Posted on 07/17/2007 7:27:48 PM PDT by RedRover
Former Cpl Josh Karlen
A former Marine from Kilo Company wounded at Haditha, Iraq on the day of the alleged massacre told Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigators he saw Kalashnikov assault rifles propped against a white taxicab next to the bodies of five Iraqi men killed when the fighting started. His report contradicts prosecution contentions that the Iraqis were innocent civilians.
Joshua Cash Karlen, 23, from Westminster, Colorado, said Monday that he is positive he saw the weapons while he was being evacuated from the battlefield. The following spring Karlen says he reported his observations to NCIS investigators while being interrogated by two special agents.
"They grilled me over why I was there, why I was driving through the cordon and what I saw," Karlen said. "I was in there for about four hours."
Karlen says he repeatedly told the two agents what he witnessed at the ambush site.
"The area was cordoned off when we drove by," Karlen said in a telephone interview from his home. "I was hit by a grenade and had a severe concussion so I had to be evacuated out. I was on the south side of Chestnut (code name for the road running on the south side of the ambush site) being driven through the cordon. We were going real slow so I could see a white car, a pile of bodies, and weapons piled against the car. There were three or four AKs stacked leaning against a white car and some Marines were standing around."
Despite a lengthy interview Karlen’s statement was never included in the evidence obtained by the defense, according to defense attorney Brian Rooney. The former Marine Corps Staff Judge Advocate represents Lt. Col Jeffrey Chessani. Chessani is the former commander of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. Chessani is currently waiting to discover if he will stand general courts-martial over his role in Kilo’s alleged murder rampage.
"This is the first I have ever heard of this!" Rooney exclaimed.
Rooney said the NCIS failure to provide Karlen’s eyewitness account to Marine Corps prosecutors was a "very serious omission" that undoubtedly harmed his client’s case.
Karlen’s testimony is absolutely essential to the defense, Rooney added. The outspoken defense attorney is at a loss to understand why Karlen’s statement was never introduced into evidence, he said.
"We could never put any weapons with the Iraqis who were killed by the cab," Rooney explained Monday night. "This evidence is crucial to prove the men in the cab were armed insurgents. Early on there were reports they had weapons, but the weapons were never found."
Last week Col. Christopher Conlin, the officer presiding over Chessani’s Article 32 hearing, recommended the career infantryman face general courts-martial because he "failed to thoroughly and accurately report and investigate a combat engagement that clearly needed scrutiny."
"The irony is almost overwhelming," a very senior Marine noted Tuesday morning.
Karlen’s observations contradict prosecution assertions that the five men were unarmed Iraqi civilians who meandered into the ambush site only to be gunned down in cold blood by Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich and Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz. Wuterich stands accused of gunning down the Iraqis in retaliation for the gruesome killing of Lance Corporal Miguel "T.J." Terrazas on November 19, 2005 by an IED ambush. Dela Cruz was granted immunity to testify against him. The prosecution alleges Wuterich and two other Kilo Marines then rampaged through a nearby group of houses executing 19 more innocent civilians. Seven other Marines who were with them as well were later granted immunity from prosecution.
Karlen said he was interrogated by two NCIS Special Agents at Camp Pendleton after returning from home leave following the battalion’s return in late March, 2006. He was summoned to regimental headquarters sometime in April or early May along with almost every enlisted man in Kilo who was at Haditha, Karlen said. At the time he was assigned the guard detail providing security to regimental headquarters at Camp Horno, the 1st Marines lodgment area on Camp Pendleton.
By the time Karlen was interrogated he felt sure the NCIS agents already knew "everything" about the incident and just want to see what he was going to say about it. They told Karlen they wanted to talk to him because he had actually been at the alleged crime scene. They repeatedly asked him what he had seen and why he was there, Karlen said.
"There were two NCIS guys. The young one was friendly and the old guy was gruff. The young one would ask me questions for awhile, talk about surfing; how did I like Pendleton - that stuff. And then the old one would come in and say he had to ask something and he would sound sort of mean and angry. He would try and be intimidating. It was the good cop – bad cop routine.
"I kept telling them I was wounded and had a concussion and was just riding by. I kept telling them what I saw and why I was there and then they would ask me again. They acted like they didn’t believe me. I told them all I wanted was to get out of the Corps and was this going to keep me in somehow. Once they realized I don’t have anything they wanted they let me go."
During the Haditha incident Karlen was an assaultman assigned to Kilo Company’s Weapons Platoon. He was standing watch at the same Combat Observation Post - C.O.P. - as former Corporal Joe Haman, another Kilo Marine who witnessed the attack on Wuterich’s squad. Their position was about 600 meters from the ambush site. Wuterich’s patrol had just delivered the morning rations and supplies before they got hit. By lunch time Karlen would be wounded in desperate combat with insurgents near the same site, he said.
