No One Left Behind

The Lt. Comdr. Michael Scott Speicher Story

By: Amy Waters Yarsinske

Narrated by: Gary Telles

Author and former intelligence officer Amy Waters Yarsinske breaks the incredible true story of the first American pilot to be shot down during the Gulf War - and who was discovered alive 11 years after his own government left him for dead.

On January 16, 1991, Lt. Comdr. Michael Scott Speicher launched from the USS Saratoga, one of 40 F/A-18 Hornets, of which only 39 would return. Moments after an assault by an Iraqi MiG-25, Speicher's plane vanished in a fireball over the Baghdad desert. The next day, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell declared Speicher killed in action - the first casualty of the Gulf War.

Two months later, a Kuwaiti secret police colonel claimed he was in the same hospital as a captured American pilot. Over the years, evidence of Speicher's survival continued to emerge, and on January 10, 2001, Speicher was declared missing in action. It was the first time in history that a U.S. serviceman's status had been changed.

Tracking this explosive story for the past eight years, Yarsinske has interviewed top government and military officials, diplomats, pilots, informers, and Iraqi defectors. The result is a stunning true account of government denials and cover-ups that obscured an essential fact: Speicher survived. No One Left Behind takes us beyond the lies to unearth the truth of the pilot left behind.

©2002 Amy Waters Yarsinske (P)2002 Listen & Live Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"It amounts to an extraordinary betrayal of the U.S. military's proud boast that 'no man is left behind'." (The Times, London)
"The entire production [has] a feeling of an overheard conversation between knowledgeable friends, adding a depth of believability and confidence that fancier, more melodramatic treatment might have weakened." (Publishers Weekly)