Posted on 01/26/2007 12:19:00 PM PST by RedRover
Edited on 01/27/2007 2:28:48 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
CAMP PENDLETON ---- The credibility of three Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents and three enlisted men will be at issue today when a hearing for a Marine officer accused of assaulting Iraqi civilians resumes at Camp Pendleton.
The issue arose earlier this month when a lawyer for 2nd Lt. Nathan Phan alleged that statements prepared by the agents based on interviews with the three enlisted men included fabricated material that implicated his client.
The contention from attorney David Sheldon prompted Lt. Col. William Pigott, who is presiding over Phan's Article 32 hearing, to halt the proceedings until the agents could be present to testify.
The hearing will lead to a recommendation from Pigott as to whether he believes the convening authority, Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, should order Phan to face court-martial.
Sheldon and Phan's two military attorneys contend they have sworn, signed affidavits from the three enlisted Marines stating they never told the Navy and Marine Corps' law enforcement agency that they saw the lieutenant strike anyone.
Phan was charged in August with assaulting three Iraqi men in the village of Hamdania last year and placing an unloaded pistol in the mouth of one of the alleged victims. He also is accused of making a false official statement.
The hearing is to resume at 8 a.m. today and continue into Saturday. Mattis can either accept or reject the ultimate recommendation from the hearing officer, and he has the same sort of discretion when it comes to a judicial finding and sentence should Phan be ordered to trial and convicted.
Sheldon said this week that he planned an "aggressive examination" of agents who took the enlisted men's statements during interview sessions in Iraq last spring. He also said he expects to call two of the three enlisted Marines to the stand. The third has already testified that he never told agents he saw Phan commit an assault.
An issue that has arisen from Sheldon's assertion is the Naval Criminal Investigative Service's practice of not taping its interviews. Agents instead prepare a typewritten document based on their interviews and then present it to the witness or suspect interviewed to review and to sign as a sworn statement.
Sheldon said he also wants to know why the agency typically tapes drug or stolen property buys conducted by undercover agents, but does not employ the practice in its interview sessions.
Agency officials at its headquarters in Washington say the methodology is under review, with consideration being given to taping statements.
Phan's attorneys maintain that the 26-year-old Sacramento area native is innocent and that Marine Corps prosecutors have failed to submit any evidence that he made a false statement. They also contend that evidence being used to prosecute the assault charge does not establish that he ever struck any Iraqi.
Prosecutors, however, point to the statements the enlisted men made in Iraq and the guilty plea by a Marine corporal last week in an unrelated homicide case as sufficient evidence of wrongdoing.
On Jan. 18, Cpl. Trent Thomas pleaded guilty to murder and related charges in the April 26 shooting death of a 52-year-old Iraqi man in Hamdania. Thomas also pleaded guilty to assaulting one of the men that Phan also is accused of beating, and made reference while being questioned by the judge presiding over his case to seeing the lieutenant place a pistol in the mouth of an Iraqi detainee.
The assault case arose out of the investigation of the homicide. Five of the eight men from Camp Pendleton's Kilo Company from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment charged in that case have pleaded guilty to offenses related to the slaying.
Phan was the platoon commander over the men charged in the homicide case but was not present when the killing took place and is not implicated in it in any way.
A pretrial hearing for the squad leader in the homicide case, Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, was on the Camp Pendleton court calendar for Monday but it was not immediately clear whether that session will take place.
Contact staff writer Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mlwalker@nctimes.com.
BUMP!!
A Nifong agent?
Also these fine threads:
NCIS investigative methods come under fire over prosecution of Marine lieutenant [Hamdania Marines]
NCIS Exposed:Criminals, Thugs, and Liars Bringing Down Marines
Where is Gibbs when you need him?
(reference to NCIS tv show)
Let me or jazusamo know if you want on the Haditha Marine Ping List--also used to alert Freepers to misconduct by military investigators and the prosecution in cases arising out of Iraq.
I am SO disappointed in what is happening in this trial..it is bad enough that the charges were even brought...but now this??
Thanks for keeping us up to date!
I don't think Gibbs, D'Anozzo, McGee or Ziva David would have made such mistakes.
Damn! You beat me to it.
But I guarantee Jenny is going to make those agents pay.
squids..........
Well it dosent matter if he is acquitted or not his career is RUINED!
I'm curious to know why the typed statement wasn't based on what was in his notes, was the difference intentional?
Hopefully they will get more detail this afternoon and tomorrow. It sounds like the pucker factor has just been elevated for the NCIS.
Let's hope so....between these guys and the Senators....why would any soldier put his life on the line for an ungrateful public.
