President Bill Clinton said that is reason to hope that a U.S. flier shot down on the first night of the Gulf War may be alive.

But Clinton says there's no "hard evidence" that a U.S. pilot based in Jacksonville who was shot down on the first night of the Gulf War survived.

He says, "I don't want to raise false hopes here."

Clinton's statement Thursday went further than a Navy announcement changing the status of the F-18 pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Michael "Scott" Speicher from killed in action to missing.

"We have some information that leads us to believe that he might be alive and we hope and pray he is," Clinton said in an interview with CBS. "But we have already begun working to try to determine whether, in fact, he's alive; if he is, where he is and how we can get him out and we're going to do everything we can to get him out."

Speicher was shot down while flying a mission from the carrier USS Saratoga on the opening night of the 1991 war.

"Since he was a uniform service person, he's clearly entitled to be released, and we're going to do everything we can to get him out," Clinton said. The president cautioned, however, that he did not want the change in Speicher's status to "raise false hopes."

Joanne Speicher-Harris, Scott Spiecher's wife, gave this statement to Channel 4's Joe Conger: "We have been involved in this process for a considerable time, and have supported, and are encouraged by, the change in status to MIA for Scott. We are heartened by the formal demand to Iraq. We appreciate the efforts of the Federal Government on Scott's behalf, and will have no further comment due to the sensitivity of these matters. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers."

Iraq has never accounted for Speicher.

Barry Hull, who flew off the Saratoga on the same mission with Speicher, said Friday that he is puzzled by the fact Speicher's uniform was found in the Iraqi desert.

"That's one of the pieces of the puzzle that just doesn't fit," Hull said on CBS' "The Early Show." "If I get shot, the moment I pull that ejection handle, I'm no longer a pilot. At that point I'm a soldier and the last thing I'm going to do, running around in the desert, is take off my flight suit and walk around in my skivvies. It just doesn't make any sense."

Hull said that "my gut tells me that he is probably dead, but there is no evidence that he's dead."

The Navy statement did not mention the possibility that Speicher could be alive. One day after it notified Speicher's family of the decision to change his status to MIA, the Navy said Thursday that "additional information and analysis" led Navy Secretary Richard Danzig to reverse earlier determinations that Speicher had died.

The Navy did not explain what new information it had obtained. As recently as 1996 it had reaffirmed a 1991 "finding of death."

Pentagon officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Danzig acted because of substantial evidence that Speicher may not have died in the crash.

One official said that the State Department sent a new diplomatic note to Baghdad demanding that the Iraqi government tell all it knows about Speicher's fate.

"We don't have a response from Baghdad," Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman, said Thursday.

He said that similar U.S. notes would be sent to Iraqi representatives at the United Nations in New York and in Geneva.

"We do believe that the Iraqis hold additional information that could help resolve the case of Cmdr. Speicher, and they are obligated to provide that information to us," Reeker said.

In March 1999, Republican Sens. Bob Smith of New Hampshire and Rod Grams of Minnesota asked Danzig to change Speicher's status to missing in action, reflecting evidence of doubt about whether he survived the crash. Smith met with Danzig again Dec. 20 on the matter, officials said.

In a letter dated Dec. 18, Sandy Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser, told Smith a recent intelligence assessment "has stimulated a high-level review of this case - several new actions are under way and additional steps are under intense review."

Berger's letter, provided to The Associated Press on Wednesday, did not specify what actions were contemplated.

Speicher, of Jacksonville, flying off the USS Saratoga, went missing when his Navy F-18 Hornet was shot down on Jan. 16, 1991, in an air-to-air battle with an Iraqi fighter. He the only serviceman missing from the Gulf War still unaccounted for.

Additional Stories:

• Jan. 12, 2001: Missing Pilot Still Remembered In Hometown
  
• Jan. 11, 2001: Navy Changes Status Of Missing Pilot