In a nutshell, the case exploded when an intelligence officer dropped a bombshell on prosecutors during a pre-hearing interview when he revealed the existence of exculpatory evidence that appears to have been obtained by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and withheld from the prosecutors.This officer, described by senior Marine Corps superiors as one of the best and most dedicated intelligence officers in the entire Marine Corps, was in possession of evidence which provided a minute-by-minute narrative of the entire day's action - material which he had amassed while monitoring the day's action in his capacity as the battalion's intelligence officer. That material, he says, was also in the hands of the NCIS.Much of that evidence remains classified, but it includes videos of the entire day's action, including airstrikes against insurgent safe houses. Also included was all of the radio traffic describing the ongoing action between the men on the ground and battalion headquarters, and proof that the Marines were aware that the insurgents conducting the ambush of the Kilo Company troops were videotaping the action - the same video that after editing ended up in the hands of a gullible anti-war correspondent for Time magazine.When asked by the prosecution team to give his copies of the evidence to the prosecution, he told NewsMax.com that he was reluctant to do so, fearing it would again be suppressed or misused, but later relented when ordered by his commanding general to do so.
Confronted by the massive mounds of evidence that Marine Corps sources tell NewsMax proves conclusively that the cases against the Haditha Marines are baseless, the prosecutors were forced to postpone the Article 32 against Lt. Col. Chessani and two of the enlisted men in an attempt to regroup.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Fighting Orcs, Remington Raiders and Office Pogs--Case against the Haditha Marines Bogus, Baseless, Barn Yard Pure B!S!
From American Thinker and News Max comes news that the NCIS has been deliberately sitting on mounds of exculpatory evidence "that Marine Corps sources tell NewsMax proves conclusively that the cases against the Haditha Marines are baseless". Excuse me. So what you have here is Haditha Marines, who supposedly ran amuck "killing innocent civilians", really ran into a Remington Raiders Lynch Mob who sat on exculpatory evidence that would not only throw the case out of court but would have prevented prosecutors from filing charges at all: