Soldiers' families accuse military of cover-up
Posted: June 23rd, 2006, 10:39 am
Note: This story is personal for me. Nadia McCaffrey is a friend and also a mentor with my hospice work. She helped me get started, and trained me, and worked with me doing hospice. Nadia has known from the beginning that the US Government was not telling truth about her son's death and she's been fighting for two years to get the truth. And while this is a step in the right direction, and some truth has been revealed - it is not the whole truth. That's why what's happening now is so important. Perhaps, the whole truth may never come out - but my hope is that what has will finally open the door to bring our soldiers home; and the families of our soldiers to be told the truth, and our government to be held accountable for all the lies. There is so, so much more that can be said about this, but ... this is where I choose to start today. - Deb
Source:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... JIDN21.DTL
Military comes clean to mom
2 years after son's death, she gets truth, learns suspect is held
Henry K. Lee, Matthew B. Stannard, Jim Doyle
Chronicle Staff Writers
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Photo caption: Patrick McCaffrey, holding flowers given him by Iraqi children, was photographed 45 minutes before he was killed.
Fellow soldiers knew within minutes on June 22, 2004, that California National Guard Spc. Patrick McCaffrey and 1st Lt. Andre D. Tyson had been killed by supposedly allied Iraqi soldiers who were patrolling alongside them. Army investigators reached the same conclusion in 2005.
But it wasn't until Wednesday afternoon that the military finally told the soldiers' families how they died and that one of the suspected killers was in custody.
McCaffrey's mother, Nadia McCaffrey, emerged from a three-hour briefing with Army Brig. Gen. Oscar Hilman and other military personnel -- who presented her with a six-inch-thick binder of documents -- saying she still had questions.
"They basically said they failed me, failed us," she said. "It's worse than it was two years ago when I received the phone call telling me that he was dead."
McCaffrey, who became outspoken against the war after her son's death, said she intends to continue pursuing answers in his case while demanding changes to prevent such notification delays.
"I want some very clear answers. I'm not going to let go. I want them to take some measures to protect the solders," she said. "There are no excuses for things like this, and they know it."
Army officials confirmed Wednesday that they completed their investigation in September into the killings of McCaffrey, 34, of Tracy, and Tyson, 33, of Riverside. The soldiers were shot to death outside Balad, Iraq. Both were attached to Alpha Company, 579th Engineer Battalion, based in Petaluma.
Although initial reports said the two soldiers died in an ambush by enemy forces, the Army now says they were killed by members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps that the California Guardsmen were training.
"I want to express our condolences to both families," Army spokesman Paul Boyce said in a phone interview. "The army regrets any delay in notifying the family of the ultimate, successful conclusion of this investigation."
The Army has already reformed its casualty notification process in response to cases such as the 2004 death in Afghanistan of Army Cpl. Pat Tillman of San Jose -- later revealed to have been killed by friendly fire -- and the death that same year of Army 1st Lt. Ken Ballard of Mountain View, whose mother, Karen Meredith, found out only 15 months after the fact that his death had been caused by an accidental weapons discharge.
"This is horrible for every military family again, because if your loved one has died, now the high water mark is two years," Meredith said. "Every family is going to say, 'Do I know the truth? And if I don't, do I have to wait two years to find it?"
Army officials blamed the delay on the complexity of the case, and said that politics over the war in Iraq played no role in the holdup. But McCaffrey's father, Bob McCaffrey of Redding, scoffed at that claim.
"It's a bunch of lies, a bunch of smoke and mirrors. It makes me mad as hell," McCaffrey said. "But the military does not make these decisions on their own. They're told by the administration, 'No, that could be damaging.' They're told not to talk to the McCaffreys, that it could be damaging. They just have no regard for the truth."
U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said Wednesday she is troubled by the delay and plans to raise the issue on the floor of the Senate and with the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Nadia McCaffrey, asked the senator's staff to help her obtain information about her son's death in May. The queries from Boxer's office led the Army to admit that it had not properly notified the families of the results of its investigation. "In September '05 they knew exactly what happened, but failed to tell the families until today," Boxer said. Asked why she thought the Army had failed to notify the family, Boxer said: "I think it's pretty obvious that if the American people knew that the Iraqis we train would turn on our soldiers, support for the war would erode."
Army officials said that cases of American soldiers being killed by Iraqi allies are "extremely rare," but the problem of insurgents enlisting in the Iraqi military was recognized as early as April 2004, when Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita discussed it in a briefing.
"We're working very hard to vet these guys and to get Iraqis more involved in their own security, and that's moving forward quite well," Di Rita said. "But we know that we're going to pick up some of the wrong people, and we'll vet them and deal with them if that happens."
