Military Comes Clean To Mom. Years After Son’s Death, She Gets Truth, Learns Suspect Is Held

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...

Military Comes Clean To Mom
2 Years After Son’s Death, She Gets Truth, Learns Suspect Is Held
Henry K. Lee, Matthew B. Stannard, Jim Doyle, Chronicle Staff Writers
Thursday, June 22, 2006

Fellow soldiers knew within minutes on June 22, 2004, that California National Guard Spc. Patrick McCaffrey and 1st Lt. Andre D. Tyson had been killed by supposedly allied Iraqi soldiers who were patrolling alongside them. Army investigators reached the same conclusion in 2005.

But it wasn’t until Wednesday afternoon that the military finally told the soldiers’ families how they died and that one of the suspected killers was in custody.

McCaffrey’s mother, Nadia McCaffrey, emerged from a three-hour briefing with Army Brig. Gen. Oscar Hilman and other military personnel — who presented her with a six-inch-thick binder of documents — saying she still had questions.

"They basically said they failed me, failed us," she said. "It’s worse than it was two years ago when I received the phone call telling me that he was dead."

McCaffrey, who became outspoken against the war after her son’s death, said she intends to continue pursuing answers in his case while demanding changes to prevent such notification delays.

"I want some very clear answers. I’m not going to let go. I want them to take some measures to protect the solders," she said. "There are no excuses for things like this, and they know it."

Army officials confirmed Wednesday that they completed their investigation in September into the killings of McCaffrey, 34, of Tracy, and Tyson, 33, of Riverside. The soldiers were shot to death outside Balad, Iraq. Both were attached to Alpha Company, 579th Engineer Battalion, based in Petaluma.

Although initial reports said the two soldiers died in an ambush by enemy forces, the Army now says they were killed by members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps that the California Guardsmen were training.

"I want to express our condolences to both families," Army spokesman Paul Boyce said in a phone interview. "The army regrets any delay in notifying the family of the ultimate, successful conclusion of this investigation."

The Army has already reformed its casualty notification process in response to cases such as the 2004 death in Afghanistan of Army Cpl. Pat Tillman of San Jose — later revealed to have been killed by friendly fire — and the death that same year of Army 1st Lt. Ken Ballard of Mountain View, whose mother, Karen Meredith, found out only 15 months after the fact that his death had been caused by an accidental weapons discharge.

"This is horrible for every military family again, because if your loved one has died, now the high water mark is two years," Meredith said. "Every family is going to say, ’Do I know the truth? And if I don’t, do I have to wait two years to find it?"

Army officials blamed the delay on the complexity of the case, and said that politics over the war in Iraq played no role in the holdup. But McCaffrey’s father, Bob McCaffrey of Redding, scoffed at that claim.

"It’s a bunch of lies, a bunch of smoke and mirrors. It makes me mad as hell," McCaffrey said. "But the military does not make these decisions on their own. They’re told by the administration, ’No, that could be damaging.’ They’re told not to talk to the McCaffreys, that it could be damaging. They just have no regard for the truth."

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said Wednesday she is troubled by the delay and plans to raise the issue on the floor of the Senate and with the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Nadia McCaffrey, asked the senator’s staff to help her obtain information about her son’s death in May. The queries from Boxer’s office led the Army to admit that it had not properly notified the families of the results of its investigation. "In September ’05 they knew exactly what happened, but failed to tell the families until today," Boxer said. Asked why she thought the Army had failed to notify the family, Boxer said: "I think it’s pretty obvious that if the American people knew that the Iraqis we train would turn on our soldiers, support for the war would erode."

Army officials said that cases of American soldiers being killed by Iraqi allies are "extremely rare," but the problem of insurgents enlisting in the Iraqi military was recognized as early as April 2004, when Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita discussed it in a briefing.

"We’re working very hard to vet these guys and to get Iraqis more involved in their own security, and that’s moving forward quite well," Di Rita said. "But we know that we’re going to pick up some of the wrong people, and we’ll vet them and deal with them if that happens."

Fellow Guardsmen believed almost immediately that McCaffrey and Tyson were killed by Iraqi troops, said former Guard Sgt. Steve Edwards Jr., who became fast friends with McCaffrey even before they went into combat.

"Even though I only saw him during drill times, we’d always talk like I’d known him forever," Edwards said in a phone interview from his home in San Jose.

None of the California Guardsmen really trusted the Iraqis they were supposed to train, Edwards said. While one platoon of Iraqis was composed of solid, professional soldiers eager to protect their nation, the rest were filled with men who the Americans saw as farmers willing to do as little as possible and still earn soldier’s pay.

The day McCaffrey died was so brutally hot that McCaffrey was administering rehydrating IV’s to his fellow troops, Edwards said, even though McCaffrey was carrying the radio along with all his own gear. Even the Iraqis were falling out from the heat, he said.

"We were just saying, they’re pushing it too hard ... they can’t keep pushing us like this," Edwards said. "(McCaffrey) said, ’They’re going to keep pushing us ... until we’ve lost someone.’ And unfortunately, it was him."

Near the end of the mission — searching for weapons caches — many of the Americans were exhausted and boarded vehicles. A small group — including McCaffrey and Tyson — pressed on. Somewhere up ahead, he said, the group broke up into even smaller sub-groups. He heard later that Tyson argued with the Iraqi troops, ordering them to keep up.

"Shortly thereafter, we’re sitting there getting ready to move out, and we hear AK-47 fire," he said. They didn’t think much of it — Iraqi weapons fire was common — but moments later they heard the sharp sound of American M-16 fire and radio traffic about soldiers down.

They raced in the vehicles to the scene, where Edwards saw soldiers working on a prone form. He approached a medic.

"Who’s hit?" he asked.

"Lt. Tyson’s dead," the medic said.

"Tyson is dead? You’re sure?"

"He’s got two rounds in the head. He’s dead."

"Who else is hit? ... Who’s that they’re working on?"

"That’s McCaffrey," the medic said. "I don’t know if he’s going to make it."

Edwards recalled he stood silent, shocked. Then another soldier spoke up.

"There’s some (Iraqi troops) missing," the soldier said. "Could it possibly be them?"

The Guardsmen quickly decided it could have been, Edwards said. They eventually learned that one of the missing soldiers had apparently been a sniper in Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard, Edwards added.

"That son of a bitch managed to get away," Edwards said. "Until right before we went back home, they caught him in Baghdad, doing the same kind of stuff: counterinsurgency ... against us."

It was not immediately clear if the man Edwards described was the same Iraqi soldier who Army officials said was in custody in Baghdad. The official said the United States will seek the suspect’s prosecution under Iraqi law.

Legal experts said there may be few avenues for U.S. prosecution of the Iraqi suspect, and even Iraqi courts might not prosecute him if a general amnesty currently being considered by the Iraqi government is approved. It’s a possibility that Edwards found discouraging.

"This was my friend. These were my friends who were killed over there. If I had my way, the guy would fry," he said. "Unfortunately, I think he’ll be able to get away with it."

E-mail the writers at hlee@sfchronicle.com, mstannard@sfchronicle.com and jdoyle@sfchronicle.com.