11Jan04-Ron Word-Gulf War Pilot's Fate Is Still a Mystery
Sunday January 11, 2004 11:31 PM
By RON WORD
Associated Press Writer
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Military search crews have returned to the site where Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher's fighter jet crashed 13 years ago, while captured Iraqi officials, including Saddam Hussein, are being questioned about the fate of the missing flier.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who has worked to get answers for Speicher's family and friends, said crews are actively looking for the Jacksonville man, whose plane went down Jan. 17, 1991, about 100 miles north of the Saudi Arabian border.
The FA-18 Hornet was the first jet shot down in the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq.
Navy officials said crews have checked more than 50 sites, including hospitals, prisons, security archives, homes and the crash site, said Lt. Mike Kafka, a Navy spokesman. ``The Navy remains extremely interested in information regarding Capt. Speicher,'' he said.
Nelson said he was heartened when he heard Saddam and other high-level Iraqi officials had been questioned about Speicher, although Saddam has denied knowledge of Speicher's fate.
Kafka said all detained officials and hundreds of lower-level officials, civilians, defectors and refugees have been questioned.
``Sooner or later, somebody is going to talk,'' said Nelson, who believes Speicher could still be alive. ``I hope so. With each passing day, it diminishes that possibility.''
Recently, crews revisited the crash site for the first time since 1995. At that time they found the canopy, wings, unexploded ordnance, but the cockpit was missing. Nelson said he could not comment on what, if anything, was found in the second search.
Some believe Speicher was killed when a surface-to-air missile knocked his fighter jet from the sky. There was evidence, however, that he ejected from his damaged aircraft.
Speicher was 33 when he was shot down. He held the rank of lieutenant commander at the time; he has since been promoted to captain. His wife, Joanne, has remarried and his children are now teenagers.
His status changed from missing in action to killed in action, but in 2002 it was changed again to missing-captured. A marker has been placed on an empty grave at Arlington National Cemetery.
``We hold out hope that Scott is still alive,'' Speicher's cousin, Teresa Engstrom of Minneapolis, said in an e-mail. ``Failing that, I would hope that the family and all those wonderful supporters can at least know what happened.''
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