Memo Reveals Military's View of Reporter Probing (Haditha) Atrocity

[babylonsister]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003602793

Memo Reveals Military's View of Reporter Probing Atrocity


By Greg Mitchell

Published: June 24, 2007 12:35 PM ET

NEW YORK Six weeks ago, at the military hearings probing the killing of 24 civilians in Haditha in November 2005, a Marine officer testified about his view of the initial questions about the incident, and possible coverup, raised by the Time magazine reporter who broke the case.

The questions from Tim McGirk clearly provoked more rage than a determination to look into the evidence offered by eyewitnesses.

First Lt. Adam P. Mathes, then the executive officer of Company K, said he other officers had dismissed the reporter's queries, feeling they were ''sensational'' and politically inspired -- McGirk clearly had an "antiwar agenda," he alleged.

''The questions were questionable,'' Mathes said. ''It sounded like bad, negative spin. We tried to weed out the grievances that Mr. McGirk had against the Bush administration....This guy is looking for blood, because blood leads headlines.''

Troubling, and revealing, details on that view of McGirk – and likely any probing by any reporter into a possible massacre – surfaced this week when the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times published excerpts from a five-page memo produced by Mathes and three other officers in January 2006 in response to McGirk’s questions.

Stonewalling by the military contributed to the Haditha story remaining largely unexplored by the press for several weeks after the sketchy revelations by McGirk in Time. Extensive coverage only ensued after Rep. John Murtha raised the issue in interviews in May 2006.

But McGirk would accomplish what the memo writers most feared: that he would “spurn a reaction from the command that will initiate an investigation.” Later that year, the Marine Corps would charge three enlisted men with murder, and four officers with dereliction of duty for failing to determine how and why the Iraqis were killed.

more...