Ten years ago Cpl. Justin Bunce was on patrol in Iraq when shrapnel from a bomb ripped through his right side, and severely damaged his brain. His family and their doctors have spent the decade since trying to restore Justin to the man they knew.
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Ten years ago Cpl. Justin Bunce was on patrol in Iraq when shrapnel from a bomb ripped through his right side, and severely damaged his brain. His family and their doctors have spent the decade since trying to restore Justin to the man they knew.
Thanks for checking us out. Please take a look at the rest of our videos and articles.
To stay in the loop, bookmark our homepage.
Extract from helmet camera recording of incident in Helmand, Afghanistan
A Royal Marine has been found guilty by a military court of murdering an injured Afghan insurgent, in what the prosecution called “an execution”.
Two other marines were acquitted at the Military Court Centre in Wiltshire.
The three – Marines A, B and C – had denied murdering the unknown man while on patrol in Helmand province in 2011.
Marine A was convicted after the court martial heard he had shot the man at close range. He faces a mandatory life sentence and was taken into custody.
It is the first time British forces have faced a murder charge in relation to the conflict in Afghanistan, said BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt.
There were tears from the marines’ families as the verdicts were read. Marines B and C are now free to return to military service, the judge said.
Marine B had inadvertently filmed the murder, which happened on 15 September 2011, on his helmet-mounted camera and the footage was shown to the court during the two-week trial.
’9mm pistol’
It showed Marine A shooting the Afghan prisoner with a 9mm pistol, and saying: “There you are. Shuffle off this mortal coil… It’s nothing you wouldn’t do to us.”
He added: “Obviously this doesn’t go anywhere fellas. I just broke the Geneva Convention.”
This international agreement concerning the treatment of captured and wounded prisoners of war was first signed in Geneva in 1864. It was later revised in 1949 and consists of four treaties.
Article three of the third convention rules that members of the armed forces who have laid down their arms or who cannot fight due to sickness, wounds or detention should be “treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria”.
To this end, it is prohibited to pass sentences on prisoners or carry out executions without a constituted court judgement. Prisoners may not be harmed, degraded, humiliated or taken hostage.
Under the convention, the wounded and sick should be collected and cared for by an impartial humanitarian body, such as the Red Cross.
On Thursday, a recording of a conversation between the marines in the moments before the Afghan was shot was released by the judge.
He had previously rejected an application by the media to release the footage, saying it could be used as propaganda.
During the court martial, prosecutor David Perry told the court: “It was not a killing in the heat and exercise of any armed conflict. The prosecution case is that it amounted to an execution, a field execution.”
Marine A was convicted by a seven-strong board, consisting of officers and non-commissioned officers.
At the time of the killing, he was an experienced sergeant, while Marine C was the most junior of the three. Marine B was new to the Helmand base where marines A and C were based.
Judge Advocate General Jeff Blackett told Marine A: “The mandatory sentence prescribed by law is imprisonment for life.
“This court now has to determine the minimum term you will serve before you are eligible for release.”
He asked for a report to be prepared ahead of sentencing at a later date.
Addressing the other two defendants, the judge added: “Marine B and Marine C, you have been found not guilty of murder and you are now free to return to your normal place of duties.
“The issue of anonymity will be decided at a later date.”
Under attack
The murder took place after a patrol base in Helmand Province had come under attack from small arms fire from two insurgents.
The Afghan prisoner was seriously injured by gunfire fired from an Apache helicopter sent to provide air support, and the marines found him in a field.
In one conversation between Marine A and C about shooting the man, one serviceman is overheard asking “Anyone want to give first aid to this idiot?” before another replies loudly “Nope.”
In another, Marine C was heard asking A if he should shoot the man in the head, but Marine A said that would be too obvious.
Royal Military Police arrested the three marines in October 2012 after video footage was found on a serviceman’s laptop by civilian police in the UK.
They first appeared at the Military Court Centre in Bulford in August, where they pleaded not guilty to murdering the Afghan national contrary to section 42 of the Armed Forces Act 2006.
Two further marines – D and E – had the charges against them dropped in February. An anonymity order granted last year to protect the five men from reprisals remains in place.
Prof Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute, said the Ministry of Defence needed to be transparent in cases such as this.
“The only thing the MoD can do is not try to hide in cases that look as bad as this, and they’re going to have to accept that if we fight these wars, there will be cases that we are not very proud of – and that’s not justifying them, I think it’s just a realistic understanding of the ways things work,” he said.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The nations that make decisions about Antarctic fishing failed Friday for a third time to agree on a plan that would create the world’s largest marine sanctuary.
Science Headlines
Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. The incursion into Lebanon was one of the biggest debacles of the Reagan administration. Unfortunately, though Reagan eventually recognized his folly and pulled troops out, other presidents did not recognize the tragic lessons of the pointless loss of American troops.
Here’s a piece I wrote ten years ago on the Lebanon debacle for Counterpunch (excerpted from my 2003 book, Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (St. Martin’s/Palgrave).
Counterpunch, October 8, 2003
by James Bovard
In his televised speech to the nation on September 7, President Bush declared, “In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge. In this, they are mistaken.” There are many parallels between the 1982-84 U.S. deployment and decimation of U.S. troops in Beirut and the current Iraqi situation. None of them bode well for the success of Operation Iraqi Freedom or the life expectancy of American troops.
