Marine Corps News, news from Iraq - Marine Corps Times

The ‘C-Y-A’ brief

A Marine captain, in what he described as the “C-Y-A part” of his briefing, ordered dozens of men in his company to get their story straight in case investigators asked questions about a 2006 firefight that might have left Iraqi women and children dead in the crossfire.

“Earlier up on the roof, there was like five women and little girls, OK? We f---ed that area up,” Capt. Shane Cote, 35, told his Marines, after a day that included at least nine firefights in 14 hours. “If we did any collateral damage, there will be people here asking. Your answer, for the sake of yourselves — and me — better be you were f---ing shooting at muzzle flashes.”

His Marines grunted out their affirmatives, “ooh-rahs” all around. They got it.

One of them even got it on tape.

A secret recording of the briefing (Warning: Explicit language), obtained by Marine Corps Times, was made by a sergeant who believes the captain was ordering his men to lie about the shooting. The recording, made on the sergeant’s MP3 player, was turned in to unit officials weeks after the day in question. A criminal investigation followed.

Now, more than a year later, the Marine Corps still refuses to discuss the details of the shootout near Ramadi.

Repeated attempts to reach Cote directly and through the Marine Corps failed.

Shootouts on the Euphrates

Cpl. Matthew Kreisler says he will never forget the day he went into the river.

Multimedia

Hear the secret recording (Warning: Explicit language)

See video of the search for missing crypto gear (Warning: Explicit language)

That day, the now 26-year-old Marine reservist was riding a Small Unit Riverine Craft, patrolling the Euphrates River in Ramadi. As part of the Jacksonville, Fla.-based Bravo Company, 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion, the early morning fire-support mission seemed like a typical mission, another day on the river.

Then shots rang out.

The small boats began taking fire, sometimes randomly, sometimes in coordinated attacks. Rounds came whizzing by Kreisler and the other Marines from both banks, and the unit was exposed. So they returned fire, and in the fog of war, encrypted communications gear that wasn’t properly lashed to the boat’s deck was kicked into the river.

It was gear that Kreisler had been told he was responsible for minding, despite the fact that he had not signed for it and did not have the appropriate security clearance for it.

But the gear was vital and his commanders said it needed to be found. Kreisler was ordered to strip off his flak vest, Kevlar helmet, boots and uniform. Just minutes after the lead stopped flying, the young corporal, on his first combat deployment, stood on the deck of the boat in only a pair of green gym shorts and flippers, as his fellow Marines tied a rope to his waist.

Kreisler can be seen on a video of the event (Warning: Explicit language), also obtained by Marine Corps Times, slipping into more than 25 feet of brackish water where he found a strong current and could go down only two feet below the surface. A call came over the boat radio reporting precise sniper fire in the area. After 30 minutes of trying, Kreisler pulled himself into the boat empty handed.

The corporal got dressed and returned to his weapon. He would need it, as the river patrol slugged it out over and over again that day. At least two of his fellow Marines were wounded in the mix — one shot in the knee, the other clean through his thigh.

Although taking fire from insurgents was no surprise to Kreisler, or any of the others Marines on that boat patrol, what came next was.

Their commander told them to lie about the details, Kreisler said.

“At the time I had no problem,” he said, remembering the order and the failed attempt to fish out the gear from the river. “I tried to do anything to remedy the situation. Now, as I sit here, it’s something I couldn’t believe that I did.”

Cote lied to battalion command about how the gear was lost, and looked to his men to back him up, Kreisler said. He falsified the location of where, how and when it went overboard. “He told us how to word our statements,” he said, conceding that as a two-year Marine, he looked at his commander “as God.”

Cote called it “Marines taking care of Marines,” Kreisler said.

“I hold nothing against Captain Cote. He just made some bad decisions,” said Kreisler, who is a communication technician with Bravo Company. He now realizes he could have refused many of his commander’s orders.

“I could have refused to have taken my gear off, from writing false statements.”

