Notes to Consider…

The United States Army has a presence on all seven continents. If a felony crime occurs which has a nexus to the service, at least one of one thousand Criminal Investigation Division (CID) special agents posted worldwide will investigate that crime. CID is also the lead federal agency tasked with protecting the US Secretary of War and a multitude of lesser deputy secretaries, general officers, and visiting high profile foreign military figures. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with a retired Army CID special agent. Over the next month, I will pass along some of his stories from the second of our three wars in Iraq.

In the mid-2000s, one American soldier murdered another at a forward operating base (FOB) north of Baghdad. The ranks of the US armed forces tend to be a cut above in their behavior than the general US population. However, just like the general population servicemen are drawn from; a small number of petty criminals to downright psychopaths exist within our military.

Practically all vice involving American forces in Iraq had a Turkish connection. The subjects of this murder investigation regularly obtained alcohol and drugs through a local interpreter who obtained his supply from Turkish truck drivers. The Turks should be watched. Carefully.

Upon notification of the death, investigators were immediately flown via helicopter to the crime scene and the remaining agents (all but a skeleton crew of investigators remained at the office on the sprawling air base where the detachment was headquartered) made the interesting ride to the FOB via up-armored Humvee. What awaited them was what occurs at any murder scene investigation: around the clock documentation and (most importantly) subject/witness interviews until the matter is resolved. Don’t fool yourself. The job of all law enforcement is not to “Protect And Serve” but to “Document And Investigate”...post-fact.

Just how was this “matter” resolved? With the crime lab analyzing in thirty minutes a single hair, revealing the exact identity of the murderer? No. That would have been the Hollywood myth come true. Murder cases are solved when the guilty individual(s) confess. Suffice it to say, if you are under the impression you can talk your way “out of” a situation with a trained interrogator, I suppose you would also believe you could have prevailed in a scrap inside the squared circle with an in his prime “Nature Boy” Ric Flair?

In the end, this tragedy involved a victim who had been a poster child for bad soldiering. Habitually derelict in his duty and often drunk/stoned; he continually “picked” at a fellow soldier who exhibited signs of not being mentally competent enough to have been in the military in the first place. During the wee hours of a cold November morning, the badgered and inebriated medic snapped: loaded his issued M9 pistol; and shot his drunken tormentor multiple times in the upper chest and neck.

Upon return from overseas, the interviewed agent looked up local news stories concerning the murdered soldier. The reports were all glowing about the deceased’s “honorable” service to the nation. The true story (as is so often the case with civilian murders) involved the avoidable formula of drugs/alcohol and miscreants keeping company with fellow troublemakers.

Next Week: Equal Justice Under the Law

Happy Veterans Day to all those who have ever stood in the breach…