Washington ? In the 11 years since Navy pilot Michael Speicher was shot down over Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, his wife has remarried and his young children have become adolescents.

Now, U.S. intelligence officials are trying to determine whether Speicher is alive and languishing in an Iraqi prison.

Speculation about the downed pilot’s fate has heated up as President Bush considers plans to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, another piece of unfinished business from the 1991 war. The Pentagon changed Speicher’s official status from “killed in action” to “missing in action” last year, and intelligence agencies are under intense pressure to come up with more information.

Sen. Bob Graham, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that reports of the lieutenant commander’s captivity “have some degree of credibility.”

Graham, a Florida Democrat whose leadership role gives him ready access to classified information, said representatives of an unnamed third country have given U.S. officials information about Speicher’s fate gathered from a source inside Iraq.

“They allegedly saw and know where Commander Speicher is,” Graham told CNN. “There continue to be reports that would have some degree of credibility.”

Graham’s comments appeared to corroborate a report last week in the Washington Times that British intelligence officers supplied the tip several months ago.

Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have acknowledged the possibility that Speicher is imprisoned in Iraq. Speicher’s F/A-18 Hornet was shot down near Baghdad on Jan. 17, 1991, in the opening hours of the war.

After the war, Iraq gave U.S. authorities a container that supposedly held his remains, but DNA testing showed that they were not Speicher’s.

In late 1995, Iraq let members of a Red Cross team visit the crash site. They found the aircraft canopy, used flares, parts of a survival kit and an abandoned flight suit all evidence that the pilot may have ejected from the damaged fighter.

Over the years, intelligence officials have received other tips about Speicher from an Iraqi defector and an army general from Qatar who stumbled upon the downed aircraft while hunting for falcons. Rumsfeld said most of the reports are second-hand or sketchy.

“There has been a very serious effort on the part of the United States government over a sustained period to try to gather as much information as possible,” he told reporters last week. “Some of it is information that is from sources that require it to be classified. Some of it isn’t. Some of it’s speculation. Most of it is unauthoritative.”

Speicher, who was born in Kansas City, Mo., and graduated from high school in Jacksonville, Fla., was listed as the first casualty of the Gulf War. At age 33, he left behind a wife, a 3-year-old daughter and an infant son. Believing her husband was dead, Speicher’s wife married one of Speicher’s friends adding a gut-wrenching personal twist to the unfinished story.

Cindy Laquidara, a Jacksonville lawyer who represents the family, said Speicher’s former wife, Joanne Speicher Harris, is now convinced that the pilot is alive.