Remains of Pilot Missing 18 Years in Iraq Found
By PAULINE JELINEK
The Associated Press
Sunday, August 2, 2009; 9:27 AM
WASHINGTON -- The remains of the first American lost in the
Persian Gulf War have been found in Iraq, the military said Sunday,
after struggling for nearly two decades with the question of whether
he was dead or alive.
The Pentagon said the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology on Saturday
had positively identified the remains of Navy Capt. Michael "Scott"
Speicher, whose disappearance has bedeviled investigators since his
fighter jet was shot down over the Iraq desert on the first night of
the 1991 war.
The top Navy officer said the discovery illustrates the military's
commitment to bring its troops home.
"Our Navy will never give up looking for a shipmate, regardless
of how long or how difficult that search may be," said Adm. Gary
Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations.
The Pentagon initially declared Speicher killed, but uncertainty -
and the lack of remains - led officials over the years to change his
status a number of times to "missing in action" and later
"missing-captured." The family Speicher left behind, from
outside Jacksonville, Fla. - continued to press for the military to
do more to resolve the case.
Family spokeswoman Cindy Laquidara said relatives learned on Saturday
that Speicher's remains had been found.
"The family's proud of the way the Defense Department continued
on with our request" to not abandon the search, she said. "We
will be bringing him home."
Laquidara said the family would have another statement after being
briefed by the defense officials, but she didn't know when that would
be.
More than a decade after he was shot down in a combat mission, the
2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq finally gave investigators the chance
to search inside Iraq. That led to a number of new leads, including
the discovery of what some believed were the initials "MSS"
scratched into the wall of an Iraqi prison.
The search also led investigators to excavate a potential grave site
in Baghdad in 2005, track down Iraqis said to have information about
Speicher and make numerous other inquiries in what officials say was
an exhaustive search.
Officials said Sunday that they got new information last month from
an Iraqi citizen, prompting Marines stationed in the western province
of Anbar to visit a location in the desert which was believed to be
the crash site of Speicher's FA-18 Hornet.
The Iraqi said he knew of two other Iraqis who recalled an American
jet crashing and the remains of the pilot being buried in the desert,
the Pentagon said.
"One of these Iraqi citizens stated that they were present when
Captain Speicher was found dead at the crash site by Bedouins and his
remains buried," the Defense Department said in a statement.
The military recovered bones and multiple skeletal fragments and Speicher
was positively identified by matching a jawbone and dental records,
said Rear Adm. Frank Thorp.
He said the Iraqis told investigators that the Bedouins had buried
Speicher. It was unclear whether the military had information on how
soon Speicher died after the crash.
Some had said they believed Speicher ejected from the plane and was
captured by Iraqi forces, and the initials were seen as a potential
clue he might have survived. There also were reports of sightings. Laquidara
was among those who said she believed he survived the crash.
"It's really easy to put out a yellow ribbon but not so easy to
allocate resources to find a missing serviceman or woman," she
said earlier this year. "If Scott's not alive now, he was for a
very long time, and that could happen to somebody else."
While dental records have confirmed the remains to be those of Speicher,
the pathology institute in Rockville, Md., is running DNA tests on the
remains recovered and comparing them to DNA reference samples previously
provided by family members.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with Captain Speicher's family for
the ultimate sacrifice he made for his country," Navy Secretary
Ray Mabus said in the Pentagon statement. "I am also extremely
grateful to all those who have worked so tirelessly over the last 18
years to bring Captain Speicher home."
Speicher was shot down over west-central Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991.
Hours after his plane went down, the Pentagon publicly declared him
killed - then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney went on television and announced
the U.S. had suffered its first casualty of the war. But 10 years later,
the Navy changed his status to missing in action, citing an absence
of evidence that Speicher had died. In October 2002, the Navy switched
his status to "missing/captured," although it has never said
what evidence it had that he ever was in captivity.
Another review was done in 2005 with information gleaned after Baghdad
fell. The review board recommended then that the Pentagon work with
the State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the Iraqi government
to "increase the level of attention and effort inside Iraq"
to resolve the question of Speicher's fate.
Last year, then Navy Secretary Donald Winter ordered yet another review
of the case after receiving a report from the Defense Intelligence Agency,
which tracks prisoners of war and service members missing in action.
Many in the military believed for years that Speicher had not survived
the crash or for long after; intelligence had never found evidence he
was alive, and some officials felt last year that all leads had been
exhausted and Speicher would finally be declared killed.
But after the latest review, Winter said Speicher would remain classified
as missing, despite his strong reservations about the pilot's status
and cited "compelling" evidence that he was dead. Announcing
his decision, Winter criticized the board's recommendation to leave
Speicher's status unchanged, saying the review board based its conclusions
on the belief that Speicher was alive after ejecting from his plane.
The board "chose to ignore" the lack of any parachute sighting,
emergency beacon signal or radio communication, Winter said.
Speicher's family - including two college-age children who were toddlers
when Speicher disappeared - believed more evidence would surface as
Iraq becomes more stable.
"There are people that know," Buddy Harris, a former Navy
commander and a close friend of Speicher's who has since married Speicher's
ex-wife, said at that time. "It's just a matter of getting to them."