Don't forget, this is an article 32 hearing, not a court martial. if they are having this much trouble with the hearing, think what the defense lawyers are going to do with it, IF IT GOES TO COURT MARTIAL.
Watching for the cross over!
This would be a prosecutorial disaster in an civilian criminal proceeding.
I hear what you're saying. It's an indication of the dedication to our country that the vast majority of our military people have.
We don't need people like this Austin or anyone like him in the NCIS. They should be weeded out now.
BTTT
ping
ping
Thanks!
thanks for the ping.
We get some of this on our local news that doesn't make it to MSM. Also see and hear their families on local TV,
just sad. 24/7 news in WWII would have taken us out the first month.
As of 5:45 EST, I can only find this one article in The North County Times.
It's no surprise that news outlets are ignoring this story. But it still makes me angry.
The second agent should be one of the investigators: Kelly Garbo, Kyle Casey, or James Connolly. Connolly is the most senior and I would hope we hear from him.
The bigger story, yet to unfold, is how false statements were introduced as evidence in this hearing.
But has the story been garbled? The account is online at the Fresno Bee.
What's confusing to me about the AP version is this. Previous reports said that the disputed statement was about Lt. Phan (who is at the center of the hearing). But this report says the statement was about Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, choking a detainee.
I'm going to assume that the AP has screwed it up and that The North County Times has got it right until I find out otherwise.
-------------------------
Marine witness in Iraq beating case says statement was changed
A Marine lance corporal testified Friday that government agents altered key parts of a statement he made to authorities investigating assaults allegedly carried out on Iraqis.
One of the agents who helped interview Lance Cpl. Christopher Faulkner also testified that at least one incriminating detail the serviceman provided appeared to have been changed in the statement attributed to him.
Faulkner, who is not accused of any crime, was called to the witness stand as part of an Article 32 investigation, the military equivalent of a civilian grand jury. At the hearing's conclusion an investigating officer will recommend whether the case should proceed to a court-martial.
The investigation centers on the actions of 2nd Lt. Nathan Phan, Faulkner's platoon leader, who is charged with assaulting three Iraqi men.
Defense attorney David Sheldon, who called Faulkner to testify, questioned the integrity of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents who gathered evidence in the case.
According to Faulkner's final statement, he told investigators he saw a squad leader, Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, choke a detainee. But Faulkner testified Friday that he told investigators he was not sure if it was Hutchins he'd seen.
Asked by prosecutors why he signed the statement if it was inaccurate, Faulkner said he hadn't read it carefully.
Special Agent Michael Austin, who helped interview Faulkner in Iraq last June, testified that the statement incriminating Hutchins didn't conform to his handwritten notes, which had Faulkner saying he had seen someone choke a detainee and that it was "probably" Hutchins.
"That's not exactly what it is in my notes," Austin said of the statement.
Phan, 26, has been charged with assaulting three men in the rural Iraqi town of Hamdania last April. Prosecutors say he put an unloaded pistol in one detainee's mouth and beat or choked two others. He's also been charged with making a false statement to authorities.
The NCIS agents took statements from several men under Phan's command.
Evidence of the assaults was uncovered during an investigation into the killing of an Iraqi man in Hamdania on April 26. Prosecutors allege a squad from Phan's platoon kidnapped Hashim Ibrahim Awad from his home and shot him to death in a roadside hole.
Applause!
I was thrown off in reconciling the two accounts but I now see the two reports match. The NC Times reported that, "The official statement prepared by another agent who questioned Faulkner during the interview says that Faulkner reported seeing a sergeant choking the detainee and that the lieutenant being prosecuted was watching."
So help me out here. Faulkner claims NCIS lied about what he said about Lt. Phan. He says he didn't pay much attention to what NCIS had put down because he wasn't in trouble at the time. Once he finds out Lt. Phan may go down because of things NCIS attributed to him (Faulkner), he comes forward and says, no way, I never said that. Now Faulkner could be in trouble for making a false statement. Is this a felony for a Marine?
So by trying to clear up a mistake that NCIS made, now Faulkner may go down? What about NCIS? Will they be charged with anything now that they've also admitted to making a mistake.
What's wrong with this system who can punish a Marine for clearing up a mistake, but has no punishment for the original falsifiers?
In any event, now that we've established that a false statement made into it the evidence, we still need to hear the NCIS version of how it happened. Hopefully, we'll get an update about the second agent's testimony later this evening.
Slovenly incompetent investigators, or Mike LIEfong style mendacity?? It's sounding like the whole case needs to be thrown out over the tampering with witness statements by someone....