Few Americans remember the bitter details of one of Reagan’s biggest foreign debacles. Lebanon had been wracked by a brutal civil war for seven years when, in June 1982, Israel invaded in order to crush the Palestinian Liberation Organization. U.S. troops were briefly deployed in August in Beirut to help secure a ceasefire to facilitate the withdrawal of the PLO forces to Tunisia.
U.S. troops exited Beirut after the PLO withdrawal was largely completed. However, in mid-September 1982, the massacre of more than 700 Palestinian refugees threatened to plunge Lebanon into total chaos. Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia butchered residents of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps; the militia was armed, aided, and fed by the Israeli Defense Force, which surrounded and blockaded the camps.
The Lebanese government appealed to President Reagan to send American troops back into Beirut as a stabilizing factor, and Reagan quickly obliged. As fighting escalated between Christians, Muslims, Syrians, and Israelis in Lebanon, the original U.S. peacekeeping mission became a farce. The U.S. forces were training and equipping the Lebanese army, which was increasingly perceived as a pro-Christian, anti-Muslim force. (Most Lebanese are Muslim).
On April 18, 1983 a delivery van pulled up to the front door of the U.S. embassy in Beirut and detonated, collapsing the building and killing 46 people (including 16 Americans) and wounding over a hundred others. The U.S. embassy was a sitting duck for the terrorist assault: unlike many other U.S. embassies in hostile environments, it had no sturdy outer wall. Newsweek noted: “Delivery vehicles are supposed to go to the rear of the building. Why Lebanese police guarding the embassy driveway would have made an exception in the case of the black van remained a mystery.” The attack lacked novelty value, since the Iraqi and French embassies had been wrecked by similar car bomb attacks in the preceding 18 months.
Five days later, on April 23, 1983, Reagan announced to the press: “The tragic and brutal attack on our embassy in Beirut has shocked us all and filled us with grief. Yet, because of this latest crime we are more resolved than ever to help achieve the urgent and total withdrawal of all American forces from Lebanon, or I should say, all foreign forces. I’m sorry. Mistake.” But the actual mistake was a U.S. policy that would cost hundreds of Americans their lives.
By late summer 1983, the Marines were being targeted by Muslim snipers. In the same way that some Bush administration officials are shocked by the Iraqi resistance to American troops, Reagan administration officials seemed surprised at rising attacks on American soldiers.
The Reagan administration responded to sniper potshots and scattered mortar attacks on U.S. troops with a massive escalation. On September 13, Reagan authorized Marine commanders in Lebanon to call in air strikes and other attacks against the Muslims to help the Christian Lebanese army. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger vigorously opposed the new policy, fearing it would make American troops far more vulnerable. Navy ships repeatedly bombarded the Muslims over the next few weeks.
At 6:20 A.M. on Sunday morning, October 23, 1983, a lone, grinning Muslim drove a Mercedes truck through a parking lot, past two Marine guard posts, through an open gate, and into the lobby of the Marine headquarters building in Beirut, where he detonated the equivalent of six tons of explosives. The explosion left a 30-foot-deep crater and killed 243 marines. A second truck bomb moments later killed 58 French soldiers.
Colin Powell, who was then a major general, commented in his autobiography: “Since [the Muslims] could not reach the battleship, they found a more vulnerable target, the exposed Marines at the airport.” A surprise attack on a troop concentration in a combat zone does not fit most definitions of terrorism. However, Reagan perennially portrayed the attack as a terrorist incident and the American media and political establishment accepted that label.
Reagan administration officials scrambled to assert that the administration was blameless. White House press spokesman Larry Speakes declared on the day of the attack that the bombing “definitely was a difficult situation for us” since “people come out of nowhere and perform these acts.” Vice President George H.W. Bush rationalized: “It’s awfully hard to guard against that kind of terrorism.” Defense Secretary Weinberger announced that “nothing can work against a suicide attack like that, any more than you can do anything against a kamikaze flight.” Actually, during World War II, the U.S. Navy quickly responded by placing rows of antiaircraft guns on the sides of its big ships.
In the aftermath of the Marine barracks bombing, Reagan’s creativity with the facts matched George W. Bush’s Iraq tales. In a televised speech four days after the bombing, Reagan portrayed the attack as unstoppable, declaring that the truck “crashed through a series of barriers, including a chain-link fence and barbed-wire entanglements. The guards opened fire, but it was too late.” Reagan claimed the attack proved the U.S. mission was succeeding: “Would the terrorists have launched their suicide attacks against the multinational force if it were not doing its job? . . . It is accomplishing its mission.” He warned that a U.S. withdrawal could result in the Middle East being “incorporated into the Soviet bloc.” Reagan also declared that the U.S. was involved in the Middle East in part to secure a “solution to the Palestinian problem.”
Reagan sent Marine Corps commander Paul X. Kelley to Beirut. Kelley quickly announced that he was “totally satisfied” with the security around the barracks at the time of the bombing. Upon returning to Washington, Kelley was summoned to Capitol Hill and bragged to Congress: “In a 13-month period, no marine billeted in the building [destroyed by the truck bomb] was killed or injured” from incoming fire. Kelley inaccurately testified that the Marine guards had loaded weapons and that two of them had been killed in the attack. When congressmen persisted questioning, Kelley became enraged and shouted: “We’re talking about clips in weapons, but we’re not talking about the people who did it. I want to find the perpetrators. I want to bring them to justice! You have to allow me this one moment of anger.”
