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Actually it was a US Navy pilot during the Clintoon Raping of America.

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Fixing a Photo to Fit a Policy

Crime/Corruption News Keywords: NAVY MAN LASERED EYES
Source: INSIGHT Magazine
Published: January 21, 2000 Author: J. Michael Waller
Posted on 01/21/2000 19:26:54 PST by Stand Watch Listen
The Defense Department appears to have doctored a surveillance photograph as part of the Clinton policy to go easy on Russia – leaving a wounded U.S. Navy officer high and dry.

A recent CNN report alleged that the Defense Department misled the public with an altered videotape of a U.S. attack on Yugoslavia. It fizzled when the Pentagon attributed the error to a digital-compression process designed to allow intelligence analysts to review combat footage quickly. "The product was presented as the intelligence analyst would normally see it, and that is not a manipulation," Pentagon spokesman P.J. Crowley claimed.

While that seemed to end the story, the allegation of manipulation has revived questions about another image the Pentagon released to the press. At issue is a Navy intelligence photo of a Russian spy ship believed to have fired a laser at a Canadian military helicopter, wounding members of its Canadian-U.S. crew over the waters off Washington state in April 1997. The photo, as released by the Defense Department, differs markedly from the original taken by the wounded U.S. Navy intelligence officer aboard the helicopter: Details that Navy imagery analysts interpreted as a laser beam had been removed from the official photo.

The differences in the photographs, as well as a chain of policy decisions made by the Clinton administration to exculpate the Russian ship, and a Navy inspector-general’s, or IG’s, finding that the Navy photographer suffered reprisal for reporting the laser incident to Congress suggest that someone in the Defense Department doctored the version of the photograph that the Pentagon Office of Public Affairs released to the public.

Secret Defense and State department documents obtained by the Washington Times show that senior Clinton-administration officials conspired to cover up the April 4, 1997, lasing of U.S. Navy Lt. Jack Daly and his Canadian pilot, Capt. Patrick Barnes, by the Russian freighter Kapitan Man. The Office of Naval Intelligence, or ONI, apparently responding to political pressure, retaliated against Daly for pursuing the matter with Congress. Daly suffered laser burns to his right eye, as well as vision problems and severe headaches.

Daly was the Navy’s foreign-intelligence liaison officer in Esquimalt, British Columbia, heading a joint U.S.-Canadian helicopter-surveillance operation against Russian, Chinese and other spy ships operating in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which separates British Columbia from Washington state, and in Puget Sound, the site of major U.S. nuclear ballistic-missile submarine and aircraft-carrier bases.

Daly didn’t realize he had been wounded by a laser, or "lased," until he returned to Esquimalt after photographing Kapitan Man and handed his Kodak DCS-460 digital camera to Chief Petty Officer Scott Tabor, a highly trained U.S. Navy imagery analyst on base. Tabor processed the photos and discovered on frame 16 a bright red spot, with a yellow halo and white core, emanating from the port side running light on the bridge of Kapitan Man. Tabor showed the photo to Daly and urged him to get immediate medical attention. An initial medical evaluation, and months of subsequent tests by the U.S. military’s top experts on laser eye injuries, confirmed laser burns on Daly’s retina.

Side-by-side comparisons of frame 16 and the photograph released by the Pentagon, labeled frame 85, reveal the changes. (The numbering discrepancy is explained by the way the digital camera, which can take up to 52 pictures at a time, numbers the frames as they are downloaded to a computer.) Both images first were published in October on the Website of Reader’s Digest magazine. The photo on the right (at the top of p. 25) is the original as shot by Daly and analyzed by Tabor. It was taken at about noon under clear, sunny conditions, and the colors of the water, sky and ship match the other photos on the string. A bright red light is shown emanating from a black recessed panel just below the bridge. Enlargement of that part of the photo shows a whitish core and a yellow halo — indicating that it is not a normal running light from a low-watt bulb shining through a heavy glass lens. Daly testified before a congressional panel that Tabor interpreted the anomaly as a laser beam.
A secret military memorandum to the Canadian minister of national defense, obtained by Insight, states: "The analysis eliminated the possibility that the light source was benign, e.g., port running light and suggests a red laser produced the flash shown on the photo."