The Marines' legal problems began when Time Magazine published an account in March, 2005 claiming 24 Iraqi civilians, including the five men killed by the white taxicab, were innocent Iraqis. Reporter Tim McGirk wrote that the five men in the taxi were mercilessly gunned down by Marines while on their way to school. They were the first to die in retaliation for an IED attack the patrol had just endured, McGirk claimed.
Karlen has an entirely different take on the incident, he says. He was on guard duty on top of a building when he heard a loud boom. He didn’t know what had happened except it came from the direction Wuterich’s four-HUMVEE patrol had just taken. The IED explosion was followed by a strong exchange of gunshots, he said.
"It was blatantly obvious somebody was getting hit," Karlen said. "Corporal Haman was the senior Marine NCO on the C.O.P. so he could hear the radios, know what all was happening. I didn’t know anything except there was a firefight going on and we were going out."
Then it grew relatively quiet for a few minutes. The talk later on was the ambushed Marines had to regroup, Karlen said.
"They had to figure out where the fire was coming from and collect their wounded. Wuterich came out of the School of Infantry. He was a good Marine. He was an instructor. They teach other guys so he had to be a good Marine. The guys who were with him said he did exactly right. All the time there were gunshots going off all over the place. I couldn’t distinguish what kind of weapons were firing. I was gearing up so I wasn’t paying that much attention. Gunfire is always going off in Iraq."
About 30 minutes later they were told to proceed to some houses down the road that were reportedly occupied by insurgents, Karlen said. After a two minute run their 12-man squad stopped in front of some houses where headquarters thought the insurgents were hiding. Without hearing the radio traffic Karlen didn't know they were from the same group that ambushed Wuterich's patrol. He wouldn't learn anything about that for several months, he said.
At the time he thought his patrol was part of a larger operation because there were groups of insurgents running all over the place, he said. There was gunfire erupting everywhere, he said. All he knew for sure about Wuterich’s patrol was that somebody’s "kill number" had been put out over the radio so he knew a Marine was dead, he explained.
After the squad cleared the first house they came to with grenades, Karlen split up from Haman's team and went on the other side of the building with Lt. Zall, Sgt. Raphael, the Navy corpsmen and several other Marines. He was standing about 15 feet from Lt Zall and the corpsmen a few minutes later when Iraqi insurgents hiding on the roof of the adjacent building attacked them with a grenade barrage. The attack erupted when a grenade dropped from the roof and exploded about five feet from Lt. Zall and the corpsman. Karlen sustained a serious concussion in the blast, he said.
"I saw the lieutenant and corpsman get hit so we ran out and pulled them into the house under cover. Lt. Zall was hit in both his legs and the corpsman was hurt pretty bad as well. They both had broken legs," Karlen said.
Meanwhile Karlen's team lost contact with Haman and his fire team. All he knew was that some of the Marines he was with went on the roof of the first house to get a better position to counterattack the Iraqi grenadiers. He was worried about his friend Haman and the other Marines in the squad.
"It isn't good to get in a cross-fire between friendlies," he said.
Immediately the fight grew in intensity. It rapidly escalated turned into a "grenade free-for-all," Karlen said.
"Grenades were going off all over the place. I don't know how many grenades were thrown. Almost everybody got wounded. Then we used flares to get back in contact. It was just a vicious firefight," Karlen said
Then the ORF (Quick Reaction Force) showed up, Karlen added. His team eventually ran across the road and joined up with Haman’s group and the reinforcements. By then almost all the Marines were wounded to some degree, Karlen said. After they regrouped he joined other Kilo Marines who went on the roof on still another house to engage the Iraqi insurgents. Karlen stayed there firing on the insurgents until he was ordered to the rear to receive medical attention.
"We overpowered them with our medium machine guns. The QRF was lighting up the buildings with the two-forties (M-240G 7.62 mm medium machine gun)," Karlen said. "They didn’t have nothing to stand up to our firepower.
"And that is about where the war ended for me. I had a pretty bad concussion and they said I had to be evacuated. That is why I was driven past the cordon. Everything else I learned about talking to Kilo Marines when I got back to Camp Pendleton."
Today Karlen lives in a suburb of Denver. He was married last November and has a newborn son. He is currently employed by a private security company guarding the Federal offices in the Denver area. Karlen eventually hopes to return to school to obtain a business degree and open his own company. Karlen father served six years in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, including combat operations in Southeast Asia.
