Posted on 05/28/2008 3:33:36 AM PDT by RedRover
According to what I found, he deleted them from his computer in February. But then, there’s this:
http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2007/jun/09/marine-says-he-deleted-photos-of-haditha-victims/
that says he deleted the photos from his computer, but not his camera.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
On another note, I find it strange that the money and passports disappear, he’s the last one to see it, and yet Briones is charged with shipping stuff home. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Did Briones really ship stuff home to himself? Or did somebody else do it.
Q. Now I want to go back to the area that you marked as house “A.” And we still have Jordanian passports and currency sitting over there. What ever happened to that?
A. Eventually, once we had made the determination of who we were bringing back to firm base for questioning, I went over to there to let those Marines know and to gather all of that stuff up.
Q. What did you do with it?
A. I put it in a big bag. I had Mickey Mouse on it and brought it back with me when I went back to the firm base.
Q. Do you know what ever happened to it after that?
A. OCFI came and picked it up when they took two of those individuals with them.
Q. Now OCFI is?
A. Other Coalition Forces in Iraq.
Q. And you never heard about that stuff again?
A. No, sir.
Q. Do you know anybody in OCFI who might know where the passports and the currency went?
A. I don’t know, sir.
Q. Do you have a point of contact or anything before you turned that stuff over to them?
A. No, sir.
You know, I hadn't realized just how important Laughner was to the prosecution until I looked and saw that he previously testified at the Article 32 hearings for LtCol Chessani, LCpl Sharratt, LCpl Tatum, SSgt Wuterich, and, of course, Lt Grayson. Quite the lynchpin.
Ahh... Thanks for getting that info. It’s basically a Miranda warning acknowledgment. If you are ever given a Miranda warning, NEVER say a word after, “I want a lawyer.”
I’m betting that it’s SOP for investigators like Watt to throw some paperwork on the table, announce that it’s all just a formality, then hope that good old-fashioned intimidation gets the interviewee to sign away his rights. Apparently, Lt. Grayson was not intimidated by Colonel Watt, and this is likely what put a burr up Watt’s rear-end: “How dare a lowly Lieutenant refuse my request!”
I can see most enlisted men, and even most lower-ranking officers, signing that form and “waiving” their Miranda rights when it is placed in front of them by a colonel. “Why not?”, they may think, “I haven’t been arrested.”
Let me emphasise again, once you get an inkling that somebody in law enforcement has given you what sounds like Miranda rights, either vocally or in written form (like this form Grayson pushed away), IMMEDIATELY announce loud and clear that you want a lawyer.
Col Watt gave the same lame testimony at the Article 32. Here's a QUOTE from an NCTimes report on November 17, 2006...
U.S. Army Col. Gregory Watt testified that Grayson came across as arrogant and reluctant to share much when interviewed regarding the Haditha events.
"Lt. Grayson was not forthcoming in providing information in support of the investigation," Col. Watt testified....
Watt also said that Grayson's sworn statement did not meet his expectations because it did not discuss the intelligence team's role in examining the scene of the killings.
At the end of the Article 32, the Investigating Officer wasn't impressed. Here's ANOTHER QUOTE...
A military hearing officer [Col. Robert Stahlman] said Saturday he has serious doubts over the validity of criminal charges filed against a Marine lieutenant in the aftermath of the slaying of 24 Iraqi civilians two years ago....
The colonel's comments came at the close of a hearing at Camp Pendleton over the last week to help determine if Grayson, a 26-year-old intelligence specialist, should be ordered to face trial by military court-martial....
The colonel also said he was anxious to see the prosecution's written arguments on the charge that Grayson lied to investigators.
"I think it is a stretch to charge that," Stahlman said.
I've never seen the IO's report on the Article 32, but I wish I knew why the IO ended up recommending that the case go forward. Must have been something in the written arguments. Regardless, the case doesn't look any stronger now than it was.
100% agreement, Lancey. Never, ever, under any circumstances waive your rights. Ever.
In fact, never fill out any form describing any events and sign it. What you remember tomorrow will be different than what you remember today...or next week...or next month. You’ll want to rephrase what you wrote, but it is forever there in their hands as your “official” statement.
Had a battalion commander who instructed all of us to let everyone in the battalion always to know “NEVER talk to CID.” (Cid=Ncis)
“and I just don’t get why this case went to a court martial at all.”
As a coincidence, Red, I just reread that very same myself.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1927577/posts
And it is like I told Girlene. It is senseless. IMO, it is IMPOSSIBLE for sensible people to to figure it out.
I gave up trying to figure it out long ago and I have turned my limited mental abilities to prayer. Praying there are sensible men on that panel.
1000% agreement.
Thanks for that blast from the past. Why indeed was Grayson ever charged in the first place? There is only one answer that makes sense: “Command Influence” and a sellout by Mattis.
Do you have any predictions/suggestions on how the defense will/should proceed?
1. Nail Laughner
2. Recall Watt and nail him some more.
3. Call Dinsmore to testify to intel at the time OR to provide character witness for Grayson.
4. Call Mattis and sweat him about his fourth star and “command influence”.
Frankly, I don't know how the defense proceeds. The entire obstruction case seems based on Watt's feelings--not on fact. How do you refute feelings? Or do you just trust that the jury of Marine officers can see through the (pretty thin) fog?
