Time correspondent Tim McGirk
Posted on 06/14/2007 11:05:59 AM PDT by RedRover
When it comes to the November 2005 Haditha incident, which the media has characterized as a wanton massacre of 24 innocent civilians, it seems it is the truth that has been massacred — by the news media.
As Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, long heralded as one of the bravest and most skillful Marine officers in the Corps, faces charges that could send him to prison for failing to adequately investigate the incident, defense attorneys for both the colonel and the other Marines have been unable to cite in open court the evidence that clearly exonerates him and all of the other accused Marines.
As a result, the media has emphasized all of the erroneous charges leveled by the prosecution, most of which rely on suspect testimony from anti-American Iraqis — some of them insurgents.
As NewsMax.com has previously revealed, the bulk of that exculpatory evidence is contained in the eight hours of videotaped testimony offered by the battalion intelligence officer (designated S2), all of which up until now has been highly classified and therefore unusable in open court and kept from the notice of the American people.
The Truth Revealed
That roadblock has been cleared. The full eight hours is declassified, and because it will be available to the public, NewsMax can now break through the paper curtain erected by the media to report what we have long known but have been unable to reveal.
The evidence clearly shows that a great miscarriage of justice has been imposed on a group of some of the bravest and finest of Americans — the men of the Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment.
It told the full story, was supported by photographic evidence, logs of all the day's radio transmissions, and included an almost minute-by-minute narrative of the day's events.
The eight hours of testimony and cross examination offered by Capt. Jeffrey Dinsmore, the S2 officer, gave full details of the intelligence passed on to the officers and men of the 3rd Battalion 1St Marine Regiment including the Marines of Kilo Company. It buttressed previous briefings which alerted the Marines of insurgent tactics such as the killing of seven reconnaissance Marines who were ambushed by insurgents in hospital beds with AK-47s hidden under the bedcovers.
Planned Ambush
According to Dinsmore, a 20-year up-from-the ranks captain reputed to be one of the best intelligence officers in the Marine Corps, as well as the unit's only officer awarded a Bronze Star for his service in Haditha, the officers and men of 3rd Battalion 1St Marine Regiment were specifically alerted to the possibility of a white car being involved in the planned ambush.
That there existed prior intelligence on the planned ambush was hinted at in a May 30, 2006 interview Lance Cpl. James Crossan gave to KING-TV in Seattle.
Crossan was riding in the Humvee that was struck by the IED in Haditha on Nov. 19. He suffered a broken back, shattered bones, and perforated eardrums. The explosion killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas.
According to Crossan the Marines had information on the day of the incident that about 20 insurgents were planning a major attack on the command outpost (COP), which he describes as something like a vehicular check post.
Crossan said that he saw a child signal the passing of the Humvee, and that he saw two guys standing not five feet away from where the IED exploded. He said there was no way that they didn't know about the IED. When the IED exploded, he said, the Marines were already ready for something like it that day, thanks to the intelligence provided them the night before.
Sgt. Wuterich was among those alerted to be on the lookout for a white car, and when a white Opal taxi cab screeched to a halt on the Marine's exposed left flank and five men jumped out and began to flee. Wuterich and Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz ordered them to stop. When they didn't, the Marines shot and killed them. Officers later on the scene said that then position of the bodies clearly showed them to have been fleeing when they were shot.
According to Capt. Dinsmore's telephone testimony, given from his post in Iraq for the Article 32 hearing for Capt. Stone, intelligence showed that four of the men in the cab were among the eight identified insurgents killed that day.
The Time Magazine Debacle
It is interesting to note just how erroneous the media's reporting on that incident was as exemplified by Washington Post reporter Ellen Knickmeyer who six months later took the word of a so-called "Iraqi witness" from Haditha and reported that the men in the cab "happened upon the scene inadvertently" while riding in the cab.
Nat Helms is author of a new book, "My Men Are My Heroes" which provides an account of the incredible bravery of Sgt. Brad Kasal in the second battle of Fallujah.
He stated that Knickmeyer wrote about a witness who said that the taxi driver turned onto the street and saw the wrecked Humvee and the Marines, and then the cab driver tried to back away at full speed. The Marines opened fire from about 30 yards away, killing all the men inside the taxi. Dela Cruz reportedly pumped his 30-round M-16 magazine into the car when they tried to run.
