Posted on 05/29/2007 6:02:58 PM PDT by RedRover
Hearing fact sheet
Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani was the commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment at the time of the Haditha incident and is the highest-ranking officer to have charges filed against him.
Chessani, who grew up in northwest Colorado, was relieved of his command in April 2006 along with the Kilo Company's commander, Capt. Lucas McConnell. At the time, a Marine Corps spokesman told reporters that the two men had been relieved of duty, "due to lack of confidence in their leadership abilities stemming from their performance during a recent deployment to Iraq."
Before being relieved of duty, Chessani appeared to be on a solid career path. He was reportedly involved in helping to plan the 2004 assault on Fallujah. He also served in the first Iraqi war in 1991.
He received his first command position at an Albany, New York, recruiting station and later attended the Command and Staff College in Quantico, Va., where he earned a master's degree in military studies.
He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 2004 and assigned to the post of operations officer for the 1st Marines in Iraq. His first combat command came in May 2005, when he took over the base's 3rd Battalion. The Denver Post has reported that during the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, he captured several of former President Manuel Noriega's top officers.
Lt. Col. Chessani is facing three years in prison and a dismissal from the service if convicted on all three counts.
Preferred Charges and Specifications:
Charge: Violation of the UCMJ, Article 92
Specification 1 (Violation of a lawful order): wrongfully failed to accurately report and thoroughly investigate a possible, suspected, or alleged violation of the law of war by Marines under his command. (Maximum punishment: dismissal, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 2 years)
Specification 2 (Dereliction): willfully failed to ensure that this possible, suspected, or alleged violation of the law of war was accurately reported to higher headquarters. (Maximum punishment: Dismissal, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 6 months)
Specification 3 (Dereliction): willfully failed to direct a thorough investigation into this possible, suspected, or alleged violation of the law of war. (Maximum punishment: Dismissal, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 6 months)
Investigating officer: Col. Christopher Conlin
Convening authority: Lt. Gen. James Mattis, commanding general for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine Forces Central Commander for Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa.
In Lt. Col. Chessani's defense: Civilian attorney, Richard Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center says, "The testimony we will elicit will show just how ridiculous and politically motivated these charges are."
For the official USMC advisory, click at the link.
Source: Various articles in the North County Times.
We're going to go right from tbe Chessani hearing to Justin's. I'm struggling to keep up.
Here’s some additional info, if you care to include any on these witnesses.
Sgt Maj Edward Sax - from 10Newscom, post 180 above “ testified he advised Chessani not to go to the locations immediately following the killings because it was too dark and dangerous in the area.”
Atterbury - alleged powder burns were from pictures, not bodies
What about 1st Lt. Alexander Martin “who said he encountered “screaming mothers and angry fathers” a day after the killings when he toured the neighborhood where they took place. Martin was a platoon second lieutenant in Haditha in 2005.”...
“Martin also said that after the Nov. 19 incident, Haditha residents were much more cooperative.
“After Nov. 19, people would come up to me and tell me where the IEDs were,” he said in reference to the military’s shorthand for roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices.” From North County Times http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/05/31/news/top_stories/40_39_545_30_07.txt
Samuel Carasco - another quote from LA Times (post 172 above: “Why would we leave one of our fallen angels out in the street unless you’ve had a lot of contact?” Carrasco said, a slight tremor in his voice. “ [Basically indicating how busy and messy it was that day that they even had to leave a dead Marine in the street for hours, not something they would like to do normally - my words]
Another quote by Carasco, from San Diego Tribune http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20070603-9999-1mc3haditha.html
“After being pressed by Conlin, Carrasco said: “In hindsight, should we have allowed him to go out there? Absolutely.” “
And from a press release, day 4, TMLC, post 237 this thread, “ testimony of Major Carrasco indicated that the last terrorist they found that day went into a house and grabbed a child in order to pretend he was a civilian family member. The only reason the terrorist’s ruse was discovered was that blood was coming from his ears.”
Haven’t looked at Mathes yet.
Adam Mathes - Testified he did not believe the slayings represented a violation of the laws of armed conflict. ref. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/06/04/military/13_14_426_4_07.txt
I think this is Max Frank testifying about Mathes, but I hadn’t seen all of this before. From AP, Thomas Watkins, http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2007/05/ap_hadithah_070530/
“A fellow officer, 1st Lt. Adam Mathes, told Frank that “we were to go out and say this is what happens when you let the terrorists use your house to attack our troops.”
Mathes was not present during the killings.
Frank also testified that he took photos at the scene, but Mathes deleted the electronic images because he thought they were not allowed to have pictures of dead Iraqis on personal equipment.”
