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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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September 24th, 2006 - A Silence
in the Afghan Mountains News
article by the Los Angeles Times |
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A Silence in the Afghan Mountains The concealment of two detainee deaths paints a troubling picture of
abuse by U.S. Special Forces units deployed to the country. A Times
Investigation. By Kevin Sack and Craig Pyes Los Angeles Times September 24, 2006 Gardez, Afghanistan - After
completing their deployment to this remote firebase, the Green Berets of ODA
2021 left for home covered in glory. The 10-member Special Forces
team, part of the Alabama National Guard, returned to their families in the
spring of 2003 with tales to tell of frenzied firefights and narrow escapes. Its commander had nominated
each of his men - as well as himself - for medals for valor. The team's
performance was heralded as evidence that the Guard could play as equals with
the regular Army in the war on terrorism. But the team also had come
home with secrets. Apparently unknown to Army
officials, two detainees had died in the team's custody in separate incidents
during the unit's final month in eastern Afghanistan. Several other detainees
allege that they were badly beaten or tortured while held at the base in
Gardez. One victim, an unarmed
peasant, was shot to death while being held for questioning after a fierce
firefight. The other, an 18-year-old Afghan army recruit, died after being
interrogated at the firebase. Descriptions of his injuries were consistent
with severe beatings and other abuse. A member of the Special
Forces team told The Times his unit held a meeting after the teen's death to
coordinate their stories should an investigation arise. "Everybody on the team
had knowledge of it," the soldier said, insisting on anonymity.
"You just don't talk about that stuff in the Special Forces community.
What happens downrange stays downrange…. Nobody wants to get anybody in
trouble. Just sit back, and hope it will go away." What distinguishes these two
fatalities from scores of other questionable deaths in U.S. custody is that
they were successfully concealed - not just from the American public but from
the military's chain of command and legal authorities. The deaths came to light
only after an investigation by The Times and a nonprofit educational
organization, the Crimes of War Project, led the Army to open criminal
inquiries on the incidents. Two years later, the cases remain under
investigation and no charges have been filed. The Times has since reviewed
thousands of pages of internal military records showing that prisoner abuse
by Special Forces units was more common in Afghanistan than previously
acknowledged. More than a year before the
Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal broke in Iraq, top officers worried that
harsh treatment and excessive detentions could lead to criminal prosecutions. In one November 2002
correspondence, a high-ranking Special Operations official said military
police were detecting "an extremely high level of physical abuse"
of detainees transferred from Special Forces field bases to a prison in
Bagram. An operations officer with
the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, the command supervising
Special Forces teams in Afghanistan, complained in a memo that prisoners were
being held for so long without charges that it "may be implied as
kidnapping, a federal crime." Early in 2003, the chief
Special Forces intelligence officer in Afghanistan warned in a note to the
task force commander, Col. James G. "Greg" Champion, and his top
aides: "As you are all aware, alleged assaults and kidnapping [have]
been occurring for quite some time. Again, I want to emphasize, this is not
isolated." The same officer reported
another improper detention less than two weeks later, notifying Champion's
staff in a memo that reflected his exasperation. "Today is Day 5 of this
hostage crisis," wrote the intelligence officer, Maj. David Davis. He
said that such unauthorized detentions amounted to "criminal conduct in
my book." There also were early
warnings from outside sources about prisoner mistreatment. In a series of meetings that
began in late 2002, officials with the International Committee of the Red
Cross told top U.S. commanders in Afghanistan that they had fielded a rash of
detainee abuse reports involving at least five Special Forces firebases,
according to previously undisclosed military documents. The Red Cross
representatives protested that the bases had, in effect, become short-term
detention centers, without adequately trained personnel or effective
monitoring, said several U.S. officials with knowledge of the meetings. Most of the bases singled
out by the agency were under the control of National Guardsmen with the
Alabama-based 20th Special Forces Group. The compound at Gardez, then
occupied by ODA 2021, was portrayed as one of the worst. Detainees there
alleged they were beaten, kicked, immersed in icy water and deprived of sleep
for days at a time. The Army declined to comment
on the cases involving ODA 2021 or more generally on allegations of detainee
abuse. Special Forces firebases in
Afghanistan - often the first stop in a detainee's journey to a holding
facility and possibly on to the prison at Guantanamo Bay - operated largely
beyond the reach of human rights monitors, journalists and, at times, the
military chain of command. Because of their clandestine
nature, Special Forces operations have been a concern to some in Congress and
the State Department who worry that human rights violations could be
occurring under a cloak of secrecy. The handling of detainees in
Afghanistan became a murky area after President Bush declared early in the
war, launched in October 2001, that the Geneva Convention would not be
applied to Al Qaeda, and Taliban captives would not be treated as prisoners
of war. Instead, detainees were to be treated "humanely," according
to a February 2002 White House directive. The internal military
records show that although senior U.S. commanders in Afghanistan issued
warnings and distributed rules consistent with the Army field manual and
Geneva Convention, those procedures were routinely ignored. "You have so much
freedom and authority over there," one member of ODA 2021 said. "It
kind of makes you feel like God when you're out there in cowboy and Indian
country." The documents also show that
in 2003 the leadership of ODA 2021 was repeatedly criticized by its
superiors. One 20th Group officer said the Gardez ODA (for Operational
Detachment Alpha) was "the most troubled" field team among nearly a
dozen in Afghanistan. Another senior officer expressed concern in a note that
the team was gaining a reputation as "a rogue unit." That a small Special Forces
detachment could be tied to two detainee deaths and two apparent cover-ups in
less than two weeks reflected an almost perfect confluence of circumstances.
