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.
It doesn't matter where they are. The Marines were under fire as has been established. If in that situation I THINK I hear a weapon being locked & loaded, then I DID hear it. I don't open the door and say, "Excuse me, but did I hear a weapons L&L? That's a prescription for death.
What I do is frag the room.
If there's no weapon and no person likely to be an enemy IT DOESN'T MATTER. It is tragic, but it is not culpable action.
It is according to the ROE, but more importantly, it is according to the basic rules of survival. You've got to trust your 6th sense.
As my son left for Iraq, a 3 time wounded Ranger Korean War Veteran from our church pulled him aside and taught him a few simple rules. The first one out of his mouth was:
"TRUST YOUR 6TH SENSE! IF YOU'RE WRONG, YOU'RE STILL ALIVE. IF YOU'RE RIGHT, YOU'RE STILL ALIVE!"
Trying to keep an eye on the live thread Red has set up with Marine Rooney regarding questions and answers on the Haditha cases. It looks like it is about to start. Red and Brian Rooney have just made contact on our board. Time Estimate: 9:15PM.
Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times, June 6, 2007
CAMP PENDLETON — War weariness and a deep suspicion of Iraqis kept Marines from investigating after their troops in the town of Haditha stormed three houses and killed 19 people and yet found no weapons or insurgents, officers testified Tuesday.
1st Lt. William Kallop said that on the night of the incident the U.S. Marines in central Iraq were still reacting to the death of Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, killed earlier in the day by a roadside bomb, and were focused on what they expected to be dangerous days ahead. No "after-action" report was done, he said.
"We had just lost a Marine, and our guys were stressed out," Kallop testified at a hearing for an ex-battalion commander accused of not launching an investigation of the Nov. 19, 2005, incident. "Guys on their second and third deployments were saying … 'Here we go again.'
"We had to get ready the next day to go outside the wire again."
Capt. Oliver Dreger testified that Marine officers rejected, without discussion, the demand a week later by the mayor and town council of Haditha for an investigation of the killings.
The mayor presented officers with a petition in English calling the killings unjustified and saying some of the dead had been executed.
But the mayor was suspected of having insurgent ties, in part because he had demanded that Marines release an Iraqi woman arrested with 30 passports for Jordanian men, cellphones and a large amount of cash, all considered indications of involvement with insurgents.
The petition, Dreger testified, was seen as "posturing, political maneuvering" by the mayor. Dreger, a battalion intelligence officer, was in a position to hear and see how officers reacted to events.
The testimony came as prosecutors sought to determine whether Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, the former battalion commander, had asked questions about how 24 civilians had been killed, 19 in three houses and five earlier outside their car. "No," Dreger said.
Chessani and three other officers are charged with dereliction of duty for not triggering an investigation of whether the bloodshed constituted a war crime. Three enlisted Marines are charged with murder. A fourth has had charges dropped in exchange for his testimony.
Kallop and Dreger testified that although the 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment, had arrived in Haditha only six weeks earlier and had not seen prolonged combat there, many of the Marines had fought in the city of Fallouja in late 2004. The Fallouja battle was the Marine Corps' most sustained street combat since the battle for the city of Hue during the Vietnam War.
Officers had lectured Marines that Haditha was not like Fallouja and that less aggressive tactics would be required.
But under prodding from a defense attorney, one officer indicated that the message did not sink in.
"I always thought Three-One was sent to Haditha because they were veterans of Fallouja and they knew how to go into a hardened place and root out insurgents," Lt. Mark Towers, the battalion adjutant, testified Tuesday. "I expected Haditha to be another Fallouja."
The Marines also had heard from comrades in a unit they replaced in Haditha about the insurgents' tactic of hiding behind civilians.
Kallop, the platoon commander, said his Marines were shaken by Terrazas' death but did not go on a "rampage," as the Haditha town council alleged.
Kallop gave the order to "clear" houses, which led to the killing of three women, seven children and nine men in three of the houses.
"They did not have grief in their eyes," Kallop said of Marines in his platoon. "They were operating as we have trained them."
Prosecutors assert that the Marines overreacted and then lied when telling their superiors, including Kallop, about what happened in the houses.
Kallop testified that he gave the order to clear the houses even though no one could be certain that insurgents were hiding inside. On Tuesday, he defended his action.
"I was trying to get the insurgents, to get the bad guys, and to protect our guys," he said in videotaped testimony.
For his actions in leading the assault on the houses, squad leader Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich was nominated by Kallop for a Bronze Star.
The lieutenant said Wuterich told him later that while clearing the houses, the Marines heard AK-47s being prepared for firing in the first house and encountered someone firing at them in the second house.
Wuterich is now charged with 12 counts of murder.
"He was personally the least aggressive" of the company's squad leaders, Kallop testified. "But he was also professional and knows his job."
