Navy no longer says Speicher was captured

[unhappycamper]

Navy no longer says Speicher was captured
By Mark D. Faram - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Mar 10, 2009 16:55:01 EDT

The status of an F/A-18 Hornet pilot missing since the first night of the 1991 Persian Gulf War has been changed to “missing in action,” according to the Navy, which no longer believes he was captured.

The change comes as Navy Secretary Donald Winter rejected the recommendations of a Jan. 5 board that Capt. Michael Scott Speicher’s status remain “missing/captured.”

“My review of the board proceedings and the compelling evidence presented by the intelligence community causes me great concern about the reliability of the board’s recommendation, given their failure to employ a logical analytic process to their evaluation of the evidence in the intelligence assessment,” Winter wrote in a statement Tuesday.

The board’s recommendation, he wrote, was based on their conclusion that Speicher landed alive in the Western Iraqi desert after ejecting from his aircraft and was captured.

“They base this on a statistical analysis of F/A-18 ejections; however that analysis was based solely on peacetime ejections, and not the combat environment in which this ejection occurred,” Winter wrote. “They also chose to ignore the lack of any parachute sighting, emergency beacon transmission or survival radio transmissions.”


Rest of article at: http://navytimes.com/news/2009/03/navy_speicher_status_031009/%2e