by Nathaniel R. Helms |
July 21, 2010
This is the first in a three-part series.
Read part two here.
The third part is coming soon.
______________________________________________________
Retired Marine
Corps lieutenant colonel Jeffrey Chessani broke more than five
years of silence Tuesday to tell Defend Our Marines what it was
like to finally leave the Marine Corps he loves without ever being
entirely exonerated of failing to adequately investigate an alleged
massacre that never happened.
“Praise God, this has
taken care of everything,” Chessani said during an in-depth telephone
interview from his home near Camp Pendleton, California. In the
background the tiny voices of some of his seven children could
occasionally be heard.
After more than four
years of legal wrangling, Chessani was forced to retire last week
after Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus accepted a December 2009 ruling
by a Camp Pendleton military board of inquiry that found Chessani was
not guilty of misconduct after more than 23 years of exemplary
service. The BOI ruled Chessani must retire anyway because he
displayed “substandard performance” by failing to conduct a more
detailed investigation of the civilians killed…” as a result of a
house clearing counter-attack by four of his Marines.
The criminal charges
against Chessani were dismissed in June 2008 when Marine Corps
military judge Colonel Steven Folsom ruled that Chessani was the
victim of undue command influence by General James Mattis while the
distinguished general was considering whether to charge Chessani and
his men with crimes. After two appeals courts refused to overturn
Folsom’s ruling, Chessani was forced to endure a Board of Inquiry last
December to determine whether he would be allowed to retire at his
present rank.
I'm not bitter
During 2005 and 2006
Chessani commanded 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines
(3/1)--the Thundering Third--a reinforced infantry battalion of
roughly 1,900 Marines and attached Army and Iraqi units tasked with
pacifying 4,000 square miles of Al Anbar Province when the incident at
Haditha erupted on November 19, 2005.
“I’m not bitter. I am
not necessarily glad these things happened, but it worked out for the
best," Chessani
said. "I was
on my third deployment in three years and got prideful. I thought I
might be selected for a top level school and colonel so I decided to
give it a try. Before my third deployment we were looking at
retirement when I came back. The deployments were so hard of my
family. That was going to be the plan. Now we can do it.”
Chessani completed
his final day of active duty service on July 16, 2010, more than four
and a half years after he was charged with dereliction of duty and
orders violations for allegedly covering up the deaths of 24 Iraqi
citizens killed by Marines under his command at Haditha. The
Iraqis--including women and children--died in a Marine
counterattack after insurgents, hiding among them, triggered an IED
ambush that killed one passing Marine and left two others severely
wounded.
The IED ambush was
part of a coordinated city-wide insurgent attack that shattered the
morning dawn.
The embattled
Marines’ platoon leader ordered four men from the weakened squad to
clear houses of gun-wielding insurgents who were firing on the
Marines. The
coordinated counterattack took less than a minute to clear two houses
where the ambush was sprung, using rifle fire and grenades. The
infantrymen’s devastating textbook assault was straight out of Marine
Corps training manuals that didn’t address what to do when the enemy
is using innocent civilians for shields. That oversight would cost
Chessani and his Marines dearly.
On December 19, 2006,
after refusing multiple prosecution offers to accept non-judicial
punishment and early retirement instead of a career ending court
martial, Chessani was charged with dereliction of duty and two counts
of orders violations for failing to adequately investigate and report
the incident. By doing so he placed his retirement pension,
reputation, and family’s welfare on the line.
Isolate the force they want to destroy
“My Marines had done
nothing wrong. I had done nothing wrong. The regimental commander
Colonel [Stephen] Davis and Major General [Richard] Huck [2nd
Marine Div. commanding general] had all the information in their hands
by either the evening of the 19th or the next morning,” he
said. “My operations officer and S-2 [intelligence officer] then
personally briefed them at Haditha Dam a day or two later. We were
told we were doing a great job. We received notes of congratulations
from General Huck and other officers at division.”
Then everything
crashed down around his command, Chessani said. In late February it
became apparent that the senior commanders in Baghdad were looking for
scalps to appease a Time magazine reporter named Tim McGirk
that was hounding the senior commanders in the Green Zone with
allegations of murder and mayhem at Haditha by unrepentant 3/1
Marines. First an Army colonel came for a look, followed by a team of
investigators led by an Army major general, Chessani said. Meanwhile
the first of dozens of Naval Criminal Investigative Service special
agents began ruthless interrogations of the 3/1’s enlisted men in a
urine soaked dungeon beneath Haditha Dam. It was a text book effort of
divide and conquer.
