posted on April 23, 2003 06:57:26 PM new
American investigators in Iraq have found what may be a clue to the only American missing from the first Gulf War: the initials of Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher, etched into a prison wall in Baghdad.
It is unknown who scrawled the letters "MSS" into a cell wall in the Hakmiyah prison, said U.S. officials, or whether the letters had anything to do with the missing pilot.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said an informant had also reported that an American pilot was held at that prison in the mid-1990s.
A joint team of officials from the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency is in Iraq, searching for clues to Speicher's fate.
Lt. Cmdr. Speicher, an F/A-18 Hornet pilot from Jacksonville, Fla., and three other pilots flew off the USS Saratoga for a bombing run over Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991, the first night of the war. During the mission, another Hornet pilot saw a flash and lost sight of Speicher.
The next morning, the Defense Department announced that Speicher's plane had been downed by an Iraqi missile. Several months later the Pentagon classified the pilot as killed in action, but changed that last year to "missing in action, captured."
Intelligence reports from several sources led to the change, officials said.
Iraq officials have said Speicher was killed in the crash.
Speicher's flight suit was found at the crash site and there have been persistent intelligence reports about a U.S. pilot held in Baghdad.
Only one U.S. service member remains listed as missing from the second Iraq war - Army Sgt. Edward J. Anguiano, 24, of Brownsville, Texas, who disappeared after his convoy was ambushed March 23.
posted on April 23, 2003 07:35:56 PM new
These stories are always so very sad. The families don't have closure. We all know this happens in war time....but I do hope they can find out something about him from talking to the local Iraqi's, or in some other documentation.
Have you seen the stacks and stacks and stacks of 'charts' they're finding in the prison cells? It's going to take years to read all those and see if they lead to any important information. Like in the building where they found all those coffins with the lists of names etc.
I get a kick out of all the money US money they're finding in 'dog kennels'. Millions of $$.
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
