Honor and Betrayal : The Untold Story of the Navy Seals Who Captured the "Butcher of Fallujah"-and the Shameful Ordeal They Later Endured (9780306823091) (43 page)

Weston and his “minder” were both mostly missing, believing—and with good reason—that the SEALs did not include either of them among their favorite people.

Also missing were Greg McCormack, Jon's lead civilian counselor, and Monica Lombardi for Sam. Both these ultrabusy attorneys were arriving a couple of days later, but not in the same aircraft.

And right there, fate stepped in with an unforeseen hand. On April 14, as McCormack was in a plane racing across the North Atlantic toward a European landfall, an unbelievable incident broke out some five hundred miles north of his aircraft. Clear of the Labrador Sea, the plane was approaching the earth's 20-West line of longitude, southeast of Greenland's Cape Farvel, when a gigantic volcano almost blew itself apart in neighboring Iceland.

No one can pronounce its name, but the power and wrath of Eyjafjallajökul in the south of the ice-bound country was suddenly unleashed. The glacier-topped volcano hurled thousands of tons of molten rock clean through the ice cap, hurling a gigantic wall of ash, dust, and steam six miles into the air.

It slowly formed a vast cloud of dust, ash, and cinders, which climbed into the North Atlantic jet stream, producing a satanic darkness that was
instantly capable of clogging aircraft engines on one of the world's busiest flight paths, south of Greenland. And the eruptions kept going, so steadily that no one knew when they would stop or whether another of Iceland's twenty-two highly erratic active volcanoes would also erupt.

At this point the world's airlines went into a collective flat spin. Dozens of flights were diverted and ordered to return from whence they came. Airports were closed and twenty countries shut down their airspace, stranding millions of passengers all over the world. It was only the third time since the Vikings showed up in the ninth century that Eyjafjallajökul had blown. But two centuries ago it blew intermittently for fourteen months!

Jon put the whole thing down to the obvious displeasure of an even greater power than General Charles Cleveland: one of the largest black clouds ever witnessed was drifting over northern Europe and heading directly southeast toward Greece and then Baghdad. “It's an omen,” he muttered. “We could be here for a year. They'll have to cancel it! God is on our side!”

Meanwhile McCormack's flight was diverted to Amsterdam, stranding him there without luggage, waiting for the cloud to disperse. And in turn this caused havoc back at Camp Victory, where McCormack's client, Jon, was scheduled to face the court-martial first, six days from then, April 20. This was when McCormack, with his meticulous preparation, would have been first in line to tackle Westinson and the shackled terrorist in the witness box.

The unavoidable delay of Jon's lead civilian counselor now made this questionable, because no one knew how quickly the ash cloud would disperse to allow the attorney to get out of Holland. Indeed, the court may be forced to reschedule and instead bring forward the Sam Gonzales case. Sam's lawyers—Monica Lombardi, Drew Carmichael, and Guy Reschenthaler—were by now all in Iraq, but right now the issue was very much up in the air (unlike McCormack).

And right here in Camp Victory this very expensive group had to somehow find their own level, passing the days by working long hours, brainstorming, planning, strategizing, and, in the case of
Threatt, poring over the highly variable statements made by Westinson, who was, in company with the crazed jihadist, public enemy number one to Jon and Sam.

Threatt had long realized that the conduct of the master-at-arms held the key to the entire operation. So he made a study of any circumstances surrounding Westinson's activities.

He noted that after the Marines left the huge Baharia Base, the Schwedler Camp was left to defend itself, and their departure had unnerved Westinson.

To improve security, Westinson had managed to get an elevated camera installed. And once it was in place, he watched the camera-feed obsessively. Although he was often told to take only a three-hour shift, he had been watching the camera feed for twenty hours when Echo Platoon arrived with their prisoner. Threatt concluded, “He was exhausted, agitated, and extremely nervous.”

