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Rick's
Blog
Did You Hear?
Rick Rogers
I get tidbits daily concerning our military and veterans and defense industry. While often these odds and ends don't quite add up to a column, they are of interest to those of us who care deeply about the military community in North County and beyond. So without further delay, here's what I'm calling "Did You Hear?"
Avert Your Eyes, Avert Your Eyes
The Wikileaks saga apparently has implications for San Diego County defense contractors as well as Camp Pendleton service members merely curious about what all the fuss is about.
In a letter dated Aug. 10 from the National Defense Industrial Association - a very active chapter of which resides in San Diego County -- an organization official warned contractors that despite the fact that the classified information was made public, it is still classified and to view it -- much less to download it -- would constitute a security violation.
"NDIA, though not a government contractor, conducts classified conferences under a site license granted by the Defense Security Service, and as such has a special responsibility to observe proper security procedures. Thus it is most important that NDIA members, chapters, divisions, affiliates and staff refrain from attempting to assess the Wikileaks Site."
Not sure what the fallout would be should a contractor take a peek, but the blowback on service members appears to be substantial.
A recent Marine
message said:
The Director of Defense Intelligence Agency has stated that he wants all personnel requesting a Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System accounts to undergo a CI POLY (Counter Intelligence polygraph test). This means -- at some point in the near future EVERYONE will be required to undergo a CI POLY. If they purposely accessed the "WIKILEAKS" website to view classified info -- they have willingly placed classified information on an open network not authorized to view classified information and have willingly committed a security violation. In most cases they will fail the CI POLY."
Cheap Chargers Tix
The Chargers are extending a special offer as part of the team's annual Salute to the Military. Tickets to the Aug. 21 Chargers vs. Cowboys game at Qualcomm Stadium for only $25! A savings of up to $73 per ticket on regularly priced $54 - $98 tickets. As part of this special offer, Ticketmaster has offered to reduce its ticket service fees if buying online by logging and inserting the password SALUTE. There is no limit on the total quantity of tickets that can be purchased. The offer is only available for a limited time and as long as tickets remain. For additional information, please contact the Chargers Ticket Office at 1-877-CHARGERS.
These tickets were available as of Monday morning, but I could not in good conscience buy any. Not sure this program won't be abused by the unethical.
The French are Interested in What?
A French TV network is talking to the Oceanside-based American Combat Veterans of War about filming its outreach efforts in North County. ACVOW is a nonprofit organization that recruits combat veteran volunteers to mentor, coach and assist warriors suffering from combat stress. TF1 is a news network in France with a European audience of perhaps 10 million viewers.
Miss Work 4 a Good Cause
The "Fore Heroes Charity Golf Classic" is looking for players for its Sept. 17 outing at Maderas Golf Club. (11 a.m. registration; 1 p.m. shotgun start (4-person scramble format) Sponsors say money raised will go to the Challenged Athletes Foundation's military focused grant program: Operation Rebound. For questions, or to reserve a sponsorship opportunity, contact Alec Zirkenbach, tournament chairman, at (619)888-7214 or info@foreheroes.com
Keeping the Interfaith
Interfaith Community Services' is holding its annual meeting this week at the Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church. The meeting will provide highlights of Interfaith Community Services programs, including an update on its "Lifting Up Our Neighbors" capital campaign. The goal of raising $4.8 million for veterans' transitional housing is just $400,000 short. Call Mary Ferro at (760) 489-6380, Ext. 266 if interested in contributing or volunteering.
Rick Rogers is a longtime military reporter based in North County. His phone number is (760) 445-3882.
I Could Live in New Zealand/How I Became a Media Mogul/The Death of Col. Larry Richards/Why Journalism is Screwed
Long time no write. Sorry about that. I missed you guys. First I landed a free-lance job for the summer edition of "Defense Standard" writing about new SEAL equipment - more on that later -- and then spent a spell in New Zealand, the other down-under. Then I went back to the East Coast for a work and caught up family.
First, New Zealand.
What a great country! Daisy chains of superlatives rush to mind to describe the food, drink, hospitality and scenery. Almost everything was aces. Never liked lamb before I visited N-Zed, as the Kiwis refer to their country. People went out of their way to be helpful. No one ever tried to take advantage of us and strangers always steered us true.
Considering that New Zealand is half a world way, the trip was relatively stress-free, though driving on the opposite side of the road presented some challenges. My girlfriend and I were back in the States a week before she stopped reminding me to move over on the road.
The plane ride was a straight 13-hour shot straight from LAX to Auckland. No visa required - can't say that about Australia - and the U.S. greenback muscled up against the New Zealand dollar during our May stay, which made the trip more affordable.
* Travel Tip #1: Read the New Zealand customs form carefully. We landed very early in the morning after a long trip. I completely missed this customs question: Are you bringing any hiking boots into the country? That almost cost me a $400 fine. New Zealand doesn't want invasive plant species entering the country on a foreigner's dirty boot. I don't blame them.
My girlfriend and I traveled extensively on both the north and south islands - probably logging 700 or so miles driving and many more than that flying and busing - while exploring Mount Maunganui, Rotora, Lake Taupo, Whakataine, the Coromandel Peninsula, Christchurch, Queenstown, Milford Sound and Auckland.
Got crazy lost in crazy beautiful Pauanui. You know there's a problem when the GPS (Global Positioning System) leads you to a locked gate crossing a farmer's field after you've spent five miles on a dirt road. The good news is that we found the most amazing place to stay.
Travel Tip # 2: The GPS is a good idea, but always take a map, too. This goes for whether holidaying in a foreign country to traveling in the USA.
That experience crystallized the whole trip for me if not the adventure of traveling in general. Every time we followed a meandering road, checked out café not starred by a travel publication or generally just went with the flow, we encountered magical things.
Like any place, NZ has its problems. A growing story when I left centered on allegations of a racial quota of "darkies" for a rugby team down there. I looked online recently and found that the issue had generated so much political heat that the country's prime minister had to make comment.
My girlfriend is dark-skinned, and we got a few dirty looks walking hand-in-hand a few places. Could've been the way I parted my hair or my funny clothes. Don't know, didn't ask.
Think football is big in the United States? Rugby in New Zealand seems much bigger if only for this reason: Football is primarily a spectator sport in the States. In New Zealand, rugby is a participant sport.
I must have seen 50 rugby fields in my travels, and I wasn't even looking for them. Every hamlet had one, and a good many of them were right next to the local tavern. A good many resided just outside local pubs like something from an Andy Capp cartoon.
Travel Tip #3: Travel in the fall and see it all. New Zealand is located in the Southern Hemisphere, which means their seasons are the opposite of those in the Northern Hemisphere and the United States. So late May when we went is autumn trending to winter for them not spring heading to summer. It really was a perfect time: warm enough to enjoy the beaches and cool enough to hike around without getting too hot.
This might sound strange, but what I'll remember most about New Zealand wont be the flightless Kiwi -- of which I did not see one - or the rugby. Not the fiords. Not stylish Auckland or happening Queenstown or stately Christchurch or laidback Mount Maunganui or the wild Coromandel Peninsula.
No, what I'll remember is the ice cream. No, it's too good to be called merely ice cream. Something that good deserves its own dictionary entry. The main brand of creamy deliciousness in New Zealand is Tip Top Ice Cream. It's so good that it makes Ben & Jerry's taste like Crisco. If Tip Top ever makes it to the states, all the other manufactures might as well start making hubcaps because they just can not compete.
This whole Media
Mogul thing could be going better. The problem in a nutshell is
that no one wants to pay for anything. The fish-wraps would rather
run the equivalent of three-day-old salmon left out on the stove
then pay even a few bucks for something good. Don't believe me?
Read most papers. If anyone had any standards, the editors of these
rags wouldn't show their faces in daylight.
The public trust, my keister.
Get this. So, I hate calling publications to beg them to run my content. It's a little humiliating to pitch some guy who has zero news judgment. But of course these guys aren't going to track me down. So, I swallow hard and make some calls.
First, I call a TV station in San Diego and quickly get invited down for a chat. They've been reading my stuff for years and like what I do. They say I'm going the Lord's work covering military and veteran issues in San Diego County. They say they want to run my stuff and that I can help them shape their military coverage.
I feel pretty good after the meeting. These people get it.
So, I call the next day to find out how much they'd be willing to pay for my services. I'm thinking $100 a week would be nice. But $50 wouldn't be too bad, especially if I can leverage this station using my stuff to entice others to do the same.
Know what they offered?
Zero. Nothing. Zilch.
"Well, Mr. Rogers, we, ah, spent all our money updating our website. I am sure that you'll agree that an excellent looking website is a must in today's competitive multi-media marketplace where readers have so many attractive choices.
"Instead of actual money changing hands, we were thinking more along the lines of partnering with you to ensure a constant flow of value-added content for our varied viewership demographics. The fact is, we don't have any money to spend on adding military content worth actually reading on our beautiful website. But I am sure you would agree that looks are more important then substance."
Yeah, if I'm looking to hook up in a bar, not if I am trying to forge a livelihood! And this person looks at me with such a straight face that I didn't know which one of us to feel sorrier for.
Since she has a job, I'll feel sorrier for me this time.
Flush from this experience, I call a website that specializes in military and veteran news. Within minutes a guy is talking about how I can get my own password to post content directly to the site. A site, he boasts, that gets more then 600,000 hits a month and one that attracts paying advertisers - kind of a rare thing. They want me to send samples ASAP.
And payment?
"Ah, well, we don't actual pay. We give writers exposure and allow them to post something besides their name if they want to advertise their website or cause."
Thanks, I'll get right back to you on that.