Even though there had already been numerous major car bombings in Beirut that year and scores of other suicide attacks, Kelley told the committee that the truck bombing “represents a new and unique terrorist threat, one that could not have been anticipated by any commander.” Kelley denied the Marines received any warning of an impending attack. However, on the morning of Kelley’s second day of testimony, the New York Times reported that the CIA specifically warned the Marines three days ahead of time that an Iranian-linked group was planning an attack against them.
Other military officials involved in Lebanon also denied any culpability. Vice Admiral Edward Martin, the commander of the Sixth Fleet, declared: “The only person I can see who was responsible was the driver of that truck.” Martin stressed in an interview: “You have to remember that prior to Oct. 23, there hadn’t been any real terrorism threat.” A New York Times investigation concluded: “Marine officers in Beirut and the admirals and generals in the chain of command above them did not consider terrorism to be a primary threat even after the embassy bombing, and even though Beirut had been full of terrorists for years.”
Shortly after the bombing, Reagan appointed a Pentagon commission headed by retired Admiral Robert Long to investigate. The commission report, finished in mid-December 1983, concluded that military commanders in Lebanon and all the way back to Washington failed to take obvious steps to protect the soldiers. The commission suggested that many fatalities might have been prevented if guards had carried loaded weapons. The report stated that the only barrier the truck overcame was some barbed wire that it easily drove over. The commission also noted that the “prevalent view” among U.S. commanders was that there was a direct link between the Navy shelling of the Muslims and the truck bomb attack.
When the White House saw the final version of the commission’s report, they issued a stop order. The Washington Post reported that the White House “delayed release of the report for several days, allowing Reagan to respond to its criticism before it became public, and then attempted to play down its impact by vetoing a Pentagon news conference on the document.”On December 27, 1983 Reagan revealed that “we have never before faced a situation in which others routinely sponsor and facilitate acts of violence against us.” Reagan sought to make the report “old news”: “Nearly all the measures that were identified by the distinguished members of the Commission have already been implemented and those that have not will be very quickly.” Reagan announced that the Marine commanders in Beirut “have already suffered enough” and should not “be punished for not fully comprehending the nature of today’s terrorist threat.” Reagan then effectively declared that no one would be held accountable: “If there is to be blame, it properly rests here in this office and with this president,” he announced, just before leaving Washington for a vacation in Palm Springs, California.
The Reagan administration blamed its antiterrorist failures on the Carter administration. White House press spokesman Larry Speakes announced: “We don’t quarrel with the fact that the CIA and other intelligence-gathering agencies have been crippled by decisions of the previous administration, and we are in the process of rebuilding capabilities. But it takes time . . . to re-establish our intelligence-gathering methods.”
The following September, shortly after a suicide bomber again obliterated much of the poorly-defended U.S. embassy in Beirut, Reagan blamed the debacle on Carter administration CIA cutbacks: “We’re feeling the effects today of the near destruction of our intelligence capability in recent years before we came here.” Reagan falsely asserted that the Carter administration had “to a large extent” gotten “rid of our intelligence agents.”
Reagan quietly withdrew U.S. combat troops from Beirut in early 1984. During the 1984 presidential election, the Reagan administration also responded to its Beirut debacles by attacking the patriotism of Democrats. In the vice presidential candidates debate, George H. W. Bush denounced Democratic candidate Walter Mondale and his vice presidential pick, Geraldine Ferraro: “For somebody to suggest, as our opponents have, that these men died in shame, they had better not tell the parents of those young marines.” Neither Mondale nor Ferraro had said that the Marines “died in shame.” Bush denounced Mondale for running a “mean-spirited campaign”: “We’ve seen Walter Mondale take a human tragedy in the Middle East and try to turn it to personal political advantage.” But Mondale’s criticisms of the Reagan administration’s failures in Lebanon were less strident than Reagan’s criticisms of Jimmy Carter for the Iran hostage crisis during the 1980 presidential campaign.
Muslims also responded to U.S. troops by seizing American hostages. Reagan sent military equipment to Iran as a means to entice the Iranians to exert pressure to get hostages released. After the “arms for hostages” deal became public (along with the illegal funneling of the proceeds to the Nicaraguan Contras), Reagan’s credibility was devastated. Reagan went into such a tailspin after the crisis broke that his new chief of staff, Howard Baker, briefly examined invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove Reagan from office because of medical unfitness. The Tower Commission report on the debacle concluded: “The arms-for-hostages trades rewarded a regime that clearly supported terrorism and hostage-taking.”
The 1982-84 deployment of U.S. troops in Beirut achieved nothing. And, contrary to the arguments of today’s hardliners, a larger, longer deployment would have merely boosted the number of body bags arriving at Dover Air Force base. The Israelis were far more aggressive against perceived opponents in Lebanon than were the American troops. But even the Israelis were effectively driven out of Lebanon over a decade and a half later, after failing to suppress Hezbollah and losing more than twice as many soldiers there as it lost during the 1967 Six Day War.
The Reagan administration paid no political price for its Beirut debacle. Reagan and Bush Sr. succeeded in falsifying, blustering, and smearing their way out of political trouble. Now, two decades later, the only “lesson” that seems to be recalled is to stick resolutely to floundering policies – at least until the number of dead soldiers threatens to become politically toxic.