Even worse, later media reports said the cab carrying four known insurgents was occupied by four "college students," along with the cab driver, who were on their way to school.
These false reports however, pale in the face of the role played by Time magazine Tim McGirk and Time itself. According to McGirk's first story, a "budding journalism student" had given him a video he had taken after the killing of the civilians in the houses near the site of the IED explosion.
Almost immediately, Time had to correct the story, revealing that the "budding journalism student" was actually 43-year-old Taher Thabet al-Hadithi who just happened to be on hand to videotape the aftermath of the killing in the houses.
Time also identified al-Hadithi as head of something called the Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring. Time reported that the Hammurabi Human Rights group was affiliated with Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch vehemently denied they had any connection or any ties or association with the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, and Time wrote a retraction.
It was then revealed that the Hammurabi Human Rights group was a group of two: Hadithi and Ali Omar Abrahem al-Mashhadani, a Reuters News Service reporter who was previously arrested by U.S. Marines in his home town of Ramadi and underwent weeks of interrogation at the infamous Abu Ghraib Prison. His American warders told Reuters that he was released in a general amnesty in late 2005 along with about 500 other Iraqi prisoners. Reuters also reported that he spent five months in U.S. custody before being released without charges.
Three months later al-Mashhadani was the darling of Time magazine, Nat Helms wrote sarcastically.
NewsMax can now reveal that the battalion S2 knew that the insurgents were following their usual practice of videotaping an ambush. And it was a series of cell phone communications between Hadithi and Mashhadani, both known insurgents, that alerted the Marines to the impending ambush.
False Charges Under False Pretenses
The Marine Corps, however, had discovered al-Hadithi more than a year before Nov. 19, among other anti-government, anti-American Sunni insurgent sympathizers inhabiting Haditha. He was still under their microscope in late February when he gave his video to McGirk after shopping it around for weeks. Helms described it as "ugly and inflammatory, full of dead children and women and blood-covered walls."
Al-Hadithi claimed the deaths were the handiwork of out-of-control Marines who wantonly charged through the innocent victims' homes slaughtering women and children in revenge for Terrazas' gruesome death.
In late March, McGirk released al-Hadithi's "evidence" to the world. Marines who specialized in signal interception told Helms they were shocked when they heard al-Hadithi and Mashhadani were mixed up in it.
In his testimony Capt. Dinsmore revealed that both men were operating freely throughout the province before purportedly announcing the creation of their human rights organization in early 2006. Marine intelligence officers were aware of their intelligence activities because their frequent cellular telephone conversations were monitored, they said.
McGirk's sources were known insurgent propagandists and it was McGirk's Time reports that created the Haditha massacre hoax.
Marine sources told NewsMax that when McGirk first contacted the 3rd Battalion and asked to interview the men of Kilo Company, he was invited to come to Haditha and the men were told by Chessani to answer all his questions fully and truthfully.
On the day before he was due to arrive in Haditha from the safety of Baghdad's Green Zone, NBC reporter Bob Woodward and his cameramen were badly wounded. McGirk promptly canceled his trip, saying it was too dangerous. This, incidentally is the same McGirk who partied with the murderous Taliban after 9/11 and proclaimed them to be a fine upstanding bunch of just plain folks.
The courageous McGirk has now refused to testify at Chessani's Article 32 hearing where defense attorneys insist he would have been torn to pieces in cross examination.
I agree!!
HOLY CRAP!!!!!
There was intelligence about an attack involving a white car?? There was intelligence that al-Hadithi was involved intimately with the terrorists?? The 5 in the car were classified as terrorists when tallying the deaths????
CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY THEY ARE EVEN HAVING HEARINGS?? (Yes I know I was yelling - I meant to)
Red - as soon as this is over, we need to push with all our might to have Murtha sanctioned if not removed from Congress. I’ll help coordinate whatever is needed but this POS needs to go!
That Semper I says it all about murtha!
The author's credibility would be enhanced if he just said "terrorists".
Time correspondent Tim McGirk
You make a good point.
The lawsuit was originally filed on August 3, 2006. You may remember this was reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer (unfortunately no longer archived on their site)...