Col. Larry Richards died a few weeks back. If any of you heard a sigh coming from the general direction of Washington, D.C. on or about July 17, that would've been the sound of relief rushing from several high-ranking officers, a handful of congressional leaders and at least a few three-letter intelligence-gathering agencies.
See, Richards knew who knew about the FBI and CIA documents he'd been dragging back to Los Angeles from Camp Pendleton for years while concurrently serving as a reserve colonel running intelligence operations first under Gen. James Conway and then Gen. James Mattis while also doing counter-intelligence work as a LA Sheriff's detective.
By the way, although Richards and his men were privy to extremely classified materials, only Richards had any formal intelligence training. Beyond that, they apparently had no supervision, which allowed them to carry on for years without detection.
You've heard me run through this story before and the whole thing is laid out in "Marine Generals Questioned in Pendleton Case" if you want to read it again.
Richards could also name whom - if anyone -- within the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group knew he was stealing highly classified materials from Camp Pendleton.
He also knew if anyone within the Marine Corps were giving him a wink and a nod to run his little operations that by Richards' own account lasted at least four years and included a intelligence analysis working for homeland security.
You could argue that all Richards and his Marines were just keeping America safe in the face of archaic information-sharing rules that did nothing but hamstring law enforcement while giving the bad guys a free hand.
Fair enough. If that's the case, make the arguments in public, pass the laws in daylight and be done with it. Stop this over-the-transom business that's frankly embarrassing and amateurish.
And certainly don't hang your own guy out to dry when something goes wrong.
So now Richards is dead from apparently natural causes at the age of 52. He died just days before he was to stand trial at Camp Pendleton on the intelligence violation charges, and just days before he could've helped clear up the entire fascinating case. I ask you, what are the odds?
I've made inquiries about what happens next in this case and the only answer I get is that it is done, over, finished. I'm told that documents are already being destroyed.
No seems the least bit interested in diving to the bottom of who knew what, when and for how long much less who benefited from the leaked files or whether any landed into the wrong hands.
One morning I'm watching CSPAN and there on TV is former LA Police chief William J. Bratton speaking about homeland security issues.
Seems Bratton while LAPD chief around about 2007 wanted to map Muslim communities in an effort to identify potential hotbeds of extremism. In a document unearthed by the LA Times, the Los Angeles Police Department's counter-terrorism bureau proposed using U.S. census data and other demographic information to pinpoint Muslim communities.
Echoes from the screams of civil libertarians can still be heard on quiet evenings around sunset.
For his part, Bratton, who Mattis told investigators he met with while 1st Marine Expeditionary Force commander, has strongly denied any effort of targeting or profiling Muslims.
Guess what documents federal agents asked about by name when investigating the alleged files Richards passed from Camp Pendleton to Los Angeles? U.S. census data.
I'm sure this is all a big coincidence. Nothing to see here. Let's all just move along.
Richards is dead and with him the case. Or is it?
So there I was waist-deep in the Susquehanna River catching small-mouth bass. The sun felt warm and the water cool as I scanned the clean-flowing river. As I retied a hook and bite on a split-shot, it came to me why American journalism is too broken to be fixed in my lifetime. The river gave me the answer.
Short decades ago, newspapers enjoyed the rough equivalent of minor and major leagues you see in baseball today. In those days, a promising reporter fresh from college might -- if good and lucky -- land a job at, say, The Anniston Star in Alabama, a small paper with a big reputation for molding young scribes.
From there, if he or she broke good stories and showed the right work ethic, they might move on to The Virginian Pilot, a larger paper with an equally strong reputation for developing reporting talent.
From The Pilot a reporter on the rise might land a gig at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Once at the Inquirer, the sky was the limit. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal and even The New York Times were all in play.
The system worked because it rewarded talent, tenacity and ballsy reporters who tackled stories with the next rung on the professional ladder in mind. Yeah, their stories pissed off the entrenched powers. But big stories were worth it because they lifted the fortunes of all journalists involved. Plus, both reporters and editors - the best ones at any rate - were likely moving on in a few years anyway.
The system mirrored the river. Clean, flowing, efficient, devoid of mire and unchoked by the muck that throttles stagnant pools.
Guess what? Newspapers and publications today are the very embodiments of stagnant pools. No one moves on unless fired, laid off or dead. Any steady fresh stream of talent infusing newsrooms dried up years ago and the types of stories that once landed you the next job are not being pursued.
In these bastions of mediocrity consensus building is valued over enterprise and boat-rocking reporting is discouraged. Newsrooms today have about as much energy flowing through them as mud puddles have oxygenated water and about the same amount of life.
An End Without an Ending
By Rick Rogers
Larry J. Richards died Saturday morning (July 17) at his Lake Arrowhead home at the youngish age of 52. A coroner will determine what killed him, but the Marine reserve colonel likely died of natural causes.
There was, however, little natural about the timing of his death, just days before a scheduled court date at Camp Pendleton.
Or as multiple sources have told me in one form or another in recent days, "How many people do you think are breathing easier now that Col. Richards is dead?"
Let me tell you why.
Richards was the central figure in an intelligence ring that, according to Richards' own account, had for years funneled highly classified documents from Camp Pendleton to the civilian law enforcement in Los Angeles County.
In his civilian job, Richards served as a detective for the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. Along with another Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy named John P. Sullivan, the two founded the Los Angeles Terrorist Early Warning Group in 1996.
The LA TEW grew in a veritable lawman's stew of dozens of federal agencies, military groups, first responders and local cops who gathered monthly to swap tips on alleged terrorist cells operating in Los Angeles County and their potential targets.
After Sept. 11, regions across the nation adopted the LA TEW as a kind of anti-terrorism template and something of a franchise was born. You'll find second-generation TEWs - often called "fusion centers" - in at least 70 locations across the county.
In his military job, Richards was Marine reserve colonel, a trusted senior officer who served well enough under then 1st Marine Expeditionary Force commander Lt. Gen. James Conway during the early days of the Iraq war to earn a Bronze Star for his intelligence work.
Once stateside, Conway appointed Richards to start and command the "Strategic Technical Operations Center," an intelligence cell at Camp Pendleton composed of a handful of Marines privy to national-level intelligence with a force-protection mission.
Through this post, Richards told investigators, he provided TEW law enforcement agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, anti-terrorism information on cases and threats from roughly 2002 to 2006.
That all began to unravel in 2006 with the arrest of a Marine from Richards' office caught with more than 100 classified documents.
Over next few years, a handful of Marines who worked for Richards were charged with either helping him illegally pass FBI, CIA and U.S. Northern Command files or allowing it to happen. Most if not all agreed to testify against Richards in return to reduced punishment.
The Marine Corps finally charged Richards in June 2009 with dereliction of duty, conspiracy, conduct unbecoming an officer and various crimes related to transmitting and not safeguarding classified materials.
Former Gunnery Sgt. Gary Maziarz, who spent two years in jail for his part in the scheme, claimed that both Gen. James Conway, former Marine Corps commandant, and Gen. James Mattis, recently nominated to run the U.S. Central Command, both knew and approved of what Richards as ways to prevent another 9/11-style attack.
Richards had worked for both back when they commanded the 1st MEF.
Those allegations never grew legs, though Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents did question Conway and Mattis in September 2009. Both generals said they neither knew nor would have approved of Richards' activities.
Mattis said he met former Los Angeles Police Department Chief William Bratton once, but it was about how anti-gang techniques might be used by Marines in Iraq and not about sharing intelligence, according to NCIS documents.
As Richards approached a major court hearing at Camp Pendleton in July speculation mounted: Would Richards claim to be a rogue Marine officer who took intelligence information to advance his civilian career or a currier executing a lager plan?
Then just days before his scheduled court date, Richards died before potentially revealing who knew of or approved of his operation.
All ready rumors are brisk that Richards might have secreted away information that will exonerate him from beyond the grave and implicate others; or that he signed waivers allowing others to divulge otherwise confidential information after his passing.
In this case, any of that would seem natural.
_______________
Tumuty, More than Meets the Eye
By Rick Rogers
The North County Times recently ran the sad story of Army Spc. Travis Tamuty, the troubled 28-year-old Iraq veteran found dead near his grandmother's San Marcos home in late April.
At the time of his death, Tamuty faced Army charges for AWOL, Texas charges for spouse abuse and a lengthy prison sentence in Florida for breaking the nose and jaw of his father-in-law. He likely died by his own hand curled up in his SUV.
These were not Tamuty's first encounters with the law. Chronic anxiety and drug abuse dogged him throughout his late teenage years, and in 2006, a year before the Army recruited him, he faced drug charges.
While this cautionary tale prompts questions of what could've saved Tamuty, it raises systemic questions.
For instance, why was he even in uniform to begin with -- let alone sent to war - and to what lengths will recruiters go to make their enlistment quotas and what can happen if they do?
Unfortunately, we might have some notorious examples close to home to consider.
On October 15, 2008, four Camp Pendleton Marines allegedly stormed the home of Sgt. Jan Pawel Pietrzak, 24, and his 26-year-old wife Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak in Riverside County at gunpoint.
Once inside, Pvt. Emrys John, Lance Cpl. Tyrone Miller, Pvt. Kevin Darnell Cox and Pvt. Kesuan Sykes raped Jenkins-Pietrzak and tortured the couple for hours before killing them execution style, police say.
He four men have pleaded not guilty to murder -- alleged confessions notwithstanding -- and now await death-penalty trials tentatively set for January 2011.
The Marine Corps quickly separated the four from the service and then ensured the press referred to the quartet as "former Marines" to distance themselves even further.
Marine Corps officials, however, were less interested in discussing the fact that at least two of these gentlemen had criminal records before they joined the service and at least three of them were connected to multiple burglaries and at least one violent home invasion afterwards.
And one, Miller, supposedly described himself in his MySpace page as a gang member.
