That's gotta be pure hell for him.
Posted on 07/29/2010 4:55:07 PM PDT by smoothsailing
by Nathaniel R. Helms | July 28, 2010
This is the third part in a three-part series. Read part one here and part two here.
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About six weeks after retired Lt. Col Jeffrey Chessani was charged with crimes at Haditha, Iraq in December, 2006, the Thomas More Law Center decided to represent him. Thomas More is an advocacy law firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan which some of the other defense attorneys irreverently call “the Pope’s mouthpiece” in America. It was no joke that the Center spent almost a million dollars collected from the faithful to defend the devout Catholic officer.
Two former Marines, Brian Rooney and Robert Muise, were detailed by the firm to represent him. Rooney is best known as the fiery public advocate for justice. He went on the attack the day Thomas More announced it was representing Chessani. Rooney appeared used to notoriety. Perhaps it is because he comes from the family that owns the Pittsburgh Steelers. Shunning privilege for service he joined the Marines and served with Chessani at Fallujah in the fierce 2004 November battle.
Muise was a former Marine Corps infantryman who left the Corps long enough to go to Notre Dame on his own dime before returning as a lawyer. He served more than 13 years on active duty and has 11 children. Chessani credits Muise with leading the defense that saved him from possible incarceration and almost certain loss of everything he had earned serving as an infantry officer for 20 years if he had been convicted.
Pitted against them was a team of prosecutors led by a Chicago Marine reservist named Lt. Col. Sean Sullivan. He was the Marines Corp’s designated pit bull. On June 11, 2007 Sullivan set the tone for what was to come when he told the Article 32 pre-trial hearing officer Col. Christopher Conlin there was enough probable cause to court martial Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani for horribly botching the most important job he was ever faced with – deciding what to do about the 15 dead civilians his Marines had undoubtedly killed.
"There was an absolute failure of the obligation to investigate the death of these civilians. This is a classic case of things gone wrong. You want to believe in your Marines, but sometimes things go wrong,” Sullivan opined before Conlin.
Col. Conlin was no stranger to controversy himself. He landed in the New York Times on July 31, 2003 when he aroused the decidedly un-PC male population of the holy city of Najaf by attempting to install the city’s first ever female judge. The local boys who a year later would kill a lot of Marines were out in force chanting in no time and Conlin was forced to reconsider, according to the New York Times.
Sullivan capitalized on Chessani’s uncustomary loss of temper in Iraq, upon hearing his men were being accused of murder by a Time magazine reporter, to build his case. According to Sullivan, Chessani began breaking the law as soon as he reacted angrily to the accusation by dismissing as fabrications the allegations of inquiring Time reporter Tim McGirk. According to testimony Chessani broke the law when he angrily said his men were not murderers instead of initiating an investigation, Sullivan claimed.
"We said, 'Hey, sir, this is going to get bad very fast if we don't do something,'” 3/1 Operations officer Maj. Samuel Carrasco testified. "He raised his voice, which is something he rarely did, and said, 'My men are not murderers.' We adjourned the room."
Before being called before the bar, Chessani believed civilians regrettably died when caught in the cross fire between his Marines and attacking insurgents. The insurgents had initiated the fight, not his Marines, he said.
We were getting phenomenal intel, we were getting the big fish.
Chessani’s opinion still hasn’t changed. If anything he is more certain now than he was in late January, 2006 when he received from higher headquarters the first inkling not all was well at Camp Blue Diamond where the 2nd Marine Division brass presided. A month after hearing about McGirk’s off-the-wall questions, Chessani was embroiled in a full scale investigation he ultimately suspected would lead to his relief and possible court-martial. At the time however, Chessani said he was more concerned keeping his Marines alive. The battle at Chestnut and Viper was only the opening salvo in a month long campaign that essentially wiped out the insurgents using Haditha as a showplace.
The battlefield told the story. The Haditha attack, by now condemned in the world press as a massacre, had the unintended consequence in encouraging the Iraqis who were caught in the middle between the Marines and the insurgents to decide to cooperate, Chessani said
“I wasn’t paying attention to the specific details of what happened [in the growing investigation]. I wish I had. At the time we had no reason to believe we had done anything wrong. We had operations going on all over our AO {Area of Operations}. A few days afterwards we were already able to take out of our AO many of the bad guys. We were getting phenomenal intel [intelligence], we were getting the big fish. My Marines were out there finding the bad guys every day. The ones that were still alive, the ones we hadn’t killed, we were pulling in.”
On Dec. 11, 2006, an informant named Muhannad Hassan Hamadi told the 3/1 Marines who captured him that the Haditha ambush was carried out by multiple cells of local Wahabi extremists and well-paid local gunmen from Al Asa’ib al-Iraq [the Clans of the People of Iraq] that were led by Al Qaeda foreign fighters, documents acquired during the subsequent investigations showed.
“Iraqi civilians were hearing from the terrorists every day. They had a propaganda shop, they were using letterhead; they had CD burning machines, printing presses pumping out propaganda. The terrorists were heard from daily. We stopped it,” Chessani added.
His claims were bolstered by Marine signal intercepts revealing that the al Qaeda fighters planned to videotape more attacks and exploit the resulting carnage for propaganda purposes. Time’s specious allegations were supported by videotape made by a suspected insurgent who just happened to be at Chestnut and Viper the day after the carnage subsided.
“HET (Human Exploitation Team) was so good. They were reeling in the guys that hadn’t been killed. They took away their arms and rolled up a good number of them. We also found some we had killed that had been buried. By the 20th [the day following the ambush on Viper and Chestnut] we were really rolling them up,” Chessani said.