Later that day, Cote, the company commander, corralled all of his leathernecks in Ramadi into a tent for a briefing. The meeting was smaller than a typical full company muster, because the unit was pulling double duty and had previously been split in two, with the others stationed upriver in Hadithah to provide security for the hydroelectric dam.

Cote went over the chain of events for his Marines, and in what he called “the C-Y-A part” of the briefing, made it clear what he expected from them. The commander’s intent to put them all on the same page comes through on the recording loud and clear.

“Yeah, we took some fire from an area,” Cote said. “Earlier up on the roof, there was like five women and little girls, OK? We f---ed that area up. I think I saw one of you kill a f---ing cow,” he said, as his Marines snickered.

“I know, I know, I understand, I understand, but here’s my point though,” Cote said, attempting to regain their attention. “If we did any collateral damage, there will be people here asking. Your answer, for the sake of yourselves — and me — better be you were f---ing shooting at muzzle flashes.”

The Marines rogered up.

Recording the brief

Sgt. Henry Butts, 38, admits he had conflict with Cote, almost from the very beginning. The platoon sergeant knew the captain for only about three months, when Cote transferred to the Reserve unit before they deployed.

The pair began to bump heads almost immediately. Butts said it might have started when the local newspaper wrote more about him than Cote in an article about the duo’s impending deployment before they left the U.S.

Maybe it was his request for mast because of harsh treatment that set Cote off, or that the NCO was black; he didn’t quite know why, but still Butts felt marked. So much so, the sergeant felt compelled to secretly document every exchange with Cote.

In Butts’ pocket was a small Samsung MP3 audio player, a Christmas gift from his wife before his deployment. It had a voice recorder feature and could hold up to 10 hours of audio.

“It never came to me that I needed something like that,” he said. “My thing was just trying to clear my reputation and who I am as a Marine.”

Cote’s instructions that September day were the kind that wind up destroying young Marines, Butts said.

“He told them it’s OK to lie,” said Butts, who was not on the river during the firefights. “He didn’t know if they did shoot anybody. If [Kreisler] had died, would you have known the truth?”

Butts points out that, as a civilian, Cote was an officer at the Port Orange Police Department.

“You don’t get your story straight, you tell investigators what happened,” Butts said. “That’s witness tampering.”

The Corps has attempted to keep it quiet ever since, he said.

“If you’ve got a bad apple, you don’t protect them and cover it up,” Butts said. “The question is, then, why was there no court-martial?”

Butts admitted he did not immediately hand the recording over to Corps officials, and did so weeks later after learning that Cote was attempting to take administrative action against him. He handed the recording over to his first sergeant, who pushed it up higher.

Fallout was swift. Butt’s recording triggered a criminal misconduct investigation as soon as the unit returned to the U.S.

Kreisler — along with Butts, Cote and 14 other Marines — was held at Camp Lejeune, while the rest of the unit returned to Florida. The corporal, like the others detained for questioning, missed the homecoming with his family, who had made the six-hour drive to come pick him up and were already sitting in a Jacksonville hotel room waiting.

Several weeks later, the 17 Marines were returned to Jacksonville, some placed on legal hold for months, which prevented them from immediately returning to civilian life.

Kreisler was placed on legal hold until March, but was eventually allowed to live at home so he could attend college. The outcome of that criminal misconduct investigation, however, is still unknown, even to those investigated.

“We were investigating allegations of misconduct that were raised against the members of the unit,” said Capt. Erin Wiener, spokesperson for Marine Forces Reserve in New Orleans, La.

While Wiener confirmed the investigation has since ended, she refused to give any details about its conclusion or whether any punishment was issued. She confirmed that Cote is no longer the Bravo Company commander, and is now listed on the roll of the Individual Ready Reserve.

However, she stopped short of confirming he was stripped of command.

Marine officials deemed the investigation administrative, which keeps the matter a personnel issue, she explained.