A former US Marine-turned activist told a Turkish court on Thursday that Israeli commandos had opened fire from a helicopter on a Gaza-bound aid ship three years ago. The claim contradicts Israeli’s claim that the soldiers had acted in self-defense.
On May 31, 2010, Israeli naval commandos using speedboats and helicopters boarded the Turkish-owned Mavi Marmara, part of the ‘Gaza Freedom Flotilla’ that was attempting to break the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip and deliver humanitarian relief.
In the ensuing melee, eight Turkish nationals and one Turkish American were killed, and many were wounded. Ten Israeli commandos were also wounded, one of them seriously.
The incident sparked a deep diplomatic crisis between Israel and Turkey – the former a committed ally of the United States, the latter a full-fledged NATO member waiting for membership in the European Union. Today, relations between the two remain tense.
Now, a trial being held in absentia in Istanbul against Israel’s former Chief-of-Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and three other senior commanders may aggravate bilateral relations even more between the two former allies.
Kenneth O’Keefe, an Irish-Palestinian and former US marine who was aboard the humanitarian vessel during the conflict, told the Turkish hearing, which convened in June of last year, that Israeli soldiers had started shooting from the helicopter while it was still in the air.
“Within five to 10 minutes after the Israeli helicopter approached the ship, I ran into Cevdet Kiliclar’s dead body on the deck, before any Israeli commando had boarded the vessel,” O’Keefe said, referring to one of the Turkish activists.
“He must have been shot from the air. After seeing Kiliclar’s dead body, I went upstairs to the top of the deck and saw several people lying on the ground, wounded or dead.”
Israel has dismissed the Turkish proceedings as a political “show trial” of four former IDF commanders.
The 144-page indictment lists “inciting murder through cruelty or torture” and “inciting injury with firearms” among the charges against the now-retired Israeli officers and seeks life sentences for the commandos.
O’Keefe’s testimony supports Turkey’s official findings of the incident, described in a September 2011 UN report, which said Israeli commandos had fired upon the activists before boarding the ship.
“IDF personnel began firing on the Mavi Marmara from both the speedboats and helicopters before boarding had commenced….Two passengers were killed by shots from the helicopters before the first soldiers had boarded the vessel,” the Turkish Commission report said.
Turkey’s version of events, however, clashes with that of Israel’s version, also summarized in the UN report.
“Three ‘flash bang’ stun grenades were thrown from the helicopter before and during the descent, but no shots were fired. The soldiers from the first helicopter were met with an extreme level of violence from a group of passengers on the vessel,” according to the Israeli position.
Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador after the 2011 UN report, which concluded, seemingly in favor of the Israeli position, that while Israel had used “unreasonable force” during its raid on the Turkish ship in international waters, its blockade on Gaza was legal.
Ankara announced its demands for normalizing bilateral relations with its neighbor – an apology, compensation and Israel ending its embargo on Gaza.
In March, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and apologized for the deaths of the nine activists, pledging to reach an agreement on compensation for their families.
The hearing has been adjourned until March 27, 2014.
By Cassius MethylToday, the US marine corps recruiting page was hacked by Syrian hackers, with a message warning US soldiers against joining ‘Al Qaeda’ in fighting in the Syrian civil war. It contained images of US soldiers holding pieces of paper, declaring that they will not fight in Syria, images that have been circulating around the internet rapidly in recent days, and the following message-
“This is a message written by your brothers in the Syrian Army, who have been fighting al-Qaida for the last 3 years. We understand your patriotism and love for your country so please understand our love for ours. Obama is a traitor who wants to put your lives in danger to rescue al- Qaida insurgents.”
“Marines, please take a look at what your comrades think about Obama’s alliance with al-Qaida against Syria. Your officer in charge probably has no qualms about sending you to die against soldiers just like you, fighting a vile common enemy. The Syrian army should be your ally not your enemy.”
“Refuse your orders and concentrate on the real reason every soldier joins their military, to defend their homeland. You’re more than welcome to fight alongside our army rather than against it.”
Your brothers, the Syrian army soldiers. A message delivered by the SEA”
In these recent days, protests unprecedented in history have been held and planned, some considered ‘emergency protests’, a concept that seems to just have been created. This is an excellent sign that activists, truth speakers, and the opposition to war are finally being heard. People continue to wake up faster than ever before, and consequently, the people in power who want this war are trying to advance their agenda rapidly. Please share this with as many people as possible, as a method of raising morale and confidence for the opposition to this senseless war. Yet this raising confidence is not hollow, this isn’t building support for a resistance that is likely to fail- this is very powerful, very real opposition by spreading of information, and it is having a dramatic effect on the consciousness of people everywhere.
Cassius Methyl is a journalist writing for Intellihub.com and a liberty activist who plays every instrument and vocals for an experimental metal-truth movement project called “Core of a Virus”. Find his music on Facebook. This article was originally brought to you by Intellihub.com
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Fallujah veteran says government is afraid of its own citizens
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
August 15, 2013
A former Marine Corps Colonel who was stationed in Fallujah and trained Iraqi soldiers warns that the Department of Homeland Security is working with law enforcement to build a “domestic army,” because the federal government is afraid of its own citizens.
