Live from Ann Arbor, Michigan, this is Veterans
Radio and now here's your host Dale Throneberry.
And beginning of this portion of our Veterans
Radio program, Ken's going to give us a little
bit of news. What's going on in the world of
military affairs? Well, the Department of Veterans
Affairs recently dedicated a ceremony to officially
open the Sacramento Valley VA National Cemetery
in Dixon, California. Nearly 346 ,000 veterans
and their families live within the service radius
of the National Cemetery. Burials began in October
of 2006 on approximately 14 acres, which includes
a committal shelter and three burial sections.
And you can get more information on VA burial
benefits by going to CEM .VA .gov. That's the
Veterans Affairs webpage. An airman assigned
to the 50th Mission Support Squadron recently
fell victim to a new banking scam. The scammers
apparently generate random routing and account
numbers into which they try to deposit one cent.
Once the one cent deposit clears, The perpetrators
know the account is active and begin to withdraw
funds from the account. The withdrawals seem
to take place near the beginning of the month
and some people have only seen a single withdrawal
from their accounts. So, word of the wise, check
your accounts frequently. It sounds like PayPal.
It's similar, yeah. That's the way that they
test your account. But PayPal is a little more
secure. These guys are just getting into a bank
and randomly running numbers and seeing what
happens. That's dangerous. So keep your word
to the wise. Know what's going on with your account.
Drug researchers in the United States are trying
to develop a controversial new treatment that
could potentially help by reducing the intensity
of a particular traumatic memory in veterans
with post -traumatic stress disorder. They stress
they are not trying to wipe out the memory itself,
but rather to alter the patient's response to
it. Evidently, what they do is they give them
the drug that eases the the reaction and that's
their goal is to try to to relieve the anxieties
and stresses. It's an interesting story that
I was talking to my undercover agent who works
with the Michigan National Guard and supposedly
when the troops come back from overseas they're
being debriefed you know and you go through what
the treatments are what your issues are and so
on and so forth. Well one of the problems is
that those debriefings are taking up to a year
and a half to sit down and talk with some of
these veterans and find out what their issues
are and that that's resulting obviously in some
problems. Another issue that's going on with
the Veterans Affairs Office right now is that
some of the people at the higher up levels of
the VA got really nice bonuses. Oh, really? Yes,
for their work over the last year. Oh, that's
nice. And that's something that we're going to
be talking about in a couple of weeks. We all
know that the Veterans Administration, at least
most of the local VA hospitals, do the best that
they can with the funds that they have, and it's
something I think that we need to address later
on. This is coming down from a number of sources
that were sending me emails over the week. People
were a little bit upset with that. I would be
upset with that, too, yes. Yeah, for such a good
job. And one final news item. in a very sad one.
The United States has lost one of its heroes
Thursday. Wally Schirra, one of the seven original
astronauts, died of a heart attack in Scripps
Green Hospital near San Diego. He was a Naval
Academy graduate, shot down an enemy jet in Korea,
and went on to set several space records. He
was the only astronaut to fly in the first three
space programs, the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
In 1965, he performed the first rendezvous in
space maneuvering his Gemini 6 to within 10 feet
of Gemini 7. Wally Schirra was 84 years old.
I still idolize those guys and I think most of
us of our generation just think they were so
amazing and heroic in what they did and how anybody
had the nerve to go up in space like that. Remember
they used to isolate them when they'd come back
and they didn't know what they'd been exposed
to and so forth. I still want to go. Well, all
you need is what? Ten million dollars or something
like that. I might have to cash a paycheck. Okay,
yeah, quit hoarding all your money. It's time
for Welcome Home, and each week, Veterans Radio,
we welcome home servicemen and women who have
been stationed around the world in the service
of our country. Sal's Restaurant provided a welcome
home meal for over 100 Marines from the 3rd Battalion,
14th Marine Regiment, on Wednesday the 1st of
May at West Trenton's Reserve Center in Pennsylvania.
