Replies

Wow. That's an open-ended question. ;) I'll do my best to be brief. There are a few things to consider here. First of all, look at the conviction rate of the military JAG Corps. While each service has their own, the conviction rate AVERAGES are 97%. No civilian attorney could EVER claim a 97% win rate. That alone says there's something not quite right going on. The abuses of the NCIS/CID/OSI are again, well-documented; the CID/OSI to a much lesser degree, but still. The AMN Bryan Roney Case is just one example of investigative agents literally making work to justify their own existence. Trying to court-martial a 20-year-old airman over seven one-ounce bottles of Jack Daniels that he didn't steal, drink, or possess at any time is pretty stupid. Considering this happened in Qatar, I think it's safe to say the OSI had bigger things to worry about. But I digress. I hate to keep drawing a parallel between the military investigative services and the police's Internal Affairs, but there are some serious similarities. These are people from within the ranks who are tasked with policing their peers. While everyone can agree that the military needs policing as a rule (as do we all), the simple fact is that that kind of power can corrupt. In many cases, it does. It's not just a question of them not understanding the ROE. These people don't understand a damn thing about their own jobs. That link on the King case illustrates it perfectly. In the Girouard case, the agent who interrogated him spent half the interview with her hand on his thigh, or with her arms around him, telling him she was "there for him," and trying to use her femininity to get him to "confess." An agent in the Pendleton 8 case admitted under oath she's never read the manual for her own job. I have the memos and documents from quite a number of cases where the NCIS has completely dropped the ball. Actually, "dropped the ball" implies they are incompetent, when the reality is their incompetence is exacerbated a hundredfold by their willful ignorance and purposeful intent to win cases and trophy hunt at any cost. Bottom line: They've been able to operate under a shroud for quite some time. Years and years. These cases are now getting more attention because of the work we are doing. It's like a serial rapist gets caught on one charge, and then other victims see him in the paper and say, "Hey, I know that guy...here's my story." Granted, I've had to weed through a few "false leads," but so far I've almost always gotten good info that is able to be independently corroborated. Holy soapbox. I'll get down now. Sorry for the long post, and I really hope I somehow came close to answering your question. ;) By the way, I've got Girouard's attorney on the show on Wednesday night to talk about some of these new developments.