Leave Nobody Behind - One

Leave Nobody Behind - One of the most fascinating stories so far has been that of Navy Lieutenant-Commander Scott Speicher, a pilot shot down on the first night of the Gulf War.

The 1991 Gulf War.

The story is still alive, as the Navy, operating on evidence dug up by Amy Waters Yarsinske, civilian reporter, over the last several years.

Speicher, then 33, was piloting a Navy F/A-18 Hornet jet when enemy fire shot it down January 17, 1991 -- the first day of the Persian Gulf War. He subsequently was declared the war's first combat death, but the U.S. Navy changed his status to missing in action in 2001 after receiving information that he may have survived.

His status was changed a third time in October to missing-captured.

In a memorandum announcing the change, Navy Secretary Gordon England said the decision was based on the following factors:

• Analysis of the wreckage concluded that Speicher survived the initial damage to the aircraft and ejection.

• The flight suit found near the wreckage and turned over by the Iraqis showed no signs of a crash impact, as it would have if the pilot had been in the plane when it hit.

• The Red Cross team that investigated the wreckage reported that the cockpit had been expertly dismantled.

• Cumulative information received since Speicher was shot down continues to suggest strongly that the Iraqi government can account for him.

I heard Waters Yarsinske on (ahem) the KQ Morning show last week. The story she tells goes way beyond the fairly clinical details in the CNN articles; she alleges (and claims her allegations have been backed up by US intelligence - which would seem to be supported by the Navy altering his status) that Speicher lived among the Bedouin of the western Iraqi desert for a few years, hiding out with a broken leg, until a neighboring tribe gave him up (resulting in the massacre of the tribe that had hidden him).

Most damningly, she claims, the Clinton Administration was given the same evidence that she's given the Bush team. They didn't want to hear about it - preferring (she said on the radio) to concentrate on getting more women and gays into the military.

Although finding clues as to Speicher's fate has to be a lower priority, it is apparently on the military's agenda now that they're in Iraq.

Posted by Mitch at April 9, 2003 01:09 AM