The comments by the Colonel, whose identity remains unknown, were made during public testimony at a Concord City Council meeting on Tuesday. The meeting concerned a decision on whether to accept a $ 260,000 Homeland Security grant on behalf of the Central New Hampshire Special Operations Unit to purchase a BearCat armored vehicle.
The purchase of the vehicle has been surrounded by controversy after the city’s Police Chief wrote in an application filing to the DHS that the vehicle was needed to deal with the “threat” posed by libertarians, sovereign citizen adherents, and Occupy activists in the region.
Referencing signs in the crowd which read “More Mayberry, Less Fallujah,” the Colonel spoke of how he didn’t even have armored vehicles when he was stationed in Fallujah.
The Colonel’s role as a Ministry of Defense coordinator was to command, train and equip the Iraqi Army, noting that he helped do everything he could “to make it as strong as possible,” but that “Homeland Security would kick their butts in a week.”
Stressing that it was unlawful and unconstitutional to use US troops on American soil, the Colonel warned, “What’s happening here is we’re building a domestic military,” adding that police are now “wearing the exact same combat gear that we had in Iraq, only it was a different color.”
The Colonel warned that the DHS was following military tactics by, “pre-staging gear and equipment” in order to build a “domestic army” while shrinking the US military “because the government is afraid of its own citizens.”
The Colonel slammed the idea of law enforcement purchasing militarized vehicles for domestic security, noting, “The last time more than ten terrorists were in one place at the same time was September 11th and all these vehicles in the world wouldn’t have prevented it nor would it have helped anybody.”
“I don’t know where we’re going to use this many vehicles or this many troops,” he continued, “Concord is just one cog in the wheel – we’re building an army over here and I can’t believe that people aren’t seeing it – is everybody blind?”
In his initial application to the DHS for the grant to purchase the armored vehicle, Police Chief John Duval wrote, “The State of New Hampshire’s experience with terrorism slants primarily towards the domestic type. We are fortunate that our State has not been victimized from a mass casualty event from an international terrorism strike however on the domestic front, the threat is real and here. Groups such as the Sovereign Citizens, Free Staters and Occupy New Hampshire are active and present daily challenges.”
Duval’s characterization of activists from across the political spectrum as terrorists prompted outrage but he refused to apologize, merely clarifying that his application may not have been worded correctly. Following the removal of the terms Sovereign Citizens, Free Staters and Occupy New Hampshire from the application, the DHS made it clear that the grant would be approved.
As the Concord Monitor reports, Tuesday’s public testimony also included a warning from Irena Goddard, who grew up in Czechoslovakia.
“I do not want this deadly intimidation force of a military vehicle to suppress free speech, much like what was done with communist military tanks in Czechoslovakia,” she said.
Resident Jesse Mertz remarked that the militarization of law enforcement signaled that, “The military industrial complex has infiltrated every part of our society to the point where it’s now happening in our hometowns, and we’re seeing stuff occur that people said would never happen in our own country.”
The Concord Council delayed the decision to purchase the vehicle and the matter will be taken up once again at next month’s meeting.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.
This article was posted: Thursday, August 15, 2013 at 6:07 am
Tags: domestic news, government corruption, police state
NBC News
Karalen Morthole, 23, alleges she was raped by a noncommissioned officer at a Marine base bar in Washington, D.C., in July 2012.
By Michael Isikoff, National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News
A 23-year-old Washington, D.C. woman who alleges she was raped on a Marine Corps base just blocks from the U.S. Capitol said she never thought she’d be in danger among members of the military.
“I thought I was going to a place where I would be safe,” said Karalen Morthole in an exclusive interview with NBC News. “In my head, I thought these are people who are supposed to be protecting me.”
This week a Marine Corps general ordered that Master Sgt. Ronald E. Bohlayer be charged with raping Morthole after a night of partying and drinking last July at the historic Marine Barracks on Capitol Hill. The charges come as the entire U.S. military is under fire for its handling of sexual assault cases, and barely a year after the release of an Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Invisible War,” that featured allegations of sexual assault and raucous drinking at the Barracks. The allegations got widespread attention from Congress despite strong denials from the Marine Corps.
An attorney for Bohlayer, meanwhile, questioned whether the general’s order that his client be prosecuted for rape, despite the recommendations of an investigating officer that the charge be dropped, might have been influenced by the current publicity about sexual assaults in the military.
Morthole, who agreed to let NBC News use her name, is a local bartender and recent Catholic University graduate. She said that after attending a Washington Nationals game last July 3, she was partying with some friends at the Ugly Mug bar on 8th Street SE when she accepted an invitation from a Marine to go to a pub on the grounds of the Barracks, directly across the street. She was escorted onto the base by the Marine early on the morning of July 4, she said, without showing any identification to a guard.
Once at the Marine Barracks pub, she said, she and others present began drinking “a lot” of shots of Irish whiskey – and one Marine got sexually aggressive in a patio area outside. “The man who was doing this kept on making very vulgar advances toward me, sexual advances towards me,” Morthole said. He “pinned” her against a wall, she said, got “very close to my face and …kept repeating the phrase, ‘I’m going to (blank) you.’”
“I was very scared,” said Morthole. “I can just remember being in excruciating pain and crying and asking him to stop.”
