Forgotten flier: U.S. Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher was shot down during the Persian Gulf War and classified as `killed in action' despite reports that he survived. Did he ultimately die because of Pentagon inaction, or could he still be alive in an Iraqi prison more than a decade later?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 17, 2002 | by Timothy W. Maier

Instead the "search and rescue" was left to the beneficence of Saddam. In February 1995, the Clinton administration formally asked permission from Iraq to excavate the F-18 crash site, but Baghdad delayed the matter until late October 1995. The Red Cross crash team finally was granted access to excavate the site from Dec. 9-16,1995.

Sen. Robert Smith (R-N.H.), a senior member on the Senate Armed Services Committee whose own father, a Navy pilot, was killed at the end of World War II, was briefed by the Pentagon's POW/ MIA unit about the excavation. He was told the Red Cross team had found nothing to indicate Speicher survived. Later, he received reports from the Pentagon's Inspector General and the General Accounting Office, praising the intelligence agencies' role regarding Speicher.

Case closed? Not quite. A few weeks later, Smith began to hear from his intelligence sources claiming there was more to the story. He soon verified both that there was no search for Speicher when he was shot down in 1991 and that there was evidence in hand that he had survived. "I was misled," he says. "I was lied to. There are people whose heads should roll for lying to Congress, lying to me. But this isn't about me. The issue is let's bring him home, let's get the answers"

In 1995 a series of crash-site experts ranging from aviation engineers to anthropologists filed reports to the Pentagon. These reports were classified, but information from other sources began to leak to Smith. Many of the records some of which have been declassified and obtained by INSIGHT--sharply contradict what Smith had been told. Crash investigators reported Speicher's Hornet did not blow to pieces in the sky. The F-18 was found right-side up, and many of its pieces (including the engines, which had no entrance or exit wounds) were in a circle.

Investigators also determined the wreckage had been previously examined. A pilot's jumpsuit was round along with straps of a parachute and such survival items as an inflatable raft and a signaling flare. The flare apparently had been lit on both ends atone time.

The jet's damaged memory unit revealed the flight had taken off Jan. 17, 1991, at 1:36 a.m. Seven minutes later it experienced a computer failure that may have made as many as three missiles inoperative. Nearly two hours later Speicher's ALR-67 radar-warning receiver went on, which may have meant a complete failure of the radar system, making him unable to detect threats from air or land. At 3:49 a.m. the pilot turned off his autopilot, and a few seconds later the Hornet lost power after being struck.

Engineers reported the rocket motors that push the canopy off for ejection had burn marks on the frame, which meant a good ejection had taken place. Further evidence shows that up until Speicher's ejection at least 58 air-crew members had ejected from F-18s. Six were killed, but while the others were injured from either the initial jolt or parachute landing, 52 survived.

In 1996, Congress received a partial briefing on the Speicher case--just enough details to support another Navy claire that he was killed in action. When the case was closed again, Smith was livid. He, and later Sen. Roberts, began pressing to have Speicher's status changed to MIA. Branded by the Pentagon brass as a "troublemaker," Smith soon was taking heavy flak.