They included the personality of the team, the unaccountability of its
leadership, the evolution of U.S. policy on detentions, the failure of United
Nations officials to report abuses, and the complicity of Afghan officials. The story of the team's
deployment, like the five-year American campaign in Afghanistan itself, is a
tale of high-stakes but often conflicting goals. For the men of ODA 2021, it
would be a place and time in which questionable deaths and unquestionable
daring were all part of the same mission. Hotel Gardez The shooting war was supposedly
over when about 300 National Guardsmen of the 20th Group's 1st Battalion
arrived in Afghanistan nine months after the December 2001 ouster of the
Taliban regime. Nonetheless, it was a dangerous and chaotic time. Al Qaeda and the Taliban
were in flight, but not vanquished. The new government was trying to stand
up, but it was still wobbly. And, much like today, the U.S. military
struggled to balance the sometimes incompatible missions of combat and
reconstruction. As this latest rotation of
U.S. Special Forces hit the ground, much of the countryside remained beyond
the control of the newly installed government of interim President Hamid
Karzai. It would fall to Special
Forces teams such as ODA 2021 to root out Al Qaeda and Taliban stragglers and
unearth caches of weapons. In Paktia, the province that includes Gardez, the
task was complicated by byzantine local politics. Tribal warlords and bandits
had skirmished for centuries over the inhospitable terrain along the porous
border with Pakistan. They had only been emboldened by the power vacuums and
shifting alliances created after the U.S.-led invasion. As in centuries past, power
and wealth in the region flowed to those who controlled the trade routes. In
2002, that meant controlling 17 longtime checkpoints along about 50 miles of
dusty mountain road between the provincial capitals of Khowst and Gardez.
Both of the detainee deaths linked to ODA 2021 came as a consequence of
efforts to pacify that perilous route. For the Americans, securing
the checkpoints would help them detect militants' movements and ensure the
free passage of troops and supplies. For the warlords, who were regularly
accused of extorting cash or produce from truck drivers, the checkpoints
afforded a means to pay and feed their militias. The Green Berets were
prepared to remove illegally operated checkpoints by force, but Pentagon
planners regarded the problem as a local political dispute that should be
handled by the Afghans. Besides, the U.S. military was under pressure to move
from combat operations to a reconstruction phase aimed at winning hearts and
minds. The stakes could not have
been higher for Col. Champion, commander of the 20th Special Forces Group.
Not only was the Army counting on his National Guard troops to perform like
active-duty professionals, but Champion also had been placed in charge of the
Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force. It was the first time since
the Korean War that a National Guard unit held command over all U.S. Special
Forces in wartime. If Champion succeeded, a general's star awaited his lapel. The 20th, with about 1,600
members, is one of the Army's seven active Special Forces groups, and one of
only two consisting of National Guard troops. ODA 2021 belonged to the 1st
Battalion, based in Huntsville, Ala., and its 10 members came from five
Southern states. Some were longtime friends
and neighbors, like Sgt. 1st Class Dan L. Smith, a world-class judo
competitor who ran a gym outside Nashville, and Sgt. 1st Class Scott
Barkalow, a locomotive engineer. Though many of the guardsmen had drilled
together for years, most would be seeing their first combat. The team leader, Capt.