From the TMLC press release, post 205, this thread, “Lieutenant Mathes testified on Saturday. Lt Mathes was Kilo Company’s executive officer at the time of the attack. He was one of the closest officers to the battle that day. His job was to coordinate the Marines in the battle. He testified that November 19, 2005 was a large scale complex attack by terrorists. He testified that he and the company commander, Capt McConnell asked the enlisted Marines the “hard” questions to get to the ground truth of the civilian collateral damage. Lt Mathes stated that he and Capt McConnell were satisfied with the enlisted Marines answers as to their actions: a regrettable outcome to a hard fought battle that the terrorists designed specifically for collateral damage to occur.”
From a NY Times article, post 183 above
“In other testimony on Saturday, the former executive officer of the marine company at Haditha said Colonel Chessani refused to look into questions from a Time magazine reporter about the civilian deaths because he viewed them as a trap.
“If we follow up with an investigation, it will be an admission of guilt,” said the officer, First Lt. Adam P. Mathes, recalling what Colonel Chessani told him and other battalion- and company-level officers in a meeting on Jan. 29, 2006, to discuss the reporter’s questions.”
And from San Diego Union Tribune, “Commanders Huddled after killings, court told”
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070602/news_1m2b2briefs.html
Check out that link. I hadn’t seen this testimony before.
Commanders huddled after killings, court told
June 2, 2007
CAMP PENDLETON: Just hours after 24 Iraqi civilians were killed by several Camp Pendleton Marines, their commanders huddled to plan how to keep the incident from “disgracing” the Marine Corps.
That was the testimony of 1st Lt. Adam Mathes, a witness yesterday in the pretrial hearing for Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani.
Chessani is one of four officers accused of failing to properly report and investigate the Nov. 19, 2005, deaths in Haditha. Three enlisted Marines under his command are charged with murder.
Mathes yesterday said he overheard Chessani and Capt. Lucas M. McConnell talking about how to “spin” the deaths.
Defense attorney Robert J. Muise said it's prudent for commanders to engage the public with their side of the story, particularly in places where insurgents use propaganda. He also accused Mathes of not correctly remembering the conversation between Chessani and McConnell.
San Diego Union Tribune, June 7, 2007
CAMP PENDLETON – A Marine who took pictures of 24 Iraqis killed by U.S. forces testified today that one of his commanders later pressured him to erase the photos, including ones showing dead women and children. “I just kind of looked at him with shock,” Staff Sgt. Justin Laughner said about the orders from 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson.
“It just didn't seem right,” he added. “To me, it looked like destroying evidence.“
Laughner said Grayson told him to delete the images from his computer after higher-ups in the Marine Corps began investigating the killings, which happened Nov. 19, 2005, in the city of Haditha. Military prosecutors contend that all of the dead were innocent civilians.
“How did you feel about that?” Lt. Col. Sean Sullivan, a military prosecutor, asked Laughner about the order to delete the pictures.
“Not good . . . because I knew it was wrong,” Laughner responded while on the stand in a Camp Pendleton courtroom.
“Did you feel you had just obstructed justice with Lt. Grayson?” Sullivan asked.
“Yes,” Laughner replied.
The testimony came during the preliminary hearing for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, the commander of Camp Pendleton's 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. He and three other officers, including Grayson, are accused of failing to properly investigate the Haditha deaths.
Laughner testified that he photographed the Iraqis' bodies, some of which were lying in the street and others in two houses. There was no evidence to suggest that any of the dead were insurgents, he said.
In one home, Laughner photographed a woman “slumped over a child,” her arm wrapped around the youngster, as if in protection. The women and child were dead, he testified.
Laughner also said he didn't know whether the pictures were ever shown to Chessani, whose lawyers assert that their client was never told about the photos.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers are presenting evidence to Col. Chris Conlin, who will recommend whether Chessani, 43, should face court-martial. If Chessani is tried and convicted, he could be dismissed from the military and face up to two years in prison.
Haditha slayings were seen as combat-related, Los Angeles Times, June 7, 2007.
Officer calls Haditha prosecution politically motivated, Associated Press, June 6, 2007.
Okay, who all took pictures and why? I’m having a hard time figuring out how many took pictures, how many had pictures on their computers which were mere downloads, and are the official military photos intact? Briones said he took pictures but erased them becausem he thought they had been downloaded. An Andrew White (not sure if I’ve got his name right) said he took pictures and kept copies. Now SSGT Laughner says he took pictures and was told to get rid of them off his personal equipment by Grayson. Max Frank says he took pictures at the scene, but Mathes told him to get rid of them of his personal equipment.
Do the official photos still exist and were these guys just told to get them off their persoanl computers? This shouldn’t be so confusing, unless someone is TRYING to make it look like a coverup.
Sounds like Lt Grayson and others were telling sergeants to delete the pictures because it was improper for them to have them. It’s so easy to duplicate and e-mail pictures that no one as smart as those lieutenants would think it was destroying evidence. Especially when officers had them.
