From the New York Post --



IRAQIS STILL HOLD U.S. MIA PILOT: SPY REPORT

By NILES LATHEM



January 11, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence agencies have recently

received bombshell new information suggesting that an American Navy pilot

shot down over Iraq in 1991 is still alive and is languishing in Saddam

Hussein's prisons, it was revealed yesterday.



Two important new reports have surfaced in the past two months giving new

credence to the suspicion that Navy Lt. Capt. Michael Speicher survived

after his F/A-18 Hornet jet was shot down over Iraq on the first day of the

Persian Gulf War, according to Pentagon officials and the family's lawyer.



Baghdad has claimed he is dead, but Cindy Laquidara, a Jacksonville, Fla.,

lawyer for Speicher's family, told The Post she had recently spoken to an

Iraqi defector whom she described as a government official "who was in a

position to know."



Laquidara also said she and family members were briefed by U.S.

intelligence agencies at a secure facility at the Jacksonville Naval Air

Station yesterday about an even fresher report that came in sometime in

November, appearing to corroborate the defector's account that the Navy

pilot is being secretly held by the Iraqis.



Meanwhile, the U.N.'s chief nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, met

yesterday with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of

State Colin Powell.



ElBaradei was asking the White House for more specific intelligence

information to help in the search in Iraq for banned nuclear and

biochemical weapons.