Soldiers from the Boone -based 1451st Transportation
Company of the North Carolina National Guard
returned home on Monday, April 30th. And Marine
Corporal Brad Walker from the Delta Company of
the 4th Combat Engineer Battalion received a
very special welcome home celebration from friends
and family as he walked through his home's front
door on his new pair of legs. Hudson County held
a very special ceremony to welcome Vietnam veterans
on April 12th at the Brennan courthouse in Jersey
City, New Jersey Welcome home. I think that's
a that's an incredible thing that was going on
there in Hudson County is that they they gave
out medals mm -hmm to the Vietnam veterans and
the other issue that I wanted to talk about real
briefly is That as far as welcoming home is concerned
is that they've added three more veterans names
to the Vietnam Memorial and Army Sergeant Richard
Pruitt, who died as a result of complications
from wounds that he received in the war 30 years
ago. Joseph Gerald Krawicki of Holton, Michigan
and Army Specialist Weston Alvin Stiverson of
Monticello, Illinois have been added to the Vietnam
War wall. And on behalf of Veterans Radio, I
want to tell all of them to welcome them all
home and welcome home to all the veterans coming
home from Iraq and around the world. And while
you're talking about the wall, the 25th anniversary
of the wall will be coming up this November 11th
in Washington. So if you're interested in going
and seeing the wall and helping to observe its
anniversary, you can do that. And we'll be right
back. You're listening to Veterans Radio. And
we are back here on Veterans Radio coming to
you from the studios of Avi Maria Radio in Ann
Arbor. The program of today is going to be talking
about a case against some Marines that, and I
want to kind of set the stage a little bit for
you, if I can. On November 19th, 2005, members
of Kilo Company of the Marine Corps were on deployment
near and about the town of Haditha in Iraq. And
one of their Humvees was blown up. As a result
of that, and different variations of what we've
been able to find out so far, and we'll get into
this a little bit more later, is that in addition
to the Humvee being blown up and one of the Marines
being killed, two were seriously wounded, that
there was a coordinated ambush going on with
this at the time, and that the Marines fought
back, and over the period of time, a number of
Iraqi insurgents were killed, and unfortunately,
a number of Iraqi civilians were killed also.
After this, a number of different types of investigations
have been going on. Time magazines had some newsmax.
Lots of different stories are out there. They
said it was a massacre. They said it wasn't a
massacre. They said that the commanders up the
line didn't know what was going on, didn't follow
what was happening. Once they did do their investigation,
they supposedly tried to cover it up. And it's
just been kind of rolling and rolling and rolling
as it's been going on over the last couple of
years. As I say, different news sources have
had different stories from one end of the spectrum
to the other end of the spectrum. Our guest today
is Dick Thompson, who is the chief counsel of
the Thomas Moore Law Center here in Ann Arbor.
And they, the Thomas Moore Law Center, has taken
on the case for Lieutenant Colonel Ciasani. And
Lieutenant Colonel Ciasani is about to go. go
before a Article 32 board, I believe it is, by
the end of the month. And so anyway, you've taken
on this case, and Dick, I want to welcome you
to Veterans Radio. Thank you. It's a pleasure
to be here. And maybe you can kind of fill us
in a little bit more on the background of this
case. Sure. As you indicated, the incident occurred
on November 19, 2005. At about 7 .15 a .m., this
Marine convoy was going through Haditha. Now,
you have to understand, Haditha is an insurgent
stronghold. This is in Albar province. Suddenly
an IED roadside bomb went off underneath one
of the Humvees. It killed one of the Marines,
injured two others, and simultaneously as soon
as that explosion occurred the Marine convoy
started to get fire from nearby civilian homes.
and uh... the marines did what they were trained
to do uh... they got out of their vehicles and
a lieutenant shortly came up and told the marine
squad to take the houses and a four -man squad
went into these three houses that they were getting
fire from uh... and they went room to room and
did what they were trained to do. That is, they
threw a hand grenade in, and once the hand grenade
exploded, they'd go in there and spray the room.
Now, I have three sons and they play video games.
That's the way they take care of homes in these
war games that they play. They did this in several
rooms. They went to the next house, did the same
thing. As a result of this house clearing operation,
there were 24 Iraqis that were ultimately killed.
15 of them were civilians. Now everyone understands
in the combat zone in Iraq that the insurgents,
the terrorists, make use of civilian populated
areas as their cover, whether they're firing
from mosques, schools. houses and they realize
that the marines are going to defend themselves
and return fire and as soon as any uh... civilian
is killed and they use that as a co -propaganda
machine to you know to give the americans a black
eye as a result of this uh... i e d that exploded
it became a signal throughout haditha for insurgent
attacks. And several attacks were occurring throughout
that area that Colonel Chassani had command of.
