As of 5:45 EST, I can only find this one article in The North County Times.
It's no surprise that news outlets are ignoring this story. But it still makes me angry.
But has the story been garbled? The account is online at the Fresno Bee.
What's confusing to me about the AP version is this. Previous reports said that the disputed statement was about Lt. Phan (who is at the center of the hearing). But this report says the statement was about Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, choking a detainee.
I'm going to assume that the AP has screwed it up and that The North County Times has got it right until I find out otherwise.
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Marine witness in Iraq beating case says statement was changed
A Marine lance corporal testified Friday that government agents altered key parts of a statement he made to authorities investigating assaults allegedly carried out on Iraqis.
One of the agents who helped interview Lance Cpl. Christopher Faulkner also testified that at least one incriminating detail the serviceman provided appeared to have been changed in the statement attributed to him.
Faulkner, who is not accused of any crime, was called to the witness stand as part of an Article 32 investigation, the military equivalent of a civilian grand jury. At the hearing's conclusion an investigating officer will recommend whether the case should proceed to a court-martial.
The investigation centers on the actions of 2nd Lt. Nathan Phan, Faulkner's platoon leader, who is charged with assaulting three Iraqi men.
Defense attorney David Sheldon, who called Faulkner to testify, questioned the integrity of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents who gathered evidence in the case.
According to Faulkner's final statement, he told investigators he saw a squad leader, Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, choke a detainee. But Faulkner testified Friday that he told investigators he was not sure if it was Hutchins he'd seen.
Asked by prosecutors why he signed the statement if it was inaccurate, Faulkner said he hadn't read it carefully.
Special Agent Michael Austin, who helped interview Faulkner in Iraq last June, testified that the statement incriminating Hutchins didn't conform to his handwritten notes, which had Faulkner saying he had seen someone choke a detainee and that it was "probably" Hutchins.
"That's not exactly what it is in my notes," Austin said of the statement.
Phan, 26, has been charged with assaulting three men in the rural Iraqi town of Hamdania last April. Prosecutors say he put an unloaded pistol in one detainee's mouth and beat or choked two others. He's also been charged with making a false statement to authorities.
The NCIS agents took statements from several men under Phan's command.
Evidence of the assaults was uncovered during an investigation into the killing of an Iraqi man in Hamdania on April 26. Prosecutors allege a squad from Phan's platoon kidnapped Hashim Ibrahim Awad from his home and shot him to death in a roadside hole.