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This is the second of two-part article. The first part is posted here: Firefight in Haditha: An eyewitness account
NCIS needs to either be closed and started all over again or cleaned out completely starting at the top. Oh move it OUT of the lib cesspool of DC......
For your ping list, freema. Thanks for all the good work you are doing to protect the reputations of these fine men (and women).
MORE!
>> “This is the first I have ever heard of this!” Rooney exclaimed.
That’s a big find.
>> Karlen’s observations contradict prosecution assertions that the five men were unarmed Iraqi civilians who meandered into the ambush site only to be gunned down in cold blood by Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich and Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz.
It’s amazing how Iraqi children new the ambush was set, but 5 dopey Iraqi adults ‘meandered’ into the ambush completely unaware of what was going on. I think not.
SECNAVY Winters needs to wake up and smell the coffee. He has denied requests for probes into NCIS malfeasance and incompetence.
Meanwhile, the agency has become a complete embarrassment and is a discredit to the UCMJ.
Every Marine, every parent of a Marine, should be aware of just how serious this situation is.
Excuse me, I have to go puke.
I’m tellin’ ya Red... Take a close look at the leaked pic of the dead guys laying by the white car. I SWEAR there are photo-shopped blurred areas near the bodies...
Okay Okay - I’m on “pregnant daughter labor countdown” and might be too hyped up but the way things have been going in this case, NOTHING would surprise me!!!!!
Hate to say it, but with "leaders" like Bush, Petraeus, Conway, Hagee, and Mattis who allow this kind of disgusting travesty of a prosecution to drag on and on and on and on, I can't blame this Marine, not at all. The problem is not with the warriors in the field, it's with the mice "in the rear with the gear", who are more worried about sensitivity training, "rules of engagement", Marines ratting out their brothers-in-arms, "battlefield ethics", and political correctness than they are with destroying the enemy.
Sometimes I wonder if this country is on its last legs.
Thank you!
Who took that photo? Was it TIME, some Iraqi “civil rights” activist, NCIS, or anybody else of that ilk who would photo shop the image to help the scumbag ACLU lawyers of JAG railroad the accused Marines?
This is insane. Withholding relevant witness testimony from the defense. Guess they know all the good tricks. Testimony doesn’t fit your preconceived notion of what you think happened? Throw it out.
You and me both, Lancey.
Don’t know who took it. It was part of the 15,000 page NCIS report, leaked to the Washington Post back in January.
During the LCpl Sharratt hearing, NCIS agents admitted they were “following a script” in collecting evidence. The script being that the Haditha Marines had committed a massacre. So NCIS totally cooked the investigation by totally suppressing exculpatory evidence.
The more we see of these cases, it's become apparent that NCIS and JAG have knowingly and willfully withheld exculpatory details from their investigational details.
I would hope that at their completion, the defendants attorneys could band together and bring appropriate charges against the principles involved, including Murtha, because regardless of the individual outcomes the innuendo will remain attached to these men and the USMC in perpetuity. They all deserve full exoneration, for their recovery, for the honor of the Corps, and to reclaim the pride of America.
And these Marines, some medevacced out of Haditha, deserve harrassment from NCIS agents? This is an absolute disgrace to the nation and the Corps.
BTTT!
Red, good reminder on the “following the script” routine that became apparent in LCpl Sharratt’s hearing. I wonder if witholding this type of evidence reaches a high enough bar for an investigation to be initiated?
Brityank, I think the Department of Justice has to file any charges that would be brought since NCIS is not part of the military. Maybe the Sec. of Navy has to request an investigation, then the DOJ has to complete it. Not sure. So far, noone seems too interested in investigating NCIS. Wonder why?
I sent Brian Rooney a link to this thread. He’s pretty busy at the moment, but hope to get a read from him on their next steps.
Nothing would surprise me about NCIS, either, but Karlen said he saw three or four AKs stacked leaning against a white car, not on the ground. It would be interesting to get a time frame on when this picture was taken and when Karlen drove by on the road for further clarification.
NCIS has some splainin to do, IMO.
I sent an email to Brian via the Thomas More website to drop by and respond.
I don’t know who is responsible, but we do know that Secretary Winters has already said that he was not going to hold any investigation, so the next step is either to confront his boss or institute a court case. Sorry to say, I don’t think his boss cares at this point, as he’s too busy helping get the illegal immigrants settle in, and get the SPP invoked.
Excellent point, Gene. It's also very hard to believe a carload of military age men would be out driving around after the IED went off and there was a lot of small arms fire.
Exactly...I'm no legal beagle but in civilian courts if exculpatory evidence is withheld I believe that's the end for the prosecution.