He was the battalion commander of the battalion
that was stationed in Haditha. In addition to
about a thousand American troops he had, he had
an additional thousand Iraqi troops as well.
So he was, as a commander, he was monitoring
the situation and ordering his troops. interestingly
enough as let me jump forward in December of
this year he was in December of 2006 they ultimately
concluded a report and he was charged with two
offenses one of the offenses was failure to investigate
the incident that occurred on November 19th and
the second a charge was failure to properly brief
his upper -echelon command as to what occurred.
Now those are the two charges against him. If
he is convicted, he faces a possible three years
in prison, dismissal from the Marines, and loss
of all of his retirement. Now he's a 19 -year
Marine veteran. He served in the Persian Gulf
War. He served in Panama. He's had three tours
in Iraq and now his entire career is going to
be wiped out and the livelihood. He has five
young children. I wanted to say that because
I want to now go back to the scene. What was
interesting is that immediately upon receiving
the attack on November 19th, radio communications
as you know would go back and forth what they
also had was an unmanned drone that was launched
immediately by division to cover the scene and
so immediately as this event was folding the
upper echelon knew what was going on they were
monitoring the radio traffic they were seeing
it with unmanned drones what was going on And
the reports were going through the line. The
next day, Colonel Ciasani visited the scene,
looked at it. All of his staff, his intelligence
officer, the lieutenants on the scene, the company
commanders on the scene, indicated what had occurred.
And the civilian deaths were an unfortunate aspect
of the Marines defending themselves. No problem.
No investigation occurred at that time until
Time magazine several months later Get some information
from an Iraqi who we now know was an insurgent
operative and Says there was a massacre Time
magazine reporter a guy by the name of McGurk
sends a communique to the Marine Command saying,
I've got these questions. The Marine Command
sends the questions down to Chassani. Chassani
responds to the questions and Time Magazine leads
off with the story, Haditha Massacre. As soon
as that story is led that way, the upper echelon,
not the Marine Command but the overall general,
General Chiarelli asked for an investigation.
I want to reintroduce, make sure people know
what we're talking about here. And we're talking
with Dick Thompson, who is the chief counsel
for the Thomas Moore Law Center, who has taken
on the case for Lieutenant Colonel Ciasani. And
what's going on is we're investigating the collateral
damage or massacre at Haditha back in November
of 2005. One of the questions I wanted to ask
you is, in one of the articles I was reading,
is that there were people on the ground almost
immediately after this conflict, which is what
you do in the military. I mean, you always have
to fill in after -action reports and that they,
you know, that they saw that there were civilians
involved and they immediately, you know, did
whatever they had to do to take care of them
and the wounded and so forth, but that all of
these reports were going up and that it does
turn out that this drone was taking videotapes
of this entire incident. Although that just came
to light very recently. Yes, in fact it was within
the last month the two lawyers that we have assigned
to this case actually went down to Camp Pendleton.
and saw the video still classified, saw the classified
video. There are a lot of strange things that's
happening in this case. I mean, I don't like
to have a conspiratorial theory out here, but
basically I think this whole investigation has
been politicized and it's been done to harm the
ability of not only the Marines, but every combat
officer and soldier uh... fighting the war in
iraq because now what they have to do is every
time they fire they have to see hey am i going
to be investigated for a crime you might as well
have a a lawyer beside every combat soldier to
tell them okay you can shoot and this is what
you can shoot at i mean i looked at the rules
of engagement and i it is outrageous if we had
those rules of engagement in world war two we
would have lost world war two right i mean though
you ike you know i was a young I don't want to
give away my age either. Age became a problem
here. But I was at Fort Benning, Georgia for
two years in a basic officer infantry course
there. We didn't have anything about rules of
engagement at that time. I mean, we were taught.
To fight and defeat the enemy. We didn't have
to look at, you know, can I fire here or can
I fire there? The rules of engagement used to
be if somebody shot at you, you shot back. Right.