Michael M. May, 35, was a decorated Kentucky state trooper who had a cop's
respect for procedure and the chain of command. A father of two, he was
cautious and regarded the Special Forces as ambassadors who were helping the
Afghans reclaim their country. Though some of his men were eager to round up
bad guys, May focused on the team's broader mission of training Afghan
troops. "I'm going to be the
one to write the letter to your kids if you get hurt or killed," he
would tell his teammates. Some clearly felt May was
too passive, especially as conditions in the area deteriorated. They "wanted
[us] to grab our guns and drive out the door and go do it," one team
member recalled. In Gardez, the dusty
provincial capital nearly a mile and a half above sea level, the ODA settled
into an adobe fort the size of a football field. They called it Hotel Gardez.
It was surrounded by 25-foot mud walls and had an elevated latrine accessible
only by ladder. The region was endlessly
brown, parched by drought. Being stationed there, one U.S. soldier said, was
like "living in a gravel pit." The fortress came under
regular attack, most often by Taliban loyalists lobbing missiles from a pair
of nearby hilltops. One day, a shell exploded in a cemetery behind the fort
and the soldiers watched dogs fight over the bones of unearthed remains. Army regulations at the base
were relaxed. The guardsmen wore bushy beards and civilian clothing, a look
intended to ease their approach to locals. They also adorned the grille of a
red Toyota truck with a James Brown doll, thrilling local children when, at
the press of a button, it sang out: "Whoa! I feel good!" The Warlord From their earliest days in
Gardez, the members of ODA 2021 bristled at being kept on a short leash. They
were particularly eager to mount an offensive against their primary nemesis,
a renegade warlord named Pacha Khan Zadran. In an assessment sent to
headquarters shortly after its arrival, the team's leaders labeled the
warlord "a thug" and asked permission "to take a much stronger
stance" against him. Pacha Khan was an imposing
figure. With heavy eyebrows, a thick dyed mustache and trademark bandolier,
he resembled a Pashtun Pancho Villa. As the leader of the Zadran
tribe, he commanded 300 to 600 armed men and, with American backing, had
helped fight the Taliban. He also controlled various checkpoints along the
Khowst road. CIA and Special Forces
operatives who dealt with Pacha Khan (or PKZ, as they called him), described
him as brutish, mercurial and unstable. "I thought he was a windbag and
a bully and just out for the money," said one U.S. intelligence analyst. But Pacha Khan's stature
grew when he became one of the signatories to the December 2001 Bonn
agreement that formed the transitional Afghan government. Karzai rewarded his
support by naming him governor of Paktia, then rescinded the decision after
Afghan military commanders in Gardez refused to cede power to the warlord. Pacha Khan responded by
furiously bombarding Gardez in the spring of 2002. American forces were
caught in the middle of the rocket attacks and the policy confusion over how
to deal with the warlord. CIA operatives and Special
Forces tacticians hatched a number of plans to capture and imprison him, but
senior officials in Washington always resisted. The havoc he wrought was exactly
the kind of intra-Afghan dispute that the Defense Department insisted should
be dealt with by the Karzai government. Denied its preferred option,
the CIA tried intimidation. As Pacha Khan was leaving a confrontational
meeting at the Gardez firebase, intelligence officials arranged for three
jets to buzz the compound in a display of American might. The low-level
flyover sent the warlord diving beneath his car, toppling his turban,
according to a witness. Then U.S. officials embraced
a plan by Gen. Atiqullah Lodin, an Afghan military commander, to pay Pacha
Khan's checkpoint commanders to defect to the government. Lodin said in an
interview that the CIA put up the cash. Military correspondence shows that
the agency contributed at least $100,000. One who defected for dollars
was the commander of the strategic Sato Kandaw checkpoint, Ahmad Naseer, who
told The Times the CIA gave him $3,000 and a pickup truck. He said an agent
photographed him accepting the payoff. By November, however, ODA
2021 had begun receiving reports that the checkpoint shakedowns had resumed. The team's patience was
already wearing thin when, on the morning of Nov. 27, 2002, a unit convoy was
ambushed while passing through a steep draw on the Khowst road. The soldiers
had just picked up the 1st Battalion commander, Lt. Col. Steven W. Duff, who
was headed to Gardez for a Thanksgiving visit despite warnings about security
along the road. "We told him if he
wants to come see us, take a helicopter - don't come down the Khowst
road," a team member recalled. But Duff insisted. As his red Toyota sped
through the kill zone, a sniper round slammed through Duff's left thigh. Smith and Sgt. 1st Class
Jason Howard ran off the snipers, and Duff was evacuated by helicopter.
