Status of Gulf War pilot still unknown

(EXCERPT) By Robert Burns Associated Press

WASHINGTON — U.S. investigators searching in Iraq for clues to the
fate of missing Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher, shot down on the
opening night of the 1991 Gulf War, have returned to an early
hypothesis: that he died at or near the site where his F-18 fighter
crashed.

A later theory — that he was captured alive and imprisoned in Baghdad
— has been largely dismissed, based on postwar interrogations of Iraqi
officials, searches of the prison system and assessments of Iraqi
government documents, defense officials familiar with the search said.

The idea that Speicher was a prisoner gained currency after
intelligence reports in the late 1990s cited claims by Iraqi sources
that an American pilot was being held in Baghdad. Upon closer
examination since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime those claims
have unraveled, officials said.

Defense officials said investigators have not abandoned the search in
Baghdad or reached any conclusion about Speicher's fate. But they have
found nothing so far to support the theory that Speicher had been held
alive in an Iraqi prison.

This has taken investigators back to the theory that if he survived
the shootdown Jan. 17, 1991, over west-central Iraq, then he most
likely died there shortly afterward.

Some of the documents found since the fall of Baghdad indicate that
Iraqi government officials were befuddled by continuing U.S.
government inquiries about the possibility of Speicher being held
alive. U.S. investigators deduced from this that the Iraqis had no
knowledge of Speicher being held. That is consistent with Iraq's
public position from the start.

The Iraqis asserted that Speicher had died in the crash, but they
never produced his remains. In March 1991 the Iraqis returned a small
amount of human remains and identified them as a pilo...

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