Iraq rejects reports U.S. pilot survived Gulf War shooting

<br>BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) _ Iraq said Saturday there was no truth to reports that a missing U.S. Navy pilot might have survived after being shot down during the Gulf War, calling the idea a ``silly lie.''

Saturday, January 13th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) _ Iraq said Saturday there was no truth to reports that a missing U.S. Navy pilot might have survived after being shot down during the Gulf War, calling the idea a ``silly lie.''

Iraq's Foreign Ministry said it would soon release documents concerning Lt. Cmdr. Michael S. Speicher, whose jet was hit on the first night of the Gulf War in 1991. The ministry did not say what information the documents contain.

U.S. intelligence officials in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday there have been unconfirmed reports in recent years that Speicher survived the downing of his plane and was seen afterward in Iraqi custody.

``This silly lie represents the bankruptcy of (President) Clinton,'' the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said in a statement on the state-run Iraqi News Agency.

Clinton cautioned that he didn't want to raise false hopes, but said the United States was ``going to do our best to find out if he is alive and, if he is, to get him out.''

The U.S. government sent a diplomatic communication to Baghdad on Wednesday demanding an accounting, U.S. officials said.

Speicher is the only American lost in Iraqi territory who has not been accounted for. After the war, the Iraqi government turned over remains it said were Speicher's, but DNA analysis and blood testing showed they were not his.

The U.S. officials said more than one informant had reported to U.S. intelligence agencies that an American thought to be Speicher was being held prisoner in Iraq after the war ended.

The reports were received over a period of several years but the sightings were in 1991 and 1992, the officials said. The veracity of the reports was uncertain, but they are credible enough to lead American government officials to think Speicher probably survived the crash.

Speicher, of Jacksonville, Fla., flew his F-18 Hornet off the carrier USS Saratoga on the opening night of the war in January 1991, and went down west of Baghdad. He apparently was attacked by an Iraqi MiG-25 fighter.

Another American pilot who saw the jet explode in the air reported that it was hit by an air-to-air missile and that he did not see Speicher eject. A combat search and rescue mission was planned but not executed, and the crash site was not found until 1994.

Shortly after then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney told reporters on the night of the shootdown that Speicher had died in the crash, the Pentagon declared him ``missing in action.'' In May 1991, the Navy approved a ``finding of death,'' in the absence of evidence that he had survived, and he was switched to ``killed in action.'' The KIA status was reaffirmed by the Navy in 1996.

The Navy told Speicher's family on Wednesday that it was changing his status to ``missing in action.'' On Thursday, the Navy said ``additional information and analysis'' led Navy Secretary Richard Danzig to reverse earlier determinations that Speicher had died.