“It was just like the
battlefield,” Chessani explained. “They [the Marine Corps prosecutors]
wanted to isolate the force they wanted to destroy. That is why they
did it. That is what Marines are taught. When I tried to explain, to
put the ambush at [Routes] Chestnut and Viper in context they said ‘I
don’t want to hear about that.’ All they wanted to know was what
happened at the IED site. There were several significant incidents
going on that day. We destroyed an insurgent safe house down the road
with bombs the same morning, turned it into dust. There could have
been civilians killed there. They didn’t care; they didn’t want to
hear about that. We found insurgents buried in shallow graves still in
their weapons and equipment. We had to bury dead insurgents wearing
ammunition vests because they started to stink. They didn’t want to
know how it was related to what happened on Viper and Chestnut. I had
a feeling there was an agenda.”
Chessani was the
highest ranking Marine charged with crimes stemming from the November
19, 2005 incident in the war-torn province. In addition to Chessani,
eight other Marines, five enlisted men and three officers serving
under him were charged with unpremeditated murder, manslaughter,
aggravated assault, dereliction of duty, lying to investigators and a
host of lesser offenses. Instead of taking the offer for a slap on the
hand so the Marine Corps could “throw them under a bus”, Chessani
chose to close ranks with them.
It was
not a tough decision to make, Chessani said. By then he knew that the
brotherhood which ostensibly binds all Marines together apparently
didn’t include the generals and colonels who were supposed to watch
out for the welfare of their men. Major General Richard Huck,
Chessani’s immediate superior, 2nd Regimental Combat Team
commander Colonel Stephen Davis and 2nd Marine Division
Chief of Staff Colonel Richard Sokoloski were already looking for
alibis.
The
most devastating day of my life
Ultimately both colonels
“took the 5th”
to avoid prosecution and Huck chose to claim ignorance, ensuring
Chessani and his men were going to become unwilling speed bumps in the
Marine Corps’ futile attempts to put its best face forward. Eventually
all three officers received letters of censure from the Secretary of
the Navy before they were allowed to retire with full rank and
benefits. Chessani knew what that meant for
him and so did his wife. It crushed her to see him and his brave
Marines pilloried, Chessani said.
Instead of promotions
and honors Chessani, now 46, and his eight subordinates were accused
of participating in the unprovoked massacre of 15 innocents and the
suspicious killings of at least nine suspected insurgents and then
conspiring to cover the incident up. A few months after the charges
were leveled on December 19, 2006, one enlisted Marine indicted for
murder and assault accepted immunity to testify against his squad
mates. Another enlisted Marine, never charged but frequently named as
a possible suspect, ended up working in a cushy billet for the
prosecution. As expected, he later surfaced long enough to testify
against his fellow Marines. It was a dirty business. In the end their
rambling, disconnected testimony was soundly discredited.
Now, more than four
and a half years later one enlisted Marine, Staff Sergeant Frank
Wuterich, the squad leader who led the counterattack against the two
houses where the civilians died, still faces 12 counts of involuntary
manslaughter. Wuterich’s court martial is scheduled to begin September
13th at Camp Pendleton.
The charges initially
surfaced in an inflammatory March 2006 Time magazine report
claiming Chessani’s Marines executed an unprovoked assault on two
houses harboring sleeping women and children in revenge for the IED
explosion near their homes. Relying primarily on the word and video
provided by two known insurgent operatives to make the charge, Time
reporter Tim McGirk painted a blood spattered scene full of cold
blooded Marine killers bent of revenge for the death of their comrade.
Privately, in a long stream of e-mails to various senior commanders
and public affairs officers in Baghdad McGirk claimed Chessani’s young
Marines had literally executed the victims after hunting them down
like rabbits. In the subsequent furor Chessani and his men were
singled out for more than three years of accusations, innuendo and
character assassination by the world press. Through it all Chessani
never uttered a public word.
“We heard McGirk
wanted to talk to us, to visit Haditha. I didn’t want to talk to the
guy but we invited him. After an ABC reporter--I believe Bob
Woodruff--was wounded by an IED (January 29, 2006) he said he wasn’t
going to come. We received an email that said he had no more interest
in coming. He never did.”