But now we're making our combat soldiers afraid
to defend themselves. And that's why I say this
case is a lot bigger than merely some Marines
being charged and some officers careers being
ruined. It is going to impact. the way our military
can respond and I think that we have to change
the total environment of these rules of engagement
because if soldiers cannot react in combat the
way they are trained to do. If they cannot fire
upon the enemy when they're fired upon, then
pretty soon we are not going to be able to defend
ourselves and fight an effective campaign. That's
what's happening here. In fact, Stars and Stripes
had an article a few weeks ago where there are
some Marines now patrolling the streets of Haditha,
wearing video cameras on their helmet that they've
gotten themselves so that if they fire back,
they have some proof that they were firing in
self -defense. That's how bad it's gotten. We've
talked to a number of Iraqi veterans who have
complained about that same problem, and that
they have to think about it. The problem is that
when you get yourself into a combat situation,
if you hesitate, you're dead. Correct. And that's
the issue. I did want to just kind of go back
quickly, and you mentioned the two lawyers from
the Thomas Moore Law Center that are covering
the case. Those are both Iraqi veterans themselves,
aren't they? Yes. First of all, both of them
are former Marine officers. Rob Muse was a Marine
infantry officer. And then during his stay in
the Marines, the Marines actually sent him to
law school. And then once he got out, he became
a JAG officer. and he was a veteran of the first
Persian Gulf War. Brian Rooney is a JAG officer.
He served seven months in Iraq. He was there
just last year. And so he's very familiar with,
he was involved with the Fallujah campaign. He's
very familiar with the rules of engagement and
what they tell their Marines, which is totally
different now than what is coming down from headquarters.
In fact, headquarters, as a result of the Haditha
case, have changed their rules of engagement,
making it even worse. Before, if you received
hostile fire, you could fire back now you have
to positively identify the person before you
fire back and you know a lot of time that's not
you can't do that you know you're the fire is
coming from the house you don't know who else
is in the house beside the person firing at you
is that does that mean you can't fire back so
it is it is a ludicrous implications here of
what is happening not only to the officers and
let me tell you The officers that are being charged,
I've looked at their evaluation reports. They
were all scheduled for higher command positions.
Outstanding evaluation reports. The four Marines
that were charged, I mean, their lives are ruined.
Their families don't have money. Their families
are trying to get funds to hire these lawyers.
Now, the Thomas Moore Law Center is a public
interest law firm, and so we can give our services
to Chisani without charge. But this is destroying
the lives of Marines who thought they were doing
the right thing. It is clear that once this investigation
started, these are marine personnel, the army
conducted the investigation. An army colonel
cleared the marines. That wasn't good enough.
So they brought in a general, an army general
who then... conducted an investigation, and it
was based upon the investigation of the Army
General that these chargers were levied. But
let me tell you, and the Army General's report
is yet classified, but I'm going to talk about
it in this sense because someone's leaked the
General's report to the Washington Post And if
you read carefully what the Washington Post says,
the report said, not with their characterization,
but what the report says, it says, number one,
there was no intentional killing of any civilians.
That's what it found. Secondly, Colonel Ciasani
and the officers repeated everything that happened
and up the chain of command. So the report itself
would have cleared Ciasani, and these Marines.
But that's still classified. Nevertheless, these
Marines were charged. I think they were charged
for political reasons. Before the report was
even completed, before the charges were even
levied, you had Congressman John Murtha from
Pennsylvania in May come out publicly and accuse
the Marines of cold -blooded murder and the officers
of covering it up. This is a congressman. A former
marine general. He was a colonel. He was a former
colonel. I'd like to see his record, but anyway,
he accused these officers of covering it up and
the marine combat troops of cold -blooded murder.
What that means, in one sense, and Lieutenant
General McInerney from the Air Force and Air
Force Chief of Staff, opined that when Murtha
said that, that tainted the entire criminal prosecution
because there is undue command influence. Because
Murtha said he got it from a high -ranking Marine
general. So right away, everyone in the chain
of command knows, hey, the general thinks these
guys are, or thinks the general... thinks these
guys are guilty of cold -blooded murder, so I
better watch what I do in the court -martial.
This thing stinks to high heaven. Well, we're
going to go into more detail about that in a
little bit. We're coming up on a break at the
bottom of the hour, and we're talking with Dick
Thompson of the Thomas Moore Law Center, and
we're investigating the supposed shootings and
massacres in Haditha in Iraq in November of 2005.
