US Army Officer Arrested For Conspiring With the Enemy
A US Army officer, Lt. Col. William H. Steele, in charge of holding "high value" prisoners, has been arrested for "aiding the enemy". The Iraqi Slogger says Steele has been under arrest for 3 weeks and has been charged with the following:
"One specification of a violation of Article 104, aiding the enemy; one specification of a violation of Article 134, retaining classified material; two specifications of violations of Article 133, conduct unbecoming an officer, for relationships involving an interpreter and another Iraqi female; five specifications of a violation of Article 92, failure to obey lawful orders for wrongfully storing classified materials, improperly marking classified materials, failing to obey an order from a superior officer, possession of pornography and dereliction of duty as an approving official for the expenditure of government funds."
posted by wretchardthecat at 4/26/2007 01:28:00 AM
12 Comments:
The Article 32 hearing Steele is facing is described as "the military's equivalent of a grand jury investigation, to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute him."
Using women to get secrets out of enemy males has been in use since before Samson and Delilah
They won't hang him for it, but this leaf colonel is in one metric shitload of trouble.
If the court martial finds him guilty of half the charges he's gonna leave the military as a one-striper and at best a "less-than-honorable."
Self-centered idiot.
You have to be at least a Congressman or a newspaper editor before you are allowed to aid the enemy with impunity.
H/T to Harrison at Possum Bistro for link to The Heritage of the Great War
***
Well the link did not take.
At Heritage of the Great War, type in "Mata Hari".
If this officer is guilty as charged, then the sumb*tch who played dirty while his fellow soldiers fought on needs to live out his days in Leavenworth. Any press and partisans who would use this individual’s malfeasance as a discredit to our war effort should live out their days in Gaza, Waziristan, Tehran, Somalia, Mozambique or Sheryl Crow’s bathroom.
Article 92 relates to failure to follow regulations.
It appears the five counts following the mention of Article 92 in the story ARE the Article 92 counts.
The use of females and males to exploit sources is extremely easy to do either on an ad hoc basis or as part of a targeted approach. In most cases, sex is not involved at all and often you get the intel you need without the target even knowing they have been targeted.
It would be interesting to know what the females' motivations were and how they were handled and how the op was done. It could be the relationship existed prior to the compromise and the AIF exploted it.
It would be much worse if this was a ground-up penetration rather than an ad-hoc, one-time extortion.
It would also be interesting to know how this was discovered. Was it a routine audit of personnel and systems, a complaint from a soldier about fraternization, or intel from the outside from an EPW or some other source, or maybe the Officer or paramour got a guilty conscience?
Were the Officer and civilians turned and used as double agents prior to the arrest?
jane,
In my lifetime, I cannot recall a conflict absent its Hadithas and Camp Croppers. Eventually and painfully, the truth will out. Until then, we will just have to live with justice running is sometimes slow, tedious course, trusting that neither the Marine Corps nor Army will intentionally send good men to the gallows. That said, the temptation will be great to react to the public partisanship of both the prosecution and defense, as is the case with high profile civilian "trials of the century".
Now, as to Sheryl Crow, Eric Clapton seems to have had it about right: get out of town on the first plane. What a frightful fate to have one's face forever associated with the need for a line of stylish bidets or triple-ply tissue. Darwinianism is cruel.
As in flushed out of the system as waste? Yes, sure.
Most of us here can wait out the justice process, but others will use this one man's alleged improprieties as (additional to Gitmo and Abu Ghraib) proof positive of US ineptness and corruption wrt the whole show. It is this that chafes--
Meanwhile:
Death by a Thousand Cuts
In the Asia Times, More muscle to Pakistan’s madrassas by Kanchan Lakshman is reprinted with permission from the South Asia Terrorism Portal.
In it, Lakshman provides and important glimpse at the depth of Pakistan’s radical madrassa problem.
Pakistan’s “officially estimated 13,000 seminaries (unofficial estimates range between 15,000 and 25,000, and in some cases go as high as 40,000) in Pakistan, with an approximate enrollment of 1.5 million students,” has continually rejected any reforms attempted by the Pakistani government. The United States has pressured Musharraf to address the Pakistani madrassas, which have long been producing ideologically steeped graduates who often find their way into Taliban and al-Qaeda ranks.
jane,
If LTC. Steele is guilty as charged, may he get what he deserves. The damage done by such behavior would be incalculable. Obviously, the government believes there is sufficient evidence of crime to incarcerate Steele and take him, ultimately, to court martial.
What I find incongruous and even disingenuous is the fury of folk who will immediately attribute the worst to Steele while simultaneously implicitly buying into a conspiracy of scores of Marine and Naval officers to sacrifice the Haditha defendants to political expediency. No one knows what happened at Haditha. Courts Martial will determine fact in the case.
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