Then there's the case of Pvt. Joshua D. Fry, who might go down in Marine Corps lore as the only documented autistic person ever to earn the coveted globe and anchor signifying membership into arguably the most prestigious gun club in the world.
A Marine recruiter enlisted Fry despite a court order preventing him from signing contracts. The young man continued training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego despite red-flag behavior that included urinating in his canteen.
It must be added that Fry's caretaker grandmother told me she informed the Marine recruiter of her grandson's mental condition repeatedly. It is documented in military court that Fry himself told a Navy corpsman he was autistic during boot camp.
As you might imagine this social experiment did not end well. After somehow being graduated from boot camp in April 2008, Fry was assigned to Camp Pendleton where he was soon arrested and jailed for possession of child porn.
Inexplicably the Marine Corps wanted to try Fry, whom an Orange County probate judge described in 2006 as being "developmentally disabled." Wiser heads decided to simply kick him out of the service and staunch the embarrassment.
The very same day the Fry story broke - June 1, 2009 - so did the story about another Southern California-based Marine recruiter. This one charged with driving two potential recruits to Hemet to have sex with a 14-year-old girl, who the recruiter had met online and started having sex with when she was 13.
Police believe former Staff Sgt. Bryan Damone Cunningham used the teenager as a prostitute to entice recruits to enlist. He got 10 years in prison.
To my knowledge, neither the Army nor the Marine Corps has ever come clean on any of these cases and no elected official has ever made them.
According to the Pentagon, there were 2,426 claims of recruiter misconduct in fiscal 2007, when 22,218 recruiters brought 319,229 recruits into the all-volunteer services.
Of the claims, 593 were substantiated. The Marine Corps, with 43,562 recruits and 2,783 recruiters, had 211 claims of recruiter misconduct, with 118 substantiated. The Marines were the only service where more than half of claims were substantiated.
In the last three fiscal years, at least 265 Marine recruiters have been relieved of duty for misconduct, most commonly for hiding negative background factors.
In recent years, suicides within the military have increased alarmingly as have the number of mental health problems and sexual assaults. I've been told that the severity of domestic cases - if not their numbers -- has also increased and there seems to be more assaults on the military court docket than I can ever remember.
Tamuty might
have died alone on a San Marcos street, but his back-story is sounding
all too common.
Stow the Troop Stickers and Actually Do Something
By Rick Rogers
We don't need to be members of the Democratic Party to rally behind First Lady Michelle Obama's clarion call to support the military as the nation approaches a decade of combat without respite.
At a June 13 address at Camp Pendleton, Mrs. Obama told a large gathering that meeting the needs of the nation's strained military families is "one of my defining missions as first lady."
"This is a challenge to every American," she continued. "Everyone can do something to support and engage our military and your families."
Yes we ca, and San Diego County - specifically, you, North County - must lead this effort with something more substantial than "Support Our Troops" stickers that are more magnetized gestures of a lazy public than genuine manifestations of legitimate patriotism.
Why?
If for no other reason than to show the shared belief of a people in a common cause. If winning the fight against terrorism really is tantamount to ensuring the continued bloom of the American Way of Life - the largely unspoken subtext to the "better fight them there than here" mantra - then this is the least we can do.
But I see a bigger reason. It is our duty to the rest of the country as the home to the largest concentration of U.S. military forces in the world to look after the nation's wives, mothers, sisters, brothers, fathers and sons in uniform.
Since we enjoy the direct impact of the military out of proportion to the rest of the country both economically and culturally, shouldn't we also give more back? It's karma and it is right thing to do.
The need is certainly there and the consequences of not acting are indeed dark.
Consider these headlines.
" ABC News: PTSD Hits National Guard Soldiers Harder, Study " The Seattle Times: Troops Suffer long-term Brain Impacts from Shock Waves, Seattle study finds " National Public Radio: Suicide Rivals The Battlefield In Toll On U.S. Military " WebMD: Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Linked to Dementia " USA Today: No Letup in Marine Attempted Suicides " CNN: Depression, PTSD Plague Many Iraq Vets " North County Times: Marine Corps Suicides on Near-Record Pace
What can we do?
Granted, these issues have medical and emotional components that we as laypersons cannot possibly hope to address. But that doesn't relieve us of our duty to donate our time, talents or resources to make a difference.
Perfection is not the standard. If it were, no one would ever do anything. Instead let us brighten the corner where we live. Think nationally; act locally.
Several organizations right here in North County and San Diego County have for years quietly assisted the military community with food, furniture and clothing. Without them the above-mentioned issues would be that much worse. Among them are:
" Military Outreach Ministry at Camp Pendleton: (760) 763-7394 " Military Outreach Ministries at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station: (619) 461-4164 " Camp Pendleton Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society: (760) 725-5337/5338 or email Mike Hire at mike.hire@nmcrs.org " Interfaith Community Services: (760) 489-6380 or email John Stryker Meyer at jmeyer@interfaithservices.org " Wounded Warrior Battalion West at Camp Pendleton, (760) 815-6194 " American Combat Veterans of War, (858) 552-7501
Let there be no mistake, another generation of service personnel and their families are heading down the same road to ruin that Vietnam vets unfortunately blazed in decades past. That is clear. The question is do we care enough to do the right thing.
On the Cover of the Rolling Stone … Gen. Stanley McHero and Why We Need More Like Him
By Rick Rogers
Chances are zero that Gen. Stanley McChrystal ever meant to be a free-speech hero by letting slip unpleasant truths - at least in his mind -- about the administration while running the country's combat operations in Afghanistan.
Certainly McChrystal's resume doesn't embody uncontrollable truth telling, let the consequences be damned.
For example, it's highly likely that McChrystal knew perfectly well that NFL safety turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire. Yet he managed to overlook that trifling detail when endorsing the heroic Tillman for a high medal. (Any man who turns down a $3.6 million football contact to fight for his country is a hero in my book medal or no.)
On April 28, 2004, six days after Tillman's death, McChrystal approved a posthumous Silver Star recommendation that omitted any mention of friendly fire and instead included the phrase "in the line of devastating enemy fire."
McChrystal then reportedly warned White House speechwriters not to quote from the medal recommendation because it might cause "public embarrassment" should "the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public."
Obviously McChrystal could out flank the truth with best of them and knew a story he wanted no part of when he saw one.
That's what makes this whole Rolling Stone magazine thing so perplexing. There's no logical explanation short of temporary insanity for allowing a Rolling Stone reporter - or any reporter for that matter -- into the inner sanctum of your command and then to bad-mouth top civilian leadership in front of him.
But here's a secret about military men that might explain some of it: Not a few are shockingly immaturity with Big Man On Campus posturing egos.
You can send them to War College. Put stars on their collars. Anoint them to lead armies and you still get:
"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up-front with you; I like brawling."
That was iconic warrior Marine Gen. James Mattis in February 2005 to a defense group in San Diego. Not exactly a Howard Dean moment, but regrettable nonetheless.
All I can say about the McChrystal Affair is that … we need more of them. Keep 'em coming!
Think about what the general public learned -- or had confirmed -- by the McChrystal Incident that we would not have otherwise known.
" Competition among U.S. diplomats to shape Afghanistan policy is hindering decisive action. " Current rules of engagement while saving civilian lives are putting U.S. service members in danger and are hurting morale. " Troops are questioning the counter-insurgency strategy and the idea that the war is being won. " The U.S. public would have a more dismal perception of the Afghanistan war if they just paid attention. " More American troops might be requested for Afghanistan. " Vice President Joe Biden is a loose cannon who might say anything at anytime. " President Barack Obama knew little to nothing about the man chosen to fight his war in Afghanistan. " McChrystal described The Battle of Marja - which I had mistakenly believed was a win - as a "bleeding ulcer"
We need to know these things so maybe, just maybe these issues can be sorted out before it is too late. If this debacle saves just one Marine, soldier, airmen or sailor from needless death it's more than worth it.
So, it cost a four-star his job. Big deal. New ones roll off the assembly line every year. McChrystal's job was to serve the country and that meant laying down his life if need be. So, the unlikely 1st Amendment hero laid down his career instead on the cover The Rolling Stone.
He did his job, and the country is likely better off for his service in more ways than one. Now, Gen. McHero go buy five copies for your mother.
Real Way to Reduce Suicides Too Painful for Military
By Rick Rogers
In March 2006 I reported that mentally ill U.S. troops were routinely returned to combat. Two months later The Hartford Courant printed a series entitled "Mentally Unfit to Fight" that fleshed out the problem and prompted legislators to demand that the Defense Department establish deployment guidelines to protect service members from human usury.
Around the same time, I attended a combat stress conference at Camp Pendleton where doctors and psychologists told of treating frontline troops so psychologically damaged or medicated that they could scarcely function.
One Army major told the story of a young soldier who carried a severed arm with him on patrol. He kept it under his rack until his first sergeant and commanding officer talked him out of it.
They described medics and corpsmen handing out anti-depressants and sleeping pills like candy on Halloween without any medical screening much less supervision or follow-up. For those of you who don't know, anti-depressants often carry a black-box advisory warning that suicidal thoughts have been linked to their consumption.
In many cases, commanders refused to either leave these troops at home base or remove them from combat duty because doing so would only burden the remaining troops with more work and danger. Contrary to popular belief, troop commanders -- not medical personnel -- usually make the call on whether someone stays in combat.
Then in November 2006, William Winkenwerder, Jr., then the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs at the Defense Department, issued a seven-page memo entitled: Policy Guidance for Deployment-Limiting Psychiatric Conditions and Medications.
Veteran organizations praised the guidelines as an important step toward curbing suicides.
Fast-forwarded a handful of years. What do we have?
Despite a torrent of mental health programs aimed at turning the tide of suicide, self-murder and attempted self-murder ruthlessly defy all countervailing efforts.
