As a Retired Military Man-this pissed me off

[AFE7FATMAN]

Petty officer held in secret for 4 months
By TIM MCGLONE, The Virginian-Pilot
© August 4, 2006



NORFOLK — A petty officer has been in the Norfolk Naval Station brig for more than four months facing espionage, desertion and other charges, but the Navy has refused to release details of the case.

The case against Fire Control Technician 3rd Class Ariel J. Weinmann is indicative of the secrecy surrounding the Navy military court here, where public affairs and trial court officials have denied access to basic information including the court docket – a listing of cases to be heard.

After months of requests, the Navy this week provided The Virginian-Pilot with Weinmann’s name, rank and the charges he faces.

In an e-mail, Theodore Brown, a spokesman for Fleet Forces Command, said, “It is sometimes a challenge to balance the desires of the media, the public’s right to know, and the rights of an individual accused of a crime.”

“In this case,” he concluded, the command “is attempting to provide as much unclassified information as is reasonable, while maintaining an appropriate concern for the privacy of the individual involved. ”

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment Thursday.

The Navy’s position was challenged by military legal affairs experts and First Amendment advocates who say the nation’s courts, whether civilian or military, historically have been open to the press and public.

A docket listing Weinmann’s preliminary hearing, called an Article 32, was never produced. The Navy would not disclose when the hearing was held.

“That’s hogwash,” said Eugene R. Fidell, president of The National Ins ute of Military Justice and a Washington lawyer .

“I know of no authority to keep the proceeding closed,” he said. “I’ve never seen an Article 32 classified.”

The command’s e-mail to The Pilot this week said that Weinmann was arrested at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on March 26 after he had been listed as a deserter. Fleet Forces officials refused to release the so-called charge sheet, which would detail the accusations against the sailor.

Weinmann had been serving aboard the submarine Albuquerque until he deserted in July 2005, according to Brown. Weinmann enlisted in July 2003, he said.

The enlisted man could face a court-martial. An investigative officer who presided over the Article 32 is expected to release a report to Weinmann’s command in the coming weeks. Besides espionage and desertion, Weinmann is charged with failure to obey an order and acts prejudicial to good order and discipline, according to Brown.

Espionage is defined, in part, by the Uniform Code of Military Justice as the communication to a foreign government of any information relating to U.S. national defense. It carries a maximum punishment of death.

Military defense lawyers say secret military hearings and the refusal to release basic charge information have become more common since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Court precedents and federal laws have established the right of public access to court-martial proceedings, including Article 32 hearings, the lawyers and First Amendment advocates say.

The Army Court of Criminal Appeals said in a 1997 case involving an attempt to close a criminal proceeding, “We believe that public confidence in matters of military justice would quickly erode if courts-martial were arbitrarily closed to the public.”

The court said the public and the media have a right to attend military court proceedings, “absent extraordinary cir stances.”

The Supreme Court has ruled that the closure of a court proceeding or the sealing of any criminal case must be decided by a judge on a case-by-case basis.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Washington, said that, even in military courts, an order must be issued closing or sealing a case.

Brown acknowledged Thursday that “there is no order,” but said that the charge sheet in the Weinmann case would not be released.

Dalglish and others said protecting someone’s privacy has never been a legally acceptable reason to exclude the public from a court proceeding or to withhold the iden y of someone who’s been in custody for four months.

“We don’t lock up people in this country secretly,” Dalglish said. “Personal embarrassment has never been found to be a justification for closing a proceeding.”

Other than the Weinmann case, Norfolk Naval Station has refused to provide The Pilot with copies of the military court docket since at least November. The docket lists cases heard in military court each day. In March, The Pilot filed a Freedom of Information request for the past year’s dockets but has received no written response.

Beth Baker, a spokeswoman for the Navy Mid-Atlantic Region, has said that computer problems have made it difficult for the Trial Services Office at Norfolk Naval Station to generate a docket.

In two e-mails sent to The Pilot in January and February, Baker said the dockets should be available “soon.”

“The docket for the Trial Service Office has been transferred to a new system that is not user friendly to us at all,” Baker told The Pilot in a March e-mail.

More recent requests for the docket went unanswered.

Some military courts, including Marine Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, Calif., post their court dockets on a Web site.

The National Ins ute of Military Justice has begun a project to collect military court dockets and post them on its own Web site. Fidell, of the ins ute, said law students hope to begin pos ting them by the end of the summer.

“Why this continues to be an issue in 2006 is beyond me,” Fidell said.