The bias in this article makes me sick. They continually claim, without any justification whatsoever, that all the dead were civilians.
How in the world could this reporter possibly know more than the guys who were there? Answer: he can’t.
It’s pure anti-American propaganda.
Capt Dinsmore - the intel officer will testify tomorrow and he adds a lot of clarity to this. Most of all his testimony has just been declassified.
I wanted to be sure to underline that news. Capt Dinsmore will be able to tell the IO exactly why the battalion knew there were insurgents among the dead in Haditha. He is testifying today, and I hope it will be reported. But as Mr. Rooney also said, the press will drop a story as soon as it doesn't go their way.
Wanted to call out that paragraph in the LA Times article above. This raghead ho was in a house that may have been the trigger house. It was entered by Sgt. Dela Cruz and she was taken prisoner.
Dela Cruz may have been mad enough to piss on an Iraqi. But his actions soon after, when he could have easily shot this woman, clearly contradict any idea that Marines were on a rampage.
The story is that Dela Cruz entered the house with Iraqi soldiers. (This was while Sgt Wuterich and his squad was across the street.) The woman was standing in a doorway, with her back to the men. From the positions of her arms she seemed to be holding something.
The Iraqi soldiers ordered her again and again to turn around. She didn't.
Dela Cruz was just about to pull the trigger when she turned around. She was holding a stack of Jordanian passports that she was trying to hide. Cell phones and a ton of loot were found in a drawer.
And Mayor McJihad wanted her released.
When do we get to see a summary of his testimony?
They get started at 8.00 at CampPen. Usually, Mark Walker at the North County Times or Tom Watkins of the Associated Press will have the first dispatch by mid-day. (That’s after lunch, Eastern time.)
Legal officer says no one questioned Haditha deaths
North County Times, June 5, 2007
CAMP PENDLETON -- No commanders sought a probe into the deaths of two dozen Iraqi civilians in Haditha in the days and weeks after the incident, a Marine Corps legal affairs officer testified Tuesday.
The testimony from the officer, Maj. Carroll Connelly, came on the sixth day of a hearing for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, one of four officers from Camp Pendleton's 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment charged with dereliction of duty for failing to order an investigation into the killings that would draw worldwide condemnation when brought to light several months later.
The hearing will determine whether Chessani, the highest-ranking officer charged with wrongdoing arising from the Haditha incident, will be ordered to court-martial.
Connelly said his bosses would routinely direct him to make inquiries into Iraqi civilian injuries or deaths resulting from contact with U.S. troops.
But that didn't happen in the Haditha killings, he said, because an initial, inaccurate report said the deaths stemmed from a roadside bombing followed by a gunbattle with insurgents. Civilian deaths in combat situations generally did not warrant investigation, Connelly said.
It would later be shown that 19 of the 24 Iraqis were killed inside homes where no insurgents and no weapons were found.
"My understanding, at least at the time, was that they were out in the open," Connelly said of the first report, which said 15 civilians had been killed as a result of the bombing and small-arms fire. "(The report) says they were out moving past the vehicles."
Connelly was serving as one of the 1st Marine Regiment's command staff attorneys when the slayings took place on Nov. 19, 2005.
Chessani was the battalion commander until he was removed from that post in the fallout from the incident when the unit returned in April 2006.
The civilians died after Marines from the battalion's Kilo Company reported they were under small-arms attack following the bombing and were engaged in a fight with their attackers. The slayings occurred over a roughly four-hour period after the bomb killed a lance corporal and injured two other Marines.
The first five Iraqis to die were all young men, none of whom were killed by the bomb or in any crossfire. They died after being ordered from a car that drove up after the bombing and were shot at close range, according to testimony from one of the Marines who took part in that shooting. The victims were later determined to be students on their way to a college in Ramadi.
If the initial report had in any way indicated that the civilians were killed inside their homes where no insurgents nor weapons were found, Connelly said he would have raised questions.
He also testified that a formal demand for an investigation from the Haditha town council eight days after the killings was never brought to his attention. He said he also did not know until much later that the dead included several women and children found lying in supplicant positions inside a bedroom.
"It was something different than what I had always pictured," Connelly said.
Chessani's attorneys maintain that he fully reported everything he knew about the incident, relying on that first report. It was up to commanders above him to order an investigation if they thought one was warranted, the attorneys contend.
Over the course of the hearing, prosecutors have repeatedly tried to show that Chessani learned a lot more about the killings in the days immediately after the first report. Prosecutors have focused many of their questions around the town council complaint that was presented to Chessani, suggesting that he failed to fully report that development to his superiors.
The killings did not get formally investigated until last spring and only after questions were raised by a Time magazine reporter who had heard of complaints from survivors of the dead.
