Posted on 01/11/2007 6:55:07 PM PST by RedRover
Anonymous Pentagon officials who are leaking incriminating information about the Marines accused of murdering Iraqi citizens in Haditha are depriving the accused of the presumption of innocence, attorneys for one of the Marines charge.
"We're very concerned about the leaks because we do believe that there is a concerted effort at least by a select few people within the Pentagon who seem to have decided from the comments we've seen, and our own conversations with reporters who have used these people as sources, that they have a personal agenda having decided in their own minds that these Marines are guilty -- and they want to make sure that the public knows that," Mark Zaid told NewsMax.com in an exclusive interview.
The four enlisted men charged with unpremeditated murder in Haditha are: Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich; Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz, 24; Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, 22; and Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum, 25.
Zaid, who along with retired Marine Lt. Col. Neal Puckett, represents Sgt. Frank Wuterich, said he was deeply disappointed that information from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) report on Haditha had been leaked to the media, adding that it was an effort by unidentified Pentagon officials to show the Marines in a negative light.
In recent days, the world's media has cited leaks from the usual unnamed Pentagon sources, which lead to the allegation that the accused Marines, in addition to having allegedly murdered 24 innocent Iraqis, committed some of the most heinous atrocities -- including shooting at point-blank range an Iraqi youth as he stood with his hands up in surrender, and then urinating on his corpse.
None of the Marines has been tried and found guilty in a court-martial or even ordered to undergo a court-martial by a yet-to-be held Article 32 hearing that will determine if the evidence warrants a trial.
The latest spate of leaks concerns various photographs of the scene of action, obtained by the NCIS. It's been reported that some Marines took dozens of gruesome photographs of the 24 civilians who were killed in Haditha, Iraq, in November 2005.
According to the Washington Post the images -- which the newspaper says investigators tracked down on several Marines' laptop computers and digital drives -- provide visual evidence of a series of shootings outside a taxi and inside three homes that military criminal investigators have alleged were murders.
The fact is that nobody maintains that the deaths of the various victims were the result of anything other than hostile fire from the some of the Marines of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines present at the scene of action in November 2005.
Not surprisingly, defense lawyers for the four Marines who have been charged with murder in the killings say that it would be hard for the prosecution to prove anything based on the photographs alone.
Moreover, Marine Corps officials believe that many of the photographs -- which show the results of grenade explosions inside civilian homes and close-range rifle shots -- are inflammatory by their nature, whether or not a crime was committed. As a result, NCIS investigators have sought mightily to keep the photos out of public view.
Ed Buice, a spokesman for the NCIS, while saying that he could not comment on an open investigation, told the Washington Post: "NCIS strives to ensure the integrity of every investigation and finds the idea that someone might leak any of its investigative products to be deeply troubling."
Even more troubling are the conclusions drawn by a largely anti-war media based on the photos and alleged statements made by some of those questioned by NCIS investigators, a prime example of which is the following from the ultra-leftwing Web site The Peoplesvoice.org.
Under the heading "Worse than we were told," it was reported that "As bad as the things they told us about Haditha were, details emerging about what really happened are even worse. The attack on the Iraqis began after the roadside bomb blew up one of four Humvees the Marines were traveling in on Nov. 19, 2005. Minutes after that, the report portrays Sergeant Wuterich, the squad leader, and Sergeant Dela Cruz as killing five men who had nervously piled out of a taxi that had stopped near the Marine convoy, the officials said. The men ‘were shot by Wuterich as they stood, unarmed, next to the vehicle approximately 10 feet in front of him,' the report said, according to a person who has read it.
"‘Sergeant Dela Cruz said that as he approached the taxi, he saw some men standing near it with their hands in the air, officials said. After Sergeant Wuterich shot them, he continued shooting as they lay on the ground, and later urinated on one of them, an official said.
"‘But Dela Cruz is also quoted as confessing that he fired bullets into the five bodies as they lay on the ground and that he later urinated on one,' a Pentagon source is said to have claimed."
All this while Wuterich's squad appears to have been under insurgent fire.
The allegation flies in the face of the facts as previously reported by NewsMax.com New Evidence Emerges in Haditha Case that shows that within five minutes of the IED blast the Marines came under fire from insurgents. An intelligence source told NewsMax.com that immediate reporting over the radio revealed that a squad from K Company has come under IED attack and small-arms fire in Haditha. The neighborhood where the incident took place is a well-known insurgent stronghold, where as many as 50 IEDs were found previously, and from where, on two occasions previous to this, insurgents launched small-arms, RPG, and mortar attacks on K Company.
Within 30 minutes of the blast, and while the house-clearing was still under way, our source recalled that the Explosive Ordnance Disposal team that was en route to the site came under a small-arms ambush along the only route they could take to get there. This is a known insurgent tactic -- to ambush first responders.