Now for the rest of the story and I am still searching for a link and
proof of what my "Military Friends " tell me, this sailor was on a sub
and the sub was somewhere it was not supposed to be for Political Reasons.
My fing Duty and Travel Restrictions expired in 1996, ten Years after I retired.

[AFE7FATMAN]

A Photo of the fast attack nuke sub the sailor was on.

Submarines of the LOS ANGELES Class are the most advanced undersea vessels of their type in the world. While anti-submarine warfare is still their primary mission, the inherent characteristics of the submarine's stealth, mobility and endurance are used to meet the challenges of today's changing global geopolitical climate. USS ALBUQUERQUE is able to get on station quickly, stay for an extended period of time and carry out a variety of missions including the deployment of special forces, minelaying, precision strike land attack, or simply deterrence by her percieved presence while remaining undetected

[boutons_]

Mis-goverment in secret under the Repugs

[exstatic]

I am sooooooo glad I didn't join the Navy. I believe they are the only branch of the service where the defense team and the prosecutors work in the same ing chain of command. That would be like the Public Defender working for the DA's office, for you civilians. How are you supposed to get a tough defense if your defender is working for the prosecutor's boss? Horrible conflict of interest implications.

[Brick|ayer]

Infraction!

[Clandestino]

can't believe you pussies don't even think about the fact he may have committed espionage

[boutons_]

If he committed espionage, that's for usual military judicial processes to determine, but I love the predictable kneejerk prejudice of right-wingers to side with, French-style, ins utions over individuals, totally unAmerican.

[Clandestino]

you can't discuss the issues in open proceedings...

[boutons_]

secret trials, secret verdicts, secret evidence.

NEVER EVER trust an ins ution without sceptical (guilty until proven innocent) oversight by an independent, even competing ins ution.

However, I realize that entering the military requires voluntarily giving up a lot of rights that unaffiliated US citizens have. Same is true of joining a company.

[sabar]

If he committed espionage, that's for usual military judicial processes to determine, but I love the predictable kneejerk prejudice of right-wingers to side with, French-style, ins utions over individuals, totally unAmerican.

Uh oh, Boutons posted something logical and not radically left-wing!
But sadly it's part of joining the military. You're going to have secret stuff, you're going to be guilty until proven innocent and so forth. Government isn't too soft when it comes to deserting and spying either.

[boutons_]

sabar, bite me, you dumb . Being against the Repugs and their phony Iraq war does mean someone if radically left-wing. But, as is so typical, keep up your slime job.

[Clandestino]

S.A. Marine's 'death letter' is about life

Web Posted: 08/05/2006 11:58 PM CDT

Scott Huddleston
Express-News Staff Writer

At first glance, it looks like an ordinary piece of mail.
Tucked in a plain white envelope, it's much more: a Marine's final message to those he loved.


"Well if (you're) reading this I guess this deployment was a one way trip."

Those chilling words open a "death letter" from a fallen Marine, one of two San Antonians killed together in Haditha, Iraq.

No one seems to know exactly when during his two-month tour that Lance Graham, a lance corporal, supply clerk and gunner, took out a black ink pen and some steno paper, gathered his thoughts on mortality and wrote the three-page letter.

But Graham's father, Joseph Graham, remembers when the letter arrived. Two Marines delivered it and offered to read it aloud.

The elder Graham opted to read it with his own eyes, at his dining table.

His son, who had died May 7, 2005, in an insurgent ambush, had, without knowing when or whether he would meet his death in Iraq, written a loving farewell to friends and family members — and a moving tribute to those who serve.

"I just have a few things to ask. Please don't be mad at the Marine Corps. It was my choice to join and come here."

Letters such as Graham's have a long tradition in the military, one that continues even into an age when instant messaging and e-mail have rendered letter-writing a lost art. Some troops write death letters after a bad dream, battle or attack. Then they fold them up and tuck them into wallets, pockets or backpacks. Or hand them to other troops in other units for safekeeping.

Some send them on home with a caveat they're only to be read if the author is killed.

Ultimately, most death letters are destroyed. Graham's fate, however, ensured his would be a sincere, living testament of his loyalty to his family, his nation and his branch of service.

More than a year after his son and three others were killed in an insurgent ambush, the elder Graham keeps the letter in a wooden box, next to his son's Purple Heart and dog tags. Some of his son's platoon buddies have keepsake copies. His ex-wife and two of his son's friends in San Antonio have duplicates as well.

Sherry Graham had wanted to keep the original death letter. No, her ex-husband said. It had been sent to him. She gave it back to him a few weeks ago.