Indebted to the team, he recommended Smith and Howard, the team's senior
medic, for the Bronze Star. The team took it personally
that its battalion commander had been wounded while in its care. After Pacha
Khan quickly emerged as the prime suspect, the ODA redoubled its efforts to
have him listed as a high-value target. But the warlord was
considered "a pseudo political figure" - untouchable unless they
could tie him to the Taliban or Al Qaeda, according to an official of the
Special Operations task force. If they could, he wrote, "the ballgame
changes completely." He concluded: "We do
not want to get in the middle of Afghan politics, even if he is a shithead
who deserves to spend a decade or two at Gitmo." ‘Smear Campaign’ Five days after Duff was
shot, a commando task force made an unexpected visit to the Gardez firebase
in pursuit of a top-tier target believed to be in the area. The complex mission called
for ODA 2021 to join the operation, but no one had bothered to inform the
team. The team's commander, Capt. May, refused to go along because of
inadequate planning, according to several 20th Group officials and documents
reviewed by The Times. May's refusal infuriated the
Delta Force officer in charge of the commando task force, the officials said.
A month later, on his way out of the country, the officer delivered a
four-page memo to Special Operations officials, in effect accusing May of
cowardice and dereliction of duty. At Champion's request, Duff
looked into the accusations. Though he ultimately dismissed them as unfounded
and "a smear campaign," he learned that many on May's team
considered him a tentative leader, more focused on bringing his men home
alive than on attacking the enemy. Duff reassigned May to the battalion's
operations center in neighboring Uzbekistan. Though Duff insisted that
the transfer was unrelated to the criticism, May saw the reassignment as
"a career-ending thing," said one 20th Group colleague. "Mike
was stressed about this," the colleague said. He "was
devastated." In an interview, Duff said
he had intended to transfer May anyway to season him for promotion. May, who
referred requests for an interview to the 20th Group public affairs office,
was in fact promoted to major and given a company command after returning to
the U.S. May's removal heartened
those on the team who wanted to conduct more "posse operations" in
the manner of the Army's Delta Force and the Navy's SEALs. "This was an
aggressive, door-kicking bunch," said one 20th Group official, "and
Mike May was the control rod." Bamian Mutiny More than 100 miles to the
northwest, in Bamian, another Green Beret team was having its own leadership
problems. For many in ODA 2015, Chief Warrant Officer Kenneth C. Waller,
their team commander, was too hungry for a fight and had a habit of planning
risky missions without their input. Waller was not a weekend
warrior but a full-time National Guardsman. He worked at 20th Group
headquarters in Birmingham and was perceived by many to be Col. Champion's
"golden child." He declined to be interviewed for this article. Late in November 2002,
Waller's team discovered a large cache of weapons in the nearby Kahmard
Valley. They linked it to a warlord suspected of supporting Al Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden. Waller carried the news
directly to Champion's command, bypassing his 1st Battalion superiors. He
argued for a full assault on the area, peppering his entreaties with
reminders of 9/11 and imploring commanders to "think war." His end runs, and his
flamboyant prose, incensed Waller's superiors at headquarters. They were so
annoyed by his tendency to act on his own that they marked his periodic
sightings on a wall map, calling the exercise "Where's Waller?" The team leader had trouble
within his own ranks as well. The Bamian unit's senior noncommissioned
officer, Master Sgt. Pasquale "Jim" Russo, sent a defiant note to
battalion officials in December openly challenging Waller's proposal to raid
an area that was thick with enemy fighters. "I can't think of many more
principles of combat that we have not violated," Russo said of the plan. The operation was
temporarily scrubbed, redesigned and its planning assigned to a different
team. Not long after Russo's complaint,
a sizable contingent of the 2015 team let battalion leaders know they
preferred not to serve under Waller, several members said. It was an almost
unthinkable act of mutiny. After Maj. Tony Wheeler, a
top 1st Battalion official, arrived in Bamian in early January to head the
provincial reconstruction team there, he reported to Duff that the trust
between Waller and his men had deteriorated beyond repair. "The team
seems to see Ken as a loose canon [sic] who might get them killed for no reason,"
he wrote. Duff relieved Waller of his
command in Bamian and ordered him to Gardez as Capt. May's replacement.