Comparing his conduct and that of Puckett to the Pentagon leakers, Zaid told NewsMax.com: "When we talk to members of the press, we wear our agenda on our sleeves. We are the defense counsel, everybody knows that it is our job to have these individuals acquitted or otherwise obtain the best outcome possible. At the same time I think most of the reporters who know us know that we don't do anything to mislead them or lie or deceive them and we're very straightforward at to what we believe really happened. There is no one within the Defense Department except for the prosecutors who should have any agenda or role at this stage of the game." He said that it is not incumbent on anyone in NCIS or anyone else in the government to have an agenda. "Frankly I find it very disloyal and unpatriotic."
Addressing the current reversal of the doctrine of presumed innocence until guilt is proven, Puckett told NewsMax.com: "That's exactly our concern. We are going to be walking our individual clients into a military courtrooms sometime this year, and we would like for them to walk in under the presumption of innocence and then let the evidence be brought out and let's see what happens. But if everyone forms an opinion early that all the Marines at Haditha are guilty, that's very unpatriotic."
Addressing the statements allegedly given by some of those interviewed by NCIS, Puckett said "There's a lot of contradictions and sometimes even within individual statements there are contradictions. They will be interviewing one witness and he or she will change their story two or three times about what happened -- what they saw."
Said Zaid: "It seems like every time some piece of good information comes out supporting these Marines, someone leaks some bad information to counter on purpose. At best, [the information] is misleading, it's incomplete."
Pentagon leaks, however, are not the sole evidence that the doctrine of presumed innocence has been tossed overboard, NewsMax.com has learned . The Marine Corps has added to its training routine for Marines headed for duty in Iraq a required package of Rules of Engagement, Law of War, and counterinsurgency classes, on the topic "The My Lai Massacre and the Haditha Massacre: Common Lessons Learned," equating the incident in Haditha, where at most 24 civilians died, with the Vietnam War's Mai Lai massacre, where hundreds of civilians were deliberately murdered by U. S. Army troops.
According to one source, an instructor described as a Marine Corps lawyer speaking of the "crimes of Haditha" told his students that Mai Lai and Haditha resulted from "leadership failures, " leaving his Marine students with the clear impression that Haditha would live in infamy as a black mark on the history of the future Marine Corps, much as My Lai haunts the Army's history books today.
This is not the sole example of the presumption of guilt being applied to the Haditha Marines. NewsMax.com has learned that in the months since the Haditha allegations came to light, instructors in classrooms throughout the Marine Corps have been making references to the "Haditha massacre," their remarks usually laden with presupposition of guilt regarding the Marines involved. The speculation has consistently lacked the back-and-forth, two-sided debate of a typical unresolved issue, as Haditha is at this point.
According to our source, when the Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines left Iraq at the end of March, its Marines naively believed the praise heaped upon them by their regimental and division commanders for their heroic conduct. Their combat accomplishments, according to the most senior officers in Iraq, were the envy of many other battalions in country.
When the battalion returned to the United States, however, they were rudely awakened to the reality of their situation when their battalion commander and one of their most respected company commanders were suddenly relieved, not by their combat superior, but by the division commander who had remained stateside throughout their deployment, and who had little more than a few weeks of direct observation of their performance in Iraq.
Said our source, "All this is not to say that the consistent drumbeat of press coverage and politically opportune leaks from anonymous Pentagon staffers have not contributed to the prejudgment of the Haditha Marines. Those factors, though, are common to every question of guilt or innocence in accusations of military misconduct, and do not usually produce such unanimity of opinion among the Marines rank and file of their fellow Marines' probable guilt. The willingness of Marine Corps Training and Education Command to base its Rules of Engagement training for every battalion going to Iraq on an outcome that has yet to be determined is a clear indicator of what the Corps' leadership believes. Again: Every Marine going to Iraq is receiving this training, and is imbued with the idea that their fellow Marines are guilty of a gruesome massacre on par with the infamous My Lai.
"It is now 10 months since the first of several investigations was completed, and over a year since the incident itself. No charges have yet been proven, and evidence has yet to be reviewed by a military judge in an Article 32 hearing . Some of the Marines involved now languish in obscure administrative duties, their careers as Marines already ended. Many are, preparing to return, or have already returned, to combat duty in Iraq. All continue to serve faithfully, awaiting further action by a duly appointed judge or jury. While I continue to firmly believe that all will be acquitted, none of them will ever be truly exonerated. Their Marine Corps leaders have seen to that."
As retired Col. Ralph Peters wrote in the New York Post on Thursday: "To a soldier, the most encouraging thing the president said last night was that there had been "too many restrictions" on our troops in the past. Rules of engagement must be loosened. We have to stop playing Barney Fife and fight. And the president has to stand behind our troops when the game gets rough."
That should apply to the Haditha Marines, in spades.
"So why would "SENIOR defense officials" continue to jeopardize their careers with these leaks?"
Dementia?
DEPENDS...couldn't resist.
;)
My guess is SSGT Wuterich would get a deal too though not nearly as good as the first to plead out...The maximum he faces is life. Unlikely he would get that if convicted. They might let him plead out to one count of 118 then one each of the subsidiary charges , bundle them up and he gets 12 years home in 8. My guess is he will get a presidential pardon in very early 2009 anyway. So it makes sense for him to plead out unless he truly believes he is innocent.
