Iraq Knows Fate of Pilot Downed in Persian Gulf War, U.S. Officials Say

U.S. officials said Friday that they have no proof that a Navy pilot downed in the 1991 Persian Gulf War is alive but that they believe Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has collected evidence that would solve one of the lingering mysteries of the war.

Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, 33, who was downed on the first day of the air assault on Iraq, was officially reclassified from “killed in action” to “missing in action” this week. Fifteen U.S. pilots are classified as MIA from the war, but Speicher’s is the only case where there is a realistic possibility of survival, officials said.

The Navy changed Speicher’s status not because it has evidence that he is alive but because an accumulation of facts in recent years led it to doubt earlier signs that he died in a fiery crash, officials said. An accompanying pilot had reported that Speicher’s plane was engulfed in flames and that no parachute opened.

But officials say they’re convinced that the Iraqis gathered evidence from the crash site six years ago that would solve the case. And they’re hoping that worldwide publicity about the case will induce Hussein’s government, which wants relief from international economic sanctions, to disclose what it knows.

So far, Iraqi officials have commented on the case only “in a misleading way or a deceitful way,” said a White House official who asked to remain unidentified. Yet, the official said, “we have every reason to think they know more.”

Speicher’s case drew attention Thursday when President Clinton appeared to suggest that the government had come across proof that Speicher had survived. “We have some information that leads us to believe that he might be alive, and we hope and pray he is,” Clinton said in an interview with CBS-TV.

On Friday, Clinton hastened to clarify his comments, saying, “We do not have hard evidence that he is alive.”

A U.S. official added that, in fact, the official view is that “there’s very little hope here.” Yet he noted that the government is committed to going to great lengths to find out what happened to any missing troops.

Speicher was declared dead in 1991. But in 1994, a hunting party in Iraq came across the crash site. One member of the party was a senior military officer from Qatar who took down serial numbers of equipment and gathered other information about the wreckage.

The information tended to suggest that the initial judgment was not accurate and that Speicher might have survived the crash.

Later, satellite photos suggested that Speicher had tried to make a big sign to attract attention. And Speicher’s flight suit was found.

Iraqi defectors have since brought back tales that an American fitting Speicher’s description had been in Iraqi captivity just after the war. But officials said these accounts were not confirmed and could have been second or third hand.

After the hunting party’s report and with the acquiescence of Iraq, the United States sent an investigative team to the site accompanied by officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross. But it was clear that the Iraqi authorities had already dug up the area.

In 1996, the Navy reaffirmed its earlier judgment that Speicher had been killed in action.

The Navy has come under pressure to push harder on the investigation, including from Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.) and former Sen. Rod Grams (R-Minn.). They have argued that the evidence of Speicher’s death was weak.

And some veterans have contended that while the chances of Hussein holding a prisoner for 10 years might seem small, the Vietnamese held French prisoners for even longer during the Indochinese war of the 1940s and 1950s.

Throughout much of the 1990s, the Navy took the view that if Speicher was alive, his chances of survival would be helped by a lack of public attention to the case. But in the past year, the Navy has decided that at this late date, it might improve his chances if the case received additional attention.

The U.S. government has come to the view “that the benefits of going public outweigh the risks,” the White House official said.