Speicher Michael Scott - An American in the basement: the betrayal of Captain Scott Speicher and the cover-up of his death

An American in the Basement: The Betrayal of Captain Scott Speicher and the Cover-up of His Death

Copyright 2013 Amy Waters Yarsinske. All Rights Reserved.

Presentation Copyright 2013 Trine Day, LLC

Published by:

Trine Day LLC

PO Box 577

Walterville, OR 97489

1-800-556-2012

www.TrineDay.com

publisher@TrineDay.net

Library of Congress Control Number:2013934343

Yarsinske, Amy Waters

An American in theBasement: The Betrayal of Captain Scott Speicher and the Cover-up of His Death1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes index and references.

Epud (ISBN-13) 978-1-937584-21-4

Mobi (ISBN-13) 978-1-937584-22-1

Print (ISBN-13) 978-1-937584-20-7

1. Prisoners of war -- United States. 2. Speicher, Michael Scott. 3. Persian Gulf War, 1991 -- Aerial operations, American . 4. Fighter pilots -- United States -- Biography. I. Yarsinske, Amy Waters. II. Title

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21

Printed in the USA

Distribution to the Trade by:

Independent Publishers Group (IPG)

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

312.337.0747

www.ipgbook.com

AN AMERICAN IN THE BASEMENT

The Betrayal of
Captain Scott Speicher and the Cover-up of
His Death

Amy Waters Yarsinske

Table of Contents

The greatest successes of American intelligence have come at times when an intelligence officer was able to see what others could not, dare what others would not, and refuse to give up in the face of overwhelming odds.

George J. Tenet, director of Central Intelligence, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 6 May 1997

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

George Orwell, British novelist and essayist, 1946

To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American poet, Protest, Poems of Problems, 1914

For here we will follow the truth wherever it may lead so long as reason is left free to combat it.

Thomas Jefferson to William Roscoe, 27 December 1820

And Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free.

John 8:32

Foreword

Since the release of my first book on Scott Speicher No One Left Behind significant pieces of information that stood to change public perception and military action pertaining to his case can now be told, facts that make his the seminal case in the ongoing saga of Americas prisoners of war and missing in action. An American in the Basement documents the incredible true story of denial, deceit and deception that cost Scott Speicher his life. This work includes information that heretofore has been kept from the American public.

After reading An American in the Basement , each and every military operator in any Western military, and each and every parent, family member or friend of one, should seriously question the validity of the promise made by Americas leadership and the military chain of command to do everything in their power to search, locate, assist and recover all prisoners of war and those missing in action. History proves that this promise is mostly political and, worse, could mean nothing at all. When you read Scott Speichers story youll understand why.

But first there are some clarifications that need to be made. Many of you will want to call Scott Speicher a prisoner of war and that is completely understandable. But the fact is that the Pentagon hasnt used the term since 2000. This news came as a surprise to experts in the field who were unaware of the change. The Department of Defense has replaced prisoner of war with missing-captured. Thats very interesting, observed Simon Schorno, spokesman for the Washington office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) when asked for comment by Time s Mark Thompson in the magazines May 17, 2012 issue. I didnt know that.

Sometimes important things are hiding in plain sight, added Eugene R. Fidell

Department of Defense Directive 1300.18 issued on December 18, 2000, eliminated the status/designation prisoner of war (POW) for captured American service personnel, replacing it with the ambiguous designation missing-captured. The directive states:

POW is not casualty status for reporting purposes, the casualty status and category would be missing-captured. POW is the international legal status of military and certain other personnel captured during an armed conflict between two countries and that status entitles those captured to humanitarian treatment under the Third Geneva Convention, Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. The international status of POW is automatic when personnel have fallen into the power of the enemy. There is no action required by any country in the conflict to have that status applied for their personnel and for their personnel to be entitled to the humanitarian protections of the Geneva Convention.

The Pentagons policy sheds it of the responsibility of designating an American service member as a POW if the international community applies it automatically. But the POW moniker continues to be used extensively within the Department of Defense. Commands and offices inside and outside the Pentagon still use it as part of their naming convention, principally the Defense Prisoners of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) and Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC). Then there is the Prisoner of War Medal and the armed forces Code of Conduct (CoC), doctrine that unequivocally addresses the service member if taken as a prisoner of war and refers them to sections of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) that covers the same.

What did this policy do to the Speicher case? Secretary of the Navy Gordon R. England argued in his October 11, 2002 memorandum:

If the government of Iraq is holding Captain Speicher, he is entitled to Prisoner of War status under international law and the Geneva Convention and would have been entitled to such status from the day he first came under Iraqi control. Although the controlling missing persons statute and directives do not use the term Prisoner of War, the facts supporting a change in Captain Speichers category from Missing in Action to Missing/Captured would also support the conclusion that if alive, he is a Prisoner of War.

Secretary Englands statement is clear that the controlling missing persons statute and directives do not specify the term prisoner of war. Had the status prisoner of war been left in the language of the missing persons statute and directives, Scott Speicher would have been listed as a prisoner of war.

Prisoner of war wasnt good enough for Scott Speicher in the fall of 2002 but it would be for Saddam Hussein less than two years later. On December 13, 2003, during the execution of Operation Red Dawn, Saddam was captured by American forces hiding in a spider hole outside a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near his hometown of Tikrit. Following his capture Saddam was transported to a U.S. base near Tikrit, and later Camp Cropper, a holding facility for security detainees operated by the U. S. Army near Baghdad International Airport. The facility was initially operated as a high-value detention (HVD) site, but subsequently increased its capacity from 163 to roughly 2,000 detainees. Almost immediately after Saddams capture the ICRC entered discussions with U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) for access to the deposed Iraqi leader, according to the Red Cross Washington representative Girod Christophe. Less than a month later, on January 9, 2004, Pentagon lawyers declared Saddam a prisoner of war. With this determination the former Iraqi dictator was thereafter protected by the rules of international law and the Third Geneva Convention, which provides for the treatment of prisoners of war. What got him this designation? Saddam was a prisoner of war based on the fact that he was the former head of an enemy military force who was captured on the battlefield during a declared conflict.