Fellow Guardsmen believed almost immediately that McCaffrey and Tyson were killed by Iraqi troops, said former Guard Sgt. Steve Edwards Jr., who became fast friends with McCaffrey even before they went into combat.
"Even though I only saw him during drill times, we'd always talk like I'd known him forever," Edwards said in a phone interview from his home in San Jose.
None of the California Guardsmen really trusted the Iraqis they were supposed to train, Edwards said. While one platoon of Iraqis was composed of solid, professional soldiers eager to protect their nation, the rest were filled with men who the Americans saw as farmers willing to do as little as possible and still earn soldier's pay.
The day McCaffrey died was so brutally hot that McCaffrey was administering rehydrating IV's to his fellow troops, Edwards said, even though McCaffrey was carrying the radio along with all his own gear. Even the Iraqis were falling out from the heat, he said.
"We were just saying, they're pushing it too hard ... they can't keep pushing us like this," Edwards said. "(McCaffrey) said, 'They're going to keep pushing us ... until we've lost someone.' And unfortunately, it was him."
Near the end of the mission -- searching for weapons caches -- many of the Americans were exhausted and boarded vehicles. A small group -- including McCaffrey and Tyson -- pressed on. Somewhere up ahead, he said, the group broke up into even smaller sub-groups. He heard later that Tyson argued with the Iraqi troops, ordering them to keep up.
"Shortly thereafter, we're sitting there getting ready to move out, and we hear AK-47 fire," he said. They didn't think much of it -- Iraqi weapons fire was common -- but moments later they heard the sharp sound of American M-16 fire and radio traffic about soldiers down.
They raced in the vehicles to the scene, where Edwards saw soldiers working on a prone form. He approached a medic.
"Who's hit?" he asked.
"Lt. Tyson's dead," the medic said.
"Tyson is dead? You're sure?"
"He's got two rounds in the head. He's dead."
"Who else is hit? ... Who's that they're working on?"
"That's McCaffrey," the medic said. "I don't know if he's going to make it."
Edwards recalled he stood silent, shocked. Then another soldier spoke up.
"There's some (Iraqi troops) missing," the soldier said. "Could it possibly be them?"
The Guardsmen quickly decided it could have been, Edwards said. They eventually learned that one of the missing soldiers had apparently been a sniper in Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard, Edwards added.
"That son of a bitch managed to get away," Edwards said. "Until right before we went back home, they caught him in Baghdad, doing the same kind of stuff: counterinsurgency ... against us."
It was not immediately clear if the man Edwards described was the same Iraqi soldier who Army officials said was in custody in Baghdad. The official said the United States will seek the suspect's prosecution under Iraqi law.
Legal experts said there may be few avenues for U.S. prosecution of the Iraqi suspect, and even Iraqi courts might not prosecute him if a general amnesty currently being considered by the Iraqi government is approved. It's a possibility that Edwards found discouraging.
"This was my friend. These were my friends who were killed over there. If I had my way, the guy would fry," he said. "Unfortunately, I think he'll be able to get away with it."
E-mail the writers at hlee@sfchronicle.com, mstannard@sfchronicle.com and jdoyle@sfchronicle.com.
----
With gratitude to Barbara Boxer for help in finally getting some movement into this situation:
Source:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... JI2PB4.DTL
Source:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... JIDN21.DTL
Military comes clean to mom
2 years after son's death, she gets truth, learns suspect is held
Henry K. Lee, Matthew B. Stannard, Jim Doyle
Chronicle Staff Writers
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Photo caption: Patrick McCaffrey, holding flowers given him by Iraqi children, was photographed 45 minutes before he was killed.
Fellow soldiers knew within minutes on June 22, 2004, that California National Guard Spc. Patrick McCaffrey and 1st Lt. Andre D. Tyson had been killed by supposedly allied Iraqi soldiers who were patrolling alongside them. Army investigators reached the same conclusion in 2005.
But it wasn't until Wednesday afternoon that the military finally told the soldiers' families how they died and that one of the suspected killers was in custody.
McCaffrey's mother, Nadia McCaffrey, emerged from a three-hour briefing with Army Brig. Gen. Oscar Hilman and other military personnel -- who presented her with a six-inch-thick binder of documents -- saying she still had questions.
"They basically said they failed me, failed us," she said. "It's worse than it was two years ago when I received the phone call telling me that he was dead."
McCaffrey, who became outspoken against the war after her son's death, said she intends to continue pursuing answers in his case while demanding changes to prevent such notification delays.
"I want some very clear answers. I'm not going to let go. I want them to take some measures to protect the solders," she said. "There are no excuses for things like this, and they know it."
