U.S. pilot shot down in Gulf War reportedly seen in Baghdad in 1998.

Byline: David Goldstein

WASHINGTON _ Iraqi dissidents say that Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, the former Kansas City, Mo., resident shot down and reported killed during the Gulf War in 1991, was seen alive as recently as four years ago.

A member of the London-based Iraqi National Congress, who asked to remain anonymous, said in an interview with The Kansas City Star that the group has information that Speicher was being held prisoner by the Iraqi government and was last seen in 1998 at a military hospital near Baghdad.

The Iraqi National Congress is a group of Iraqi defectors and other opponents of the Iraqi regime. It was organized with help from the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1990s and favors the overthrow of Iraq President Saddam Hussein. Although it has support from the top levels of the Bush administration, some experts on the region question its reliability.

The group's information on Speicher, a 33-year-old Navy pilot reported killed in the war's first night of combat, is the second suggestion in a week that he might still be alive, or was for several years.

A report surfaced last week that British intelligence had passed on information from a third party who allegedly had said Speicher was alive and being held captive.

Several former national security and intelligence officials say that intelligence from the Iraqi National Congress, however, should be treated with caution because of its fervent anti-Hussein agenda.