Navy No Longer Says Speicher Was Captured

NavyTimes.com - Springfield, VA, USA

By Mark D. Faram - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Mar 11, 2009 21:33:33 EDT

The status of an F/A-18 Hornet pilot missing since the first night of the 1991 Persian Gulf War has been changed to “missing in action,” according to the Navy, which no longer believes he was captured.

The change comes as Navy Secretary Donald Winter rejected the recommendations of a Jan. 5 board that Capt. Michael Scott Speicher’s status remain “missing/captured.”

“My review of the board proceedings and the compelling evidence presented by the intelligence community causes me great concern about the reliability of the board’s recommendation, given their failure to employ a logical analytic process to their evaluation of the evidence in the intelligence assessment,” Winter wrote in a statement Tuesday.

The board’s recommendation, he wrote, was based on their conclusion that Speicher landed alive in the Western Iraqi desert after ejecting from his aircraft and was captured.

“They base this on a statistical analysis of F/A-18 ejections; however that analysis was based solely on peacetime ejections, and not the combat environment in which this ejection occurred,” Winter wrote. “They also chose to ignore the lack of any parachute sighting, emergency beacon transmission or survival radio transmissions.”

Winter wrote that all reported sightings of Speicher in captivity prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq have been discredited and that “there is currently no credible evidence” Speicher was captured.

“For Captain Speicher to be in captivity today, one would have to accept a massive conspiracy of silence and perfectly executed deception that has lasted for over 18 years and that continues today.”

But Winter stopped short of declaring Speicher officially dead, opting instead to change his status back to MIA and calling for further review in a year.

Winter has previously announced he would step down as Navy secretary later this week after agreeing to stay on a few weeks into the Obama administration.

Speicher was flying as a member of Strike Fighter Squadron 81 from the aircraft carrier Saratoga on Jan. 17, 1991, when his Hornet was downed by an enemy anti-aircraft missile during the first manned air strike of the war.

Then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney stated in a press conference hours after the strikes that an aircraft had been shot down and the pilot had been killed, becoming the first casualty of Operation Desert Storm.

The Navy listed him as MIA until the service deemed him “Killed-In-Action/Body-Not-Recovered” in May 1991. The Navy reaffirmed that finding in 1996.

But in 2001, new evidence was brought to light, causing then-Navy Secretary Richard Danzig to change the status back to MIA, and the status was further refined to missing/captured in 2002, based on reports of sightings in Iraq.

Speicher, a lieutenant commander at the time of his loss, has been promoted twice since then.