Army officials confirmed Wednesday that they completed their investigation in September into the killings of McCaffrey, 34, of Tracy, and Tyson, 33, of Riverside. The soldiers were shot to death outside Balad, Iraq. Both were attached to Alpha Company, 579th Engineer Battalion, based in Petaluma.
Although initial reports said the two soldiers died in an ambush by enemy forces, the Army now says they were killed by members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps that the California Guardsmen were training.
"I want to express our condolences to both families," Army spokesman Paul Boyce said in a phone interview. "The army regrets any delay in notifying the family of the ultimate, successful conclusion of this investigation."
The Army has already reformed its casualty notification process in response to cases such as the 2004 death in Afghanistan of Army Cpl. Pat Tillman of San Jose -- later revealed to have been killed by friendly fire -- and the death that same year of Army 1st Lt. Ken Ballard of Mountain View, whose mother, Karen Meredith, found out only 15 months after the fact that his death had been caused by an accidental weapons discharge.
"This is horrible for every military family again, because if your loved one has died, now the high water mark is two years," Meredith said. "Every family is going to say, 'Do I know the truth? And if I don't, do I have to wait two years to find it?"
Army officials blamed the delay on the complexity of the case, and said that politics over the war in Iraq played no role in the holdup. But McCaffrey's father, Bob McCaffrey of Redding, scoffed at that claim.
"It's a bunch of lies, a bunch of smoke and mirrors. It makes me mad as hell," McCaffrey said. "But the military does not make these decisions on their own. They're told by the administration, 'No, that could be damaging.' They're told not to talk to the McCaffreys, that it could be damaging. They just have no regard for the truth."
U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said Wednesday she is troubled by the delay and plans to raise the issue on the floor of the Senate and with the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Nadia McCaffrey, asked the senator's staff to help her obtain information about her son's death in May. The queries from Boxer's office led the Army to admit that it had not properly notified the families of the results of its investigation. "In September '05 they knew exactly what happened, but failed to tell the families until today," Boxer said. Asked why she thought the Army had failed to notify the family, Boxer said: "I think it's pretty obvious that if the American people knew that the Iraqis we train would turn on our soldiers, support for the war would erode."
Army officials said that cases of American soldiers being killed by Iraqi allies are "extremely rare," but the problem of insurgents enlisting in the Iraqi military was recognized as early as April 2004, when Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita discussed it in a briefing.
"We're working very hard to vet these guys and to get Iraqis more involved in their own security, and that's moving forward quite well," Di Rita said. "But we know that we're going to pick up some of the wrong people, and we'll vet them and deal with them if that happens."
Fellow Guardsmen believed almost immediately that McCaffrey and Tyson were killed by Iraqi troops, said former Guard Sgt. Steve Edwards Jr., who became fast friends with McCaffrey even before they went into combat.
"Even though I only saw him during drill times, we'd always talk like I'd known him forever," Edwards said in a phone interview from his home in San Jose.
None of the California Guardsmen really trusted the Iraqis they were supposed to train, Edwards said. While one platoon of Iraqis was composed of solid, professional soldiers eager to protect their nation, the rest were filled with men who the Americans saw as farmers willing to do as little as possible and still earn soldier's pay.
The day McCaffrey died was so brutally hot that McCaffrey was administering rehydrating IV's to his fellow troops, Edwards said, even though McCaffrey was carrying the radio along with all his own gear. Even the Iraqis were falling out from the heat, he said.
"We were just saying, they're pushing it too hard ... they can't keep pushing us like this," Edwards said. "(McCaffrey) said, 'They're going to keep pushing us ... until we've lost someone.' And unfortunately, it was him."
Near the end of the mission -- searching for weapons caches -- many of the Americans were exhausted and boarded vehicles. A small group -- including McCaffrey and Tyson -- pressed on. Somewhere up ahead, he said, the group broke up into even smaller sub-groups. He heard later that Tyson argued with the Iraqi troops, ordering them to keep up.
"Shortly thereafter, we're sitting there getting ready to move out, and we hear AK-47 fire," he said. They didn't think much of it -- Iraqi weapons fire was common -- but moments later they heard the sharp sound of American M-16 fire and radio traffic about soldiers down.
They raced in the vehicles to the scene, where Edwards saw soldiers working on a prone form. He approached a medic.
"Who's hit?" he asked.
"Lt. Tyson's dead," the medic said.
"Tyson is dead? You're sure?"
"He's got two rounds in the head. He's dead."
"Who else is hit? ... Who's that they're working on?"
"That's McCaffrey," the medic said. "I don't know if he's going to make it."