You’re absolutely right, brityank.
Amazing isn't it? The media and murtha want us to believe that this all happened in a vacuum. Turns out, as we have been learning that there was a full scale, viscous battle going on and that the 'college students' were armed with aks.
Yep!...The more that comes out about the way the NCIS screwed up and/or biased this investigation the pister I get at murtha and I didn’t think that was possible a long time back.
It's high time to end this, once and for all. But I know we can't, not yet.
I know it will have to play out, it's the only way our guys can get a fair shake in this world we live in.
But ain't that just a damn shame in and of itself?
Sure looks like the lower left of that blow-up was smudged over. What were they trying to conceal? Footprints?
English, please? I’m lost on your description.
Does look odd. Photoshop ala reuters perhaps? Maybe aks were on the ground and are now gone?
The only thing about that photo that bugged me when I first saw it was the body in all black that is seperate from the other four. A guy in all black is more typically associated with insurgents, and the body looks so small in relation to the others. It could be just the angle he’s laying.
Is the repeating pattern of the sand typical in a blown up digital photo? And why is it in black and white? I’m sure the photos were color. Maybe WaPo decided color photos would be too much for their readers?
The sand appears blurred with systematically recurring patterns. [The light-colored areas of ground around the bodies is of fuzzy resolution with odd blotches of regular size and shape].
The focus is less clear than the car or the bodies though the range is intermediate. [The detail of the car and the detail of the bodies is fair, but the detail of the ground is absent--in the key area, but not closer to the camera nor farther from the camera].
Paint by numbers with four shades, one pattern flipped through all orientations. [Paint by numbers was a kit for the home artist including a canvas with numbered outlines to be painted the numbered color. In this case the colors are four grayshades. The pattern may be as simple as a template repeated in a different orientation, e.g., flipped horizontally and/or vertically, inverted, rotated through 90, 180, 270 degrees--or simply a section selected for copy and paste].
Or maybe they were going to Dairy Queen. [In which case there would be plastic spoons, but not weapons].
If Karlen saw weapons leaning against the car, were they leaned against the roadside to get them out of the shot taken from the landside. The politicization of intelligence is nothing new. The use of the FBI, CIA or NCIS to further an agenda? Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, William Sessions replaced by Louie Freeh, and the scandal of Moscow Station--blame it on the Marine, though the Naval Investigative Service made a complete hash of it.
Karlen needs to be thoroughly deposed by counsel for the Marines--his testimony is the undoing of the entire matter.
That it was suppressed by the loathesome NCIS ought--I say ought--to be grounds for a major shake-up.
Not every president is going to let his legal beagles crap on the carpet and pet them for good dogs.
It also looks as if the heads have been blacked out too. All four I can discern are covered with a solid matte black.
Years ago I was into photography as a hobby and had a small darkroom. That pic reminds me of when I would take a scenic color slide and make a black and white print.
It is difficult to take a black and white pic and have the color go from real black to pure white because most B & W pics are really just shades of gray.
It’s easy to do using color slides.
Of course that has nothing to do with the focus or possible photo shopping.
FBI grabbed Richard Jewell--nothing more dangerous than ignorance coupled with arrogance.
Karlen's story needs to be taken nationwide. Hey, Rush; hey, Michelle; hey, Sean; hey, O'Reilly; and more shout outs, the more the better.
devolve, shout 'em out--you know who to shout.
I highly doubt any press photog is still using celluloid, pretty sure they’re all on digital now; easier to upload and modify.
LOL. Now that’s a description! [except I don’t think they have Dairy Queens in Iraq} :-)
If Karlen saw them leaning against the car it was because a Marine put them there. There weren’t any NCIS there that day, a Marine took the photo - but we don’t know who.
brityank’s comments about the head’s being blacked out, could this be a privacy thing- not showing the dead Iraqis faces?
Jaz’s comments indicate the picture was probably color to begin with.
I agree. That this was not shared ought to be grounds for a major shakeup. Doesn’t the prosecution have to hand over all their evidence? They may have never made a report on Karlen’s interview - thus no evidence to hand over.
But it sure seems to me, given today's technology, we'd have a clear picture of the scene, erasing any doubt.
The mere fact that questions and doubts are raised, is enough for me to think "FAKE".
You’re probably right about the digital, I just thought maybe some Iraqi’s might still be using film for color slides.
Most intentional blurring I've seen is not hidden; either a pixelation is used or a swirl to hide the features. Those almost resemble hoods; maybe that was the intent?
Ooops — should have added you to #48.
I agree, Smooth. There’s something about it that just doesn’t look right.
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