After raping her, Morthole said, her attacker escorted her outside and tried to make her get into a cab with him so they could go back to her home. When she refused, “He got within six inches of my face and started screaming obscenities at me, which prompted the guard I was standing next to to hold up his arm and say, ‘Stand down.’ ”
Bohlayer, the noncommissioned officer now charged with raping her, is a 22-year veteran of the Marine Corps who served in Iraq and was awarded a Bronze Star in Afghanistan in 2010, according to his lawyer. The charge sheet alleges that he forced Morthole to have sexual intercourse at a time when she was “incapable of consenting . . . due to impairment by alcohol, and that her impairment was known or reasonably should have been known by the accused.”
Karalen Morthole, who claims she was raped by a Marine at a pub at a barracks in Washington, D.C., says, “I thought these are people who are supposed to be helping me.”
Bohlayer has adamantly denied the charges, and his lawyer, Maj. Joseph Grimm, said in a statement that both the local U.S. attorney’s office and a Marine investigating officer had investigated the incident and concluded there were no grounds to bring charges. Morthole says she first went to a local hospital about a week after the incident and didn’t report the alleged assault to the Washington, D.C. police until about a week after that. She later testified before a grand jury, but was told by a local prosecutor that no charges would be brought because the alleged assault amounted to a case of “he said-she said.”
In his statement, Grimm said that the Marine “Investigating Officer” — a reserve colonel who is a former military judge — reached the same conclusion at a pretrial hearing. “After hearing the testimony of Ms. Morthole and all the relevant witnesses, the investigating officer found that the allegations of sexual assault and rape were baseless,” said Grimm. “The Investigating Officer subsequently recommended that the sexual assault and rape charges be dismissed.” Grimm acknowledged that the investigating officer did recommend that other lesser charges be brought.
But Marine Maj. Gen. James A. Kessler, the commander or “convening authority” in charge of the case, overrode the recommendations of the investigating officer and directed that Bohlayer be court-martialed on charges of rape as well as indecent exposure and disorderly conduct.
In a court hearing on the case this week, Grimm suggested that Kessler’s decision was influenced by the current “wide publicity about sexual assaults in the military” as well as pressure from Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos, who in recent testimony on Capitol Hill said that “a single sexual assault in a unit can undermine everything.”
“We are currently investigating whether the Convening Authority’s decision to refer the case to a court-martial was caused by unlawful command influence,” Grimm said in his statement.
A Marine Corps spokesman declined any comment on the Bohlayer case, including Grimm’s charge that the case was being influenced by politics. “That’s going to be something for the court and the jury to decide,” said Capt. Eric Flanagan. “It would be inappropriate for us to comment.”
The case is, in some ways, the reverse of another celebrated recent sexual assault case – that of Air Force Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, who was convicted of aggravated sexual assault by a military jury last November only to have his conviction overturned by a top Air Force general who served as the “convening authority” in the case. The disclosure of that reversal outraged members of Congress and led to current demands by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D.-N.Y., and others that military commanders be stripped of their authority to make decisions about sexual assault prosecutions.
Eugene Fidell, an expert on military justice at Yale Law School, explains why some accusations of misconduct within the ranks never get a fair trial and why this is a “mess” for our armed forces.
Eugene Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School, said it is relatively unusual — but not unheard of — for a convening authority like Maj. Gen. Kessler to direct that court-martial charges be brought when the investigating officer recommends otherwise. “It’s not completely rare, but it’s not something that happens every day,” he said.
But Fidell said that “in the current political climate,” Maj. Gen. Kessler was “traversing a minefield.”
“If you send the case to trial against the recommendation (of the investigating officer), people will complain that you’re being too hard and politically correct,” he said. “If you refuse to send the case to trial against a recommendation, then it means you’re unwilling to bite the bullet and make the difficult decision. So most convening authorities right now are probably scratching their heads.”
Fidell also said that Morthole’s acknowledgement that there was heavy drinking that night should not be a barrier to convicting the defendant. “If anything [it] helps the prosecution,” he said, “because that would suggest that the victim was not in a position to defend herself, to say, ‘Stop, don’t do that,’ or scream out. It’s often the case that people in these situations have had too much to drink.”
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Karalen Morthole, 23, alleges she was raped by a noncommissioned officer at a Marine base bar in Washington, D.C., in July 2012.
By Michael Isikoff, National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News
A 23-year-old Washington, D.C. woman who alleges she was raped on a Marine Corps base just blocks from the U.S. Capitol said she never thought she’d be in danger among members of the military.
“I thought I was going to a place where I would be safe,” said Karalen Morthole in an exclusive interview with NBC News. “In my head, I thought these are people who are supposed to be protecting me.”
This week a Marine Corps general ordered that Master Sgt. Ronald E. Bohlayer be charged with raping Morthole after a night of partying and drinking last July at the historic Marine Barracks on Capitol Hill. The charges come as the entire U.S. military is under fire for its handling of sexual assault cases, and barely a year after the release of an Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Invisible War,” that featured allegations of sexual assault and raucous drinking at the Barracks. The allegations got widespread attention from Congress despite strong denials from the Marine Corps.
An attorney for Bohlayer, meanwhile, questioned whether the general’s order that his client be prosecuted for rape, despite the recommendations of an investigating officer that the charge be dropped, might have been influenced by the current publicity about sexual assaults in the military.