She finds comfort in seeing her son's handwriting, in knowing he was willing to accept death.

"It's from his heart," she said. "I don't know how he knew what to write. I'm so proud of him for doing that. I couldn't imagine doing that myself."

Graham's words reflect the way he felt about being in Iraq.

"I honestly believe this is what I was meant to do," he wrote in his letter. "I don't care what the media says. We are making a difference here."

Sgt. Randy Watkins helped recruit Graham and other San Antonio reservists to deploy with the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, based in Ohio.

"There were some who didn't want to be any part of it," said Watkins, who at 24 would end up leading the platoon when they were ambushed.

While training in Twentynine Palms, Calif., Graham called his dad. Instead of returning to San Antonio, he wanted to spend his last days stateside with his new platoon buddies including another San Antonian, Sgt. Aaron Cepeda, in Las Vegas.

So before leaving for Iraq in early March, the two San Antonians and others in their unit saw the sights in Vegas together.

"Know that I did not die in vain or for some worthless cause, " Graham wrote. "We are fighting for those who can't fight for themselves, and I think that is the right thing to do. Not all the people here are bad, so please don't fill your hearts with anger and hate."

Many Iraqis welcomed the 18-member Mobile Assault Platoon 7, or MAP 7. The Marines were given food and tea. They'd play with Iraqi children and give them candy.

"We were all like best friends in this platoon," said Watkins. "Our patriotism brought us together."

Cepeda was an up-and-coming sergeant at only 22. But seeing children suffering in Iraq broke his heart. In a call home, he told his mother, Diana Cepeda, about seeing a girl who reminded him of his 1-year-old daughter.

"He saw this little child barefoot, took out a dollar and gave it to her," she said. "The family came out and asked him to take her, so she'd have a better life."

Graham, a burly, 6-foot-5 outdoorsman and Madison High School graduate who bench pressed 370 pounds just working out, was the platoon prankster. With his hulky hands, he'd shape his thinning brown hair into a Mohawk and jump around, shrieking like a baboon.

His favorite tale, about his stubby left thumb, was that he'd reached into a zoo cage as a boy, and a baboon named Rico bit the tip off. It really had been sliced off when Graham, at 15, reached for a large, half-open can of Ricos brand nacho cheese, working at a Rolling Oaks Mall pretzel stand.

Graham was a great storyteller, but he wasn't a letter writer until he got to Iraq. He wrote letters weekly to Ashley Hildebrand, a close friend and big brother figure. When he got letters from third graders at Northwood Elementary School, Graham wrote back to each child individually.

The part of the death letter that touched Hildebrand the most was when Graham mentioned his .45-caliber handgun.

Graham had spent his last night in San Antonio at Hildebrand's home.

"If I don't come back, this is yours," Graham said, handing him the gun they used to fire together at the shooting range.

"It'll be here when you get home," Hildebrand assured him.

Ultimately, Graham's death, and death letter, sealed the deal.

"Ashley can keep my .45 if he wants," he wrote to his father.

Hildebrand recently read the letter, for the first time in months, when a volleyball tournament was held in Graham's memory. The excerpt that best captures Graham's persona, he said, is a quote from a Louis L'Amour novel Graham's dad had given him as a boy:

"One that really stuck in (my) head and I tried to live by since the day I read it was on courage: 'Whenever there was trouble you never had to look back to see if he was there. You knew damn well he was.'"

"I hope I lived up to that,

"Graham wrote.
Courage is a virtue for anyone in a U.S. uniform in Haditha. CNN has called the city of about 100,000 near the Syrian border "almost literally an improvised explosive device (IED) field."

Graham had a dead aim, cool nerves and intensity served with roguish humor. He'd draw sharks or scrawl memorials to fallen or wounded Marines on his grenades. On a hot night, he guarded a rooftop in boxers and size-15 boots, all but asking for a reprimand. He said he could fire at the enemy just as well.

"You think they're going to care if I shoot at them with my pants off?" he reasoned.

Joseph Graham had taught his son, who grew up with BB and pellet guns, to hunt for food and not mere sport. That might have carried over to Graham's high-pressure job in Iraq, as MAP 7's lead gunner.

"Graham was just a real hardcore guy, and he was a badass with the 203," or M-203, a 40mm grenade launcher that attaches to an M-16 rifle, Watkins said.

In Iraq, a gunner can't let a car get close to a convoy. To warn inattentive drivers, Graham would fire a non-explosive "TP" (training purpose) round that released orange smoke.

"He'd always put the round right in front of the vehicle, and not too close," Watkins said. "He would never shoot at a family — not even a TP round."

