Intelligence officer says he rejected Haditha officials' complaints

By: MARK WALKER - Staff Writer | Friday, May 11, 2007 10:15 PM PDT ∞

CAMP PENDLETON -- A military intelligence officer testified Friday that he dismissed complaints from the mayor of Haditha and its city council about the slaying of 24 residents at the hands of Camp Pendleton Marines in 2005.

He said he did so because he believed that insurgents heavily influenced the local government.

The officer, Capt. Jeffrey Dinsmore, said he also questioned the veracity of complaints coming from the Iraqis in a flier published by the council a week after the Nov. 19 incident.

Enlisted men involved were from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment's Kilo Company.

The Iraqi flier asserted that a massacre had occurred at the hands of troops enraged by a roadside bombing that killed one of their own. The council called on the U.S. government to conduct an investigation.

"My assessment was, the city council was being used as a tool of insurgent propaganda," Dinsmore said. "They would take grains of truth and add details that were false and it would end up looking like a wild allegation."

Dinsmore's testimony came on the fourth day of a court hearing to determine if Capt. Randy Stone should be tried for dereliction of duty in relation to the incident. Stone, the battalion's legal adviser, is one of four officers charged with failing to investigate the deaths. Three enlisted men face murder charges for the slayings.

Testifying by telephone from Iraq for nearly four hours, Dinsmore also said he was surprised that higher-ups had not wanted to do an investigation. Commanders seemed "disinterested," said Dinsmore, the battalion's intelligence chief in Haditha in 2005.

Much of Dinsmore's testimony was focused on his assessment and reporting of the killings. Prosecutors pressed him for answers on why the first reports did not attempt to explain why the civilians died inside their homes.

Kilo Company commander Lt. William Kallop testified Tuesday that he ordered the assault because he believed the bomb triggerman and other insurgents were inside and firing at his Marines.

The first reports after the shooting said that 15 civilians had been killed, along with eight insurgents. In the reports, which the Marines later acknowledged were false, the civilian deaths were blamed on a bomb and crossfire during a battle with insurgents firing automatic weapons.

The Marine commander in Iraq at the time, Maj. Gen. Richard Huck, testified Thursday that the only information he had before February 2006 was that 15 civilians had died as a result of a combat action.

The number of deaths was regrettable, Huck said, but the initial reports listed the deaths as a result of combat -- not improper actions by the Marines -- and therefore did not warrant an investigation.

The man who served as the 1st Marine Regiment's chief attorney, Maj. Carroll Connelly, testified Friday that he had the same understanding as the general, and because of that understanding, no formal review was necessary.

Those reports, however, were drastically different from accounts that later emerged and from testimony heard this week.

The first five Iraqis to die, a sergeant testified Wednesday, were men who emerged from a car that drove up after the bomb destroyed a Humvee, killing Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas and wounding two others.

The five were shot at close range as they were being held at gunpoint by Staff. Sgt. Frank Wuterich as they held their hands in the air, according to Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz.

Wuterich and Dela Cruz were among four enlisted men originally charged. Prosecutors withdrew the charges against Dela Cruz last month, saying his testimony outweighed his involvement.

Wuterich has said the men represented a threat and suggested they were trying to escape when shot. His attorney, Neal Puckett, said this week that the account Dela Cruz gave under oath was a lie.

The 19 people in the homes died from grenade and gunshot wounds as the Marines conducted a "clearing operation" without being certain who was behind the doors.

Intelligence reports put together in the days after the incident, some of which may be introduced during the course of the prosecutions, placed insurgents inside one or more of the homes and firing at the Marines shortly after the bomb explosion, Stone's attorney, Charles Gittins, said during a break in Friday's hearing.

Testimony this week "proves" Marine commanders at the battalion and division level did not believe the killings required an investigation and thus should exonerate the 34-year-old Stone, Gittins asserted.

"He didn't have any duty to investigate," said Gittins, who spent more than two decades in the Marine Corps and is a lieutenant colonel in the Reserve. "He didn't believe there was a Law of Armed Conflict violation."

A military law instructor, Col. Keith Anderson, testified that if a division general such as Huck did not believe an action required investigation, there "isn't much more a battalion judge advocate can do."

Stone, whose wife and parents have accompanied him to court each day, will not testify during the hearing, Gittins said.

If Stone is ordered to trial, Gittins said he will recommend that the Maryland native have his case decided by a judge and not a panel of military officers.

The case against Stone is the first to reach court since prosecutors at Camp Pendleton announced on Dec. 21 that they were filing charges in the Haditha incident. The government's accusations of criminal conduct came 13 months after the events in Haditha and nine months after Time magazine reported that the killings appeared to violate the military's rules of engagement.

-- Contact staff writer Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mlwalker@nctimes.com.

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