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Panel: Continue search for pilot lost in Iraq

A Navy review board at the Pentagon wants to continue the search for missing pilot Scott Speicher, whose F/A-18 Hornet was shot down over Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991.

The classified review considered fresh evidence obtained in Iraq since the violence there has subsided.

“There is nothing conclusive to say he died,” said Buddy Harris, a family representative who attended the four-day review.

Speicher’s family — including two college-age children who were toddlers when Speicher went missing — believes he may have ejected safely and been captured by Iraqis. His remains were never found.

Potential clues have emerged that he might have survived: After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. troops found the initials "MSS" scrawled on a prison wall in Baghdad, for example, and there were reports that Speicher was seen alive.

The board’s recommendation will have to be formally approved by Navy Secretary Donald Winter or his successor.

The Pentagon initially declared Speicher killed in action hours after his plane went down. Ten years later, the Navy changed his status to missing in action, citing an absence of evidence that he had died. Then, in October 2002, the Navy switched his status to “missing/captured,” although it has never said what evidence it had that he was ever in captivity.

In 2005 investigators excavated a potential grave site in Baghdad but found no evidence of Speicher’s remains. Speicher’s family believes more evidence will emerge as Iraq stabilizes and others come forward with new evidence.

Speicher’s family has won support from lawmakerson Capitol Hill such as Sens. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Pat Roberts, R-Kan.

“The fact is, the U.S. government walked away from a downed pilot — mistakenly the secretary of defense declared him dead the day after ... he was shot down,” Nelson told The Associated Press this week, referring to Dick Cheney, then the defense secretary, who went on television and announced the U.S. had suffered its first casualty of the 1991 war. “It is our obligation to keep looking.”

Harris, Speicher’s friend and a former Navy pilot who has since married Speicher’s wife, said he was pleased with the Navy’s handling of the matter.

“There are people in the military that want this to go away, but they are not in the Navy,” Harris said.

“I’m trying to change the military mindset,” Harris said in a Navy Times interview. “It’s important for our service men and women to know that just because nobody can prove it or nobody has seen you alive for the past two or three years, we’re not going to stop looking for you.”

— The Associated Press contributed to this report