"Another thing I ask is that at my funeral the Marine Corps Hymn and Amazing Grace is played with the bagpipes," Graham wrote in his letter. "Nothing sounds better than the bagpipes playing Amazing Grace."

MAP 7 was at Haditha Dam, which supplies electricity to central Iraq, on May 7, a day before Mother's Day.

If not for the war, the palm groves and sandy beach by the Euphrates River could be a vacation spot, the Marines would say. Much of the city, just to the south, had power and running water. There was a market area, refinery, schools and mosques.

But Haditha had no restaurants or malls. Trash heaps lay on the edge of town. Many lived in poverty, with straw for a bed.

That morning, Graham called home and spoke to Hildebrand. He seemed upbeat.

"I'll be fine. Everything's good," Graham told his friend.

Cepeda, a skilled artist, was making a sign saying "Happy Mother's Day from Haditha, Iraq." He and Watkins planned to take a photo together with it on the dam, to send home.

The two also were sending Mother's Day e-cards home on the Internet that evening. Watkins had sent his. Cepeda was making his when they heard a "boom, boom, boom."

Mortars that hit near the dam were traced to Haditha. A short time later, another platoon drew small arms fire.

Accompanied by two M1A1 Abrams tanks, MAP 7 went out in three Humvees and a seven-ton truck, like a cavalry saddling up in the Wild West.

"We were going to dismount, see if we could catch those bas s," Watkins said.

Darkness had settled in as the Marines scanned rooftops in central Haditha. They'd gone some 500 meters past the spot where the mortars were thought to have launched. According to official reports, the street was blocked by a car and rubble.

The convoy was out of position, with Graham in the first Humvee leading the way back, as the convoy began turning around. A white Ford van emerged from an alley and sped at the Humvee, which was surrounded by Marines on foot.

"Stop, mother f-----, stop!" Watkins recalls Graham yelling.

The van hit the Humvee, exploding and hurling Graham and his entire gunner turret some 30 feet. A casualty report said he died instantly. Also killed in the blast and ensuing battle were Cepeda; Sgt. Michael Marzano, of Greenville, Pa.; and Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Jeffery L. Weiner, of Louisville, Ky.

Watkins took shrapnel from the blast to his legs, face, shoulder and chest, and was hit by four bullets as he fell to the ground. Three shots hit his body armor. One pierced his shoulder.

The next few minutes felt like 20, as "bullets were flying all over the place," Watkins recalled. Insurgents had taken over Haditha's hospital and were firing from sandbagged window positions, reportedly using patients as human shields. Every Humvee was disabled in the battle.

With his gunner wounded, one of the drivers unleashed nearly 1,000 rounds at the hospital from an M-240 machine gun.

That allowed the Marines to load three dead and five badly wounded comrades onto the seven-ton. A tank drove over the charred lead Humvee to clear a route for the truck to escape with three flat tires and an overheated engine. Reinforcements arrived, killed five insurgents and critically wounded two, according to the Marine Corps.

And they recovered Graham's lifeless body. Rather than being dragged through the streets by militant Iraqis, he was buried nine days later at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.

"I know that I haven't been the best son, brother, friend or boyfriend and I'm sorry, if you can find it in your heart to forgive me. "

Those words leapt off the pale green steno paper of Graham's death letter, with its blue lines and pink vertical stripe, and pierced his father's heart. But knowing his son held it in his hands, wrote his innermost thoughts, folded it twice and put it in an envelope that said "To Dad," Joseph Graham handles the letter like a precious gem.

"It hurt in some parts of the letter, because he felt he didn't measure up," the Marine's father said. "It hurt at the time because I was so proud of him."

He was proud that his son, who had 13 different jobs in one year after high school, whose parents had split up in '99, and who'd considered law enforcement or firefighting, had found a true purpose in his last days.

Lance Graham's older brother took the letter to Sherry Graham's house and read it to her.

"At first, I couldn't read it over again," she said.

A couple of months later, she couldn't stop reading it. The letter gave her closure, knowing her son died at peace with himself, and reassurance that he's waiting for her in heaven.

Besides gazing at his photos and his red Chevy pickup, and playing some of his music, like the Eagles and Alabama, she reads his death letter.

"I know I'm going to see him again," she said, her voice quivering with emotion. "I don't have to weep, mourn and wail."

"Another thing I ask is at least one of you travel, see the world and do the things I never got to do," Graham wrote. " This is really hard writing this. There's so much I want to say and I'm at a loss of words."

