My own feeling is ..........
I think that speculation like that is highly inappropriate.
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The hearing that is going to take place is rare in today's environment, but is standard procedure (actually, the Navy has gone well above and beyond standards in the Speicher case). Basically, the purpose of the board is to determine if there is any credible evidence that Capt Speicher is alive or could have been captured. Based on what they find, they could direct the SCO to issue a "Presumptive Finding of Death". The standard is to issue such a determination 366 days after a service member goes missing, if there is no "proof of life" in that period of time.
For those who are not fully up to speed on the case, but the Navy had good reason to change his status from KIA to Missing/Captured when they did. Nobody was ever 100% certain that he was captured but given the uncertainty, the guidance is to always treat any possibility like it has happened (err on the side of caution). There was enough of a possibility in this case that he could have survived and been captured to warrant the change in status. Now, 18 years after the incident, with our access to all things Iraqi, we have had the opportunity to run every possible lead to ground. The review board will look at what our inel agencies have found, and make a reccomendation to SECNAV.
What the reporter who wrote the AP article failed to communicate is that this hearing is really only about pay and allowances. Speicher's wife has continued to get his full paycheck, allowances, benefits, etc (including promotions and flight pay). If a presumptive finding of death is issued, she will get his full SGLI payment, death gratuity, and retirement pay for the rest of her life. The hearing is about his status in the system, and has no bearing on the amount of effort that will be expended to continue the search for answers to what happened to him. DPMO, JPAC, and the Navy's POW/MIA Branch will continue to work the case just like they are for all other 37,910 unaccounted for sailors. If any credible evidence comes up, we will investigate it and see where it goes. If Capt Speicher walks out of a Syrian prison in 2011, then there are provisions for us to "bring him back to life".
Everyone who has had to deal with the Speicher case has always done the best they could with the information that they have at the time. At this time, there is no evidence that he is alive. There are no fresh leads. There is no body, and he is not sitting in the room with us. We can't promote the man to Admiral, and it has been 18 years. The family is not going to like the status change, but the case has to at least be reviewed.