Morthole, who agreed to let NBC News use her name, is a local bartender and recent Catholic University graduate. She said that after attending a Washington Nationals game last July 3, she was partying with some friends at the Ugly Mug bar on 8th Street SE when she accepted an invitation from a Marine to go to a pub on the grounds of the Barracks, directly across the street. She was escorted onto the base by the Marine early on the morning of July 4, she said, without showing any identification to a guard.
Once at the Marine Barracks pub, she said, she and others present began drinking “a lot” of shots of Irish whiskey – and one Marine got sexually aggressive in a patio area outside. “The man who was doing this kept on making very vulgar advances toward me, sexual advances towards me,” Morthole said. He “pinned” her against a wall, she said, got “very close to my face and …kept repeating the phrase, ‘I’m going to (blank) you.’”
“I was very scared,” said Morthole. “I can just remember being in excruciating pain and crying and asking him to stop.”
After raping her, Morthole said, her attacker escorted her outside and tried to make her get into a cab with him so they could go back to her home. When she refused, “He got within six inches of my face and started screaming obscenities at me, which prompted the guard I was standing next to to hold up his arm and say, ‘Stand down.’ ”
Bohlayer, the noncommissioned officer now charged with raping her, is a 22-year veteran of the Marine Corps who served in Iraq and was awarded a Bronze Star in Afghanistan in 2010, according to his lawyer. The charge sheet alleges that he forced Morthole to have sexual intercourse at a time when she was “incapable of consenting . . . due to impairment by alcohol, and that her impairment was known or reasonably should have been known by the accused.”
Karalen Morthole, who claims she was raped by a Marine at a pub at a barracks in Washington, D.C., says, “I thought these are people who are supposed to be helping me.”
Bohlayer has adamantly denied the charges, and his lawyer, Maj. Joseph Grimm, said in a statement that both the local U.S. attorney’s office and a Marine investigating officer had investigated the incident and concluded there were no grounds to bring charges. Morthole says she first went to a local hospital about a week after the incident and didn’t report the alleged assault to the Washington, D.C. police until about a week after that. She later testified before a grand jury, but was told by a local prosecutor that no charges would be brought because the alleged assault amounted to a case of “he said-she said.”
In his statement, Grimm said that the Marine “Investigating Officer” — a reserve colonel who is a former military judge — reached the same conclusion at a pretrial hearing. “After hearing the testimony of Ms. Morthole and all the relevant witnesses, the investigating officer found that the allegations of sexual assault and rape were baseless,” said Grimm. “The Investigating Officer subsequently recommended that the sexual assault and rape charges be dismissed.” Grimm acknowledged that the investigating officer did recommend that other lesser charges be brought.
But Marine Maj. Gen. James A. Kessler, the commander or “convening authority” in charge of the case, overrode the recommendations of the investigating officer and directed that Bohlayer be court-martialed on charges of rape as well as indecent exposure and disorderly conduct.
In a court hearing on the case this week, Grimm suggested that Kessler’s decision was influenced by the current “wide publicity about sexual assaults in the military” as well as pressure from Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos, who in recent testimony on Capitol Hill said that “a single sexual assault in a unit can undermine everything.”
“We are currently investigating whether the Convening Authority’s decision to refer the case to a court-martial was caused by unlawful command influence,” Grimm said in his statement.
A Marine Corps spokesman declined any comment on the Bohlayer case, including Grimm’s charge that the case was being influenced by politics. “That’s going to be something for the court and the jury to decide,” said Capt. Eric Flanagan. “It would be inappropriate for us to comment.”
The case is, in some ways, the reverse of another celebrated recent sexual assault case – that of Air Force Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, who was convicted of aggravated sexual assault by a military jury last November only to have his conviction overturned by a top Air Force general who served as the “convening authority” in the case. The disclosure of that reversal outraged members of Congress and led to current demands by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D.-N.Y., and others that military commanders be stripped of their authority to make decisions about sexual assault prosecutions.
Eugene Fidell, an expert on military justice at Yale Law School, explains why some accusations of misconduct within the ranks never get a fair trial and why this is a “mess” for our armed forces.
Eugene Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School, said it is relatively unusual — but not unheard of — for a convening authority like Maj. Gen. Kessler to direct that court-martial charges be brought when the investigating officer recommends otherwise. “It’s not completely rare, but it’s not something that happens every day,” he said.
But Fidell said that “in the current political climate,” Maj. Gen. Kessler was “traversing a minefield.”
“If you send the case to trial against the recommendation (of the investigating officer), people will complain that you’re being too hard and politically correct,” he said. “If you refuse to send the case to trial against a recommendation, then it means you’re unwilling to bite the bullet and make the difficult decision. So most convening authorities right now are probably scratching their heads.”
Fidell also said that Morthole’s acknowledgement that there was heavy drinking that night should not be a barrier to convicting the defendant. “If anything [it] helps the prosecution,” he said, “because that would suggest that the victim was not in a position to defend herself, to say, ‘Stop, don’t do that,’ or scream out. It’s often the case that people in these situations have had too much to drink.”
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(CNN) — The U.S. Marine believed responsible for the stabbing death of his wife in North Carolina along with a deadly shooting spree some 1,300 miles away in Texas had no known ties to the Lone Star State, authorities there said Wednesday.
Lance Cpl. Esteban J. Smith, 23, died Sunday in a shootout with Texas authorities after going on a two-hour rampage that left one person dead and five wounded, according to investigators.
