Navy pilot’s fate now looks grim

A secret Pentagon report states that once-promising leads in the hunt for Capt. Michael Scott Speicher in Iraq have turned up no evidence of his whereabouts, contradicting public official comments that the search was producing positive results.

The classified document also cast serious doubt on the credibility of the Iraqi defector who first raised hopes in the United States that the Navy pilot was alive and a captive in Iraq after his plane was shot down in 1991.

The defector claims to have seen Capt. Speicher alive in 1998. But Iraqis interviewed by U.S. investigators say he is lying, according to the report prepared for Gen. Richard B. Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman.

The internal report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, quotes one Iraqi as saying the defector is a “born liar.” U.S. officials are said to now have serious questions about the unnamed defector’s veracity.

“No significant evidence of [Capt. Speichers] status has been discovered,” says the two-page classified report dated June 23. It says investigators have obtained an “alleged Speicher flight suit,” which is being examined for DNA evidence.

The report presents a much more pessimistic outlook for the search than has been generally presented in public by some U.S. congressmen who have received official briefings.

Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Democrat, said he saw classified information on a trip to Iraq that made him think the mystery would be solved. Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican, made similar upbeat comments.

A day after the date of the Pentagon report, titled “Personnel Recovery Efforts in Support of Capt. Speicher,” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was asked about the Speicher search at a Pentagon press conference.

“I read two reports today, and what they told me is that the senior people involved in, I guess the Iraqi Survey Group, are focused on this issue, attentive to it. … There is nothing that has been turned up thus far that I could elaborate on that would be appropriate.”

The report is stamped “secret” and written as an update on the extensive search for the pilot, whose F-18 was shot down during Desert Storm.

The report reveals that the main source for a report last year that Capt. Speicher survived the crash is a defector from Saddam Hussein’s Special Security Organization (SSO), which maintained the dictator’s rule in Baghdad.

The defector, whom U.S. officials call “defector No. 2314,” provided names of witnesses who he says support his story. But when contacted by the U.S. search team, the Iraqis deny the defector’s account.

“None of the information provided by 2314 has proven accurate,” the Pentagon report states.

The hunt for Capt. Speicher is one of the Bush administration’s chief postwar inquiries, topped only by the search for Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

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