As he searched through various statements, Threatt was certain that Westinson was not at his peak when the lieutenant handed over the prisoner to him alone, an action that required him to walk Al-Isawi across the camp to the detention cell.

Now according to Al-Isawi's testimony, he was struck as soon as he entered the detention cell, or Conex Box. This was the one lie about which the detainee was consistent through all his statements and testimony.

“This is important,” noted Threatt, “if you believe the detainee at all. Because there is a lot of other evidence establishing that MA3 Westinson was the only person with Al-Isawi when he first entered the cell.”

In fact, based on all the statements and the medical report, Threatt's theory was that MA3 Westinson himself had kicked the detainee into the chair, which caused him to fall, hurting his lip. The prisoner then aggravated the damage to his lip and spit blood onto his dishdasha to create the impression of abuse. “There is,” he noted, “simply no evidence of the kind of vicious beating that Westinson and the detainee allege.” And then he added, “When the officer in charge initially questioned MA3 [Westinson], he claimed ignorance. But after it became apparent that the damage to the detainee happened while he was
alone with Westinson, then [he] concocted the story of McCabe's punch. Which then evolved into a story which had every special warfare operator in the camp beating on the detainee.”

Threatt supported his opinion of Westinson's unreliability by noting that Westinson himself had admitted that he “was bored” and felt he was “wasting his life” at the camp. And in a later statement, Westinson admitted to not “patting down” Al-Isawi when he was being processed.

Lieutenant Threatt also noted conflicting evidence from the medical evidence: “MA3 says the detainee was struck on the left side. The detainee says he was hit in the face and kicked while on the ground. The photos indicate slight discoloration on the right side.”

And he concluded, “Basically it appears the government cannot firmly establish damage to the detainee beyond the sore on the inside of his lip. And a dentist asserts that was unlikely to be the result of blunt-force trauma to the lip, due to the absence of a clear cut. Rather the damage of a fever blister.”

Reschenthaler also took the opportunity to get close to the SEALs and, slightly to his own surprise, swiftly discovered that Sam was their undisputed leader. “Everyone looked up to him,” he recalled. “I could scarcely believe that this respected and blunt-spoken assault warrior, twice decorated for valor, was being charged by his own side with dereliction of duty and with covering up an alleged flagrant assault on a prisoner by another decorated SEAL. I guess you had to know Sam to understand the pure futility of such charges.”

The young lawyer from Pittsburgh was also glad to speak more to Carl Higbie, the iron man from Connecticut who was also deeply respected in the Special Forces community. “At first, you could have thought Carl a bit of a wild card because he did have an eccentric side to his nature, at least intellectually,” said Reschenthaler. “But he was rock solid when it mattered, a totally dependable member of the platoon in the times when it really counted. The guys thought the world of him.”

Paul Franco, the ex-firefighter, also made a major impression on Reschenthaler. “He was one of our witnesses, and I knew right from the start he intended to speak of Westinson's unstable nature and occasional
breakdowns,” he said. “Paul was smaller than the Team guys, but all personality, light blond hair and blue eyes, looked like a member of a boy band!

“But the SEALs really liked him, and that was the acid test. I'd trust their judgment any time. As I got to know him more, sometimes had a beer with him, I knew it would be a blast to have on the stand one of the proven top sailors in the US Navy speaking of Westinson's shortcomings. Because when Paul Franco spoke, the jury would listen. It was terrific to have him on our side.”

Back in Qatar the various lawyers had been flung together. It was not unusual to find Threatt and Reschenthaler in company with Matt's legal observers, Kevin Shea and Kristen Anastos, plus Drew Carmichael, having a beer with an important government witness, whom I shall refer to as “the Major,” a man who was intensely proud of rising from enlisted soldier in the first Gulf War to his present commissioned rank in the second.

The Major turned out to be the man who first reported the alleged “beating” of Al-Isawi to the chain of command. “Looking around at this enormous group of people assembled seven thousand miles from home to fight this court-martial,” said Reschenthaler, “I guess he had a lot to answer for, discretion-wise. If he had only just weighed the evidence, this all might never have happened.”