That conclusion, along with the laser burns on Daly’s and Barnes’ eyes, led Canadian and U.S. authorities to conclude that Kapitan Man fired a laser at the helicopter and wounded the crew. The State Department revealed in May 1997 that it had filed a vigorous diplomatic protest with Moscow.

But after a secret policy decision by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, Ambassador James Collins and others, the administration attempted to sweep the matter under the rug. The official line immediately changed. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told reporters at a May 15, 1997, briefing in response to a Times story, "Upon examination, many naval officers believe that the red dot is the port running light." ONI conducted an internal investigation that did anything but back up its wounded officer, and let the Russian ship off the hook. On releasing sections of the ONI report and the doctored frame 85 on June 26, Bacon stated conclusively, "The Navy has determined that this was a running light — a port running light. The starboard running light, which is green, is over on the other side. So they rejected this picture as indicative of a laser."

How did the running light, in the view of the Pentagon, morph from conclusively being not a running light and probably a laser, to precisely the opposite in just two months? ONI imagery analysts are afraid to speak, even on background. Tabor is at sea and has indicated through intermediaries that he is unwilling to talk to reporters. Insight attempted to interview two ONI imagery analysts, but both refused out of fear that the Navy would retaliate against them.

Other knowledgeable Navy sources interviewed by Insight say that honest differences of opinion could exist among imagery analysts about whether the light anomaly is indeed a laser flash, though the U.S. Army Medical Research Detachment at Brooks Air Force Base reproduced the image almost exactly on Daly’s digital camera by using a helium neon laser. Even so, there is no disputing that the photograph released by the Pentagon was altered to remove the telltale yellow and white pixels.

Pentagon public affairs insists it didn’t alter the photo and that it published the image on its Defenselink Website just as it was received. "This would be as we got the photo from whoever released it," Terry Mitchell of the audiovisual office of Defense Department Public Affairs tells Insight.

ONI released the photo along with a report signed by Rear Adm. L.L. Poe, then ONI director. But Poe had headed ONI for only a few days and wasn’t involved in the report. Earl Sheck, a civilian, ran ONI day-to-day as its executive director at the time, and supervised the internal report. Reached at his Pentagon office, after his recent transfer from ONI, Sheck does not deny the discrepancy between frame 16 and the Pentagon’s frame 85. He tells Insight that he wouldn’t comment without coordination with Pentagon public affairs. He referred Insight back to Mitchell. Mitchell did not return a follow-up call.

ONI already has been found guilty of wrongdoing. The Navy IG found in August 1999 that ONI illegally retaliated against Daly for having made protected communications to Congress, stating that the insertion of derogatory information in his personnel file was "an unfavorable personnel action taken by ONI and constituted reprisal." In the IG report, Sheck called Daly "overly paranoid." The IG instructed that the derogatory information be removed from Daly’s file and that a special review board consider him for promotion. After having passed him over twice, the Navy decided to promote Daly last September.

ONI appears to be the source of confusing and inaccurate Pentagon information on the Kapitan Man issue. Some believe that ONI officials supervising the probe did not want to make a conclusive finding that would upset White House policy of exculpating Moscow. Daly testified before a congressional panel that "ONI’s single analyst with a background in lasers reported to his Air Force counterpart that he had been instructed to stay out of the investigation and attempted to unduly influence her not to publish a report on the incident." ONI did not even interview Tabor, the imagery analyst at Esquimalt, or Barnes, the helicopter pilot, for its report. Daly testified, "On two separate occasions and in front of witnesses, two individuals from ONI knowledgeable about the investigation admitted to being influenced by senior officials within the organization and to limit the extent of the investigation."

