Clinton defends changing status of downed Gulf War pilot from
'killed' to 'missing'
From
John King
CNN Senior White House Correspondent,
Andrea Koppel
State Department Correspondent, and
Chris Plante
Military Affairs Producer
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Gulf War pilot initially listed as
killed in action was reclassified to missing in action
because of evidence "which convinced me that we can't ensure
that he perished," President Clinton said.
Clinton spoke to reporters in Boston, Massachusetts, on
Thursday, a few hours after saying in an interview with CBS
Radio that "we have some information that leads us to believe
that he might be alive. And we hope and pray that he is."
Clinton went on in the CBS interview to say, "I don't want to
raise false hopes." But some Pentagon officials privately
voiced concern that Clinton's remarks could be interpreted as
suggesting the government believed Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael
Scott Speicher was alive.
When the president was asked again about the case later, he
used slightly different words.
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"Well I don't want to say any more than we have. All I want
to say is we have evidence which convinced me that we can't
ensure that he perished. I don't want to hold out false hope,
but I thought it was wrong to continue to classify him as
killed in action when he might not have been," Clinton said.
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 added 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.
Pilot's family to receive his salary
Navy officials announced the change in status for Speicher on
Thursday.
The change 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 F-18 was shot down over Iraq
on the opening night of the war.
Defense officials familiar with the episode told CNN that
Speicher's "wing man" reported seeing his plane explode in
flight and a second explosion upon impact with the ground. No
distress signals were ever received, Navy officials said.
Wreckage found 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, the then-chairman of the 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 MIA/POW 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.
RELATED STORIES:
Gulf War pilot no longer presumed dead
January 10, 2001
RELATED SITES:
U.S. State Department
U.S. Department of Defense
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