Edwards recalled he stood silent, shocked. Then another soldier spoke up.
"There's some (Iraqi troops) missing," the soldier said. "Could it possibly be them?"
The Guardsmen quickly decided it could have been, Edwards said. They eventually learned that one of the missing soldiers had apparently been a sniper in Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard, Edwards added.
"That son of a bitch managed to get away," Edwards said. "Until right before we went back home, they caught him in Baghdad, doing the same kind of stuff: counterinsurgency ... against us."
It was not immediately clear if the man Edwards described was the same Iraqi soldier who Army officials said was in custody in Baghdad. The official said the United States will seek the suspect's prosecution under Iraqi law.
Legal experts said there may be few avenues for U.S. prosecution of the Iraqi suspect, and even Iraqi courts might not prosecute him if a general amnesty currently being considered by the Iraqi government is approved. It's a possibility that Edwards found discouraging.
"This was my friend. These were my friends who were killed over there. If I had my way, the guy would fry," he said. "Unfortunately, I think he'll be able to get away with it."
E-mail the writers at hlee@sfchronicle.com, mstannard@sfchronicle.com and jdoyle@sfchronicle.com.
----
With gratitude to Barbara Boxer for help in finally getting some movement into this situation:
Source:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... JI2PB4.DTL
Boxer: Soldier's 'family was not told the truth'
Jim Doyle, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Photos"
Sen. Barbara Boxer released documents on the Army's inves... Andre Demetrius Tyson. Family photo via the Santa Maria T... Nadia McCaffrey, whose son was reportedly killed by Iraqi... Bob McCaffrey, a Redding rancher, says the situation is "... More...
(06-21) 15:35 PDT WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer released documents today that appear to show that the Army completed its investigation in September 2005 into the deaths two years ago of two California National Guard soldiers in Iraq, but waited nearly nine months to inform the family of its conclusion that the two Americans had been killed by Iraqi forces during a joint patrol.
"The family was not told the truth," Boxer, D-Calif., told reporters during a conference call. "It's troubling that the Pentagon would withhold this information from the family. It's troubling that Specialist McCaffrey told his family that he had been attacked twice before by Iraqi soldiers. It's troubling that it took the involvement of a Senate office to get the autopsy and a written report about his death."
A Pentagon document that the senator obtained today indicates that the Army's Criminal Investigation Command had completed by Sept. 30, 2005, its investigation into the June 22, 2004, deaths near the town of Balad, Iraq, of Spc. Patrick Ryan McCaffrey, 34, of Tracy, and 2nd Lt. Andre Demetrius Tyson, 33, of Riverside.
But the unclassified document indicates that the Army did not provide any clarification to the McCaffrey and Tyson families, who had been told by the Army in a preliminary casualty report that the soldiers' patrol had been ambushed by small arms fire from enemy insurgents.
The Army will conduct a "follow-up notification" to the McCaffrey's family, the Army document states, "advising them as to the findings of the investigations, and explaining why they were not more timely notified of the existence of the two concurrent investigations and the conclusions contained within each report of investigation."
The document contains no written explanation of the delay.
Brig. Gen. Oscar Hillman and three other officers were scheduled to brief Nadia McCaffrey about her son's death this afternoon in Tracy.
"In September '05 they knew exactly what happened, but failed to tell the families until today," Boxer said. "You have to ask yourself, 'What are we doing there with a blank check and a blind eye, when our soldiers are risking their lives for the Iraqi people and the Iraqis are turning around and killing our soldiers?' We need an exit strategy."
A Pentagon spokesman was unavailable for comment.
McCaffrey and Tyson were both attached to Alpha Company, 579th Engineer Battalion, based in Petaluma. They were conducting training and joint operations with the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.
The Army insists that such instances of Iraqi forces killing American soldiers are extremely rare, but Boxer voiced skepticism.
"The sense you get is that this could have happened before," Boxer said. "Your trust and faith is weakened when you learn that they knew about this by at least September '05 but they didn't tell the family."
The senator said she plans to raise the issue with the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"I want to make sure that the casualty officers assigned to these families are allowed to tell the truth," Boxer said. "I want to make sure that there are enough casualty officers. ... We ask so much from these parents."
She also said that if a family is unsatisfied with the answers given by the Army, there should be people up the chain-of-command who are accessible to families.
Boxer's office was contacted in early May by anti-war activist Nadia McCaffrey of Tracy, who asked the senator's staff to help her obtain information about her son's death. A Boxer aide wrote a letter to the Army's legislative liaison requesting information about the McCaffrey case on May 22.
E-mail Jim Doyle at jdoyle@sfchronicle.com.