Corps: 6 more spec-ops Marines sent home - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Corps: 6 more spec-ops Marines sent home

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — A half-dozen spec-ops Marines were sent home to Camp Lejeune — along with their company commander and senior enlisted adviser — after a controversial shootout got the entire unit tossed out of Afghanistan and redeployed to an unnamed location.

Information on the relief and return of the company commander and senior enlisted Marine was previously released by Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, but no mention had been made of additional returns.

The commander and senior enlisted Marine were relieved on April 3 and sent back to Lejeune, where the command is based. Their names have not been released.

MarSOC officials confirmed on April 20 that six other Marines were returned to the base, in response to questions from Marine Corps Times. Information on when the Marines were returned was not released, and the Marine Corps did not disclose why they were sent home.

MarSOC officials declined to offer details for the additional Marines involved.

“In the interest of privacy and to preserve the presumption of innocence these Marines deserve to the best of our ability, we will not release the names or ranks of these personnel,” Maj. Cliff Gilmore, MarSOC public affairs officer, said in a written statement.

“They are completing required post-deployment training and administrative requirements, taking some much-deserved leave, and will return to duty within MarSOC until this issue is resolved,” he said.

Many of the details of the March 4 incident, being investigated by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, are in dispute.

Leathernecks with the Marine special operations company say they were returning small-arms fire in an ambush that started when their convoy was hit by a car bomb, according to a preliminary investigation.

But that same investigation, whose details were disclosed to a newspaper by the top special operations commander in the Middle East, and by a report compiled by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, says there’s no evidence that the spec-ops platoon came under small-arms fire after the bombing.

A story published April 8 in The Washington Post quotes Army Maj. Gen. Frank Kearney as saying, “We found ... no brass that we can confirm that small-arms fire came at them. We have testimony from Marines that is in conflict with unanimous testimony from civilians at the sites.”

Kearney, head of U.S. Special Operations Command-Central Command, went on to say that his investigating officer “believes those [Afghan] folks were innocent. ... We were unable to find evidence that those were fighters.”

Several civilian vehicles were hit. At least 10 people were killed and another 33 wounded.

Days after the ambush, Kearney ordered the entire 120-man company out of Afghanistan and, earlier this month, requested NCIS investigate for possible criminal actions.

A spokesman for Kearney could not be reached for comment since the Post interview, which many agree was an extraordinarily candid public assessment during an ongoing investigation.

“It’s unfortunate that he would take the opportunity in a press interview to publicly indict the Marines,” said a civilian lawyer whose firm was hired by an enlisted Marine in the spec-ops company. That Marine has not been charged. “It certainly seems there was a rush to judgment.”

The lawyer said he hopes that if charges are filed, they would be turned over to the Marine Corps, not Special Operations Command, “so that it dispels the appearance of the interservice politics.”

Officials with MarSOC — the parent command of the company — have not commented on Kearney’s statements.

A SOCCent official said the remainder of the company remains in the Central Command theater, training for its next mission. The company, the first of its kind to deploy since MarSOC was created in February 2006, deployed with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit in early January. It arrived in Afghanistan in early February.

Conflicting reports

A report released by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission concluded 12 people were killed and another 35, including women and children, were injured, following the ambush on the Marine convoy.

The commission’s investigation found that “the large majority, if not all, of the victims were civilians ... the level of force utilized by the U.S. forces in consequence was almost certainly excessive and disproportionate to any threat faced or military advantage anticipated.”

The convoy fired on civilians traveling by foot or in vehicles for 10 miles following the ambush, the report states.

Victims and their families, eyewitnesses and local community leaders, as well as district authorities, local hospitals and clinics and representatives of the Afghan National Police, were interviewed by the commission.

The report does not include the Marines’ accounts of that day.

“There is some limited physical evidence available suggesting that a complex ambush really took place at the site of the incident, but this evidence is far from conclusive,” according to the commission’s report.

One former Marine officer currently working in Afghanistan said there may be an explanation as to why there might have been little evidence to support that theory.

In Vietnam, guerrilla fighters dragged away their dead to keep U.S. forces from obtaining accurate body counts. In Afghanistan, the tactic has changed: leave the body but take the weapon so it appears the “victim” is innocent, said the former officer, who asked not to be identified because of his civilian position. “This stops a unit dead in its tracks,” he said. “They wonder if they’re caught up in something now.”

In such instances, U.S. troops generally find spent shell casings and other evidence of insurgent activity, he said. But the absence of such proof could mean the enemy is simply doing a good job.

“They know what the ROE is,” he said, referring to the U.S. forces’ rules of engagement. “All it takes is one shot to set it off. I find it hard to believe a unit that highly trained would go berserk. I find it more likely that they were engaged along the route of egress by skilled insurgents.”

As for the Kearney’s comments, “They’re covering their tracks,” the former officer said. “We continue to throw people under the bus when something happens. But we can’t go relieving people left and right, because then they look guilty.”

The military’s top general said that, if the allegations against the spec-ops Marines are true, it will be a “nick on Marine pride.”

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked about the allegations in a roundtable interview with defense reporters April 17.

“This certainly, for Marines, if it at the end of the day turns out to be factual, will be a nick on Marine pride, for sure, and would be something that the rest of the Marines involved with special operations will do what Marines always do, which is to work harder to be more useful to the nation in a way that restores Marine credibility in the special operations community,” Pace said, according to a transcript of the meeting.

He also said that he has discussed the incident with Commandant Gen. James Conway and that Conway was “clearly disappointed in the performance of those Marines,” according to the transcript. Pace also said that Conway told him he supported Kearney’s investigation.

Lt. Col. T.V. Johnson, Conway’s spokesman, said it would be “inappropriate” to comment on Pace’s statements regarding Conway.

Pace also said the allegations made against the company — the first of its kind to deploy under the fledgling command — won’t threaten the existence of MarSOC.

“The future of MarSOC in special operations is exactly what it was before this incident, which is the Marines will continue to find ways to be included and supported and contributors to the special operations community,” he said.

Staff writers C. Mark Brinkley and Kimberly Johnson contributed to this report.

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