Unfortunately, this is the spot in the column where I'm obligated to underscore my point by reciting desensitizing statistics that blot out the fact that a face lies behind each number and behind each of those faces are many other anguished faces of friends and families.
With 21 confirmed or suspected suicides by Marines already this year, the Corps is on pace to near last year's record of 52. The Marine Corps suicide rate of 24-per-100,000 troops in 2009 was the highest of any branch in the military. The demographically adjusted suicide rate among civilians is 20 per 100,000, federal records show. Think about that for a moment: Statistically, more smart, brave and proud Marines are killing themselves than rag bags on the corner who couldn't earn a globe and anchor in their wildest dreams. Marines are trying to kill themselves at a record clip. Eighty-nine Marines attempted suicide through May, most by overdose or laceration, according to statistics from the Marine Corps suicide prevention program.
At this rate, the Corps could surpass 200 documented suicide attempts this year, a huge jump from the 164 attempts in 2009, which was also a record. Lord only knows the number of undocumented attempts there have been - or the number of "accidental deaths" that were de facto suicides. The Marine Corps is not alone in this mortal struggle. At more than twice the size of the Marine Corps, the Army had a record 163 soldiers kill themselves last year or 22-per-100,000. The Air Force's rate of 15.5 suicides per 100,000 is that service's highest since 1995. The Navy's suicide rate has snaked up since 2005 and stood at 13.3 per 100,000 last year. During a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting in June, it was revealed that the Defense Department has documented nearly 2,000 suicides from 2001 to 2009, including more than 140 this year. In the last decade, the suicide rate among active duty U.S. military personnel has increased from 9.1 per 100,000 in 2001 to 15.6 per 100,000 in 2009 - a 71 percent jump.
All these figures got me wondering about Winkenwerder's memo and why it had seemingly made no difference. So, I called the Marine Corps and asked how many troops either had not been deployed to combat or had been taken out of the fray because of it. No one had the slightest idea of what I was talking about.
And yet Defense Department mental health experts throw their hands in the air at one congressional hearing after another swearing all is being done to stop this self-inflicted plague. Yes, everything except what might actually work and what would shift the anguish to them.
Little known fact: I coined the term "Pendleton 8" to designate the Kilo Company, 3rd Battaltion, 5th Marine Regiment troops charged with killing Hashim Ibrahim Awad in the town of Hamdaniya on April 26, 2006 It was an inspired act of sloth. I wanted a shorthand way of referring to the group and hated parsing them out as seven Marines and one sailor. More importantly it was concise, accurate and sounded good on the ear. Beyond accommodating selfish motives, I didn't think about it twice. Imagine my surprise as I drove onto Camp Pendleton one morning to see people dolled up in red-white-and-blue exercising their 1st Amendment rights by waving "Free the Pendleton 8" signs. Power to the press! Pretty soon other publications started using "Pendleton 8." Now there's a Pendleton8 website. Might even be t-shirts. And to think it all started with a lazy reporter. Here's an even a lesser known fact: I wrote 10,295 words for a book to be entitled: "The Year that Shook The Corps: Hamdaniya and Haditha." It's hard to remember now, but Hamdaniya and Haditha triggered an emotional gasp across the country and across the world. Every armchair shrink who could stitch two declarative sentences together were opining on the moral decline of the Marine Corps. Then the late Rep. Jack Murtha - a Marine combat vet and a reserve colonel, mind you -- announced in November 2005 that a military investigation into the Haditha killings had concluded that Marines had intentionally killed 24 men, women and children. Referring to the magazine piece that broke the story, Murtha said, "It's much worse than reported in Time magazine. There was no firefight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood. And that's what the report is going to tell." On this score, let's just charitably say that either Murtha was briefed wrong or he remembered it wrong or defense lawyers were able to manage the facts because that black-and-white account has not surfaced in court. In some ways, Hamdaniya looked worse still. Certainly it was more chilling in its orchestration. There Sgt. Larry Hutchins III was accused of hatching a plan that included the premeditated murder of a 52-year-old unarmed man in the dead of night minus any immediate mitigating threats. Taken together the two incidents posed problems for the Marine Corps the likes of which it had never seen. How would the Marine Corps react? Would these alleged events impact not only the ongoing fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Marine Corps' standing? As the smallest military service - I'm not counting the Coast Guard here - the Marines leaned heavily upon its reputation as an elite warrior class to recruit. How would the savviest service handle the torrent of negative publicity? Beyond the institutional angles, what fears led these young men to allegedly murder? What did this these incident say about the whole Iraq adventure, about Marine leadership at all levels? Sounded to me like a book. So I attended every hearing, studied everything I could, took careful notes and wrote. And then I stopped and have not written a single word in years. Know why? Because I came to the considered conclusion that "Pendleton 8" were simply criminals in uniform and to look for any deeper meaning is drilling a dry hole. Was Awad a bad guy? As former police officer under Saddam Hussein, he very well may have been. I don't know. But neither did Hutchins, 26. What I do know is that his men picked a lock, grabbed a sleeping man, snuck him through darken streets -- evading a U.S. drone - bound him, stuck him in a hole and shot him to death. Afterwards, they planted a gun on Awad and said they caught him planting a bomb and killed him. Recently the United States Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that one of Hutchins' defense attorneys was improperly dismissed from the case shortly before his 2007 trial. As a result, that means his 11-year sentence and dishonorable discharge were set aside. Hutchins has spent more than four years in prison, where he remains still. On June 7 the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps announced it would send Hutchins' case to the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Armed Forces. There the court can either affirm or reverse the April ruling of the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals. Should the prosecution's
appeal fail, the government can still return the case to Camp Pendleton,
where a general would decide whether to seek a new trial or enter
into plea negotiations. The "Pendleton
8"? This is looking more like the "Pendleton None."
Think that will catch on?
It's been a dance of convenience between the military and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder over the years. I remember a particularly nifty two-step by Marine Brig. Gen. Joseph Dunford five years ago while assistant commander of the 1st Marine Division. Dunford is now the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force commander and a three-star general. The occasion was a mental health press conference held in March 2005 to proclaim that far fewer Marines and sailors from Camp Pendleton were suffering mental health disorders than suggested by a huge health study that had just come out on returning Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans. A Department of Veterans Affairs analysis of nearly 50,000 such troops, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, had found up to 17 percent have been diagnosed with major depression, anxiety or PTSD. The largest study of its kind to that time also estimated that up to 26 percent had some mental disorder caused by wartime service. The report concluded that Marines and soldiers were nearly four times more likely to report PTSD than sailors and airmen. The findings paralleled findings in Vietnam War veterans. Yet none of these numbers even remotely resembled Camp Pendleton's situation, Dunford proudly declared. There, despite years of fighting, a scant 3 percent of his Marines needed mental health care. He attributed this tiny number to superior counseling his Marines received before going to fight in places like Ramadi, Najaf and Fallujah. Why was Dunford so sure of this number despite Marine Corps' estimates that the percent of mentally dinged Marines were several times higher? Because his Marines had told him so, that's why. Three percent had self-identified in their post-deployment questionnaire and that was good enough to call true for Dunford. I don't recall the general appreciating a question suggesting that just maybe 1st Marine Division troops weren't self-confessing because they wanted to go home on leave and didn't want to appear weak. About a year later the Marine tenor on the subject changed. Maj. Gen. Mike Lehnert, who retired last year as the Marine Corps Installations West commander, told me constant combat deployments were, indeed, eroding Marines and their families, though he never spelled out how. Combat stress, Lehnert said, was endemic to combat and only a psychopath could return from war unchanged by the experience. Amen, brother. What had happened was that the Marine Corps had culturally embraced "combat stress" but not PTSD. The first was a normal reaction of an honorable warrior to the horrors of war. But that stance would change yet again. By 2008 the Marine Corps and Navy had moved from downplaying the prevalence of PTSD - or calling it combat stress -- to normalizing it and comparing it to an ailment like any other. "These Marines are recoverable," said Sgt. Maj. Kevin Wilson, then the Personal and Family Readiness Division at Marine Corps headquarters in Arlington, Va. The occasion was the second annual Combat Operational Stress Control Conference. The event was held August 2008 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in downtown San Diego. "In the past, we thought if a Marine had post-traumatic stress disorder, he was gone. Now it's more like breaking a leg." Why the multiple changes of heart? I suspect some of it was based on emerging research, but also driven by the need to justify sending broken Marines back to war again and again. A 2008 conference remark by Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland's might be instructive here. "We need combat-focused, tough Marines," said Helland, Dunford's predecessor at 1st MEF. "We need them badly. (The fighting) is not going to end anytime soon, and we need to take care of our Marines." What few knew, except for Duford, Lehnert and Helland and other high-rank officers, was that taking care of the Marines included a big helping hand from Big Pharma. Between 2002
and 2008, according to Defense Department figures, the number of
anti-depressants and anti-psychotics medications going to the troops,
their families and veterans I often wonder how many more ethical, moral and pharmacological accommodations Marine Corps leaders will make to justify squeezing just one more combat tour out of their men and women and what it will mean for all of us when the music stops.