Within a few days of the Haditha ambush 11 insurgents involved in the attack were identified by name and affiliation in the details of an intelligence summary provided to 2nd Marine Division by his attached HET operation. All of them were killed or captured in the days immediately following the Haditha incident, according to documents obtained by US Army Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell during his investigation.
One of the HET reports Defend Our Marines detailed in the so-called “Bargewell Report” named five insurgents involved in setting up the IED that killed LCpl Miguel "T.J." Terrazas, the first Marines killed under Chessani’s command. One of their numbers, Majid Salah Mahdi Farraji, was killed when Marine Corps F-18s bombed the so-called “safe house” were the battle migrated to after the initial IED ambush decimated Wuterich’s squad on November 19, 2005. In time, most of them were captured or killed, the report said.
During the November Haditha ambush, the insurgents had secreted themselves among local civilians to guarantee pursuing Marines would catch innocent civilians in the ensuing crossfire. The documents and insurgents 3/1 later captured said so. On January 6, 2006 the Al Qaeda financed and led insurgency tried again. This time six insurgents were turned in to coalition authorities before they could mount a similar assault.
Again on January 18, 2006, almost two months after the infamous Haditha attack, Iraqi insurgents “planned to attack a dismounted C[oalition] F[orces] patrol". That attack was stopped by local Iraqis and the schemers arrested, the report says.
“The Iraqis were turning them in,” Chessani said.
The "cutout" in the White Car and other evidence ignored
All of the intelligence data – including the mission reports, UAV video, and internet messages between the UAV operators, 3/1, Regimental Combat Team 2, and Multi-National Force headquarters in Baghdad – was later seized by NCIS special agents. More than a year after the coordinated attack, eight Marines from 3/1, including Chessani, were charged with multiple murder and covering up the incident. The evidence Bargewell had uncovered was never brought into play....
Wow.
Passing it on.
Another great piece by Nat Helms.
Lt. Col. Chessani is to be commended for speaking out and bringing to all of us what was covered up by others.
To the Haditha Marines; SEMPER FI!!!
Good read. Thanks.
Thanks for posting this, Smooth. And thanks for the ping, Jaz.
Gonna take me a while to get through it. I read a bit and get so pi$$ed off I can’t see straight.
Thanks guys. I will read the whole article.
“they acted aggressively at Haditha because Marines are trained to act aggressively when attacked.”
Anything else gets you dead.
Chessani and the rest are mostly done with this, but the best part is Murtha is now gone.
Thanks, AV!
Parts 1 & 2 were excellent, but this Part 3 is absolutely powerful.
NCIS should be pilloried for their deliberate coverup of exculpatory evidence.
No doubt about it and if SECNAV Ray Mabus had any semblance of cajones he'd call for a thorough investigation of the NCIS and their absolutely disgraceful handling of this!
It won't happen, he hasn't got them.
Ping to #13.
That's gotta be pure hell for him.
Amen to that!!
A picture is worth a thousand years, smooth.
Burn Johnny Burn you scum.
ping to Chessani part 3
1. High probability LtCol Chessani was not accidentally targeted by insurgent propaganda in Time magazine: he wasn't just winning; he was changing Iraqi behavior. They succeeded in pulling off the battlefield one of the most effective commanders of the war.
Within a few days of the Haditha ambush 11 insurgents involved in the attack were identified by name and affiliation in the details of an intelligence summary provided to 2nd Marine Division by his attached HET operation. All of them were killed or captured in the days immediately following the Haditha incident, according to documents obtained by US Army Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell during his investigation.....snip....On January 6, 2006 the Al Qaeda financed and led insurgency tried again. This time six insurgents were turned in to coalition authorities before they could mount a similar assault.
Again on January 18, 2006, almost two months after the infamous Haditha attack, Iraqi insurgents “planned to attack a dismounted C[oalition] F[orces] patrol". That attack was stopped by local Iraqis and the schemers arrested, the report says.
“The Iraqis were turning them in,” Chessani said.
2. The evidence of intentional railroading grows enormously in light of all the suppressed evidence. I cannot imagine that the military could prevent Chessani from speaking of it.
This is the first I've heard of the cutout on the white car. I'd read of the weapons before, but how in the world can this be denied entry into a hearing on the incident. It is evidence of insurgent involvement, and that was the issue. Besides all that, reports were made up the chain as required even though it was an extremely busy combat phase throughout Chessani's AO.
“I wasn’t paying attention to the specific details of what happened [in the growing investigation]. I wish I had. At the time we had no reason to believe we had done anything wrong. We had operations going on all over our AO {Area of Operations}. A few days afterwards we were already able to take out of our AO many of the bad guys. We were getting phenomenal intel [intelligence], we were getting the big fish. My Marines were out there finding the bad guys every day. The ones that were still alive, the ones we hadn’t killed, we were pulling in.”On Dec. 11, 2006, an informant named Muhannad Hassan Hamadi told the 3/1 Marines who captured him that the Haditha ambush was carried out by multiple cells of local Wahabi extremists and well-paid local gunmen from Al Asa’ib al-Iraq [the Clans of the People of Iraq] that were led by Al Qaeda foreign fighters, documents acquired during the subsequent investigations showed.
“Iraqi civilians were hearing from the terrorists every day. They had a propaganda shop, they were using letterhead; they had CD burning machines, printing presses pumping out propaganda. The terrorists were heard from daily. We stopped it,” Chessani added.
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