Champion signed off on the transfer. However, Duff acknowledged making the
decision over the warnings of his own staff. His aides cautioned that Waller
would be even less controllable in Gardez and that inserting him into the
conflict with Pacha Khan might make things combustible. "It was like throwing a
match into gasoline," one Special Forces official said. Chaotic Mission Back in Gardez, ODA 2021 was
between commanders on the night of Feb. 6, 2003, when the team set out on a
"snatch mission." The plan was to swoop into the nearby village of
Neknam and seize two men suspected of having ties to the Taliban. The first was taken without
incident. But before team members could grab the second, they came under
intense fire that left two soldiers pinned against a wall. The team responded
with small arms and hand grenades. Because the leaderless team
had failed to file proper operational plans, headquarters had no idea who was
in command on the ground. To those monitoring radio communications from the
scene, it appeared that U.S. forces might be attacking one another in the
dark. That also made it unsafe to call in airstrikes to help end the battle. Both suspects were finally
captured, but almost immediately the team was blistered with high-level
criticism. "As you can imagine,
this makes everyone in this unit look like amateurs and incompetent as
well," Lt. Col. Robert E. Biller, a top Special Operations task force
official, wrote to 20th Group counterparts. Biller characterized the chaotic
mission as a "goatscrew." Col. Champion promptly
confined the team to its base. Then he and his staff set out to control the
damage. Champion personally briefed Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill, commander of
U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. Champion's aides later reported he had
succeeded in stressing the intelligence value of the captured detainees
rather than the team's blunders. "Things have died
down," Maj. Jeff Pounding, a Special Operations task force official,
wrote to subordinates in the 1st Battalion the following day. "We turned
the emphasis of operation of a 'rogue team' to a 'time-sensitive PUC
operation.' " PUC, or "person under U.S. control," was
shorthand for detainee. But the missteps continued.
Two days after the raid, the team in Gardez transferred two detainees to the
Bagram Collection Point, a U.S. holding facility. The detainees arrived
"bagged," their mouths taped and hoods secured around their necks, according
to military documents. "As you well
know," Pounding wrote to battalion officials, "this is a
significant violation of the PUC handling procedures. Bagram detention
facility may be doing an investigation." Red Cross Warnings There should have been
little confusion over detainee policy among members of the 20th Special
Forces Group. Champion had distributed the Army's guidelines when the 20th
deployed to Afghanistan, and they had been reissued when reports of abuse
first made their way to headquarters. Only detainees found to meet
Pentagon criteria for prolonged imprisonment, such as those with clear ties
to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, were to be transferred to Bagram. Fearing that
innocents might wind up at Guantanamo, Gen. McNeill had stressed to subordinates
that he wanted terrorists, not truck drivers and farmers, said a civilian
military advisor. But it wasn't always easy
for soldiers to tell the difference. Given the constant threat of ambush,
their instinct often was to detain first and ask questions later. The
Pentagon criteria provided plenty of latitude, allowing the detention of any
suspects "who pose a threat" or "who may have intelligence
value." There was supposed to be a
96-hour limit on battlefield detentions. Sometimes prisoner transfers to
Bagram were delayed because helicopters weren't available. But at other
times, one 20th Group official said, Special Forces teams extended their
prisoners' stays in hopes of extracting better intelligence. State Department officials
in Afghanistan said the teams seemed not to care that their door-kicking
roundups and prolonged detentions might stoke local resentment even as the
Army was trying to build bridges. "They felt … there was
carte blanche to carry out actions and there would be little repercussion if
they made tactical mistakes," said a State Department official who asked
not to be named. By the end of 2002, the Red
Cross had relayed early complaints of prisoner mistreatment to top U.S.
military officials in Afghanistan. On Jan. 10, 2003, officials of the
organization met with Gen. McNeill's staff, describing the 20th Group's
firebases as some of the worst offenders. Two weeks after the Red
Cross meeting in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld convened a
working group in Washington to recommend whether the list of approved
anti-terrorism interrogation methods should be expanded. McNeill asked his
various intelligence-gathering units to assess the techniques that were in
use in Afghanistan. Despite the Red Cross
allegations, the 1st Battalion's chief intelligence officer reported back
that there were no problems. "I have not witnessed any abuse or
maltreatment of PUCs," Capt. Steven D. Perry wrote. "When they
detain a person, I have faith that it is for a very good reason." On Jan. 24, 2003, McNeill's
command reported on its interrogation techniques in a memo to the Pentagon.