We'll be right back. You're listening to Veterans
Radio. of honors the highest award for valor
in combat given a member of the armed forces
of the United States. There had been over 3 ,400
recipients of the nation's highest award. This
is one of them. Staff Sergeant Homer Wise's platoon
was pinned down four times. Each time, Wise led
a breakout of the platoon. While his platoon
was pinned down by enemy small arms fire from
both flanks, he left his position of comparative
safety and assisted in carrying one of his men.
who had been seriously wounded and who lay in
an exposed position, to a point where he could
receive medical attention. The advance of the
platoon was resumed, but it was again stopped
by enemy frontal fire. A German officer and two
enlisted men, armed with automatic weapons, threatened
the right flank. Fearlessly exposing himself,
Weiss moved to a position from which he killed
all three with his submachine gun. Returning
to his squad, he obtained an M1 rifle. and several
anti -tank grenades, then took up a position
from which he delivered accurate fire on the
enemy, holding up the advance. As the battalion
moved forward, it was again stopped by enemy
frontal and flanking fire. Weiss procured an
automatic rifle and, advancing ahead of his men,
neutralized an enemy machine gun with his fire.
When the flanking fire became more intense, he
ran to a nearby tank and, exposing himself on
the turret, restored a jammed machine gun to
operating efficiency and used it so effectively
that the enemy fire from an adjacent ridge was
materially reduced, thus permitting the battalion
to occupy its objective. The Medal of Honor series
is a production of Veterans Radio. And we're
back on Veterans Radio and we're talking with
Dick Thompson, the chief counsel for the Thomas
Moore Law Center. And Ken, you had a question
for him. Yes, sir. It sounds to me like these
charges are... are really false. If you consider
that they'd have the drone and reporting up the
chain command and everything, how do these sergeants
actually come about that well that's a very interesting
that's why i think it this is all a political
uh... scapegoating going out of the marine officers
and the troops that were there because time magazine
had this article that said you know there was
a subdued the massacre then the congressman who
was uh... uh... chair of the subcommittee and
uh... on uh... military appropriations accuses
the marines and officers of crimes and so all
at once there was marching orders to the NCIS
you better find something wrong they had to substantiate
what this congressman was saying and to support
what you said all the way up to a two -star general
in the Marine Corps had the information and thought
there was no need for investigation, that there
were no crimes committed. Yet when the words
start coming out of the media and also from Congressman
John Murtha, I think that became the rule for
the NCIS that they had to go out and find something
wrong. And this investigation lasted over a year.
There were over 60 NCIS agents used in the investigation.
Thousands and thousands of pages of classified
investigation material were compiled as a result
of it. And our lawyers, Rob Muse and Brian Rooney,
are going through those thousands of pages of
classified information. And we just found that
there is, they just found some more classified
information. So they're just kind of leaking
this stuff out to us. And the more they give
us, the more clear it is that there was no crime,
that this is a made up crime. I am so outraged
by what is happening here. I think most patriotic
Americans, most veterans would be, maybe the
veterans might not be stunned, they may have
had some kind of experience with this before,
but most Americans would be shocked to see what
the military is doing to its own. What about
the Marines that were involved in it and not
the Colonel but the but there's troops on the
ground What was the result of their cases their
their cases have not yet been tried one of the
four Marines charged the four combat Marines
that took these houses were charged with murder.
Mm -hmm unpremeditated murder As a result of
the investigation going on, and quite frankly
as a result of our lawyer, Rob Muse, going down
to Camp Pendleton and taking some sworn video
tape testimony because several of these marines
are going back to Iraq, the marine prosecutor
realized how bad his case was turning out to
be and just granted one of the four marines charged
with immunity so that they can try to make a
case. But even the lawyers that are representing
the other remaining three think that that's not
going to help the government's case at all because
this Marine has given statements before that
exonerated all of them. It just doesn't make
sense. It doesn't make sense. There's something,
as they say, there's something rotten in Denmark
and hopefully we'll find out. I'm looking at
an article about this, they dropped the case
against the Sergeant Dela Cruz just last week
it looks like. And it's going, although the prosecutors
say they needed more time to prepare their cases,
there is much more to the story than has been
learned. And it paints a shocking picture of
a prosecution that should never have been pursued.
Can you tell us a little bit about, I know that
why Thomas Moore got involved in this was because
that the NCIS was getting, I don't know, it's
almost like they were getting rough. with their
witnesses and trying to get them to answer their
questions. Could you tell us a little bit about
what might have occurred with that? Right. We
started to find this out as our lawyers were
interrogating witnesses in preparation for the
Article 32 hearing. And then we took the videotape
testimony. We were shocked as to what NCIS was
doing now. I was a also a former prosecuting
attorney for Oakland County So I pretty much
know how you how you're supposed to investigate
How you're supposed to examine witnesses and
even suspects what we found out that these marine
Officers and enlisted men were being interrogated
up to 18 hours at a time When they were asking
for food and water They weren't being given that
Marine officers were yelled at. Papers were thrown
at them. Agents segregated them into dark, dungeon
-like rooms. Mind you, a lot of this was happening
in Haditha while there was a combat going on.