When ONI completed its investigation, it sent the report to the Pentagon under Poe’s signature, along with the altered photograph. On June 26, 1997, Pentagon spokesman Bacon released the photo along with a summary of the ONI report, a news release and a set of questions and answers about the incident. The briefing led the public to conclude that Daly and Barnes probably were lased, but not by Kapitan Man; that the laser that wounded them probably was an innocent range finder, not a weapon or espionage device; that Kapitan Man was not a spy ship; that the Canadian-U.S. helicopter crew did not single out Kapitan Man for special surveillance, so the Russian vessel was not even under suspicion; that the administration did not limit the length or scope of the ship inspection; and that no one on the ship had anything to hide.

The briefing also led to the conclusion that no evidence existed that Kapitan Man had been modified in a way that would accommodate a laser, or even suggesting a laser had been aboard; that the red light Daly photographed was definitely not a laser beam but an innocent running light; that not a shred of evidence exists that the laser could have been fired from the ship; and that the eye injuries of Daly and Barnes were not permanent and would heal quickly.

All those conclusions are false.

The Pentagon and the Clinton administration clearly were convinced that the Russian ship fired the laser. The Defense Department pushed for a complete search of the ship, and the State Department filed a diplomatic protest with Moscow. The evolution of assessments of the photo — from definitely being a laser beam to differences of opinion over the image to a 100 percent conclusion that the red spot was not a laser beam — and the production of a doctored photograph to reinforce that new conclusion indicates a political motivation to mislead, and not an objective intelligence assessment.

The Pentagon even tried to cast doubt on whether Daly and Barnes were lased at all, ultimately concluding that the laser burns might have been caused by an innocent device such as a laser range finder. In reality, no one in the U.S. military seems to know what type of laser wounded Daly and Barnes. Burns caused by laser range finders, Pentagon spokesman Bacon stated at the time, would heal within a matter of months. Daly and Barnes both tell Insight — and reports from the U.S. military laser eye-injury experts at Brooks Air Force Base confirm — that their conditions are worsening after nearly three years.

Bacon carefully chose his words when he implied that Kapitan Man was not a spy ship. "We have no direct evidence that the Russian merchant vessel Kapitan Man was on an intelligence-gathering mission at the time of the incident of 4 April 1997," he said. In fact, the Pentagon long had suspected the vessel and others of the Far Eastern Shipping Co., or FESCO, as being spy ships. Three weeks before the incident, then ONI chief Michael R. Cramer had been briefed about the problem of FESCO merchant ships and their threats to the U.S. Navy. A top-secret Defense Department report written two days after the lasing said Kapitan Man "is suspected of having submarine-detection equipment on board." A secret Canadian military document termed Kapitan Man a "high-interest" vessel, a euphemism for spy ship. Another, dated three days after the lasing, called Kapitan Man "a suspected SSN/SSBN surveillance vessel" — a spy ship deployed against U.S. attack submarines and ballistic-missile submarines. U.S. searches of Kapitan Man in 1993 and 1994 uncovered expendable bathythermographs used for antisubmarine warfare, and sonobuoys to pick up the sounds of ships and submarines at sea.

The Canadian helicopter on that fateful day, according to Bacon, was on "routine maritime patrol" at the time of the incident and did not single out Kapitan Man for surveillance. Insight has obtained declassified Canadian military documents indicating that this is untrue. According to the documents, U.S. and Canadian forces had been watching Kapitan Man for days as it "loitered" 10 miles off Vancouver Island March 29-30, 1997, along with a sister ship, the Anatoly Kolesnichenko. On April 1, Rear Adm. Russell Moore, commander of Canada’s Maritime Forces Pacific, ordered P-3 Aurora surveillance planes to follow Kapitan Man as it steamed off the coast of Vancouver and directed that the Barnes-Daly helicopter photograph the vessel at close range once it sailed into the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

In a scripted Q&A, the Pentagon asks, "Is it true that the State Department restricted the search of the ship to public areas?" answering, "No, this is not true. ..." Secret U.S. documents published by Times reporter Bill Gertz in his book, Betrayal, and secret Canadian documents obtained by Insight, agree that the Clinton administration did indeed try to limit the ability of investigators to search the ship. Ambassador Collins, the documents show, basically gave the Russians control of the probe by giving them 24 hours’ notice of the search, and by limiting the search of the 570-foot ship to two hours instead of two days. Collins also limited the search to the "public areas" of the vessel. The documents support Daly’s testimony that two ONI officials admitted to being pressured to limit the scope of the probe.

