Navy awaiting DNA results on body identified as Gulf War’s first casualty

Further tests on body of Navy pilot from Gulf War

WASHINGTON — The Navy awaited DNA test results Monday on the skeletal remains identified through dental records as those of pilot Michael “Scott” Speicher, who was called the first casualty of the 1991 Gulf War.

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.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the remains will be turned over to Speicher’s family after tests are complete.

For nearly two decades, Speicher’s family, from outside Jacksonville, Fla., pressured the Defense Department to find an answer. Finally, the Pentagon announced Sunday that his remains had been found.

Cindy Laquidara, the family’s attorney, said 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.

Shot down over west-central Iraq on a combat mission on Jan. 17, 1991, Speicher was declared killed by the Pentagon hours later. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney went on television and announced the U.S. had suffered its first casualty of the war.

But 10 years later, the Navy changed his status to missing in action, citing an absence of evidence that Speicher had died. In October 2002, the Navy switched his status to “missing/captured,” although it has never said what evidence it had that he ever was in captivity. More reviews followed, without definitive answers.

Over the years, critics contended the Navy had not done enough, particularly right after the crash, to search for the 33-year-old Speicher.

Officials said Sunday that they got new information last month from an Iraqi, who helped lead Marines to two others who identified the burial site in the western desert.

The military recovered bones and multiple skeletal fragments and Speicher was positively identified by matching a jawbone and dental records.

The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Md., is running DNA tests on the remains and comparing them with DNA reference samples from family members.

Word reported from Jacksonville, Fla.