Police in Jacksonville, North Carolina, also believe he stabbed his wife to death.
Authorities don’t know why Smith, an active duty Marine from Bakersfield, California, was 1,300 miles away from his duty station at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, said Tom Vinger, spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Tuesday, survivors of Smith’s Texas shooting spree said they were thankful to be alive.
“I don’t know how we survived it,” Casimiro Solis told CNN affiliate KTAB.
He said he and his wife, Charlotte Feldman, were on their way to work in Brady, Texas, when a man police identified as Smith came up to them with a “dead blank” look on his face and started firing.
Authorities counted 16 bullet holes in their truck.
Solis said hardware that attaches the shoulder belt to the truck caused one bullet that would have gone through Feldman to instead ricochet into the truck’s top.
“I really thought the side of my face was shot off,” Feldman told the station.
Feldman and Solis suffered only minor wounds in the attack.
In addition to Feldman and Solis, police say Smith killed Alicia Torres, 41, in Eola, Texas, shot at two people in Eden, Texas, and wounded Concho County Sheriff Richard Doane just north of Eden in central Texas.
Smith died in a firefight with state troopers and a game warden who arrived shortly after that incident.
Authorities found an assault rifle, a handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in Smith’s pickup.
Smith’s wife, Rubi Estenania Smith, 21, was discovered dead Sunday afternoon at a motel near Camp Lejeune, according to police in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
Police located Rubi Smith’s body after agents with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service working on the Texas incident found some sort of evidence on Smith and contacted them for help.
Police didn’t describe the evidence.
It appeared she had been stabbed, police said.
Esteban Smith was a Marine rifleman who had served two tours in Afghanistan with the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, according to the Marine Corps.
He first deployed to Afghanistan from August 2010 to May 2011, then again from April 2012 until November.
CNN’s Vivian Kuo and Adam Levine contributed to this report.
CNN.com Recently Published/Updated
(CNN) — A North Carolina-based Marine killed by Texas authorities after a deadly shooting spree had deployed twice to Afghanistan, according to service records released Tuesday by the Pentagon.
Lance Cpl. Esteban J. Smith died Sunday in a shootout with Texas authorities after going on a two-hour rampage that left one person dead and five wounded, according to investigators.
He is also apparently connected to a woman whose body was found near his base in North Carolina, Camp Lejeune, CNN affiliate WNCT reported, citing Marine Corps officials.
Smith, 23, of Bakersfield, California, served in Afghanistan with the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division from August 2010 to May 2011, according to Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Maureen T. Krebs.
He returned to Afghanistan with his unit in April 2012 and remained there until November, according to Krebs.
Service records indicate his military job was rifleman.
His service records included a number of routine awards for personnel assigned to combat tours, including the National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and a Combat Action Ribbon, among others.
Investigators say Smith began his shooting spree around 4:30 a.m. Sunday. They say he killed Alicia Torres, 41, in Eola, Texas, and also shot two people in Eden, Texas, two people in Brady, Texas, and a sheriff’s deputy just north of Eden.
He died in a firefight with state troopers and a game warden who arrived shortly after that incident.
Two victims, including the deputy, Richard Doane, remained hospitalized Monday with non-life-threatening injuries. Three other people were treated at a hospital and released.
Authorities found an assault rifle, a handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in Smith’s pickup.
According to WNCT, Smith is also linked to the death of a woman whose body was discovered at a Jacksonville, North Carolina, motel.
In addition to local authorities, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is involved in the investigation, a spokesman said.
CNN’s Adam Levine contributed to this report.
CNN.com Recently Published/Updated
LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — A Marine killed after going on a shooting spree that left one person dead and several hospitalized in Texas also is suspected of fatally stabbing his wife, whose body was found in a North Carolina motel room hours after the rampage, police said Tuesday.
Rubi Estefania Smith of Bakersfield, Calif., was found dead Sunday afternoon in a motel room near Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, N.C., police said in a news release. She was the wife of Esteban J. Smith, a 23-year-old Marine who died Sunday in a gunfight with Texas authorities.
Police spokeswoman Beth Purcell said Rubi Estefania Smith appears to have died from a knife wound.
Esteban Smith is suspected in a West Texas shooting rampage that left one woman dead and five others wounded. An assault rifle, handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition were recovered from Smith’s vehicle.
The Texas shootings began about 4:30 a.m. Sunday, when the gunman shot a motorist in the Eden area of Concho County, about 40 miles southeast of San Angelo and 210 miles southwest of Dallas. She was hospitalized in San Angelo with non-life-threatening wounds, Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger said.
Over the next 90 minutes, two more people were shot while sitting in a car at a convenience store in adjacent McCulloch County. Both were treated and released from a hospital, Vinger said.
Shortly after 6 a.m., Alicia Torres, 41, was found dead in her car in Eola, just east of San Angelo, Vinger said.
The suspect fired on the vehicle of Concho County Sheriff Richard Doane when the sheriff came upon him north of Eden, according to DPS. Doane, who suffered non-life-threatening wounds in the gunfire and hospitalized, was released from a San Angelo hospital early Tuesday, Shannon Medical Center spokeswoman Suzi Reynolds said.
Doane did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
___
Biesecker reported from Raleigh, N.C.