Interesting days here at DefenseTracker headquarters in beautiful La Costa and not without promise. Last week I approached Time Warner Cable about doing a public access TV show on issues important to military veterans, active-duty personal and their families, reservists and National Guardsmen and the defense industry. That's a lot of groups to get under the big top, but all are vital to San Diego County and Southern California, and all share the dubious distinction of being neglected by mainstream media about 98 percent of the time. The Time Warner folks asked for a list of show topics and a proposed guest list. This week I delivered an outline for six, 30-minute show tentatively entitled "Front and Center" that the Time Warner folks thought was a pretty good start. Things are moving forward, but no one can do God's work alone, and I need your help. Specifically I need a motivated and experienced production crew who share the belief that the above communities are worth serving with programming available nowhere else. This is not an ego-driven pursuit, but rather one meant to fill an unmet need in our community. Needed to launch Front and Center: 2 Camera operators We might secure sponsorship for this show, but for now anyone signing on to this project would be paid in jelly donuts and coffee. In the interest of full-disclosure, I have no political bent. I am neither pro right nor pro left and the show will not be either. If interested, contact me at (760) 445-3882 or email me at Rick.Rogers@DefenseTracker.com. Thanks. Let's do something great! Getting Picked Up in The North County Times The North County Times is starting a military page that I've been told will run every Thursday. I've been contacted to help provide content, which I am more than happy to do. There is a great need for much more military and veteran coverage in Southern California than is being provided. The problem is media of every stripe are cutting back and there just aren't enough bodies in the newsrooms to do the work. Hope you pick up a copy and tell me what you think. Marine Officer Symposium Had the honor of recently addressing, along with Gidget Fuentes from Marine Corps Times and Tony Perry from The Los Angeles Times, a room full of Marines attending the West Coast Commanders Media Training Symposium in Redondo Beach. Good group not afraid of asking tough questions and sharing frustrations. Issues that popped up included: whether the media is more divisive than ever; what are the ethics of showing wounded troops; in the age of bloggers, just who is a journalist; did the media and or the Marine Corps screw up the Haditha story; what exactly makes a story; why is the death of a girl in San Diego news and the multiple of deaths of service men and women seemingly not. Whew! I can't say everyone on the panel shared the same opinion. But I can share with you what my thoughts were. · I don't
think the newspapers and networks are more divisive than ever only
because "ever" is a long time. Don't forget that people
created newspapers as a bully pulpit to launch their political views
at least as much as a forum to inform the public or make a buck.
I think we are actually returning to the days of old tyme journalism,
where anything went and readers migrated to publications that best
dovetailed with their leanings. I don't think this is a good thing,
but it's certainly not new. Brothers and sisters, there's a miasmic cloud hanging over the country the likes of which I've never seen. It's not that we've just lost faith in our elected leaders and our institutions. That happens. The assassinations of King and the Kennedys in the 1960s coupled with the Vietnam War knocked us loopy. Then Watergate in the early 1970s evaporated whatever trust in our government we had left. Then we settled in for protracted nothingness. A wall falls there. A desert despot makes a land-grab here. Until Sept. 11, 2001, we were treading water in the spit-bucket of largely unremarkable times. Those days don't look so bad now. And it's not as if we can turn to our business leaders for the succor of hope. If there's a higher power, they're in for a long, slow grilling. They pimped the financial crisis as America got screwed. Please don't lawyer me on how these titans were technically on the right side of the law when they were on the wrong side of the line morally and ethically. This is what you need to know about them: They wagered the country's future on financial instruments they either didn't understand or knew outright to be fraudulent. What they unquestionably grasped was they were making hand-over-fist profits. Damn the consequences. Here's a new book you might want to consider. Michael Lewis' "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" about the financial crisis. (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62F5BB20100316) Today, Wall Street seems honestly amazed that Americans aren't jumping back into its rigged, Ponzi market - one that is NO different from the one that crashed. All this reminds me of a jody call from basic training. A yellow bird
with a yellow bill We are the little bird and Wall Street is trying to lure us back into the market with the bread of profits. We get in, share prices rise, the boys in the know sell, the market falls and we hold the door as the robber barons walk out with our money -- again. Simplistic? Hardly. More like recurring. Business and government have evolved. They once viewed people as cattle to be herded, milked and slaughtered. That was back when both institutions needed our physical presence to bring in the crops, create centers of commerce and man the armies. Now we are a cash crop to be harvested or a cost to be managed. I call it the Modern Predatory Era or the MPE. More on that in a future rant. Our elected leaders? I would argue that they are largely neither elected nor leaders. A small cadre picks those to run for office. Once in office, money flows to incumbents making elections a quaint formality. We very rarely elect people anymore. We elect ideologies or parties or too often chose between sides of the same coin. When we do elect a relative freethinker, those whose very livelihoods depend on propagation of the status quo throttle the fresh voice in his crib. Leaders? They don't lead anything. They are errand boys, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill. Who else finds it illuminating that not until after Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., announced his retirement from the Senate, where he doddered as chair of the Senate Banking Committee in the years leading up to the financial collapse, did he finally propose substantial financial reform? What a crock. I can't believe the man can hold a straight face. No, what's changed is we've lost faith in our ability to control our lives in any substantial way. This is a much more serious than the rise of smarmy politicians or commercial scam artists. This loss of faith starts with our inability to control the single most important aspect of our lives in a consumer-oriented society, namely our work. It used to be that hard work was enough to achieve a relatively secure life. Then hard work and education were enough. Then hard work, coupled with a college education, coupled with connections were enough. Then hard work, coupled with an advanced college degree, coupled with selecting the right career field, coupled with connections were enough. What's enough now? The goal posts keep moving and we keep running. So, let's see. As a country we're getting old, getting fat, getting depressed and getting tired. We're already scared. Nothing we do seems good enough. We are underemployed or unemployed. We feel betrayed by our leaders on all fronts. The past looks brighter than the future. Yes, America, our collective mid-life crisis is here. Hopefully, we'll hate it enough to change the future.
It's been a trying week here at DefenseTracker Central Command. In case you've ever wondered what dazzling skills are needed to run a multi-media/content-producing empire worth hundreds of dollars - if auctioned -- let me tell you a story. I've spent half my life digging stories out of the military. Lordy, I could tell you tales that'd make you wonder whose side these perfumed princes running our commands are really on! From Fort Sill to Camp Henry to Fort Belvoir to Pacific Stars & Stripes to The Daily Press to The San Diego Union-Tribune to DefenseTracker. I plugged away at it for decades, both in and out of uniform. It took a while, but I finally figured out what I was doing. I'll spare you the personal traits that led to my moderate ascendency because we're all special, aren't we? What I didn't spend much time on through the years was learning computer and Internet skills, specifically how to actually build a website upon which my future now hinges or how to keep one pruned and watered. I also never learned to sell my stories or myself. I always worked for papers that saw my worth. They hired me right? That all seemed like such a minor issue when I started DefenseTracker. Oh, you naïve boy. Wouldn't you think a great idea -- and delivering localized military content in defense-heavy places where there's no real competition is a great idea -- alone would get you at least 85 percent of the way home? Me too! But, there's this little thing called an Internet Website that's my grail and my grievance at the moment. I won't bore you with the details, but the upshot for someone with the web savvy of a stoned fifth-grader who rides the short bus to school is that daily I throw my hands in the air just trying to upload my latest batch of home-baked stories. For the uninitiated, uploading stories on to a website is about as basic as it gets for the nerdy elite, that band of capable brothers I so hope to join one day. It's roughly the computing equivalent of slapping a magazine into an M-16 or slipping a key into an ignition and just as indispensible. Cash is king in the commercial world. But new content is the royal flush in the website world. No fresh content, no readers. No readers, no reason. Invariably after failing at this most basic task, I'd check my website stats and see that: A. You weren't showing up in droves; B. You'd show up, but leave almost immediately. The page hits went down, your visits went down. My spirits sank. Of course I couldn't give up. So, I did what any educated person would do. I took a class. Actually, I took two night classes. And do you know what I learned from plunking down $289 and driving hundreds miles and sitting for in classes for hours? I learned that unless you're a genius or all ready have a background in website design, you're never going to learn enough fast enough to produce a professional looking page. Underscoring that point, a teacher rolled out a book that weighed slightly less then a small child and pronounced that everything we needed to know comprised exactly six paragraphs in the entire book. Six little jewel paragraphs interspersed among hundreds and hundreds of pages of rocky gibberish. That's like a downed pilot at sea with no communication. She said our chances of finding these sparkling passages were nil. I felt like the pilot. She said that by the time we learned enough to actually operate, say, Dreamweaver, the program would be obsolete. At this point, I felt water filling my lungs. After that, I called a few web designers. They were eager to help, but at a cost ranging between $5,000 and $20,000. And that didn't include the recurring monthly charge for site maintenance. And I thought the professor had bad news. But I lucked out. A close friend built my site for the cost of a handful of breakfasts in Bird Rock. But I still needed to learn how to post stories. I couldn't rely on this poor guy forever. The problem was that he was a PC using Dreamweaver 4, and I was MAC using Kompozer. Dreamweaver and Kompozer are both web development applications, essentially programs that allow you to create websites and, more importantly for me, post stories. We were the Montagues and Capulets of cyber space. To get us on the same page, I searched for a MAC-compatible Dreamweaver 4 program and found one on eBay for $75. My research suggested that it would run on my MAC. So, I bought the darn thing thinking this was the answer. Wrong. The Dreamweaver program is too "classic" to be supported by Snow Leopard 10.6.2. I can't even return the program, so the frustrations there continue. So, I set that aside all that and began calling small publications to sell my content. Heck, if I can't get my stories on my own Website, maybe I can at least sell them to someone who can put them up on theirs. I knew free weeklies wouldn't be able to pay much. But I figured that if I could convince a few to pick up my stuff at least that I would gain a foothold in the market and keep the wolf from the door. This is admittedly a work on progress. But let me give you a taste of how these conversations have gone. Mind you I'm talking to editors whose big scoop is the SPCA's free spay and neutering fest or the five best places in Tijuana to get fat sucked out of your ass. Hi, I am a content producer specializing in military and defense news in Southern California. I have stories that no one else has. I've taken a look at your publication's demographics and see that you have a large veteran and military readership. I have figures that show that these populations have above average household incomes. I also noticed that you currently carry no localized news for them. I have compiled a list of perspective local advertisers who would like to reach them. I can help you reach this lucrative market. You know that we have very high standards at our publication. Very high. Your stories would have to be extremely well written and researched. We demand the very highest journalistic standards. Few people are actually able to meet our exacting standards. You'd probably have to spend days on each story. You should also know that we don't pay much. In fact, we probably wouldn't pay you anything. You'd be doing this for the thrill of being published in our esteemed newspaper. Well, sir, I like to challenge myself. I've read your publication and find your content quite a revelation. I think I would be a good fit for you. I was hoping to send you examples of my …. You say that you are a content producer? Yes, sir. So, you're trying to sell your stories to other publications in the region as well? Yes, sir. But I am sure that we can come to some accommodation. Think of it this way, local newspapers routinely run the very same stories from The Associated Press. This would essentially be the same thing, except no one has, ah, actually, at this moment in time, run anything I've written. But by running my stuff, you'd provide your readers with unique information they would not otherwise get. It would be valued-added content for you. Hmmm. If you write for us, we wouldn't want that story used any place else. It would be for us alone. Sir, just so I am clear on what I hear you saying. I have to work days on a story that you will pay me nothing for, yet I can't offer it to any paying customers or to anyone else, even for the exposure? You got it. Thank you for your time, sir. I'll be watching for the next riveting SPCA story. Yes, we are very proud of that one. As you should be, as you should be. I think it speaks volumes of your news judgment and the talent of your staff. Well, thank you! Not at all,
sir, you deserve at least that much.
