Posted on 02/12/2005 6:02:42 PM PST by Former Military Chick
Today, Second Lt. Ilario G. Pantano of the Marine Corps is the suspect in the murder of two people in Iraq. But years ago, he was known to his friends as a Renaissance man, a mover and shaker in the downtown Manhattan world of independent films and Internet television.
By November 2000 he had founded his own company, Filter Media, and later joined other alumni of the elite Horace Mann School, who were running the Shooting Gallery, a film company that produced "Sling Blade," "You Can Count on Me" and other movies.
He had served as a marine in the Persian Gulf war of 1991; he left the corps to attend New York University when he was 21. Later he was an energy trader for Goldman Sachs, he delivered food to homeless shelters, and he helped a friend promote his new restaurant.
But after watching the World Trade Center come crashing down on Sept. 11, 2001, taking the lives of several friends, his life took another turn.
He moved to Battery Park City a few months afterward and passed ground zero daily. He told friends that the sight pained his heart.
James Rafferty, who has known Lieutenant Pantano for 11 years, said he believed that the terror attack prompted Lieutenant Pantano's decision to re-enlist in the Marines.
"I think for Ilario it kind of brought him to the realization that he is a marine and there are things that need to be done so that stuff like this doesn't happen again," Mr. Rafferty said. "It would be hard to sit back and not be a part of that."
He added, "I think he felt like his brothers are going to fight for our freedom, and if he still can, then he will."
After re-enlisting, Lieutenant Pantano went to Iraq with the Second Marine Division, landing in March 2004. He fought in the battle of Falluja last spring.
Now, his lawyer said, he is facing murder charges that stemmed from his role in the shooting deaths of two Iraqi men south of Baghdad on April 15.
The shooting occurred during a search of a vehicle suspected of transporting insurgents, said the lawyer, Charles Gittins, who added that Lieutenant Pantano could face the death penalty.
"The Marine Corps is saying he is a murderer, and those are slanderous allegations," Mr. Gittins said.
Lieutenant Pantano is back in the United States with his wife and two children, at his home in Wilmington, N.C., near Camp Lejeune. Maj. Matt Morgan, a Marine Corps spokesman, said a hearing in the coming weeks would determine formal charges. Major Morgan said no further information would be released before the hearing.
Through his lawyer, Lieutenant Pantano declined a request to be interviewed. But, the lawyer said, "He is fighting mad."
Friends and family members are rallying to his defense, unable to reconcile the man they know as a bright, if enigmatic, level-headed city boy equally conversant in movies and military technology with the thought that he could have deliberately killed people without justification.
"Ilario returned from Iraq a hero but there are some dark forces still trying to bring him down," his wife, Jill Chapman, wrote in an e-mail message to friends.
People who knew him from his days in film and media in New York struggled to absorb the news.
"I find this all fairly unbelievable," said Vladimir Edelman, a former business partner who founded Filter Media with Lieutenant Pantano in 2000. Now defunct, it was a consulting agency to the budding interactive television industry that once counted Sony Pictures Digital and MSNBC among its clients, according to a company press release.
Friends said they found Lieutenant Pantano, who grew up in Hell's Kitchen, to be a curious player on the Internet media scene. Some knew that, fulfilling a boyhood fascination with the military, he had served in the Marines in the early 1990's. They surmised that he had entered the high-charged, creative atmosphere of Internet media and film because it appealed to his drive and artistic inclinations.
"He is an incredibly passionate, creative guy," Mr. Edelman said. "I was like, 'What are you doing here? You were a former sniper? How does that happen?' He was not your typical Hoo-ah military guy, but he was always patriotic."
Lieutenant Pantano was an executive in the Internet division of the Shooting Gallery.
But the company fell victim to the downturn in the economy in mid-2001. He ultimately left it in the months before he re-enlisted in the Marines in early 2003.
Lieutenant Pantano's mother, Merry Pantano, suggested that her son might have headed back to Iraq if the Marines' investigation had not arisen.
"He was fierce in battle and compassionate at home as any of his friends or colleagues can tell you," she wrote on the Web site she set up, defendthedefenders.org. "He has often demonstrated he would do anything to protect and save the lives of his men, and until he received a charge sheet for murder, he was preparing to go back to Iraq with his brothers and do it again."
This NYT article is all pointless drivel. We need to get the lawyers out of the military NOW!
"I did not know officers enlisted / re-enlisted. Question, was he at one time an enlised person and then promoted to Lt. ?"
my guess is that he was enlisted for his first term of service, used his VA benefits to get a degree, and was eligible to re-enter the service as an Officer. Check the other article Chick linked above.
I'll give them the possibility that he may have enlisted and then gone to Officers Candidate School and gotten commissioneed thereafter, but he certainly didn't enlist as a second lieutenant.
Ignorance, thy name is newspaper reporter.
What your write seems to be correct, visit this web page and see the photo "Graduating OCS, 3/2003".
This has all the "makin's" of the LT. Calley case in Vietnam.
Is it just me, or has the media in this country become SO anti-military that it is now at the point of being treasonous?
Liberalism is so dicotomous...the left puts on this face that they "support the troops", then you see them turn right around and "hassle" an Army recruiter to the point that he can't do his job at a community college in Seattle.
Then, it seems that at EVERY turn the so called "mainstream media" just HAS to come out with a story about all of the VERY FEW bad deeds that soldiers perform "in theater", just so they can get a scoop!
It makes you wonder if they have a clue, or even care that all their actions do is erode troop morale, erode stateside support, and boost the morale of the enemy?
It just makes me want to "round them all up", "detain" them, THEN S-L-O-W-L-Y torture them, and finally "excise" them from the human race!
And what's up with these little douchebags who wan't to "run tell 'dat" at every turn. Is there no loyalty to one's commander in the ranks anymore?
Lastly, this whole Abu Graib fiasco seems to have made the military's officer corps full of a bunch of C.Y.A. specialists who are too scared to "prosecute a war" and are more intent on "looking good" for the friggin press!Screw what the press think! War is not pretty, it is not bloodless, it is not rational, and it IS NOT humane! Stop trying to portray it as such for "the folks back home!" War is hell, and it always will be!
Let the Marines investigate and either clear him or recommend court-marshal. If this is the case of a disgruntled Marine making false charges, it will come out. If he did indeed commit murder, he should be punished. Right now, it looks like a lot of conjecture.
I know Ilario Pantano. He was a Marine Sniper in Gulf War 1. I got to know him when he was an energy trader at Constellation Power Source in 1998. I had the utmost respect for him even before I found out that he rejoined the Marines after 9/11. He is a true patriot and that's all they will ever be able to prove. Those of us who know him need to speak up and get the attention on this (Michael Savage, O'Reilly, Rush, Hannity, et al) and donate to his defense. (http://www.defendthedefenders.org/pages/3/index.htm)
If it were not for people like this we would not now be speaking English and enjoy the freedoms we do.
As an aside, it was truly shocking to me to see that he was with one of my old units - Echo Company 2/2 - "Echo Warriors".
OH go figure.
However, now the damage is done -- he'll be handicapped by second-guessing himself which can so easily get him killed.
Rumsfeld needs to fix whatever in the regulations that allow charges like this to go forward. He was cleared by his commanders in country at the time of the incident. Somebody back here going to sit in judgement?
This has all the makings of another "Breaker Morant."
Gator...what is "Breaker Morant"?
Carolyn
It was an Australian movie set during the Boer War where basically the British executed two Australians for killing Boer Guerillas, in the hope it would help get them to the peace table. Morant was a scapegoat for the Empire.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.