INSIDE THE RING
by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
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Baghdad report

We have obtained a classified report from the Pentagon dated Dec. 9, 1991, that quotes an Iraqi refrigerator technician. The technician said he saw the bodies of three American servicemen that were being kept at a morgue of the Al Rashidia hospital in Baghdad.

The report, labeled "secret," states that while the technician was making repairs on the hospital's refrigeration unit, he was told that the Iraqis were holding the three Americans' bodies in the morgue and was shown their identification cards.

The bodies were covered in dried blood and had grayish uniforms with U.S. Air Force insignia. The source also said he had seen the bodies of a Saudi soldier and a British soldier at the morgue.

It could not be learned what action was taken to pursue the technician's claims.

But the report, sent from the Defense Attache Office in Amman, Jordan, is the kind of intelligence information that a special team now in Iraq is pursuing to resolve the case of a missing Navy pilot, Capt. Michael Scott Speicher. He was lost when his F-18 was shot down in January 1991 near Baghdad.

So far, Capt. Speicher's fate has not been determined, although new evidence was uncovered in Iraq in the form of the initials "MSS" carved into a prison wall.