicher prisoner.
One U.S. official said the new agent offered to identify the exact location in Baghdad where the American is being held and also offered to obtain a photograph of the prisoner.
A defense official said the new information is not related to an earlier report from an Iranian pilot who was repatriated recently to Iran and said that he had seen an American held prisoner in Iraq. "That was checked out, and the intelligence community didn't find anything about it," the defense official said.
President Bush has been briefed on the new intelligence on Cmdr. Speicher and the likelihood of an American POW in Baghdad is being factored into U.S. policy toward future operations against Iraq, the officials said.
DIA spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Jim Brooks said the Speicher case is "an active investigation." The agency "investigates and continues to investigate all reports regarding the Speicher case." He declined to comment further on specific reports on the case.
A White House spokesman could not be reached for comment.
It could not be learned if the Bush administration is taking steps to contact the Iraqi government about Cmdr. Speicher.
However, U.S. intelligence agencies are continuing to gather information on the case, the official said.
The CIA sent a notice to Congress Feb. 4 saying it had obtained new intelligence related to Cmdr. Speicher and is expected to provide more information in a briefing that could come as early as this week, one official said.
A U.S. intelligence report from March 2001 stated: "We assess that Iraq can account for Cmdr. Speicher but that Baghdad is concealing information about his fate."
The report, ordered by the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated that Cmdr. Speicher "probably survived the loss of his aircraft, and if he survived, he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis."
The report stated that Cmdr. Speicher's aircraft was shot down by an Iraqi jet firing an air-to-air missile, and that the jet crashed in the desert west of Baghdad.
An unclassified summary of the report, "Intelligence Community Assessment of the Lieutenant Commander Speicher Case," was obtained by The Times.
The intelligence community report said that after the Gulf war cease-fire, Cmdr. Speicher was not among the 21 U.S. military personnel released, nor were his remains returned.
The new intelligence information bolsters an earlier report from an Iraqi national. In 1999, an Iraqi defector reported to U.S. intelligence officials that he had taken an injured U.S. pilot to Baghdad six weeks after the Gulf war began. He identified Cmdr. Speicher in a photograph as the pilot.
Based on the defector report and pressure from Sen. Robert C. Smith, New Hampshire Republican, the Navy changed Cmdr. Speicher's status from killed in action to missing in action on Jan. 11, 2001.
The intelligence community report stated that during an investigation of the crash site in 1995, Iraqi officials provided investigators with a flight suit that appeared to be the one worn by Cmdr. Speicher. The flight suit had been cut.
The intelligence report concluded that the pilot "probably survived the crash of his F/A-18."
"We assess Lt. Cmdr. Speicher was either captured alive or his remains were recovered and brought to Baghdad," the report said.
Mr. Bush has called Iraq one of three "axis of evil" states, and there have been intelligence reports indicating Iraq may have supported the September 11 attacks.
The government of the Czech Republic monitored a meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence officer and Mohamed Atta, regarded by U.S. investigators as a ringleader for the September 11 attacks.
Senior Pentagon policy-makers have said Iraq should be the next target for U.S. anti-terrorism operation.
Cmdr. Speicher was the pilot of a Navy F-18 jet that was shot down by enemy fire on Jan. 17, 1991, the first day of combat operations in the Gulf war.
Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney said during a news conference that same day that the pilot had been killed, and the Navy declared Cmdr. Speicher killed in action five months later.
The intelligence community report said that Iraq's government learned that the pilot was declared dead and as a result felt it probably did not have to account for him at the end of the war.
At first the Pentagon believed Cmdr. Speicher's aircraft was hit by either a ground- or air-fired missile and broke up in flight.
But the aircraft was later found intact and its canopy was found some distance from the crash, a sign the pilot had ejected.
The CIA also was told about the capture of an American pilot in the early 1990s but dismissed the information as coming from an unreliable agent, the officials said. The agency later acknowledged its dismissal was an error, U.S. officials said.
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Link to the story in the Washington Times here

treeman · Mar 11, 2002

Leave no one behind. Dead or alive.

It would actually not surprise me too much to find that the previous administration - an extremely casualty averse administration - would ignore this creed and zero a rescue op.

I don't know if this is true or just a smokescreen (it could possibly be either, but I doubt it on both counts), but if there's a pilot alive in there, we've got to get him out.

Ottomaton - unlike most militaries/governments, the USM actually accounts for its people. When someone dies, the death is reported (to the media and the family). When someone is seriously wounded, it is reported. When someone is MIA/POW, it is reported. Where Desert Storm is concerned, as far as I know, all in each category were accounted for. This is the first I've heard of a possible POW existant.

As for this being a PR story to drum up support for an Iraq operation - the support is already there. In any case, this would be a rescue mission, not an invasion...

Buck Turgidson · Mar 11, 2002

This isn't something that the Bush administration dreamed up recently.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/01/10/gulfwar/main263241.shtml

Here's a little info on Uday Hussein (Maxim's not exactly a bastion of investigative journalism, but this is a pretty good article); dude is a friggin psychopath, can you imagine him in charge of a country with WMD?
http://www.maximonline.com/articles/article_4211.html

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