Should The Marine Corps Be Allowed To Opt Out? The days (gays?) of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" are seemingly drawing to a close. Nothing so foreshadows this than recent comments by top civilian and military leadership favoring allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military. Not exactly sure what serving "openly" means. Rainbow pride flags hanging from rearview mirrors? A few weeks ago Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Congress he supports President Obama's efforts to end DADT -- as it has come to be known -- and has asked Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson and Army Gen. Carter Ham to study the affect of such a repeal on unit cohesion and discipline - the main concerns that led Congress to implement "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in 1993. They'll also take a look at partner benefits, base housing, fraternization and base conduct. Gates also plans to ask the Rand Corporation, a defense think tank, to update its study of the impact of gay service on unit cohesion. Some times Washington studies an issue to death in lieu of having to act. But I think in this case the brass is looking for backup documentation to bolster an imminent decision. "It is clear to us we must proceed in a manner that allows for thorough examination of all issues" and "minimizes disruption" to a military all ready stressed by two wars, Gates said. The panel headed by Johnson and Cater will issue its recommendations later this year. Gates told the senators he hoped the work would guide the Congress to pass a law overturning "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, views on the subject are particularly instructive and an historic departure from those of his predecessors. In 1993, when President Clinton tried to overturn the ban, the uniformed military rejected the effort. Former Army Gen. Colin Powell was particularly vocal in opposition. In 2007, Mullen's immediate predecessor, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, publicly called homosexuality "immoral" and compared it to adultery. Mullen has a different take. "No matter how I look at the issue," Mullen, said, "I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. . . . Allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do. "I have served with homosexuals since 1968." the chairman said. "Everyone in the military has." Mullen has it right. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the military has known -- or at least strongly suspected -- that some of the troops he or she served with were gay. In some cases, the troops in questions have admitted as much. For me it was an admin sergeant who lived in the barracks across from me in Korea when I was based in Taegue at Camp Henry in the early 1990s. And I didn't care. He was a squared-away soldier, who kept his private life to himself. The unit would have been less for his absence. Of course, I was a garrison troop, a remf. I am not discounting that I might have felt differently in alternate circumstances. A poll from last May found that 69 percent of Americans favored allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly. Several U.S. allies allow openly gay people into the service, including Australia, Israel, the U.K., France, Denmark, Italy, Canada, the Czech Republic and Spain. There are some pretty good militaries on that list. Closer to home,
a poll of 3,000 active-duty troops found that about 51 percent opposed
repealing the policy. More teenagers and young adults are obese than ever before. More teenagers and young adults gulping down mental health meds than ever before, which often precludes them from military service. In short, the pool of qualified candidates for military service is shrinking for the reasons stated, plus the fact that the population is aging. War is a young man and woman's game. No escaping that. I suspect that implementing this policy won't be easy, in some services less so than others. I also believe that regardless of Defense Department's stance on gays in the military that peer pressure will keep many from openly disclosing. What changing
DADT would do, however, is de-criminalize being gay and focus instead
on behavior. Adultery is a crime prosecuted in the military, as
are crimes against good order and discipline. I doubt gays get a
free pass for such violations, and neither should they. I broke a story some months ago about an autistic kid that the Orange Recruiting Station signed up and who the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot San Diego graduated from boot camp. Then there were the four Marines - former Marines now - who allegedly tortured and murdered a Marine sergeant and his wife a few years ago in Riverside County. At least two of them had brushes with the law before their enlistment. But I digress. The Marine Corps has a history of being allowed to do things its way and that might include how and if to phase in DADT. For example, the Marine Corps has successfully fought making boot camp co-ed some years back when the winds of political correctness were blowing hard. It is not inconceivable that the Corps might side step this integration as well. But probably not forever. Look for a rainbow flag arriving soon at a military base near you.
Or In Defense of Newspapers, Sort of ….. There are a lot of thoughts -- and maybe a few ideas -- that I've wanted to get off my chest and into this blog, though my first forays into blogdom have been a little tepid, I admit. The truth is real reporters who dress bad, eat too much fast food and fight with their editors to get stories in the paper, HATE just HATE to put themselves in the spotlight. The old school guys so embedded in us lucky enough to learn at their elbows as they eviscerated our copy the cardinal rule of staying out of our stories that although I've written thousands of stories over a nearly 25-year journalism career, I find this blog thing both exciting and almost a physically painful task. And the old guys were right -- for their time. Too bad they worked for straw-for-brains owners who didn't know a dime from a donut when it came to actually managing a business that moved and evolved and who didn't act when their markets and demographics shifted. They were apparently too busy counting their stacks to put much thought into that or to sinking money back into the business that gave them their fine homes and nearly untouchable status. Journalism eggheads will go on and on about market fragmentation, the young being non-newspaper readers, the advent of the gypsy customer base, non-monetization of the Internet, blah, blah, blah. And no doubt when the last reporter writes the last newspaper's obituary, they will all be listed as contributing causes of death. But the truth is the primary causes of death will be greed, sloth and pride. They didn't spend money to improve their product when they were clearing 25-30 percent margins. They were indulgent monopolies with a bigger "what, me worry?" attitude than a Hilton heiress. And they didn't suck up their pride and work with other survivors of the newspaper crash when clearly some kind of division of labor was called for. Proud and dead, how about that for an epitaph? These are sins that newspapers executives alone will have answer for before reporting for night desk duty in hell. But newspapers will not perish from his earth for the reasons I so often hear and for which I question our education system every time I do. Newspaper stories are OVERWHELMINGLY unbiased. I can't say zero because some one will find a story that makes me cringe. Don't believe me? Find a paper - chances are there is one somewhere even at this date. Read about the bicyclist getting hit by a motorist. Read about some city approving the Wal-Mart expansion. Read about the guy pleading not guilty to vehicular homicide. Read about water-rate increases. Whatever. Do you see any bias? No. That's because those stories are like about 92 percent of the others in the paper. They are straight. This is what happened or that is what some government entity is planning to do. The reporters who write these stories hardly have time to string together a passel of declarative sentences much less slant a story. The other 8 percent of the newspaper is written by people who are SUPPOSED to have an opinion, like columnists and editorial page folks or people who pen letters to the editor. When I lay out this argument, I invariably hear about some putz on TV. Here's a secret: TV and radio personalities aren't journalists! They are practiced teleprompter readers or spouters with impeccable hygiene. If they twice made the on-air mistake of saying pubic instead of public, they'd be slinging drinks in the Poconos or selling time-shares in the Bahamas. They also take a position. They have an audience. They preach to their congregations. I have no problem with them. I wish people would do a little more thinking for themselves, but it's a free country. Pragmatism isn't currently outlawed, but certainly holds no current media value much less an audience. Maybe at one time TV people were journalists. I'd like to think that Walter Cronkite could dig out a story and lay down some lines. But if he were around today, he'd be the exception to the rule. Don't believe me? When was the last time that TV broke something really big? I mean Pentagon Papers, Watergate big? OK, even something not so big, like … just about anything? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? It rarely happens because TV almost always follows print. The print guys make the kill and TV feeds on the carrion. It has always been thus. When I started in journalism, a time that seems both far away and near, I knew the Fourth Estate was in trouble. But I believed that papers would at least survive through my career - I suppose I mean that both ways. Now that newspapers are dying faster than Kennedys it's easy to imagine them sinking below the waves without causing so much as a ripple. I don't doubt that I might live long enough witness the extinction of newspaperous de plebs plebis. Some will say that would be just, deserved and the natural order of things. The horse and buggy made way for the car. The 8-track tape for the cassette and then the CD and now the MP3. But I say that no single impending collapse of a major institution in our county's history so threatens our democracy as the demise of newspapers and, more precisely, journalism itself. In fact I would argue that newspapers are nearly so weak now that they are virtually ineffectively when it comes fulfilling its core obligation of being the public's eyes and ears. So, newspapers will make way for what? Surely not bloggers, who are a collection of niche provocateurs at best or former juvenile delinquents with a keyboard at worst. Those needing to stick a finger the media's collective eye can point to bloggers plucking stories that mainstream media missed or ignored. I suspect this will happen more often as paper slash staffs and hire cheaper and less experienced reporters. Hell, I have a vested interest in papers missing and underplaying stories so more people see value in what I do. But are bloggers really going to attend water district or city council meetings? How about sitting through trials? Who knows how many bad ideas never became policy because some sharp-eyed, pain-in-the-rear reporter looking out for the public good asked questions and exposed what was going on? It's a tough question to answer, but think of how many crummy decisions were rendered with them there and times that by at least a couple. And have you really perused any number of blogs lately? Amusing? Sometimes. Insightful? Occasionally. Substantive? Very rarely. Which brings us to my biggest concern. Who is going to keep eye on the government, big business, the military, big pharma, corporations, unions, movie stars, doctors, lawyers, China, teachers, cigarette makers, big oil companies and Wall