To the lawyer, the Major was an anathema. “It was he who made that report that Hashim had ‘bruising' and a ‘bloody lip.' We were all here because of him. And he was a real dinosaur. His heroes were guys like Genghis Khan. He even lent me a book about that old Mongolian conqueror.

“Ironic, right? He admires the most bloodthirsty warriors in history yet makes an unfounded claim of abuse on this terrorist for fear of running up against the politically correct military culture.”

Anyhow, as the days went by, with McCormack still grounded beneath the ash cloud, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the two trials were probably going to reverse order. If the ash, which was falling all over Europe's mountains, would not billow its way out of the stratosphere, then McCormack might be seriously late.

And at this point Reschenthaler, with Carmichael and Lombardi, began to make plans to go first on the basis that the judge could not possibly waste everyone's time waiting for McCormack. This huge circus was costing sufficiently already, without court time being sacrificed.

Carmichael convinced Lombardi that Reschenthaler should handle the terrorist. The younger defense JAG had easily the most experience with litigation through an interpreter, and he knew the most about terrorists and how they would act on the stand. Reschenthaler had, after all, prosecuted those ninety-two cases in Baghdad the previous year.

Lombardi quickly grasped the sense of this and gave the green light to the junior. The government then made Al-Isawi available in a small building on Camp Cropper, Baghdad's top-secret military holding prison, which was surrounded by razor-wire and concrete and was where Saddam Hussein spent his final days.

Reschenthaler noticed a photograph of the late Iraqi dictator still on the wall of the room where he would conduct his first interview with the wanted al-Qaeda terrorist, the man who had caused this gigantic upheaval—indeed, fracture—in the US military.

Shea and Anastos, on behalf of Matthew McCabe, went into the room first, because their task was to prove that the leader of Objective Amber had not laid a glove on Al-Isawi. They were in there for about a half-hour, and when they emerged, Reschenthaler was waiting.

“Get anything?” he asked, hoping that the prisoner had cracked and admitted that Matt had never touched him.

“A little, not much,” replied Shea. “But c'mon, the photos tell us all we need to know.”

Threatt, who was still officially scheduled to go first if McCormack could get there in time, went next and stayed with Al-Isawi for almost an hour.

“Get anything?” asked Reschenthaler when Threatt emerged.

“Oh, boy. You gotta get in there, Resch.”

As it happened, the junior JAG was not quite ready. For the past half-hour he had been busy with a pair of nail scissors, cutting and picking
out the threads that held all of his military insignia, patches, medals, and decorations.

“One thing you must understand,” he said later. “These terrorists are not stupid—at least, not their commanders, like this Al-Isawi character. He'd have taken one look at my uniform and known I'd served in Iraq previously, and that would have put him on his guard.

“They know our insignia. They can ‘read' a uniform. And I needed it to be stripped of all clues before I faced him.”

Immediately Al-Isawi was at a disadvantage, facing an American lawyer who knew his kind well, understood the almost-irresistible Iraqi inclination to exaggerate, sometimes wildly, and to lie about something so often they end up believing it to be true.

Reschenthaler had one overriding aim through this impending interview: not to dominate the prisoner nor intimidate him but, rather, to make the Iraqi terrorist like and trust him. That way he could coax him into exaggerating his injuries and making some attempt to elicit sympathy from the American attorney, lulling him into the sense he was dealing with a friend.

If he could just get the terrorist to trust him and describe the fantasy of his wounds and how he received them, then Reschenthaler could spring the photographs on the jury, the medical snapshots that showed not a mark except for the cold sore.

“I knew if I could just pull that off, the government's case against Sam Gonzales could implode right there,” he said.

“Look,” he told Carmichael, “I'm going to say some things in there to get this guy to open up. Don't think that I believe what I'm saying. I have a plan. Trust me.”