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Pentagon Leaders Distorting Haditha Facts Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com Unnamed sources in the Pentagon with their own agenda have been leaking false information about the killing of civilians in Haditha by Marines last November, NewsMax.com has learned.
A Marine intelligence agent who investigated last year's Nov. 19 shootings of civilians in Haditha in the immediate wake of the incident has stepped forward to defend the Kilo company Marines against charges that they massacred the victims.
In Thursday's Washington Post, Marine intelligence operative Sgt. J.M. Laughner is quoted as calling the shootings an appropriate response to a coordinated insurgent attack.
In a transcript of his interview with two investigating colonels, Laughner, described by The Post as a member of a Marine human-intelligence exploitation team that was hunting down insurgent bomb-makers, said his unit went from house to house in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005, in the immediate aftermath of the incident. He acknowledges finding two dozen bodies, including some women and small children.
Laughner said the scenes of the slayings appeared to match the version of events the Marine squad provided that day and did not seem especially out of the ordinary, according to a transcript of his interview.
Laughner's account, The Post noted, supports the argument made by some Marines in Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines — that they believed they were following their rules of engagement when they opened fire on groups of people inside at least three homes after a roadside bomb killed a member of their unit. Several Marines are under criminal investigation in connection with the civilian deaths that day, but no one has been charged.
Laughner's statement is further evidence that Marines who were on the ground that day viewed the civilian deaths as accidental rather than the result of a vengeful rampage.
The transcript was provided to The Post by someone The Post said is sympathetic to the enlisted Marines facing scrutiny for the shootings.
Story Continues Below
According to NewsMax's Marine intelligence sources, the intelligence unit Marines, which included Laughner, arrived within 30 minutes of the incident. Our sources said the unit reported that they were deeply impressed with the attitude and professionalism of the Kilo company squad and believed that it makes absolutely no sense that they could have maintained their composure and conducted themselves so professionally by the time Laughner's unit arrived if they had been in a rage and conducting a massacre only minutes before.
In recent days, The New York Times, The Associated Press, and The Post all carried stories quoting the usual unnamed sources in the Pentagon as saying that parts of a video allegedly taken by a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) had disappeared, that pages of a logbook dealing with the actions on that day were missing, and that the report of the action attributed the civilian deaths only to the IED explosion.
None of this is accurate.
NewsMax's sources say there was no video taken from the UAV, only photos. These were included in an after-action report sent to regimental and division headquarters the night of the incident. That report, a Powerpoint presentation, contained a detailed account (with the UAV photos) of the events of that day. It told the whole story of the Haditha incident and was so complete that the superior officers, including Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, 3rd Battalion commander, rightly concluded that the Marines had acted appropriately.
In a statement to military investigators in March, obtained by The Post, Chessani said he did not consider the deaths of 24 Iraqis, many of them women and children, unusual and did not initiate an inquiry, according to a sworn statement he gave to military investigators in March.
"I thought it was very sad, very unfortunate; but at the time, I did not suspect any wrongdoing from my Marines," he said, adding, "I did not have any reason to believe that this was anything other than combat action."
The Post reported that Chessani had told investigators he concluded that insurgents had staged a "complex attack" that began with a roadside bomb, followed by a small-arms ambush that was intended to provoke the Marines to fire into houses where civilians were hiding.
"I did not see any cause for alarm," especially because several firefights had occurred in the area the same day - Nov. 19, 2005 - Chessani said. Because of that conclusion, he added, he did not see any reason to investigate the matter, or even to ask how many women and children had been killed. "I just saw this as a large combat action that had been staged by the enemy," he told investigators.
Chessani's conclusions were based on the compelling evidence provided him in that PowerPoint presentation and subsequent interviews with Marine officers present during the incident.
As far as the so-called missing pages of the logbook are concerned, Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich has told the media that the logbooks were merely records of radio transmissions. NewsMax can report, however, that "rolls and rolls" of the yellow-slip message papers on which the radio operator writes all transmissions were turned over to investigators, and they reflect the tone and exact times of Kilo company reports of that morning.
The Post reported that the anonymous sources at the Pentagon charged that after the killings, the Marine Corps issued a statement that Iraqis had been killed in Haditha by a roadside bomb, with no mention of insurgent small arms fire directed at the Marines. Actually, the report issue by Sgt. Wuterich, who commanded the Kilo company squad, in effect reported that a total of 24 had been killed — 15 civilians by the IED blast and ensuing fire, and eight of the dead assessed to be enemy, in addition to the Marine killed in the IED explosion. Most tellingly, the report concluded, "The follow-on small arms fire between insurgents and coalition forces contributed to the civilian deaths."
Incredibly, the Division Public Affairs Officer, who was totally removed from the situation, either left out the last sentence on purpose, or just overlooked it.
Marines at the battalion level said that they were dumbfounded that he left out that crucial piece of information when they read the final press release, but it was too late at that point. They recalled that they were not surprised that the press release raised questions, and attributed it to the out-of-the-loop people at division headquarters, and not to deception. Even the Naval Criminal Investigative Service acknowledged the existence of that last line, charging that the last sentence, although fairly clear, was too brief and did not accurately reflect the magnitude of the number of civilian deaths. That is the basis of the accusation that the battalion was deceptive in its reporting.
As NewsMax reported last June 26 (New Evidence Emerges in Haditha Case), the evidence all points to the fact that there was a planned ambush the Marines walked into. First the IED blast, then the fire from the houses that the insurgents knew would lure Wuterich's people into initiating house clearing — an operation with which the insurgents are thoroughly familiar. They knew what would happen, saw to it that it did, and filmed the entire thing. They then shopped the video around for weeks until they found Time correspondent Tim McGurk, who swallowed the whole scenario.
According to one well-placed NewsMax source, the misleading statements by unnamed Pentagon sources are the result of the anxiety felt by high-ranking Marine Corps officers who, out of misplaced political correctness and fear of media reaction, have committed themselves to a conviction of some kind even though unwarranted by the facts.
"If there is complete exoneration, they will be severely embarrassed," our source said.
Editor's note:
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