Despite isolated reports of officers telling U.S. troops to write them, the armed services don't require death letters. Many refuse to write one, saying it's bad luck — a deed that can feed a preoccupation with mortality.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Alfred Valenzuela officiated at the funerals of 22 soldiers killed in Iraq. Half had left death letters for parents, wives or girlfriends.

"I call it a premonition," Valenzuela said.

But officers should never order or encourage their troops to write one, he said.

"To impart that idea to a young soldier isn't right," he said. "If they're doing that, shame on them."

Lt. Col. Scott Fazekas, Marine Corps spokesman at the Pentagon, said the Marines have no policy regarding death letters.

Watkins, now up for disability retirement due to his battle wounds, said many Marines in Iraq write death letters but don't talk about them.

"You don't want to jinx yourself or make your buddies dwell on it," he said.

Watkins threw his death letter away after surviving the ambush. If he'd died, it could have comforted his parents.

"You try to get them remembering the good things, the good times," he said.

"Just know that I have God in my life and I'm in a better place and Marines guard the streets in heaven," Graham wrote. " Who else would God trust?"

Trust in the Marines has been called to question after reports of an alleged massacre and cover-up by Marines in Haditha last Nov. 19. Military investigations may determine whether up to 24 Iraqis, including women and children, were killed in retaliation for the death of a Marine from El Paso, and whether murder charges are warranted.

As far as Watkins is concerned, Graham, Cepeda and the others who died in the ambush lived and died by the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis — always faithful.

"Someday, I'll tell my grandkids about them," he said. "I'd take a bullet for those guys. I don't know if I'd do it for others who were there."

Graham closed his letter with a heartfelt Marine farewell:

"To my family I love you all. Semper Fi, Love Lance."

A few weeks after the funeral, Watkins hobbled up the steps of Joseph Graham's house to visit. They now speak regularly.

"It helps me so much to see him. I feel closer to Lance when I talk to him," Watkins said.

When President Bush visited the wounded at Brooke Army Medical Center on Jan. 1, Joseph Graham was one of about 20 San Antonio motorcycle officers in his motorcade from Randolph AFB. Bush learned of Graham's loss and asked to meet him.

Joseph Graham was the last of a half-dozen law enforcement officials to meet Bush.

" o, Joseph, how are you doing? I'm sorry about Lance. I want you to know that he did not die in vain," Graham recalls the president saying.

They spent about 15 minutes together. Graham spoke of his son, and how he had believed in the mission in Iraq.

"And then the president started crying. And I started crying," he recalled. "I could see the concern in his eyes, and the worry and the hurt."

Bush hugged Graham three times during the visit, then gave him a coin with the presidential seal and took a photo with him.

Rather than seeing his son's grave or gazing at his medals, Graham prefers chatting with Watkins and others who knew his son as a Marine, living and dying for a cause. He'd taught Lance, the second of his three sons, that anyone could live strong. It took a special person to "die strong" for a cause.

So while some Marines in Iraq wore yellow "Livestrong" wristbands sold by the Lance Armstrong Foundation to help cancer patients, Lance Graham wore a black wristband, made from a motorcycle inner tube, to reflect his motto: "die strong."

In a postscript of his death letter, on a third, final page, Graham wrote a nearly flawless recollection of a 1932 poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye, a Baltimore homemaker who died in 2004:

"Do not stand at my grave and weep; I'm not there. I don't sleep..."

To Ashley Hildebrand, the letter reflects his friend's true colors, those of a free spirit who looked for good in everyone.

"I am the thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints of snow," the poem continues. "I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain..."

Even now, more than a year after Graham's death, his letter still has a hold over people. To his mother, it's a priceless souvenir that conjures thoughts of her son's grace, charm, and faith in everlasting life.

To his father, it's like a mystical, magical talisman that evokes both elation and sorrow.

"When you wake in the morning hush, I am the swift uplifting rush...Of gentle birds in circling flight. I am the soft star that shines at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry. I'm not there. I did not die."

On a recent trip to Ohio, Joseph Graham showed the actual letter to his son's platoon buddies, and made copies for two of them. He sees the letter as an enduring paper memorial that celebrates Lance Graham's final days as a Marine. As a man.

"It's a remembrance of him," Joseph Graham said. "After a while, memories fade. If you have something to hold on to that's tangible, it can bring all those memories back."

In a wooden box, where it's cool, dry and safe from crinkles, smudges and fingerprints, he keeps his son's last message.


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[email protected]

[Obstructed_View]

Since when did people start thinking that someone in the military has any rights?