Also testifying Tuesday in a base courtroom, where the Chessani hearing is playing out as his family members watch from seats directly behind him, was 1st Lt. Mark Towers, who previously served under Chessani.
"He's a godly man," Towers said of the lieutenant colonel, whose defense team includes two attorneys from the Christian-based Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, Mich. "I know he has a lot of integrity ... and I know he took care of his Marines."
The hearing will conclude this week when Chessani is expected to make an unsworn statement that will not be subject to cross-examination. Attorneys will then present final arguments.
From there, the hearing officer, Col. Christopher Conlin, will write a report to Lt. Gen. James Mattis stating whether he believes the case should move forward to court-martial or that some other action should be taken. Mattis is commander of Marine Corps forces in the Middle East and as such is the "convening authority" over the Haditha prosecutions under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The other officers accused of dereliction of duty are Capts. Randy Stone and Lucas McConnell and 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson. A pretrial hearing for Stone took place last month. The hearing officer who presided over Stone's case has yet to announce whether he believes Stone should face court-martial.
The first pretrial hearing for one of three enlisted men charged with murder in the Haditha deaths is scheduled to start Monday when Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt is due in court. Sharratt is accused of three counts of unpremeditated murder and could be sentenced to life in prison if ordered to trial and convicted.
The two other enlisted defendants charged with murder are Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who led the platoon, and Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum. Their hearings are scheduled to take place later this summer.
Day Five Dispatch from LtCol Chessani Hearing (from the Thomas More Law Center)
Yesterday was another good day for the Thomas More Law Center in their defense of LtCol Chessani. Captain Oliver B. Dreger, the assistant intelligence officer at the time of the battle of Haditha testified as to his knowledge of what occurred that day. His testimony was enlightening in two respects: One; that NCIS, the Navy investigative service, essentially mistreated him and accused him of wrongdoing. This is an officer with an impeccable record.
The other, more important point that Captain Dreger made was that his understanding of the intelligence picture of Haditha matched with what actually occurred that day.
Major Caroll J. Connelley testified next. Major Connelley is the attorney for the 2nd Marine Regiment (LtCol Chessani's higher command) at the time of the battle. He testified that he knew that 15 civilians were killed in the battle but that his higher headquarters - the 2nd Marine Division, told him he did not have to investigate. In fact, Major Connelley stated that he tracked all investigations in the Regiment in Iraq, and none of them involved civilians’ deaths when there were Marines fighting the enemy. The obvious reason for this was because Marines did not target the civilians -- they target the terrorists firing from where the civilians were located.
Lieutenant Mark E. Towers testified next. Lt Towers was LtCol Chessani's adjutant. He testified that LtCol Chessani was a godly man – who read his Bible every morning for a half hour to start the day. He testified that LtCol Chessani was out on the battlefield often - not afraid to lead from the front. Lt Towers also testified as to his training and that they expected Haditha to be like Fallujah. The unit they replaced had 25 Marines killed.
Overall, it was a great day for the Thomas More Law Center. Today we will hear from Captain Jeffery S. Dinsmore, the main intelligence officer. His testimony has recently been declassified so the American public will have a better understanding of the day’s events.
San Diego Union Tribune, June 6, 2007.
CAMP PENDLETON – For months, questionable information reported as facts helped to deflect blame from Marines accused of murdering 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, an intelligence officer testified yesterday at Camp Pendleton. Capt. Oliver B. Dreger described one of the suspicious explanations – that 15 of the Iraqis were killed by a roadside bomb – as “ridiculous on its face.”
He said commanders of Camp Pendleton's 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment knew that some Marines had killed the civilians with grenades and small-arms fire while raiding several houses on Nov. 19, 2005. The raid took place shortly after a bomb blew up one of the Marines' Humvees, killing a lance corporal.
In the end, Dreger said, neither he nor other officers felt obliged to correct the accounts about what happened that day in Haditha. That's because the civilians' deaths were linked to combat between Marines and insurgents, he testified.
The errant information was apparently sent to higher military headquarters. Months passed before Time magazine published a story in March 2006 that questioned whether any combat took place and whether the Haditha incident amounted to a massacre. The article sparked investigations into what could be the United States' worst atrocity in the Iraq war.
Dreger testified during the sixth day of the pretrial hearing for Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, the highest-ranking officer accused of not properly reporting or probing the Haditha incident. He and three other officers are charged with violation of a lawful order and dereliction of duty.
Three enlisted Marines are accused of killing the civilians – five of them near the bomb blast and 19 in the houses.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys are questioning witnesses and presenting other evidence to Col. Chris Conlin during Chessani's pretrial hearing. Conlin will later recommend whether Chessani should face court-martial, and the decision will rest with Lt. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton.