I would start with a motion to dismiss.
I think I'd ask the classic question: "What were you THINKING?"
I'd hoped better of Mathis, but you gotta wonder what in the world was going through his mind. Maybe someday we'll discover that he allowed the appearance of command influence in order to intentionally submarine what was a politically correct prosecution of these outstanding Marines. I can only hope that's what was on his mind.
But, I doubt it.
I couldn't agree more, Red and the panel are all Marines with combat experience. I believe they've already seen through him and hope that's not just wishful thinking on my part.
One thing I did note on the cover sheet of 2Lt. Kallop's Bargewell memo was that he had specifically deleted "offense(s)" and "suspected/accused" and inserted "Event". I'll bet none of the other cover sheets are that way, otherwise those changes would have been made by Bargewell -- look at the difference in the style and weight of the writing of them both in the sig block at the bottom. As you said who's going to go against the guy: "Hey, I'm your buddy just getting the details so I can go home" -- the friendly cop who won't screw you over. Yeah, right. In a pig's eye!
With the extra details that you, freema, Girlene, Lancey, and xzins have pulled from the testimony I hope the attorneys are tracking these same points for reprise on Monday.
Thanks for the info, Red and all.
CHESSANI (Under Huck)-”Evidence in Chessani’s Article 32 preliminary hearing at Camp Pendleton showed that no weapons or insurgent shell casings were found in the homes and that the homes were more than 100 yards from where a bomb had killed a Marine and wounded two.”
This is in direct contradiction to later testimony of Laughner’s.
I am going to post my most very favorite piece of journalism on the whole steenkin’ mess. Thank you Paul von Beilbauer!
DEFEND OUR MARINES
________________________________________________________
2 Marines Deny
Suspecting Haditha War Crime
New York Times, May 31, 2007
2 Marines deny suspecting Haditha war crime
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., May 30 — Two Marine junior officers, in testimony made public on Wednesday, said they had no reason to suspect a possible war crime when they inspected the human carnage, including the bodies of 10 women and children, after an infantry attack that killed 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in 2005.
But one of the officers, First Lt. Alexander Martin, suggested that one of the consequences of the Marine unit’s killing of civilians — which followed a roadside bomb blast that killed one marine and wounded two others — was that Haditha residents became noticeably more helpful, if not quite friendly, to the Americans.
“After 19 November,” Lieutenant Martin said in videotaped testimony, referring to the day the civilians were killed in 2005, “I had people coming up to me to tell me where the I.E.D.’s were.”
I.E.D. stands for improvised explosive device, or roadside bomb.
The other officer testifying, First Lt. Max D. Frank, offered a detailed and gruesome accounting of the human remains — including the bodies of six children and two women on one bed — that the officers saw in three homes that had been attacked by a squad of infantryman searching for insurgents whom they suspected of detonating the roadside bomb.
The testimony introduced on Wednesday, both videotaped in March because the officers were to return to Iraq, came at a hearing for Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, a former commander of the Third Battalion, First Marines, who is one of four officers charged with dereliction of duty for failing to investigate the Haditha killings properly.
In his own videotaped testimony, Lieutenant Frank told a Marine prosecutor that each of the eight bodies he found on the bed had “multiple holes” in it, and that one child’s head was missing. But Lieutenant Frank repeatedly said in his testimony that he had never considered the possibility that a war-crime violation had occurred, the legal threshold under Marine Corps regulations that compels an episode to be reported to a superior officer.
“It was unfortunate what happened, sir,” Lieutenant Frank told the marine prosecutor, Lt. Col. Sean Sullivan, “but I didn’t have any reason to believe that what they had done was on purpose,” he said of the Marine infantrymen who killed the civilians in a house-to-house attack after coming under fire from insurgents. He said he and other officers had agreed to portray the deaths to Haditha town leaders as an unfortunate and unintended result of local residents’ allowing insurgent fighters to use family homes to shoot at passing American patrols.
After returning to the Marine base near Haditha on the evening of Nov. 19, 2005, Lieutenant Frank said, another officer, First Lt. Adam P. Mathes, told him that the Marines should not issue an apology for wrongfully killing civilians but offer a less conciliatory statement.
Lieutenant Frank said Lieutenant Mathes, the company’s executive officer, advised a Marine major assigned to a civil affairs unit that “the best way to explain this to the Iraqi people” would be to tell them, “It’s an unfortunate thing that happens when you let terrorists use your house to attack our troops.”
Lieutenant Frank, who testified after being granted immunity from prosecution in the Haditha case, said he complained to the company commander about the way that marines were forced to photograph and collect the 24 bodies.
The marines had only four or five body bags at the base and used them to collect the largest of the dead civilians, said Lieutenant Frank. The children’s remains were placed in trash bags, he said. When the marines’ four-Humvee convoy carrying the bodies arrived at a local hospital morgue that evening, Iraqi workers reacted in horror and some vomited at the sight, he testified.
http://warchronicle.com/TheyAreNotKillers/NYTimes/DefendOurMarines-NYTimesChessaniHearing53107.htm
Bumpity bump bump!
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