As to your other question....Who knows who is leaking and for what reason. They are as pernicious to the prosecution as they are to the defense. The leaks effect public perception primarily. Voir dire and the fact that the jurors will be selected from the active military mitigates most of the leak issues. While the leaks are abominable I don't think they fatally compromise the right of a fair trail.
I am speaking to the statements of Wuterich's attorney and his exception to Sgt De La Cruz's admissions to NIS investigators. The fact that De la Cruz admissions are such that Wuterich's attorney,Gary Puckett, has to publically deny them suggests that De la Cruz is now a witness for the prosecution.
In the Article 32 Hearing ( The preliminary hearing) the prosecution will present the core elemets of its case and the defense will be able to bring in rebuttal witnesses.( Civilians don't get this opportunity) The convening authority will then decide if their is sufficient evidence to proceed with the case based upon findings of the CA.
Neal Puckett.
Gary Puckett led a band called the Union Gap. You can look it up.
Could the political purposes for the leaks be to the Democrats advantage in that it fuels the fury of the anti-war/anti-Bush crowd and appeases so many others. Also, unless the jury has been living on another planet over the last year, don't you find it would be hard not to taint it with this front page news?
The court-martial began two years after Richard Nixon had been elected president, at the height of the national self-examination on the question whether we had been correct to send troops to Vietnam in the first place. The news of what seemed to be cold-blooded murder was arresting, gripping the American conscience as if by testicular strength, demanding to know how to square the American deed in Vietnam with the American ideals that sent us to Vietnam.
And yet there was such immediate dismay over the court-martial verdict that the Pentagon sent out a "white paper" explaining what had been done. To begin with, the United States' subscription to the Geneva Convention required courts-martial against the 13 defendants, i.e., soldiers concerning whom there was evidence that they had engaged in knowingly firing at civilians, or had ordered others to do so.
Charges were dismissed against 10 of the 13 on the grounds that there was not enough direct evidence. Three went to trial, and two of them were acquitted. Only Lt. Calley was convicted. "In the case of Lt. Calley," the report said, "we had an overwhelming body of evidence." What then happened has no parallel in U.S. history. Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment, dismissal from the Army, and forfeiture of pay and privileges. That set off pandemonium.
Vice President Spiro Agnew criticized the entire proceeding on the grounds that military operations "are not subject to Monday morning quarterback judgments."
Attorney General John Mitchell said, "Personally, I have a great deal of concern about the total picture as it relates not only to (Calley) but to others."
Indiana Gov. Edgar D. Whitcomb, a decorated World War II veteran, ordered all state flags flown at half-staff to protest the verdict.
Gov. Jimmy Carter of Georgia proclaimed April 5 "American Fighting Man's Day," and urged Georgia motorists to drive all week with their headlights on.
Gov. Calvin L. Rampton of Utah regarded the verdict as "inappropriate and the sentence as excessive."
Gov. George Wallace actually went to Fort Benning to converse with Calley. Wallace said he did not criticize the Army for the court-martial but believed that Nixon should grant Calley a full pardon.
Public outcry influenced Calley's pardon. If Wuterich believes that would happen again, he's a fool. As the father of three young children, he'd be smarter to fight this until vindicated.
Ironically, the jury in the Calley case were all junior infantry officers with combat experience in Vietnam. They found him guilty on 102 counts and guilty of three counts of premeditation.
Did I bring up Calley?...I don't believe I did. I merely mentioned I believe Wuterich will recieve a presdiential pardon if he is convicted.
Talk of a presidential pardon for in a case like this naturally brings Nixon's pardon of Lt. Calley to mind.
I don't remember, for instance, a powerful congressman announcing Calley's guilt in advance of the verdict or endless leaks from the DOD. Important people want these Marines put away.
I'm puzzled why you're sure a president would pardon Wuterich.
Ping-good article-interesting thread-don't let it confuse you ; )
Because presidents are, by their very nature, political men. The presidential pardon power is the last real power they have before leaving office. I don't know the history of presidential pardons but I doubt there was a president who did not exercise it at the end of his term.
Wuterich if convicted was performing his acts on behalf of his nation as he saw them. If SSGT Wuterich's interpretation of the ROE was mistaken he still performed them in what he percieved to be his duty. That is mitigation enough to warrant the president pardoning him. It is also wise politically. If his final pardons include Scooter Libby or Delay ( Assuming a conviction) and not SSGT Wuterich then the question of elitism arises. Bad politics and bad policy. That is how I reason it. Your thoughts?
Senators Church and McCarthy was unambiguous about Calley and My Lai.
I swear I ain't makin' this up.
Any hoo, she liked this corny guy named Tom, so I never got further than a smooch.
But man, did she have some headlights! ;-)
Was she related to a man from Nantucket? I think I know about her....Her sister is Caramel and she got lost in a corn field. Jane didn't go to the corn field because there are too many ears.
SO SORRY! Don't push the button.
I LIKE the time of your Post. Did you plan that just for me?
LOL!! I was thinking about the home of that girl but I wasn't going to bring it up. :-)
I love it!
ROFLOL!
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.