If Chessani is tried and convicted, he could be dismissed from the military and sentenced to two years in prison.
In the past week, prosecutors have repeatedly argued that Chessani committed a crime by not investigating the Haditha deaths. The clear evidence that civilians were killed, the sheer number of people who died, and other factors should have triggered a probe, they have said.
Chessani's attorneys have said their client had no reason to believe the deaths arose from anything but a legitimate combat action. They also assert that even higher-ranking officers in Iraq didn't raise questions despite learning within hours about the deaths of men, women and children in Haditha.
Yesterday, however, one officer said he did ask for more information concerning the incident.
Maj. Carroll Connelley, a lawyer at Chessani's headquarters in Iraq at the time of the Haditha deaths, testified that he was frustrated by the dearth of details from lower-ranking Marines. Connelley said he sought elaboration after an initial report was light on specifics.
“Yes, I would've asked for an investigation” if reports had documented how no weapons or insurgents were found among the dead civilians, Connelley testified.
He said that in light of the misinformation, especially the premise that civilians got caught up in bona-fide combat, Chessani was not required to investigate the incident further.
Great points, Girl. I’m on pins and needles waiting for Capt Dinsmore’s testimony. The scuttlebutt is that we had communication intercepts that told us a good deal about who those insurgents were. I hope we got the goods on that “young journalist student” and all.
Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2007
CAMP PENDLETON — The officer who gave the order that led to Marines killing 19 unarmed Iraqis in their Haditha homes testified Monday that none of his troops had positively identified the houses as containing insurgents before he ordered them "cleared."
1st Lt. William Kallop said he still believed his Marines acted properly because they later told him of hearing the distinctive "metal on metal" sound of AK-47s being prepared to fire in the first house and then took fire from the second house. Kallop said that two Marines told him that they began throwing fragmentation grenades after hearing AK-47s.
But Kallop, testifying in a preliminary hearing of the ex-commander of the troops' battalion, said he inspected the houses later and found no AK-47s, no shells or other evidence that insurgents had been inside.
"I looked at Cpl. [Hector] Salinas and said: 'What the crap? Where are the bad guys?' He looked as surprised as I was," Kallop said in videotaped testimony.
Kallop, who has since returned to Iraq, was given immunity to force him to testify in what has become the largest case of alleged abuse of civilians levied against U.S. forces in Iraq. In all, 24 Iraqis, including women and children, were killed in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005.
Kallop testified that Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the squad leader who led the assault, did not tell him that the Marines fired their M-16s and threw grenades while inside the houses. A report by Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents said many of the Iraqis were shot in the head, some at such close range that their bodies had powder marks.
Kallop's testimony came on the fourth day of the hearing for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, who was commander of 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment, on the day of the deaths.
Chessani, 1st Lt. Andrew A. Grayson, Capt. Lucas M. McConnell and Capt. Randy W. Stone are charged with dereliction of duty for not investigating the incident as a possible war crime. Grayson headed a team that examined the houses and took pictures; McConnell was the Kilo Company commander; and Stone was the battalion lawyer.
The Marines who assaulted the houses — Wuterich, Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum — are charged with unpremeditated murder. Similar charges were dropped against Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz in exchange for his testimony against the others.
The incident began when a roadside bomb exploded beneath the last Humvee in a resupply convoy. Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas was killed instantly and two other Marines were injured.
Moments later five young Iraqi men were ordered out of a nearby car and fatally shot by Marines.
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.
"I decided the house was most likely the place where the fire was coming from and told Sgt. Wuterich to 'clear south,' " Kallop said.
He testified that Wuterich told him after assaulting the houses that the occupants in the first house had said insurgents had fled into the second house. Prosecutors alleged that Wuterich's account was false.
Under questioning by prosecutors, Kallop conceded that he asked few questions at the scene. He did not ask, for example, about the five men in the street, or how civilians were killed in the second house, or whether Marines found any weapons in the houses.
Kallop said his Marines had "cleared" hundreds of houses in preceding weeks without incident. But Terrazas was Kilo Company's first fatality and Marines were convinced that insurgents had mounted a "coordinated, complex attack," according to testimony.
A key point in Chessani's hearing is why his Marines, despite being repeatedly told to use more restraint in Haditha than they did during the major assault on Fallouja in late 2004, reverted almost reflexively to more aggressive tactics.
In Fallouja, civilians had largely fled the city and insurgents were barricaded inside homes, waiting for Marines to burst through doors. Haditha, however, was a densely populated city.
"You can't use Fallouja-style room-clearing in a place like Haditha," W. Hays Parks, a Defense Department lawyer and an expert on the laws of war, testified last week.
Three enlisted Marines are accused of killing the civilians – five of them near the bomb blast and 19 in the houses.
That’s a quote from the article. Sorry.
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