Bacon also claimed that the Russian crew had nothing to hide, saying the searchers "were granted access to every part of the ship to which they requested access with one exception" — a locked library room. He dismissed concerns that a laser could have been hidden in that compartment.

A Defense Department news release stated that the search "discovered no sign of any recent modifications to the ship that might have indicated, for example, the removal of a laser from the area below the port bridge where the red light had been imaged." Again, critics say, this was a deceptively worded statement. The boarding team indeed discovered such modifications and photographed one on the starboard side of the bridge. The suspect port running light, just below the windows of the bridge, can be accessed from the inside to change the bulb. U.S. Navy inspectors, according to a source close to the probe, removed the access panel of the green starboard light and made a remarkable discovery: The light assembly had been modified with a hinged plate and a quick-release wing bolt that allowed the entire fixture to be removed in seconds and replaced on a homemade bracket with something else. A U.S. Navy photographer took close-up pictures of this assembly — but only on the starboard side of the ship. Navy sources close to the probe say the inspectors did not open the access panel on the port side that was the subject of the controversy, but they offered no explanation.

Earlier, Navy Intelligence had taken an aerial photo of a sister ship of Kapitan Man, the Anadyr, with a strange device protruding from the port side running light. The photo is blurry and inconclusive, but a U.S. Navy analyst tells Insight that the shape, size and dimensions are consistent with a Netherlands-manufactured laser device.

No one seems to know what type of laser might have been involved. One theory is that the laser could be installed in the running-light assembly from inside the bridge and operated from the window with a joystick. In frame 16, a man can be seen on the bridge in the window over the suspected laser flash, but it is unclear what he is doing. In frame 85, the windows are darkened, obscuring the human figure.

The only close-up shot the boarding party took of the red port running light on Kapitan Man was taken from outside the ship at an indirect angle. But even that shot shows shiny scratches on the rusty steel of the outer light housing, indicating that something had been removed very recently. The Pentagon never officially released that photo, even though spokesman Bacon told reporters that there was "no sign that anything had been attached and removed. … There was actually a layer of dirt or grime on parts of the ship that would have made it pretty easy to see if there had been a tripod set up there or if people had been running around moving equipment on the deck of the ship, and there was no indication that they had been."

It is unlikely the ONI would have informed Bacon; its report, in contradiction of the photographic evidence, states that "there was no indication of abnormal activity on the ship."

While the U.S. and Canadian governments denied that a laser incident involving Kapitan Man had occurred, both took emergency action. They immediately terminated all helicopter surveillance patrols over the Strait of Juan de Fuca and canceled the program. Based on U.S. Navy imagery analysis, Canada scrambled to find protective equipment for its pilots and air crews against "laser threats," according to a declassified memorandum. The incident, according to Ottawa, showed the high vulnerability of laser threats and a "strong possibility" that a "legitimate threat exists even in our own backyard."

The Air Force and Navy showed equal concern, acquiring protective equipment for their personnel. After an Air Force intelligence expert on lasers from Wright Patterson Air Force Base briefed the Air Force chief of staff on the lasing, she was sent on a two-year global tour to brief pilots and special-operations crews on the dangers of laser weapons. But ONI retaliated against Daly, according to the Navy Inspector General, calling him a security risk and inserting negative information in his file.

There are other anomalies as well. The section of the ONI report released to the press concluded that the red dot in the photo "has been conclusively established to be the port running light." Only when doctored to remove the white and yellow pixels could the photograph lead analysts to arrive at such a definitive conclusion.

Another section of the ONI report, a section which was not officially released to the public but which Insight has secured, tells a different story: "it cannot be conclusively ruled out" that the red dot is a laser beam. That suppressed finding, like the suppressed original photo, contradicts the administration’s absolutist line. But it still doesn’t answer the central question: Who in the Department of Defense is responsible for faking a photograph and causing the Pentagon public-affairs office to mislead the American people about the lasing of a U.S. Navy officer, and why?

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