And so we, the officers realized that These NCIS
agents weren't really looking to find out what
happened. They had an agenda. And when the officers
started giving them information that would tend
to exonerate what these other Marines had done
in Haditha, the NCI agents weren't interested
in it. They brushed it off. They said, well,
we want to get back to this subject matter. So
in other words, they already had a plan of what
they wanted. Exactly. So what we did, Dale, is
just two weeks ago, we sent a letter to the Secretary
of Navy, Donald Winters, and we asked that he
conduct an independent investigation into the
methods and techniques used by the NCIS agents,
because even while this was occurring, a Marine
commander went to the senior NCI agent in Haditha
and complained as to how officers and men were
being treated by these NCIS agents in the interrogation
process, and they brushed them aside. So we've
asked the Navy secretary to conduct an independent
investigation into this. Now, they haven't contacted
our office specifically, but they released a
public statement that they were going to conduct
an investigation. I don't know. It just seems...
It's scary when we start doing this. And I'm
not saying that we shouldn't be investigating
wanton premeditated murders or even accidental
murders. We need to investigate them so that
they don't happen on a regular basis. But it
just seems like for whatever reason that the...
I don't want to say the administration, but the
Pentagon in this case is going overboard to get
these guys. And this is not the first case of
this. It seems like a lot of times there's overreaction.
And I know that the news gets out and it goes
crazy on one end of the media and they say the
mass media is doing this and so forth. But when
you've got congressmen are coming out with their
own agenda. And I mean, Murtha is head of the
House, I think it's the House Military Appropriations
Committee. So I mean, they got to play the political
game in here. So now you've got people that are
higher up that who have their careers, their
generals and so forth. They got to cover their
backsides. And it's almost like everybody's on
their own instead of the teamwork that should
be there. So what you have here is you have a
insurgent propaganda operative. fulfilling his
mission, the Marines and the military are doing
the job for him. They are destroying the combat
effectiveness of Marines and soldiers in Haditha
and other places in Iraq by making them so afraid
to fire their weapons because they may be charged
later on down the road. I mean, a year later
they may be charged and facing prison time. So
they have effectively curtailed the combat. effectiveness
of our troops. And I just think that this is
sabotaging the war effort. And I don't know who's
behind it, but it's clear based upon all of the
investigation that we have, based upon, as you
said, Dale, now once they're granting immunity,
realizing they don't have a case, but yet the
word is out there on the street, be careful before
you fire your weapon. And as you know, he who
hesitates is lost. He who hesitates is dead.
Right, is dead. Quite clearly. One of the problems,
among many others out there, is that our troops
are over there acting as policemen, and they're
not trained to be policemen. And even though
we've been doing it for four years now, we're
still not... There is no way that you can react
to this. I mean, we have police on the streets
of major cities in our own country. that if they're
shot at, they can't return fire. So it ends up
with the thing is these guys now are wearing
dash cameras on their heads. First of all, the
Marines are trained that... You have to look
at every civilian with a degree of suspicion.
Oh, absolutely. Because they're strapping bombs
to young kids. Women are strapping bombs to themselves.
And so on the one hand, they're trained to be
wary of everybody. Because as you say, they're
now policemen. They're not combat soldiers. They're
walking and patrolling the streets. There was
one incident that occurred just before then.
and I'm not sure it was in the Haditha province
or not, where this Marine went into a hospital
without taking the appropriate precautions, this
Marine squad, and went into this place where
there were a bunch of beds. Men were lying in
the beds, and these men were insurgents, and
they jumped up and fired their automatic weapons,
killed eight Marines. time after time after time
you see what seems to be an innocent situation
developing into an attack on marines where our
soldiers are being killed and and this kind of
prosecution uh... ties the hands limits the ability
of not only soldiers on the ground but even commanders
you know if you're gonna spend all your time
now doing investigations every time a civilian
is killed well you know we're we're gonna we're
gonna have a paper army that can't fight a war
they're just going to be doing investigations
absolutely we're gonna take another break right
now we'll be back in just a moment you're listening
to veterans radio And we're back on Veterans
Radio, and we are talking with Dick Thompson,
who is the chief counsel for the Thomas Moore
Law Center, and we're talking about a case involving
Lieutenant Colonel Ciasani, who is being accused
of covering up a conflict or supposed massacre
that occurred in Haditha, Iraq, in November of
2005. Dick, where do we go from here? I mean,
right now, they're coming up on an essence, a
grand jury investigation of Chisani, which is
the Article 32. But their case is kind of crumbling
around them. Where do you see it going? Well,
as you say, the Article 32 is the first stage.