Street? Feel free to add to the list. The idea is that there are groups within the United States and without that need watching. Do we really want to rely on government oversight in light of the sway special interest groups have in Washington, especially in light of the recent Supreme Court decision that very nearly approves the public trading of U.S. legislators? Do not all the above groups benefit from newspapers being the sick man of American letters? Do you suppose these entities might exploit the widening hole in the public defense net that journalism plugs, however inadequately, in order to maximize profits at the expense of you and me? And once newspapers are gone, where will democracy's sentinels come from? For example, you don't wake up in the morning and decide you're going to comb through Exxon documents to discern whether the company is colluding with, say, BP, to keep gas prices artificially high. It takes a lot of expertise and knowledge to even understand what you're looking at if you happen to be good enough and lucky enough to get such documents to begin with. And the same holds true for just about any impactful story written. They take time, effort and often litigation. Pounding the rock day after day until something breaks. They also take something you don't hear talked about much these days in journalism and see even less: passion. You can't teach want-to. You either have it or you don't. Unfortunately, desire is being bred out of newsrooms quicker than civility in Congress and this is reflected daily. Most of the journalists left fall into two categories: the Indispensables and the Survivors. The first group is needed to put the paper out at even a weak-pulse level and include frontline editors and reporters. They are by-and-large hardworking, usually cheap help who still believe in the inherent cause of their mission. Unfortunately, the second group of individuals is almost always welding the power. They are rarely good at anything except politicking to keep their corner offices with the nice views. Most are professional editors, meaning they don't know squat about news, but quite a bit about nodding their heads and keeping out of print what might enrage and provoke. They HATE controversy or debate, two of the most prized attributes of any great newsroom, and they are politically correct to a fault. Survivors are also connoisseurs and enablers of the status quo: mind-numbingly mediocre journalism that now dominates pages across America and which in no small part has pushed the industry to the brink of extinction. Yet they fail to view themselves as leading the lemming charge. Basically, they are freaking clueless, but are so entrenched that if and when Newspaper Armageddon does come, they'll survive to write books about their heroic attempts to save the very same industry they so efficiently destroyed. But they are what we have. Between leaving the field open to those intent on preying on the American public and the mere shell of journalism that we have today, I'll take the latter every time and volunteer to clean their windows. Because without them, however shortsighted and self-interested they are, we are a country with no eyes or ears, regardless of how cataract-glazed or tone deaf.
Troops, Vets and Family Members prescribed at least 37.1 million Mental Health Drugs since 2002, more than 6.4 million in 2008 alone Southern California psychologist to testify before Congress later this month that giving psychotropic drugs to troops in combat 'criminal' Retired Army reserve Col. Bart Billings is a psychologist and founder of the longest running combat stress conference in the world. Remember his name. We'll get back to him in a minute. More than 37.1 million prescriptions for mental health conditions ranging from anxiety to bipolar disorder have been dispensed to our troops, veterans and family members in the last eight years. Probably a lot more. Between 2002 and 2008, according to Defense Department figures, the number of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics medications handed out rose from 3.7 million to 6.4 million - a 73 percent increase. The use of psychotropic drugs by the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs has interested me for some time. I've always been curious about how incurious the military is about the ethical dilemma - OK, I see it as an ethical dilemma - of medicating someone so they can be sent back to the fighting that likely triggered or exacerbated their problems to begin with. Here's a question: If you send someone into combat on, say, the anti-depressant medication Effexor - 559,339 prescriptions in 2008 - are they immune from depression and other manifestations of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or might you be creating super-PTSD that is resistant to medications? To learn more about specific psychotropic drugs, visit: http://www.askapatient.com/rateyourmedicine.htm No one knows, and I've asked people who should. The military services aren't keen on publicly disclosing just how many of their men and women in uniform are taking mental health drugs to keep them going and what exactly they are swallowing. I've asked about the kinds and quantities of psychotropic drugs being sent to our deployed forces and the answer is that no one knows. Really? There's also the matter of suicides. Many of these drugs have "black box warnings," meaning medical studies indicate some number of them carry a significant risk of serious or even life-threatening adverse effects. Here's another question: How come there's a warning about giving these drugs to "adolescents" because of the suicidal tendencies they might produce, but no warning I am aware of about giving them to teenagers in the military? Then there's the issue of dependence. From the research I've done, some of these drugs are quite addictive. At a combat stress conference in 2008, I asked Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, then commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, if there was an ethical problem in sending Marines back to combat on mental health drugs. By his reaction, you'd a thought I kicked his dog right there in the lobby of the San Diego Manchester Grand Hyatt. "But they want to go back," Helland said. "Sir, if Johnny breaks his leg in the big football game," I said, "I'm sure he wants to get back in there and play, too. But, sir, shouldn't wiser heads prevail?" "Well, I take Lipitor," Hellend countered. "What's the difference between someone taking Lipitor and an anti-depressant? It's a medicine. They take it and it makes them better." "Most people taking a drug to lower their cholesterol don't carry a gun. I also don't think that Lipitor carries a black box warning about possible suicidal thoughts." By this time Helland's attaché had moved between us to extricate the general from an obviously incalcitrant reporter. "Well, too bad for them!" Helland said walking away. A better argument, and one I heard, is that the military is simply a microcosm of society. Since more Americans are taking medications for depression, et al., it's to be expected that more troops and vets would be taking them as well. OK. But, at least on the military side of the ledger, these folks are relatively young and should be at their peak mentally and physically. The services all profess - and I believe them -- that today's men and women in uniform are the choicest fruit of American loins. If this is true, should they really be represented apparently so robustly when it comes to mental health issues? Needless to say, I had questions. But my publication wasn't interested in pursuing the story. So I sat and watched. Years went by. Deployments multiplied. Combat stress grew. The number of psychotropic drugs grew, too, by an average of nearly 302,000 prescriptions per annum from 2002 through 2008. And, tragically, the self-murder grew as well. Suicides among soldiers in 2008 rose for the fourth year in a row, reaching the highest level in nearly three decades, Army officials said in early 2009. At least 128 soldiers killed themselves in 2008 as the Army suicide rate surpassed that for civilians for the first time since the Vietnam War, according to Army statistics. Counting non-combat deaths under investigation at the time, roughly 20.2 of every 100,000 soldiers killed themselves. The civilian rate for 2006, the most recent figure available, was 19.2 when adjusted to match the demographics. The most common factors in suicides were financial, personal and legal problems, as well as job-related difficulties, the Army said. Thirty percent of the suicides in the last four years took place during a deployment, while 35 percent took place after a deployment. The remaining 35 percent of those who killed themselves had never deployed. The Marine Corps wasn't spared either. The service recorded 26 suspected or confirmed suicides in the first half of 2009. The figure put the Corps on pace for 52 in 2009, which would be the most since the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003. I wanted a breakdown of who received these drugs to find out if there was any correlation between their use and these suicides. I did not expect or want to know if the people who died were on medications, but rather if their use had spiked, as the numbers suggest. But the Defense Department said it didn't' keep figures that way. But an upcoming hearing might shine a long-delayed spotlight on the issue. Billings, founder and director of the International Military and Civilian Combat Stress Conference, is scheduled to testify before a congressional panel on Feb. 24. The independent conference is approaching it 20th anniversary and has no peer. He'll gets five minutes to say his piece. Five minutes that he fought more than three years to get. "Every military psychiatrist who prescribes a troop carrying a weapon 24/7 medication whose adverse reactions listed on the "black box" include suicidal or aggressive behavior, should be brought up on charges and thrown out of the military," said Billings, who advocates mental health counseling instead of drug treatment. "Would they do that in the United States?" Billings said. "It's a crime, it's a real crime." "If this is all true, where is the outcry?" I asked. "Is there
an outcry? Yeah, me on Feb. 24," Billings said. "This
is all about politics, being promoted, the military needing to keep
men deployable and money." Finding Vets Jobs: A Failure to Communicate
I attended the small business forum hosted by Boeing and the National Defense Industrial Association in San Diego on Friday, Jan. 22. The place was packed. Men in suits leaned against walls and took notes as Boeing executives laid out plans to expand in San Diego and then outlined the types of work it hopes to subcontract.
Unmanned aircraft; intelligence and security, command, control, communications computers & intelligence; logistics command and control and base infrastructure services were the major markets that the airline maker and defense titan hopes to make strides in with the help of small business partners here.
Can’t tell you exactly what all that means, but it has to do with supporting the military and Three Letter Agencies – TLAs for short – such as the CIA. I was surprised to learn that almost half the work Boeing does these days is other than building airliners.
Altogether these emerging markets are worth, according to Boeing estimates, $530 billion.
That got me thinking about jobs for our Southern California veterans, especially after Rueben Garcia, San Diego district director of the U. S. Small Business Administration Office, said that small businesses employ 99.2 percent of everyone in San Diego County.
Jobs, jobs, jobs are often the first three words I hear when veteran groups voice what’s needed most. Reserve and National Guard officials say the same. But there appears to be a chasm between the need to find veterans to work and a systematic plan to do just that.
