Iraq denies U.S. claims missing Gulf War pilot might still be alive

Aviator's status changed from 'killed in action' to 'missing in action'

In this story: Circumstantial evidence Change provides more for pilot's family Wreckage discovered in 1994 RELATED STORIES, SITES

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Baghdad on Saturday dismissed as a "lie" fresh U.S. claims that a fighter pilot shot down over Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf War might still be alive.

"It is a new and cheap American lie," an Iraqi Ministry of Culture and Information spokesman said. "When the Iraqi Foreign Ministry reveals documents related to the subject, this lie will be an American scandal," the spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency.

The spokesman did not say when documents on the pilot would be made public.

On Friday, CNN learned that an Iraqi defector reported a U.S. pilot had been seen in an Iraqi hospital after the start of the war.

Defense Department sources said Friday that the report by a defector contributed to Navy Secretary Richard Danzig's decision Thursday to change the status of Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher from "killed in action" to "missing in action." But the report did not specifically say the pilot was Speicher. Navy officials say there were eight Navy and Marine Corps aviators captured during the Persian Gulf War.

Speicher was on his way to drop bombs on downtown Baghdad January 17, 1991, when the F/A-18 fighter jet he was piloting went down over the Iraqi desert. He was the first American lost in the conflict. It is unclear whether it was a surface to air missile or an Iraqi MiG that downed Speicher's plane.

He is officially listed as "the only air-to-air combat loss" of the war, since it is believed that he was in a dogfight with an Iraqi fighter jet when his plane went down.

Earlier Friday, President Clinton said he had no hard evidence that a fighter pilot shot down over Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War is alive and promised that the United States would do its best to find out.

The president said that he didn't want to raise false hopes. "We do not have hard evidence that he is alive," Clinton told reporters Friday at the White House. "We have some evidence that what had been assumed to be the evidence that he is lost in action is not so."

"And we're going to do our best to find out if he is alive and if he is, to get him out because as a uniformed serviceman he should have been released if he is alive."

Circumstantial evidence

A U.S. official familiar with the case said the United States has evidence that Speicher ejected from his aircraft and survived the ejection.

"Beyond that, the evidence is circumstantial. We can't rule out that he was, at least at one time, alive in Iraq," the official said.

The official said the administration has been pressing Iraqi officials for information for some time and "they are clearly concealing information. We don't have anything to say he is alive. But we can't say he is dead."

The official also said information provided by Iraq in the past had turned out to be wrong and said the classification was part of a renewed push to get Iraq to be more forthcoming.

In 1990, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered an invasion of neighboring Kuwait, which eventually led to the United States-led attack on Iraq.

Change provides more for pilot's family

The change in status means a lump-sum payment of about $300,000 for Speicher's widow and two children, and a resumption of Speicher's salary of about $7,000 per month. Speicher becomes the only casualty from the 1991 Gulf War listed as missing in action.

Defense Department sources close to the case said it was unlikely --though not impossible -- that Speicher, who was on his way to drop bombs on downtown Baghdad, could still be alive nearly 10 years after his plane was shot down.

Defense officials familiar with the episode told CNN that Speicher's "wing man" reported seeing Speicher's plane explode in flight and a second explosion upon impact with the ground. No distress signals were ever received, Navy officials said.

Wreckage discovered in 1994

In 1994, three years after the end of the Gulf War, hunters in the Iraqi desert stumbled across the wreckage of Speicher's plane and informed U.S. officials of their discovery.

Top U.S. military and civilian officials considered whether to send a special team into Iraq to recover the wreckage, but Gen. John Shalikashvili, who then chaired the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, decided that he would not put U.S. soldiers at risk "for old bones." He decided instead to pursue diplomatic efforts with Iraq to excavate the site, officials said.

Two years later, Iraq allowed a Red Cross team, including Americans from the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, to inspect the site. By then, the official said, the site had been picked over, no human remains were recovered, and there was not a great deal learned from the visit.

There are more than 2,000 U.S. military personnel listed as missing in action from the Vietnam War, more than 8,000 from the Korean War and more than 75,000 Americans listed as missing in action from World War II.

CNN Senior White House Correspondent John King, CNN State Department Correspondent Andrea Koppel, CNN National Security Producer Chris Plante, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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U.S. State Department
U.S. Department of Defense
Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (POW/MIA)

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