New Evidence
On First Gulf War MIA Indicates Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher
Survived Shootdown
[Submitted Courtesy J. Poe Jr ]
New Evidence
On First Gulf War MIA By Linda Bordner
September 1999
"The first American to fall in the Persian Gulf War remains the last to be accounted for." With these words, Tim Weiner concluded a 1997 New York Times article regarding the fate of Michael Scott Speicher, U.S. naval pilot missing since his January 16, 1991 flight over Iraq.
Newly released evidence now increases opinion that Lt. Commander Speicher landed alive in the Iraqi desert. A July, 1999 letter by a Secretary of Defense deputy assistant revealed for the first time some details of the F-18 crash site investigation conducted in 1995.
The search was sparked when a military officer from Qatar, an emirate along the Saudi border, appeared one day at the American embassy with startling news. He told of leading a hunting party for wild game into western Iraq, where he came upon the wreck of a U.S. fighter jet.
Realizing its significance, he took photos, including the identification numbers of the craft and the plane's canopy. Presenting the irrefutable evidence to embassy officials, along with the location of his find, he also remarked on seeing an ejection seat in the area.
Faced with the Qatar encounter publicity, the Pentagon was prodded into engaging exploration and recovery consideration. Time seemed of the essence. If the U.S. could beat the Iraqi to the site, invaluable evidence might be gleaned from the remote scene.
The dilemma: Call Iraqi attention to the site by asking permission to enter, thus literally handing them a map to Speicher's last known location, or conduct a secret run into the territory to seek and recover whatever could be found. Washington chose the latter route. The Red Cross was employed to politely ask Sadaam if they could please go have a look, detailing exactly where they wished to explore.
Little information was gleaned at the site itself. The Red Cross team allowed into the western Iraq location by Sadaam Hussein to search the wreckage had been delayed for months by the Iraqi government. By the time they gained access to the desert crash scene, they found, not surprisingly, an excavated site.
Debate over whether to engage a covert mission to search for the missing pilot had been overridden by General John Shalikashvilli, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to the Tim Weiner report. Timothy G. Connolly (then principal assistant deputy of Defense for special operations.) quoted the general's claim that the risk for military search teams was too high:
"I do not want to have to write the parents and tell them that their son or daughter died looking for old bones."
The "old bones" the general referred to was Lt. Commander Michael Speicher. His father called him Scotty. At 33, the naval pilot was married with two infant children, ages one and three. His minister remembered him as a Sunday School teacher who could often be found on his knees telling Bible stories to his pre-school class.
Weiner noted that Mr. Connolly had tried unsuccessfully to win approval for the secret military approach. He explained getting diplomatic permission from Iraq for a Red Cross expedition would insure there would be nothing left at the site to find, once the regime was alerted.
Sure enough, after some six months of stalling by Iraqis, the Red Cross team was finally allowed to visit the site. As Fredrick Smith, assistant secretary for international security affairs, chose to put it:
"It appeared that people had been there before we arrived."
Among those who had argued for covert military use, was no less than four-star Admiral Stan Arthur, leader of allied naval forces in the Gulf War:
"We know there was an ejection attempt. I thought he bailed out. I was adamant we get back in there."
Although still visible on recent surveillance flights, the commander's ejection seat was gone when the team arrived. No "old bones" were anywhere to be found, either.
No one seemed surprised that the site had been "sanitized." Briefed by Red Cross officials following their meeting with Iraq to describe the requested destination, Mr. Smith documented that "Iraqis listened intently; took copious notes."
There was one surprise, however, that even Pentagon officials had not calculated on. While in the desert, The Red Cross team met up with Bedouin nomads. Among items they gave the search team were a flight suit and flight data recorder from Speicher's F-18.
Since that expedition in 1995, the Pentagon has remained silent about these findings, or what studies of the flight suit revealed. Until now. In the July, 1999 letter from a deputy assistant secretary of defense to the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen (NAFRAMS), a new bit of information was released.
Acknowledging that the wreckage in western Iraq was confirmed as Speicher's F-18, the deputy assistant added that the condition of the flight suit indicated the pilot had been cut out of the suit. This, four years after recovery of the suit, and eight years after the crash, finally supports Admiral
Arthur's belief the lt. commander had indeed ejected from his craft.