I first noticed this at a Jan. 8 veteran conference in Chula Vista featuring Congressman Bob Filner, D-Chula Vista, and State Assembly member Mary Salas, D-Chula Vista.
Veteran advocate after veteran advocate from across the state told Filner and Salas that jobs must be a top priority. Former service members face big problems if they can’t find employment after their military service, they all agreed.
Only one problem, which was ably, if not subtly, pointed out.
“When you talk about jobs, you need to have the private sector at the table,” said one man. “There isn’t one member of the chamber of commerce here either.”
The place went silent.
The obvious question is how can anyone speak of creating jobs for veterans without business involvement?
Fast forward to yesterday. After the business forum, I cornered an NDIA official about an industry vet hiring program.
He went silent. All I heard were guys in suits chatting up Boeing officials and the clink of forks against plates.
If a veteran shows up at a NDIA meeting, he’ll get a few minutes to make his job pitch, he finally said.
I told him that didn’t sound like much of a program. Then I suggested ways in which NDIA members could get the workers they need and veterans could get jobs if there was a more systematic approach. Heck, vets could even spend their own GI Bill money on training to get good defense jobs if they were simply given a little bit of guidance. An upside for defense contractors – and there are many -- is that a lot of service members already have security clearances.
Don’t you think that is the VA’s job? was his reply.
No, I think helping veterans find work should entail a concerted effort by government at all levels and private industry. Kicking the problem down the street isn’t the answer. (I felt a little bad about putting the guy on the spot like that. In all honesty, it is not his fault.)
To recap: We have well-intentioned veteran organizations that aren’t reaching out to companies. We have local defense organizations and companies that aren’t reaching out to veterans. And we have veterans who don’t’ have jobs.
Can’t someone
please figure a fix to this problem? Long before he became known as a poker commentator, Gabe Kaplan starred in the mid-1970s TV series “Welcome Back, Kotter,” along with a rising star named John Travolta. I bring up this esoteric reference because it sprang to mind while talking to Nathaniel Donnelly, the assistant veterans coordinator at San Diego State University and something of a rising star himself in San Diego County veteran circles. Donnelly was explaining a working group he heads that’s focused on developing the next generation of veteran leaders, both within the frame work of veteran affairs organizations in San Diego County and, potentially, on the national scene as well. He pointed out that for decades after World War II, the Senate and Congress were filled with veterans, but that today you’d be hard-pressed to find enough former service members to field a baseball team – even if you didn’t have to worry about the old guys breaking a hip. The lack of military experience in Congress seemed particularly pertinent today, said Donnelly, since fully a third of the federal budget goes to defense spending. How does Donnelly plan to rouse this generation of veterans to civic service? “My selling point it national leadership. The military is a big part of what our government stands for. But only 3 percent are former vets,” Donnelly said. His pitch is that it’s in the veterans’ self-interest to do so. He points out that by the 1980s the GI Bill was but a shell of what it was after World War II. He said the same could happen again without vets lending a shoulder to keep it from backsliding. But Donnelly might be fighting a losing battle. The reason actually has a price tag: $48,000. That’s the amount that veterans can now receive each year in tax-free benefits ranging from housing allowance to financial aid to go to school. It’s hard to motivate anyone to action when life is looking pretty sweet. “The benefits now are so good that they (veterans) are content,” Donnelly said. “And the VA healthcare is just so much better than it used to be. How can we explain that they need to get involved when things are good for them the way it is?” Which brings me back to Kaplan and a story he once told on his series. As I recall it, a couple had a child that they took very loving care of, but for some reason the kid never spoke a word. A flurry of visits to specialists by the score produced exactly no results. Then one day at the breakfast table, the child spoke: “Where’s the milk?” asked the kid. The parents were joyed to tears. Only later did the parents ask why the child had never spoken before: “I was getting everything I wanted, why did I need to speak?” Trust us; we're the governmentYou won't find many investigative pieces on this website because I'd much rather put my efforts into writing stories explaining how veterans, reservists and active-duty folks can make the most of their medical benefits, start a business or access the GI Bill. Those are positive stories that can and will make someone's life better and are just more interesting to research and write. Plus, quite frankly, investigative stories take too long to write and are a royal pain in the keister. I call them "crab stories" because they take a lot of work and you don't get much for your troubles. This is especially true if the story includes the military. If you don't have a wall handy and need something to bang your head against some time, just try extracting information from the military that they don't want to give up. You quickly learn that the military does pretty much what it pleases when it pleases. As far as oversight goes, there is effectively none. Congress long ago abandoned that responsibility, leaving the military services to police themselves. But the intelligence case at Camp Pendleton is a rare exception, chiefly because I broke the story and later got subpoenaed to testify in it. I'll apologize now if the following is inside baseball that probably only a handful of people outside the military and the intelligence communities care about. So far Gary Maziarz is the only person to suggest that very senior Marine officers knew that highly classified FBI, CIA and National Security Agency intelligence information was being routinely funneled to civilian law enforcement in Los Angeles. He is also the lowest ranking person implicated in the whole affair and, to my knowledge, the only one to serve time in the brig for it. He is also bitter. Maybe, at times, irrationally so. I have interviewed Maziarz several times about the case. Sometimes he's lucid, thoughtful and authoritative. He was in a position to know what was happening inside the intelligence cell that Marine prosecutors claim was responsible for an intelligence breach the scale of which is unknown, but which was apparently broad and deep and included one if not two full-bird colonels. Noteworthy is the fact that Marine prosecutors thought Maziarz credible enough to cut a deal with him to testify against others in the case. But at other times Maziarz sounds like -- how can I put this nicely -- a conspiracy enthusiast on a bender. By his own admission he has no hard evidence linking either the sitting commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James Conway, or its most iconic war-fighter, Gen. James Mattis, to his case. If you are going to besmirch the reputations of two of the most respected generals in the U.S. military, you better have impeccable standing, and somehow a convicted gunnery sergeant with a history of unstable behavior hardly seems to qualify. What Maziarz has is circumstantial evidence based on his recollection of comments he heard his intelligence chief, Col. Larry Richards, allegedly make. But over and above the accusations, the facts in the case are pretty darn interesting. Richards was a Marine reserve colonel whose day-job was as a Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy. Not incidentally, he co-founded the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group along with a guy named John Sullivan back in 1996. These two looked awfully prescient after Sept. 11, 2001, when exactly the kind of attacks they feared happened. But the problem back then and even now has always been the same: the feds don't like to share intelligence with local law enforcement. Heck, they don't like sharing it with each other. The Marine Corps had to know about Richards' background in anti-terrorism in Los Angeles; heck it was probably the reason that around the 2002 time frame he landed the intelligence job under Conway at the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. The question is why? Why put Richards in a position where he'd be privy to exactly the kind of intelligence that the group he co-founded needed and which he could not share? Doesn't this look like at the very least to be an intractable conflict of interest? Even if Richards is found innocent of the charges against him, it still seems like a poor personnel decision. Okay, it was wartime and reservists were filling billets that maybe they otherwise would not. I get that. And Conway might have been preoccupied by a little thing called the Iraq War. I get that, too. But wouldn't you think there would've been at least some scrutiny of what Richards and Maziarz, et al, were up to? You mean that no one thought anything amiss about a bunch of reservists, most of whom had zero formal intelligence training, having access to highly classified materials? That no one thought twice when Los Angeles law enforcement types walked into a secure military intelligence facility wearing security badges? Apparently not. Fast forward. In October 2006 Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents find national intelligence documents where they shouldn't be, such as on Maziarz's personal computer, at his apartment in Carlsbad, Ca., and in a storage locker he rented in Virginia. An investigation is begun. Richards and others are questioned by the NCIS. Federal investigators would find heaps of classified documents in Richards' possession. Much later he would be brought back to active-duty and charged in the case. A name that pops up during the investigation is that of Lauren Martin, an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Northern Command at Peterson Air Force Base. Martin is also a Navy reserve commander. Richards explained to NCIS agents that he cold-called her after 9/11 to analyze information that he and others at the TEW had gathered during anti-terrorism investigations in Los Angeles County. Richards claimed, and Maziarz vouched for this, that Martin supplied the TEW with "high side" intelligence. Navy, Marine and federal investigators have now spent more than three years on the case. A special Marine investigator was brought in to investigate. To date, five service members have been charged with mishandling classified documents, two of them have signed plea deals to testify against others. A third has been convicted. A colonel is charged with essentially committing fraternal espionage. An intelligence analyst at the U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for monitoring terrorist activity in the United States and beyond, is implicated in feeding him information. Federal agents find purloined FBI, CIA and NSA documents by the ream. And where is the congressional oversight in this case? Forget about the Constitutional issues raised by military members getting chest deep in domestic law enforcement. Forget about the apparent lack of security precautions taken at Camp Pendleton and who might be responsible for that. Even forget about what all the documents might have contained and their implications on civil liberties. Instead concentrate on what conceivably would drive service members -- allegedly including field-grade officers and senior enlisted -- who raised their right hand and promised to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" to do this. What is so utterly broken in the intelligence field that otherwise honest citizens would knowingly break the law? I know I want to know and wondered if anyone else felt curious. So, I called U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security in Washington, D.C., and asked if it anyone there cared. I even sent background stories. No interest whatsoever. Oversight? What oversight? Beware Charities
Wearing Military Frocks But for some time I've heard rumblings that some of these charities might be helping themselves as much as they are helping others. I recently called the California Department of Corporations and asked if charities were required to file financial disclosures. I was assured that they are. I than asked what happens if they don't. What I discovered was while tax-exempt organizations are required to file a special tax form, there really isn't a penalty should they not. So, the next
time you consider donating to a military charity, ask what percentage
of every dollar donated actually goes to those in need and where
you can find their financial disclosure forms. |
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