Remains of Capt. Scott Speicher found in Iraq

From Pilot and wire reports

The past 18 years have been a roller coaster for friends and family of Navy Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher, but much of that ride came to an end Sunday with the news that the remains of the pilot, the first American killed in the Persian Gulf War, had been identified in Iraq.

"The anxiety is over," said Barry Hull, who flew in Speicher's squadron when his F/A-18 was shot down. "But now there is no hope."

The Navy has reclassified Speicher's status several times, calling him "missing in action" and "missing-captured," since his plane was shot down over western Iraq on the first night of the war, Jan. 17, 1991.

"Always lurking in a little illogical place in your brain is hope," Hull said. He often wondered: "What if he's in a prison in Libya and there's still a chance we might find him?"

That hope 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.

The Navy awaited DNA test results Monday on the skeletal remains identified through dental records.The results, due later this week, are not expected to completely solve the mystery of how Speicher died on the first night of the war 18 years ago. The remains are small and fragmentary and are not expected to yield a definite cause of death.

His family issued a statement Sunday saying, "The news that Captain Speicher has died on Iraqi soil after ejecting from his aircraft has been difficult for the family, but his actions in combat, and the search for him, will forever remain in their hearts and minds."

President Barack Obama called the news "a reminder of the selfless service that led him to make the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom."

For nearly two decades, Speicher's family, from outside Jacksonville, Fla., pressured the Defense Department to find an answer.

Cindy Laquidara, the family's attorney, said Monday the family is dealing with grief and what she called a lack of information. She said family members want to talk to the Defense Department before commenting.

Laquidara said the family disputes the presumption that Speicher died while ejecting or in the crash.

"All the information we have received over the past 15 years is contrary to that. The fact that he ejected — the determination he ejected — there is a lot of information that conflicted with that."

The family has asked for a meeting but Laquidara said no time or place has been set. 

The family has not announced plans for funeral or memorial services. Speicher already has a tombstone at Arlington National Cemetery.

Former President George H.W. Bush, who was commander in chief at the time of Speicher's disappearance, said, "We already knew he was a hero, one who helped lead our way to a historic victory in the Gulf, but now his family and countrymen know - and history will finally record - that he was one of the very first patriots to give his life in the liberation of Kuwait."

Hull, who flew with Speicher in the VFA-81 "Sunliners," now based at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, learned through a phone call from his mother Sunday morning that his friend's remains had been identified.

"I'm not a melodramatic guy. I don't break down," he said. "But I was overwhelmed."

Speicher's fate had been the subject of several Pentagon investigations, hundreds of rumors and countless conspiracy theories since his plane was shot down over western Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991. His friends and family, including two college-age children who were toddlers when Speicher disappeared, never gave up hope that he would be found.

Last month, an Iraqi approached 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 requires that a burial is 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."

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-Qaida in Iraq operatives, switched sides and teamed with the U.S. military to fight the extremists.

The discovery of Speicher's remains brings resolution to the most prominent mystery of the Gulf War at a time when the U.S. military's heavy involvement in the long Iraq war is poised over the next year to draw to a close.

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. The exile was later discredited.

As the United States was readying for war with Iraq in fall 2002, the Navy said it was switching his status to "missing/captured." Senior Navy officials never explained why it made the change or what evidence it had to suggest that Iraqi forces were holding Speicher.

Speicher's family, which lives in Jacksonville, Fla., continued to push the Pentagon to search for the downed pilot. His case captured the attention of many lawmakers, including Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan.

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/A-18 Hornet fighter jet. M onths 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.

A few weeks later, Nelson visited the spare, dirty prison cell and proclaimed there was new secret intelligence suggesting that Speicher had survived the crash. "I cannot tell you what the evidence is," he said in a 2003 telephone conference call with reporters. "But there is new evidence, and the clues to me are promising."

On Sunday, Nelson struck a mournful note. "We all clung to the slim hope that Scott was still alive and would one day come home to his family," he told reporters.

The Pentagon also excavated a potential grave site 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, which was 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 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. The Pentagon also plans to conduct DNA tests on the remains to confirm that they are those of the Navy captain. It will take about 24 hours to get the results of the tests.

Senior Navy officials said Speicher's recovery is a testament to the U.S. military's determination to honor its war dead and to bring them home. "Our Navy will never give up looking for a shipmate, regardless of how difficult that search may be," said Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations.

Today, there are lessons to glean from the long investigation of Speicher's disappearance, fellow pilot Hull said.

"The life and death of Scott Speicher can stand for something other than the death of a great man," Hull said. "We can learn from his death. We can learn from what we did wrong.

"Sometimes it's pretty cut and dry, and this time it wasn't."

This story was compiled from reports by The Washington Post, The Associated Press and Pilot writers Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer and Patrick Wilson.