WASHINGTON — An odyssey of nearly two decades to find Navy Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, whose fighter jet was shot down during the opening days of the Persian Gulf War, ended Sunday when the U.S. military announced that an Iraqi living in the remote desert expanse of Anbar province had helped direct Marines to the downed pilot’s burial site.
Speicher’s fate had been the subject of several high-level Pentagon investigations, hundreds of rumors and countless conspiracy theories since his plane was shot down Jan. 17, 1991. His friends and family, including two college-age children who were toddlers when he disappeared, never gave up hope that he would be found.
It is unclear why the Iraqi who helped lead the Marines to the pilot’s body came forward more than six years after the U.S. invasion in March 2003. For much of the Iraq war, Anbar province, where Speicher’s plane went down, was the heart of the Sunni insurgency and was one of the most violent places in Iraq. In late 2006, Sunni tribes, which had allied themselves with al-Qaeda in Iraq operatives, switched sides and teamed with the U.S. military to fight the extremists.
Early last month, the Iraqi citizen approached U.S. Marines and said he knew two other Iraqis who remembered the jet crashing in the desert. The Marines quickly tracked down the two witnesses, one of whom told them he was present when a group of Bedouins buried Speicher’s remains. The Iraqis then led the Marines to the crash site, where Speicher’s body was found.
The Pentagon did not explain why the Bedouins chose to bury Speicher. Muslim law demands that a burial be conducted promptly after death, and it is possible that the Bedouins buried him out of respect for the body.
A 53-year-old tribal leader who asked not to be named said he recalls Iraqi army officers coming to him for guidance shortly after Speicher’s remains were found.
“They asked me if it was religiously acceptable to bury a Christian like you’d bury a Muslim,” the tribal leader said. “I told them that regardless of religion, any person should be properly buried.”
The discovery of Speicher’s remains brings resolution to the most prominent mystery of the Persian Gulf War.
Hours after Speicher’s jet crashed, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney appeared on television and announced that the United States had suffered its first fatality of the war with Iraq. Because Speicher’s remains were never found, the mystery over the pilot’s fate persisted, and at least one Iraqi exile claimed to have seen him in captivity. That exile was later discredited.
As the United States was readying for war with Iraq in the fall of 2002, the Navy said it was switching Speicher’s status to “missing/captured.” Senior Navy officials never explained why it made the change.
After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the military uncovered occasional clues suggesting that Speicher might have survived the crash of his F-18 Hornet fighter jet. Only months after the Army stormed into Baghdad in April 2003, U.S. troops discovered what some believed were the initials “MSS” scratched into the wall of an Iraqi prison, prompting new hope for his family and friends.
The Pentagon also excavated a potential gravesite in the Iraqi capital in 2005, about 100 miles from where the body was discovered.
Other studies of the Speicher case followed in 2005 and 2008, reaching conflicting conclusions about the pilot’s fate. The last review, ordered by the secretary of the Navy, determined that Speicher had died in Iraq. The study noted that his parachute was never found and that he never activated his emergency beacon signal or tried in any other way to communicate his location via radio.
For some friends of Speicher’s who had pushed the Pentagon for years to step up efforts to find him, the discovery of his body in the desert expanse of western Iraq was surreal and even a bit disquieting.
“A lot of things don’t add up for me,” said Nels Jensen, a high school classmate who helped form the group Friends Working to Free Scott Speicher. “I find it really bizarre that they say he died in the crash, considering all of the evidence to suggest otherwise.”
Speicher’s remains were flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware last week.
Working from dental records, Pentagon pathologists were able to confirm that the remains, which included a jawbone and skeletal fragments, were Speicher’s.
A spokeswoman for Speicher’s relatives told The Associated Press she was pleased that the Pentagon never gave up on finding him.
Chronology of Capt. Michael Scott Speicher
Jan. 17, 1991: Navy Capt. Michael Scott Speicher’s F/A-18 Hornet is shot down over Iraq’s Anbar province on the first night of the Persian Gulf War.
1995: On information supplied by a Qatari military official, investigators from the Pentagon and the Red Cross find the wreckage of Speicher’s jet. Iraqis provide a flight suit with the name tag cut out but no remains.
1998: President Bill Clinton speculates that Speicher “might be alive.”
2001: Navy changes Speicher’s status to missing in action, then adjusted a year later to missing/captured.
2002: Navy Secretary Gordon England says Iraq knew what happened to Speicher but was refusing to help.
2003: After Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime is toppled by U.S. forces in the second Gulf war, 50 sites are examined, including a massive grave outside Baghdad. An Iraqi document that seemed to list Speicher as among U.S. prisoners of war is found inconclusive and possibly fraudulent.
2004: U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., beseeches Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to offer a $1 million reward for information leading to Speicher’s return.
2005: England concludes that there was no credible evidence that Speicher is dead.
2009: Navy Secretary Donald Winter lists Speicher as missing-in-action, as opposed to the previous missing/captured.
Los Angeles Times