No mention was made of the data recorder obtained at the same time. Piecing together "facts" as released by the Pentagon, is as frustrating as trying to play a game of Clue, where a card is only allowed to be turned face up once every few years.
Another version of the Speicher case emerged in a lawsuit.( See story Gulf War MIA's Widow Suing Motorola - Charges Radio Failure Caused Casualty in this issue) According to the suit, a Qatar military officer found desert nomads selling parts of the F-18 in a market bazaar. They supposedly led the officer to the site, where he took photographs as proof of his find.
From the beginning, the Pentagon's claim that Speicher's fighter had "disintegrated in mid-air" conflicted with the military's own accounts. "Man-made symbol" sightings from the air near the site, in the traditional E & E format for "escape & evade" meant a soldier in enemy territory seeking rescue by his own.
In fact, how does a plane, having "disintegrated in mid-air," even have a crash site, complete with ejection seat and data recorder? The letter offers the condition of the suit and equipment as proof Speicher was "probably severely injured or dead when these items were removed."
One must wonder at the rationale that allows for "old bones" of a pilot listed "killed in action" from a "disintegrated" craft, still capable of scrawling E & E in the desert for his comrades to read from surveillance photos years later!
If Americans who still care about their vanished soldiers have to wait four years to be told the young Sunday School teacher was cut out of his flight suit, how many years until they are told what the data recorder revealed?
Although no official statement was made, Weiner quoted an unidentified officer familiar with the project:
"The evidence showed the pilot successfully ejected from the aircraft."
Alliance chairwoman Delores Alfond described the letter's contents as " a breakthrough," adding, "Saddam could be holding a live American prisoner of war. If they have the flight suit, he's got to have been in it."
Ironically, the U.S. government named the diplomatic mission sent to learn Michael Speicher's fate "Promise Kept." Alfond, a long-time POW/MIA activist whose brother is still missing from the Vietnam War, knows firsthand the despair POW/MIA families from other U.S. wars still suffer. For them, the words "Promise Kept" from the government rings hollow.
"They say finding our missing servicemen is a top priority, but their reactions show this isn't so. But its really about what the State Department considers a priority, not concern for American servicemen left behind after the shooting has stopped."
"It's disgraceful that we didn't go in under cover to pick up any evidence found by the hunter. By the time we waited around six months for Sadaam Hussein to let them in, there wasn't anything left to find."
And what about the senior officers involved in the decision to write off a naval pilot waiting in the desert for his country to rescue him? How well do they sleep at night?
Weiner lets key players in that fateful decision explain their stand.
Admiral Arthur retired after the Gulf War, but the war of words he waged to send a covert mission for his downed pilot must echo in the ears of those who ignored his plea. From retirement, he tried to explain the atmosphere surrounding the debate:
"The warriors believed they had a responsibility. You lose one of your own, you go back and find him. The more modern concept was that you can't take the risk of a loss."
A general officer, speaking to Weiner on condition of anonymity:
"This mentality of 'no losses' has more ramifications than people realize. The idea that we can do everything so well that we shouldn't ever suffer a loss or casualty invades everything. It keeps you from doing what's necessary."
The secretary deputy, Timothy Connolly, also pleaded for military recovery. His argument at the time included the Army Ranger's creed "I will never let a fallen comrade fall into the hands of the enemy." Weiner learned Connolly subsequently left the Pentagon for a teaching job. Connolly stated:
"Our senior civilian and military leaders were simply too afraid of the possibility of failure, however remote, and refused to allow this pilot's comrades to go into Iraq and bring him home. I wish I could tell you it was any more complex than that, but it wasn't."
Retired General Shalikasvili reiterated his belief in a written statement:
"I concluded that there was no overwhelming need to put our soldiers at risk to covertly search a three year old crash site when the Red Cross option was available." He also said, "To send America's sons and daughters into harm's way is the most serious recommendation a military leader can make. This is a sacred trust."
Apparently the sacred trust rule applies only to those standing on safe ground, not to those sons and daughters fallen and forgotten on foreign soil.
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Graphic
Courtesy
Bear317