In a prepared statement on the lawsuit, he commented: "I don't blame the staff sergeant for lashing out. When I spoke up about Haditha, my intention was to draw attention to the horrendous pressure put on our troops in Iraq and to the cover-up of the incident."
Among other things, the lawsuit seeks to smoke out the military officials who gave him the information on which he based his charge that Marines had killed innocent civilians.
Asked about this in the interview, Murtha said the information came from Gen. Michael Hagee, the commandant of the Marine Corps, in a one-on-one conversation the day before Hagee made a trip to Iraq. Hagee did not use the term "in cold blood," he added. Col. Dave Lapan, a Marine spokesman, disputed Murtha's account.
He said the commandant did brief Murtha about the Haditha incident. But he said that was on May 24, a week after Murtha made his public comment. The next day, May 25, Hagee left for Iraq, he said.
If you have a lawyery turn-of-mind, you can read the latest papers filed in a pdf file
My eldest son, Capt. Jeff Dinsmore (3/1 Marines) called me immediately after his people were charged in December 2006. He asked Dad what he should do.
I said, "You know what you have got to do, you are a Marine." But I asked, " Do you understand what it will cost you?"
He said, "Yes, probably my career."
He said, "We went over there together as Marines, we watched each other's backs like Marines, we were ready to take a hit for each other, because we are Marines. If I had taken that hit for any of them it would have wrecked my career." he said, "They are innocent and I can prove it, and I'm a Marine and I will leave no man behind."
The Intel knew these men to be insurgents (as well as the ones in the car). Why is it that Mannle or whatever her name is couldn’t find them in her “database”?
Cindie
If McGirk wont testify, the prosecution should not be able to use anything McGirk produced, or the fruit from anything he produced.
Since it’s a government data base, I imagine it’s crap.
They. had. all. this. ividence. and. they. put. these. FINE. Marines., their. Brothers., the Marines families. through. this. kind. of. crap. to. save. political. face.
No words can describe what I am feeling right now. Through this whole thing out NOW!
Thanks for posting that, I remember all of that well.
Murtha is not only a POS but a lying POS. When he said he got the info from Gen. Hagee he knew full well that he hadn’t until after he’d called the Marines cold blooded killers.
I hope he is eventually put on the stand under oath and made to reveal the DOD people that gave him that info.
For instance, this was in McGirk's article about the men LCpl Sharratt is supposed to have murdered...
The Marines raided a third house, which belongs to a man named Ahmed Ayed. One of Ahmed's five sons, Yousif, who lived in a house next door, told Time that after hearing a prolonged burst of gunfire from his father's house, he rushed over. Iraqi soldiers keeping watch in the garden prevented him from going in. "They told me, 'There's nothing you can do. Don't come closer, or the Americans will kill you too.' The Americans didn't let anybody into the house until 6:30 the next morning." Ayed says that by then the bodies were gone; all the dead had been zipped into U.S. body bags and taken by Marines to a local hospital morgue.
"But we could tell from the blood tracks across the floor what happened," Ayed claims. "The Americans gathered my four brothers and took them inside my father's bedroom, to a closet. They killed them inside the closet."
In the original video tape that was the basis of McGirk's story, residents of Haditha are running around for the camera wailing...
A man cries, "This is an act denied by God. What did he do? To be executed in the closet? Those bastards! Even the Jews would not do such an act! Why? Why did they kill him this way? Look, this is his brain on the ground!"
So everyhody involved KNEW exactly what happened because sensational stories (that few actually saw) were spread by the media. Then they were interviewed by NCIS!
So even though McGirk's story is irrevelant to these hearings, it explains why witness testimony (especially in the LCpl. Sharratt case) is utterly worthless.
Here’s an article ripe for dissemination.
I just received the following e-mail from Phil Brennan...
Hell no, I barely made cpl. I was a BAR man -all the spook stuff came later in civilian life.
RedRover regrets his error!
It’s like a perverted game of Gossip where someone tells you something happened and then you start wailing that you were there and know what happened. It then spreads like poison ivy with neighbors 10 blocks away insisting they were right there when it happened.
I am sick... Just sick...
Cpl. Brennan deserves much respect, the BAR was a fine weapon and very effective in the hands of a Marine.
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