Here's what was reported in the New York Times:
The Bargewell report, which was recently declassified, also established that junior officers, including a captain who issued a news release on the episode that blamed a roadside bomb planted by insurgents for most of the deaths, knew from the beginning that marines had killed the civilians, the lawyers said.
The captain, Jeffrey Pool, told Bargewell's investigators that he was given reports from battalion commanders that accurately described the marines' killing of civilians, said lawyers who read the report. But Pool said he issued a news release blaming the insurgents for the deaths because he believed that they were ultimately the result of the roadside bombing of the convoy that led the marines to strike back, the lawyers said.
"The way I saw it was this," Pool told two colonels questioning him, according to a lawyer who read the report. "A bomb blast went off, or was initiated, that is what started, that is the reason they're getting this, is a bomb blew up, killed people. We killed people back and that's the story."
Lawyers for the four officers charged with failing to properly investigate the civilian killings say the inaccurate news release created a false perception that the U.S. Marine Corps chain of command had covered up the killing of civilians.
"It was a colossal blunder," a lawyer involved in the case said. But the lawyer also said that Pool's thinking reflected that of his superiors, who believed that civilian casualties, though regrettable, were an inevitable part of the Iraq war.
"That's the rubric that the whole division was operating under," the lawyer said. The Bargewell report, he said, came to a similar conclusion. "It just was the culture of the marine corps," he said, paraphrasing the report, "to think that the Iraqis' story was propaganda, and didn't investigate."
Lawyers representing the four officers charged in the case - two captains, a first lieutenant and a lieutenant colonel who reported the civilian deaths immediately - said the Bargewell report showed that military prosecutors had charged their clients with failing to investigate but gave their superior officers, including Huck and Davis, a pass.
"It's understandable why they didn't go after the line officers," said Kevin McDermott, who represents Captain Lucas McConnell, the company commander who was not at the scene of the shootings in Haditha. "They would have had to throw Huck under the bus as well."
Someone in JAG and NCIS has some SPLAININ’ to do at the very least. As to the Presstitutes and Cong. Mullah Murtha well... we all know about them.