The false statement was not only about Phan, but also provided more "evidence" against one of the accused Hamdania Marines, Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins.
Hutchins is the squad leader and the highest-ranking man charged in the homicide case. He's about the only one who wasn't offered a plea bargain.
The four Marines who have pleaded guilty said during court appearances that Hutchins was the one who directed the plot that led to the kidnapping and killing of Hashim Ibrahim Awad.
So it seems the NCIS was piling on their main target.
There's new information in this piece, hot off the press, from the San Diego Union: Statement overstated what witness said, NCIS agent admits
By Rick Rogers UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
4:02 p.m. January 26, 2007
Two weeks ago, a defense lawyer accused agents for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service of fabricating several witnesses' statements used to charge a Camp Pendleton Marine with assaulting three Iraqis.
Attorney David Sheldon's claims reverberated far beyond the assault case against 2nd Lt. Nathan P. Phan of Sacramento. They threw a spotlight on controversial NCIS practices such as not using audio recordings or videotaping to take statements from witnesses. Instead, the organization's agents generate the statements by typing up their interview notes and asking witnesses to sign them.
On Friday, the lawyer's accusations of fraud gained some traction when an NCIS agent reluctantly admitted that a statement overstated what a witness actually said.
In a Camp Pendleton courtroom, Special Agent Mike Austin testified that a statement prepared by fellow NCIS agent Aaron Bode went beyond what he heard during an interview with Lance Cpl. Christopher J. Faulkner in June.
Austin recalled Faulkner saying he could see someone choking a detainee, but that he didn't know who did the choking. In the statement prepared by Bode, Faulkner was quoted as saying that he saw Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins choking an Iraqi while Phan looked on.
Phan was Hutchins' superior, and both were part of the Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment.
Austin said he had no explanation for the discrepancy. Marine prosecutors said Bode was working in Australia and could not be reached.
Sheldon said he planned to call to the stand two more Marines who also will testify that NCIS agents changed witnesses' statements.
The latest developments came during the continuation of Phan's pretrial hearing. Phan faces charges that he beat or choked three detainees last April in the rural town of Hamdaniya.
In previous testimony, a fellow defendant said such assaults were meant to punish suspected insurgents and get them to divulge information, such as a tip that led Marines to a sniper and a kidnapping cell.
Phan is the former platoon leader of seven Marines and one sailor charged with abducting and executing Hashim Ibrahim Awad, an unarmed grandfather, last spring in Hamdaniya.
[RedRover says: Aw, jeez, not that "unarmed grandfather" crap again! The MSM always makes it sound like they shot Grandpa Walton.]
Military investigators said that while probing Awad's death, they found evidence that eventually led to the case against Phan. He faces three counts of assault and one count of making a false official statement.
Friday's hearing was filled with acrimony between the prosecution and defense teams. At one point, the hearing officer, Lt. Col. William Pigott, admonished both sides after learning that they didn't exchange all the necessary evidence needed for the hearing.
“Do you want me to make the right recommendation or not? We owe it to that Marine sitting there,” Pigott said as he pointed toward Phan.
Pigott will review evidence from the hearing and suggest whether Phan should face court-martial. The final decision rests with Lt. Gen. James Mattis, commanding general of Camp Pendleton's 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the U.S. Marine Corps Central Command.
And, as we just learned in the San Diego Union piece above, it's someone who the NCIS suddenly needed to send off to Australia!
OH MY!!!!!.... This is a VERY important update!
Wow! They've had two weeks to reach him. He must really be in the outback. That really smells.
“Do you want me to make the right recommendation or not? We owe it to that Marine sitting there,” Pigott said as he pointed toward Phan.
That sounds a bit encouraging to me. Sounds like Lt. Col. Pigott is not all that impressed with the actions of NCIS and realizes a Marines freedom is at stake.
Why would anyone put their life on the line for this, period. This is the ONLY way the traitors can find to affect the reinlistment rates to the negative, FGS.
Why would anyone put their life on the line for this, period. This is the ONLY way the traitors can find to affect the reinlistment rates to the negative, FGS.
That was worth repeating! Hi!
That could be a good point you're making, freema. So far what has turned up here about NCIS sounds like it's nothing more than another government bureaucracy and they're more interested in a conviction than finding the truth.
WHAT WAS LEARNED IN BOOT CAMP, MARINES? HOW TO SAY, "PLEASE, WHERE IS THE SNIPER?"
The whole case is tainted now, and should be dropped.
I wonder if Bode will ever be found, I would imagine he doesn't wanna be.
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