Jeez Louise.
And another thing...
The prosecution brought in Sgt Dela Cruz to testify in the Capt Stone hearing—even though it wasn’t relevant. Same thing here. The prosecutors just seem to be warming up for Lt Grayson’s hearing.
This is going to be rough--even though no women or children were involved in the last house that Justin and SSgt Wuterich entered. The prosecution has already tipped its hand. The results of the engagement will be labelled by the prosecution as "execution-style killings". The media will have a freaking field day. * spit *
I'll post a "main thread" for Justin's hearing over the weekend.
At Haditha Hearing, Dueling Views of a Battalion Commander
June 8, 2007
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., June 7 — Through three combat deployments in Iraq, a Bronze Star and numerous combat ribbons, Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani’s Marine Corps career has been defined, it seems, by terrorist bombs.
In October 1983, news of the attack by Muslim extremists on a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut that killed 241 service members compelled Colonel Chessani, then a teenager from Rangely, Colo., to embrace Christianity and, later, to follow two brothers into the service. In November 2005, Colonel Chessani was a battalion commander in Haditha, Iraq, when a roadside bomb planted by Sunni Arab insurgents killed one of his marines and wounded two others.
Infantrymen under his command, seeking to engage the enemy, instead killed 24 civilians. Last year, the Marine Corps charged Colonel Chessani, 43, and three other officers with dereliction of duty for failing to investigate the episode properly and relieved him of his command.
In a military hearing into whether he should face a formal court-martial, witnesses and military documents have helped paint two contradictory portraits of Colonel Chessani, the highest-ranking Marine officer charged since the Iraq war began more than four years ago.
On one side, battalion officers and enlisted men testifying under oath described Colonel Chessani, who at the time of the Haditha killings was on his third combat tour in Iraq, as a physically courageous leader whose integrity was beyond question.
“Lieutenant Colonel Chessani is by far the strongest moral leader I’ve ever worked with,” Sgt. Maj. Edward T. Sax, the battalion’s senior noncommissioned officer, testified last week. Maj. Samuel H. Carrasco, the Third Battalion’s operations officer, said Colonel Chessani’s “truthfulness is beyond reproach.” On Tuesday, Colonel Chessani’s adjutant, First Lt. Mark E. Towers, called him “a godly man” who spent a half-hour every morning in Iraq quietly reading the Bible in his quarters.
On the other side, Marine prosecutors have used testimony from Colonel Chessani’s subordinate and superior officers to portray him as a touchy and incurious field commander who, instead of investigating, sent deceptive reports about the Haditha killings up the chain of command.
Colonel Chessani never asked for a detailed briefing about how and why the marines killed 24 civilians, according to testimony, and did not inspect the scene of the killings, despite a report to superiors that he had.
Three months later, responding to questions about the civilian deaths from a Time magazine reporter, Colonel Chessani sent an e-mail message to his regimental commander that inaccurately stated that several AK-47s were found in a home where marines had killed several women and children, military documents show.
Major Carrasco, under questioning from prosecutors, also described Colonel Chessani as angrily shouting, “My men are not murderers!” after Major Carrasco and another battalion officer advised him, on Jan. 29, 2006, to open an inquiry into the killings.
Amid all the courtroom characterizations of him during the past week, Colonel Chessani, slightly built and with thinning gray hair, sat stone-faced at the defense table in his desert fatigues, jotting notes but rarely talking even to his lawyers.
By all accounts, including his own sworn statements to military investigators examining his response to the civilian killings, Colonel Chessani anguished over the casualties his marines suffered that day in Haditha — the most violent and chaotic day in the battalion’s combat tour.
From a command post about seven miles from Haditha, he viewed insurgent movements via video from an aerial drone and directed several attacks and counterattacks by marines against insurgents in residential areas around the city, according to testimony this week. Colonel Chessani visited one battle site later that day, but did not inspect the homes where 19 of the 24 civilians were killed by grenades and rifle fire.
In a sworn statement to military investigators in March 2006, Colonel Chessani said he never suspected that the killings were improper under the American laws of war, because they followed an attack by insurgents that, he believed, was intended to provoke lethal return fire by marines in a residential area.
“I believe the enemy picked the ground where he wanted to attack us,” Colonel Chessani said in a statement dated March 20, which has not been officially released. “They were — they had set this up so that there would be collateral damage.”
He later added, “Enemy had picked the place, he had picked the time and the location for a reason. I believed he made a definite choice in where it was and thought that, you know, he wanted to make us look bad.”
Marine prosecutors have suggested that Colonel Chessani was, in fact, so intent on not letting insurgents use the civilian deaths against the marines that he ignored evidence that his troops, under sporadic small-arms fire, had violated rules of engagement in killing civilians in their homes.