The list conformed to the Army field manual's approved battlefield methods,
but the memo also requested approval of "more aggressive, creative and
flexible techniques." The wish list included food
deprivation for up to 24 hours, sensory overload through loud music and
extreme temperature changes and the use of muzzled dogs to create
"controlled fear." Some of the requested procedures might need to
be assessed for compliance with Pentagon rules for humane treatment, the memo
acknowledged. However, according to the
Red Cross, many of the more coercive techniques were already being used at
some of the firebases. Blood and Grudge ODA 2021's new commander took
charge in Gardez on Feb. 7 as recriminations were still flying from the
"time-sensitive PUC operation" in Neknam. For a team chafing at the
second-guessing of its missions, Waller's arrival was a welcome relief. "He wanted to be
aggressive," said one team member. "We knew he had problems with
his other team, but he fit right in with us." Another team member said
Waller quickly won respect. "He seemed very competent and certainly
wasn't afraid in combat," he said. In mid-February, only 12 days after he
had taken command, Waller and his team were returning from patrol along a
road blanketed with 5 inches of snow. The red Toyota - the same truck Duff
had been shot in - rumbled along in the middle of a five-vehicle convoy. Staff Sgt. Mark
"Marco" Deliz, a team engineer from Oneonta, Ala., tried to steer
precisely through the tread marks carved by the two vehicles ahead. But his
front right tire strayed a few inches and hit a land mine. The explosion blew the truck
6 feet into the air, military reports said. Watching in horror from the
vehicle behind, Waller could not imagine that anyone had survived. With blood streaming down
his face, Deliz stumbled out the driver's door, brushing the remains of a
foot from his lap. It belonged to his teammate and passenger, Barkalow, the
40-year old intelligence sergeant from Burns, Tenn. Deliz determined that
Barkalow was still alive and gestured for someone to radio for a helicopter.
Staff Sgt. Philip S. Abdow, a junior medic who had joined the team six weeks
earlier, wrapped what remained of Barkalow's right leg. After the unnerving
incident, the medic accompanied Barkalow on his helicopter evacuation. Abdow
reportedly acted so frantically during the flight, barking orders and
cursing, that the copter crew later complained to Special Operations
officials. He was recalled to battalion
headquarters for evaluation before being cleared to return to the field,
according to a 20th Group officer familiar with the incident. Abdow did not
respond to requests for an interview. By several accounts, the
attack had a profoundly sobering effect on the team. Before the explosion,
members had merely been frustrated by political constraints on their
activities. Now they shared Barkalow's loss - and some nursed an abiding
grudge. "You get mad when you
see your buddies blown up," one team member said. "You stay pissed
off about it." About this series "Firebase Gardez"
examines the deployment to Afghanistan of a decorated Alabama National Guard unit.
It is the result of a yearlong investigation in the U.S. and Afghanistan by
Times staff writer Kevin Sack and freelance investigative journalist Craig
Pyes. It was written by Sack. Pyes, a two-time Pulitzer
Prize winner and frequent contributor to the newspaper, reported from
Afghanistan jointly for The Times and the Crimes of War Project, a
Washington-based nonprofit that describes itself as "a collaboration of
journalists, lawyers and scholars dedicated to raising public awareness of
the laws of war." In 2004, the group provided The Times with the first
evidence of an unreported Afghan death in U.S. custody and joined with the
newspaper to investigate further. That led to a military inquiry by the
Army's Criminal Investigation Command that continues today. The Times reviewed thousands
of pages of internal military documents to reconstruct the period when a
10-member Special Forces combat team called ODA 2021 (for Operational
Detachment Alpha) was assigned to the Gardez firebase. Every member of the team was
contacted. Most declined to be interviewed or referred reporters to public
affairs officers. The Army and all of its subordinate commands - the U.S.
Central Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, Army Special Forces
Command, 20th Special Forces Group and the Alabama National Guard - declined
to comment. Times researchers Nona Yates
and Janet Lundblad contributed to these reports. External link:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-torture24sep24,0,6220615,full.story |