“When there’s an administrative action, they don’t go through criminal proceedings,” Wiener said. “That basically tells you that nothing went to court-martial.”

“An incident occured in Iraq on Aug. 23, 2006, involving Bravo Company, 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion, Dam Security Unit-2,” said Al Foucha, a Marine Forces Reserve spokesman, in a follow-up to Weiner’s comments. “The Naval Criminal Investigative Service conducted an investigation, and found no evidence of noncombatant deaths as a result of the incident. Appropriate administrative actions were taken by the commanding general, 4th Marine Division, regarding leadership issues pertaining to the incident. Specifics of these actions are not releasable due to Privacy Act restrictions.”

Despite multiple attempts by phone and mail, Marine Corps Times was unable to reach Cote for comment. Additional attempts to reach him through Marine officials also went unanswered.

He wasn’t always shy of the press. “I am responsible for these men,” Cote told the Daytona Beach News-Journal in a Nov 28, 2005, article on his then-impending Iraq deployment. “I am going to do my best to take care of the Marines and make sure they all come home to their families and friends.”

The order that sent Kreisler over the side of the boat for the seemingly ill-timed swim to retrieve the encrypted communication gear was not necessarily illegal, one military legal analyst says. If the gear was highly sensitive, it would not be out of line for the command to order its immediate retrieval, said Matthew Freedus, a military lawyer and adviser to the National Institute of Military Justice.

The audio clip urging a unified story in the event innocents had been killed in the crossfire, however, is another matter and reveals a commander trying to make the day’s events go away, he said.

“It certainly suggests people were told to lie,” said Freedus, who listened to the audio recording. “It was certainly bad word choice if his intent was to not obstruct justice.”

Not knowing the extent or outcome of the Corps’ investigation, or its outcome or punishment, leaves the issue murky, Freedus said.

“It certainly lacks some transparency.”

While the only one wielding a recorder, Butts was not the only Bravo Company leatherneck who attempted to drop the dime on Cote.

“A lot of good Marines like myself got in trouble when we tried to say Captain Cote screwed up,” said former Gunnery Sgt. Robert Germano, who was stationed in Hadithah with Bravo Company.

Before the Aug. 23 event, Germano said, he had filed several complaints requesting Cote be investigated for orders that the gunny called “inappropriate and a danger to Marines.” He said his requests were denied.

Germano was later fired from his position as operations chief, an action he said was punishment for filing an Article 138 complaint, the Defense Department’s formal process for filing a complaint against a commanding officer.

“I had a perfect [Service Record Book] with four combat tours,” he said. “And after May 21 [2006], I was the biggest dirt bag in the Marine Corps.”

“A lot of [4th AAV] Marines ended up getting out,” he said, estimating that about 20 Marines from the company dropped within a month of the return.

“I didn’t want to get out,” said Germano, who is now out of the Corps but still fighting to have his military record cleared. “They tried to make it as miserable as possible for me.”

“I was told he was still in the IRR so he can retire, which I think is horrible,” Germano said.

He said the Corps’ handling of the November 2006 investigation of Bravo Company could have been colored by timing, coming on the heels of the intense international media storm sparked earlier that year when Marines were accused of killing 24 civilians in Hadithah after a roadside bomb killed one of their own.

The Hadithah allegations prompted immediate action from defense officials, who, in June 2006, mandated that all U.S. personnel in Iraq attend “Warrior Values” refresher classes. The courses largely focused on identifying non-combatants and rules of engagement.

“We were hearing a lot about it,” Germano said of the Hadithah case. “I think that maybe [Corps officials] were hoping to avoid another situation. Maybe if somebody had gotten killed,” he said, “it would have blown up like Hadithah.

“I don’t like to hear bad things about the Marine Corps, but you can still charge somebody and hold people accountable for their actions.”

Multimedia

Hear the secret recording (Warning: Explicit language)

See video of the search for missing crypto gear (Warning: Explicit language)