Now, that is scheduled to begin on May 30th in
Camp Pendleton, California. We know it'll start.
But as I indicated earlier, because new information
is being dropped on us, new classified information
is being declassified so we can take a look at
it, although the Article 32 starts, it may go
longer than the two weeks we planned for it to
go. Once the Article 32 hearing is complete,
the investigating officer then will make his
recommendation to the general. And then the general
has some time within which he can either accept
the recommendation or reject the recommendation.
For instance, if the investigating officer says,
I don't find any crime here, the commanding general
can still say, yes, I do, and schedule a courts
martial, which would then begin several months
thereafter. So this process is going to go on
for a long period of time. It's going to begin
on May the 30th. Now, Colonel Ciasani is the
first officer I believe is the first officer
who's going to have his Article 32 hearing begin,
so May 30th. And as new investigative material
comes in, we don't know. Maybe the prosecution
will dump the case, but I doubt it. Well, if
the general can override... the investigating
officer's decision. Why have the Article 32?
I'm not an expert on the military justice system,
but that's the way the military is. Obviously,
it's unique in the sense that dereliction of
duty is one of the charges that's where he failed
to properly investigate. It's a military charge
more than what we would see in the criminal justice
system in a civilian world. You know, it's a
subjective thing in many respects. One of the
things that I think is a defense that people
will be surprised with, in the military system
where there is a dereliction of duty charge,
the outstanding military character of the defendant
can finesse that charge. And we do know that
Colonel Chissani had an outstanding military
character and reputation. His evaluation reports
were superb. In fact, the commanding general
signed off on his evaluation reports. This is
after the Adifa matter occurred, saying that
this man is ready for higher command. He should
be sent to a TLS top -level school, the Navy
War College. It was clear that Colonel Ciasani
was on the path to a general's star until this
prosecution occurred. Assuming that he is found
not guilty, what will that do to his military
career, just having this charge against him?
You know, I asked our lawyers that because they're
involved in JAG when they were in the military
service. And one of the lawyers pointed to me,
remember the tail hook controversy? One of the
officers in the tail hook controversy became
a general. So it doesn't necessarily, or an admiral,
doesn't necessarily mean he can't reach that
position. But it certainly is something he has
to overcome. It's a mark against him. It's a
mark against him. I would think so. Dick, I wanted
to ask you a little bit more about the Thomas
More Law Center, and I know how you got involved
in this case, but what else type of cases are
you involved in? Well, we are a 501c3 corporation,
and basically what we get involved in is religious
freedom of Christians, time -honored family values,
and the sanctity of human life. In more generic
terms, we attempt to preserve America. by defending
its uh... christian heritage and moral values
we've gotten involved in cases like the mount
soledad cross i don't know if you're familiar
with that case that was a forty three -foot cross
that was a centerpiece of a veterans memorial
in san diego california where the a c l u filed
a lawsuit saying take down the cross it's a religious
symbol in the city was ready to do it after a
fifteen -year uh... battle in the thomas more
uh... thomas more law center came in and um...
stopped it. We saved the cross. There's a recent
case that I was reading about in the news this
morning about another case in California where
they're asking a history teacher of 30 years
or so to take down banners that he had in his
room like you know all men are created equal
and in God We trust yes, that was a case where
This teacher Brad Johnson had been a school teacher
for many many years He had these banners up for
over 20 years. They said things like in God we
trust God bless America No one ever complained
about it for all the 20 years he had it up until
this year when this principal said take it down
because it has a particular religious viewpoint.
