Iraq

U.S. shifts from belief that pilot is still alive

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 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, the Associated Press reports, quoting three unnamed defense officials.

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.

The three defense officials said investigators have not abandoned the search in Baghdad or reached any firm conclusion about Speicher's fate. But they have found nothing 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 said Speicher perished in the crash, but never produced his remains. They returned a small amount of remains, but tests revealed they were not Speicher's.

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