In a statement he gave on March 26, 2006, to an investigator from Naval Criminal Investigative Service from the base in Asad, Iraq, Colonel Chessani admitted, in stoical, confessional language, that he could have trained his marines better.
“Looking back, I could have done a better job preparing the marines for this deployment as it relates to R.O.E. training,” his statement said, using the abbreviation for rules of engagement. That might have included using live-fire training that required infantrymen to discern enemy targets from civilians.
Perhaps the most important arbiter of Colonel Chessani’s actions in Haditha is Col. Christopher Conlin, the investigating officer who will recommend whether the charges should proceed to a court-martial. Colonel Conlin, a former Iraq battalion commander presiding over his first military hearing, has made several comments that suggest a critical view of Colonel Chessani.
For example, last week, Colonel Conlin told a witness that many other battalion commanders would have joined their troops in the battle area on the day of combat in November 2005, instead of remaining miles away.
On Tuesday, Colonel Conlin asked Lieutenant Towers, who was a battalion legal adviser in Iraq in 2005, if a report by Colonel Chessani’s staff to the regiment stating that the colonel had examined the scene of the civilian casualties “implied that he went there.”
Lieutenant Towers answered firmly, “Yes, sir.”
Dispatch From Lt. Col Chessani Hearing
On Wednesday, the recently declassified video deposition of Captain Jeffrey S. Dinsmore was proof that the terrorists attacked U.S. Marines on November 19, 2005. A catastrophic IED blast cut in half a hardened humvee. One Marine, a Fallujah veteran, was killed instantly. Two other Marines were seriously wounded. Small arms fire immediately ensued from both sides of the road. This IED blast began the battle that lasted several hours.
An unmanned aircraft was launched and showed terrorists moving from the IED area to a pre-staged weapons cache area in a set of palm groves. From there the terrorists went to another area of Haditha where they entered a "rented" house. Lt. Col. Chessani ordered 8 to 11 Marines to assault the house. The Marines were repulsed by grenades and small arms fire - all seriously wounded by the determined enemy.
Lt. Col. Chessani ordered F-18s to drop several 500 lb. bombs on the structure. Most of the terrorists were killed. Some - unbelievably escaped. One of the escaped terrorists was captured. The other ran into a house and grabbed a child to hide behind - he was detained.
Brian Rooney, one of the Thomas More Law Center attorneys stated: "Captain Dinsmore’s testimony was crucial to show that this was a true complex attack by terrorists, and not some phantom menace."
Staff Sergeant Justin M. Laughner testified on Thursday. He was part of the human intelligence team that documented the area of the battle for intelligence value. One of the most important things he testified to is the fact that he found AK-47 brass in the homes where the Marines were assaulted due to enemy fire.
Major Hyatt, the Civil Affairs officer for the battalion testified that he knew that women and children had been killed on November 19th, but that this was an unfortunate by-product of war. Major Hyatt also testified that he spoke with some of the Marines involved in the clearing of houses from which the terrorists attacked. Major Hyatt stated that one marine said he heard AK-47s racking.
Thomas More Law Center attorney, Rob Muise commented: "War often has tragic consequences for civilians caught in the crossfire. The enemy is fully aware of this and uses it as an advantage. Terrorists hide behind women and children hoping the Marines will hesitate - this gets marines killed."
Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, stated: "These past two days have shown the ruthlessness of the enemy that America faces. The propaganda that the enemy has generated from this is exactly what Al-Qaeda wants."
Tomorrow Major Thomas F. Osterhoudt, the 2nd Marine Division Comptroller, will testify to his role in paying compensation to the civilians that were killed. There will be two experts that will testify as to Marine tactics and battalion officer duties.
Actually, I’m nearly positive he means the last house where the four military aged males were killed (by Sharratt and Wuterich).
His name is Justin L. Sharratt, not Justin I. Sharratt. (Must be Chessani's fault. Let's have an investigation into this false reporting. * spit *)
Kallop, a platoon commander, arrived at the scene more than two hours after the explosion that killed Terrazas. He testified that Marines told him of hearing gunfire to the south and north of their location near the wrecked Humvee but that none specifically pointed out the three houses nearly 330 feet away across a vacant field.
*****************8
Red - is this the first mention of the 2 hour lapse between the IED and Kallop’s arrival? I thought he testified he arrived right after.
He says no, because he didn't.
But of course someone else may have. Still, the press reports, "NO SHELL CASINGS FOUND!" rather than the less exciting "NO SHELL CASINGS FOUND BY LT. FRANK!"
As to Iraqi soldiers, I can't imagine we're equipping them with "pray-and-spray" Russian automatic weapons. So I don't think shell case confusion is an issue.
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