And after negotiations with the principal, they
wouldn't budge. And so we filed a lawsuit on
his behalf in the district court, federal district
court in California. And where does that stand
now? Well, the lawsuit was just filed, so it's
a long way. If we don't pay attention nobody
will I guess it seems out there, you know, it's
just some of these things are so outrageous Well,
you know Abraham Lincoln said, you know, if we're
gonna be defeated it's not gonna be some foreign
army from across the ocean We're gonna defeat
ourselves. We're gonna die by suicide and it
seems that that That kind of thing is happening
in America more and more and Pogo said I've seen
the enemy, they is us. Yes. Well, we just all
have to pay attention. One of the advantages
of living in this great country is that we do
have such a diversity of opinion and what we
think is right and what we think is wrong, but
at least we can say it and nobody's going to
come to you and you're not going to just disappear.
Right. uh... like in so many other places well
for more information how would people get a hold
of of thomas more well they can visit our website
it's uh... w w w dot thomas more dot org there's
one oh and more and uh... if they have any information
uh... please feel free to contact us you rob
use or uh... brian rooney at area code seven
three four eight two seven two zero zero one
Okay, and we will get that put a link up on our
website for people to get that from the veterans
radio site and Please keep us posted on the status
of this case. We're very interested in this we'll
do we'll do appreciate it very much dick Thank
you very much for being on veterans radio my
pleasure. Thank you. Thank you We got another
big show coming up next. Yes, sir. Oh, yes, sir.
We do Yeah, it's one that I've been looking forward
to for many months Colonel Bud Day is the most
decorated officer in the United States. He holds
every combat medal from the Medal of Honor on
down. And he spent five and a half years in a
POW camp. He was a cellmate of John McCain and
he went on to help the retirees retain their
medical benefits because the government wanted
to cut off the medical benefits at the age 65
and saying, hey, just go on Medicare. And he
fought the battle and he lost the lawsuit but
he won the battle because Congress passed the
law giving a retired military uh... medicare
for life admitted medical treatment for life
uh... so uh... i'd i'm very excited to have him
on he's in a piece of amazing man his biography
is uh... uh... when you read it you say how how
could this man have have gone through all of
this treatment in the p of the camp he was tortured
daily for almost five years in the p of the camp
his is uh... His accomplishments are just absolutely
amazing. Throughout the entire time he was in
the POW camp, he was tortured and he never once
gave the North Vietnamese any useful information.
It was always just his name, rank, and serial
number. His mantra was to return with honor.
We're also going to have a special guest. John
McCain is going to be on to talk about Bud Day
and how he met and what they went through in
the camp. So I'm excited. I can tell. I can tell.
He's jumping out of his seat here, folks. Can
you tell I'm excited? He can't wait to do that.
You know, I wanted to just point out something
before I should have mentioned this when I was
talking with Dick Thompson is that one of the
members of their board at the Thomas Moore Law
Center is Rear Admiral Jeremiah Denton, who was
one of the longest held POWs. And I was thinking
when you're talking about Bud Day, you know,
how these people came back from that situation
and have gone on to live a very, you know, very
life obviously some of them had you know I'm
gonna talk about PTSD I would think that there
would be some issues going on there with some
of those guys mm -hmm but of course but days
is he's got many physical disabilities because
of the I know it's been five years all crunched
up because they broke his fingers numerous numerous
times yeah So I'm excited to talk about... It's
also interesting when a military person is taken
as a POW, his rank never changes while he's a
POW. It's when he comes home, he finds out, hey,
you got promoted three times while you were in
camp. Admiral Denton was that way because he
went in, I think, as a commander, and when he
came out, he was a two -star admiral. And all
of their promotions are classified, top secret,
until their return. It has to prevent them from
being mistreated because of their rank in the
POW camps. It makes certain sense. So make sure
that you tune in next week to Veterans Radio
to hear that incredible story. Coming up the
following week on the 19th, we're going to be
looking at the Okinawa invasion of World War
II, and we are looking for some survivors of
the Okinawa invasion. So please, if you know
of anybody who has been involved with that, give
us a call. at uh... veterans radio you can find
all the information on our website and then on
memorial day we want to tell some stories about
your personal heroes that unfortunately did not
make it home cuz that's what memorial day is
all about so we want you to uh... give us a call
at veterans radio or send us an email and will
be more than happy to tell your stories on the
air i guess that's about it we've got one thing
you want to say i understand that uh... i think
our guests bob good job on the board all our
new interns which will be meeting as we go along
the way On behalf of Veterans Radio and Ave Maria
Radio, you are dismissed.