Apparently it didn’t
matter. McGirk wrote his specious stories anyway. They stirred up a
political firestorm. Taking their cue from the late Pennsylvania
Congressman John Murtha and a vociferous press, former President
George Bush and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld took a
special interest in seeing the Marines were prosecuted. Chessani said
he knew he was going to be relieved and probably court-martialed for
“something” when he got the word President Bush had asked for a
command briefing while the battalion was standing down at Haditha Dam
in February or March, 2006.
“When I was in
theater I heard they [the Marine Corps] were briefing the President of
the United States. I knew I was going to be relieved and probably
charged. I even told my X.O. [executive officer] to be standing by if
I was relieved. But I didn’t expect what happened. Some things I heard
second-hand, like: 'Don’t do anything to the Marines until after we
(senior Marine Corps commanders) have briefed Congress.’ I thought,
‘What does that have to do with the Marine Corps? They are not in my
chain of command.'"
In late March, soon
after the battalion returned to Camp Pendleton from Iraq, 1st
Marine Division Major General Richard F. Natonski summoned
Chessani and several members of the battalion staff to his office.
Chessani said he was expecting the call.
“They called me and
told me to bring Captain [Lucas] McConnell, the C.O. of Kilo Company
with me. Then they called again and told me to bring Captain [James]
Kimber, commander of India. I thought that was too much. I wondered
what they wanted him for. [When] I asked and they said they didn’t
know. I was also told to bring my X.O. and the Sergeant Major.”
The next
morning after a terse meeting with Natonski the three officers were
relieved of their commands. On April 7, 2006 the Marine Corps issued a
press release stating they were relieved "due to lack of confidence in
their leadership abilities stemming from their performance during a
recent deployment to Iraq."
“It was
the most devastating day of my life,” Chessani recalled.
After a
time, Chessani obtained civilian counsel to support his appointed
Marine Corps defense team. The Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, at the urging of law center associate and former Marine
Corps lawyer Brian Rooney, agreed to represent Chessani pro bono.
Its website (www.thomasmore.org) says the
advocacy law firm “defends and
promotes America’s Christian heritage and moral values, including the
religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the
sanctity of human life.” Rooney, a fellow Marine who served with
Chessani at the battle of Fallujah in 2004, said he was determined to
find justice for the brilliant Marine officer. Thomas More Law Center
provided a possible solution.
“It
really was a Godsend,” Chessani said. “I wasn’t expecting it. I didn’t
know Brian was at Thomas More. The letter saying they wanted to
represent me didn’t mention him; it just said it wanted to represent
me. I was grateful to accept their help. After that I didn’t talk to
anybody. I learned to trust God more than men.”
Rooney
has repeatedly said the pressure to prosecute Chessani and the other
Marines came from on high, at the level of the Commandant or higher.
In his view there is no other explanation for Natonski cashiering one
of the most experience infantry officers in the Marine Corps when they
are so desperately needed to fight the war. Chessani had spent almost
three years fighting in Iraq by the time he was dropped in the grease.
“I don’t
know and I probably never will know why,” Chessani said. “That was too
far above my pay grade.”
Rooney,
now running for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican from
Michigan, believed that the pressure to prosecute the Haditha Marines
came from a Defense Department so consumed by fears of bad press that
it allowed it warriors to be sacrificed on the altar of public
relations. Later revelations would prove his suspicions correct.
“It is
like playing a pickup basketball game with your big brother,” Rooney
reasoned. “You win so he says you have to play another game or he will
beat you up. You keep playing and winning until he finally wins. The
same thing happened to Chessani.”
Read part two of the
interview here.
Coming soon: Part III, The White Car and other mitigating
evidence that was never revealed.
__________________________________________
Nathaniel R. Helms
Defend Our Marines
21 July 2010
Note: Nat Helms is a Contributing Editor to Defend Our
Marines. He is a Vietnam veteran, former police officer, war
correspondent, and, most recently, author of
My Men Are My Heroes: The Brad Kasal Story (Meredith Books, 2007).
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Comment by Rose Jones on July 25, 2010 at 9:08pm 
Comment by Ronald Whaley on July 25, 2010 at 9:29pm 
Comment by Sandra Lee Smith on July 26, 2010 at 2:21am 
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