November 19, 2006|David Zucchino and Tony Perry |
Times Staff Writers GOOSE CREEK, S.C. — Here in South Carolina's Low Country, Melanie Dianiska encouraged her son Corey to enlist in the Army two years ago. Across the country, in Washington state, Deanna Pennington would have preferred that her son Robert go to college rather than join the Marines.
Both mothers trusted the military to take care of their sons. Dianiska had grown up in a military family and married a soldier. Pennington, despite her misgivings, watched with pride as her son graduated from boot camp.
Each woman worried that her son could be maimed or killed in Iraq. But neither was prepared for what greeted them this summer: The young men came home in shackles, accused of murdering Iraqi detainees.
Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Pennington, 22, was charged in June with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in the shooting death of an Iraqi on April 26 in the western town of Hamandiya. Six other Marines and a Navy corpsman were also charged.
Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, 22, and three other soldiers were charged in June with murdering three Iraqi men they had taken prisoner during a combat operation north of Baghdad on May 9. Military prosecutors say the soldiers conspired to kill the men and cover up the crime.
After the initial shock, both mothers responded in a way that few parents of accused soldiers have. They broke the unwritten code of military silence and went public with harsh, emotional criticism of the military they once trusted.
They have since learned to negotiate the military justice system, and to amplify their voices in the era of websites, e-mail, talk radio and 24-hour cable news.
"The military wanted these guys to plead guilty and keep it hush-hush within the military," Melanie Dianiska, 40, said in her soft Southern drawl. "Well, they certainly didn't expect someone like me. I'm putting it all out there for the world to see."
Both women have started websites to support their sons. Dianiska has acted like an investigative reporter, cultivating contacts with military prison guards and other soldiers. Pennington has used the military's network of family contacts to take her son's case to the American public.
"I got into a take-charge, flight-or-fight thing. All my adrenaline kicked in," said Pennington, 49, a financial controller for a travel agency. "You have to fight like your son's life is at stake, because it is."
'I feel so let down'
On May 11, two days after the combat mission, Clagett phoned his mother from Iraq.
"Mom, I sort of killed someone," she said he told her.
She was shocked. She asked him whether he "sort of" killed someone, or actually did.
"Well, I did, but it's OK," her son replied. "I was in the right."
She was not unduly concerned because he assured her that any investigation would clear him. He said his commanders had ordered his unit to kill every military-age Iraqi male on a marshy island in Tharthar Lake, 60 miles northwest of Baghdad.
A month later, Clagett and three others from his 101st Airborne Division unit were charged with murder. When Clagett's military attorney told his mother that he could be executed if convicted, she said, "I lost it.
"I had a million thoughts going on in my head," she said. "I was pretty inconsolable."
Two soldiers in Clagett's unit first told investigators that the Iraqis were killed trying to escape, but they later changed their stories. They said the Iraqis were shot while in custody -- and that Clagett and the other three soldiers conspired to cover up the murders and threatened to kill them if they told anyone.
At first, mother and son did not discuss the case publicly. But after he begged her to "speak on my behalf" before a hearing at Ft. Campbell, Ky., Dianiska decided to go public.
"I had to fight for him," she said. "I had to get the truth out. I thought: If I don't try, and the worst happens, how could I live with myself?"
She called TV stations, asked for donations and set up a website (pfcclagett.com). Supportive e-mails poured in from soldiers and Marines in Iraq. She raised enough cash to pay for a trip to Ft. Knox, Ky., to visit her son.
The family feels abandoned by the military. Dianiska's husband, John, 42, an enlisted man in the Army Reserves, said his commanders have told him not to talk about his stepson's case and suggested he take a hardship discharge.
The Dianiskas said no one from their son's unit had visited him or written to offer support.
"I loved the military. I believed in it," Melanie Dianiska said. "Now I feel so let down."
Dianiska said that the military is pressuring soldiers to testify against her son to protect commanders and that he is being "persecuted" for following orders. The family is particularly angry with Clagett's brigade commander, Col. Michael Steele, who has refused to testify. Steele was central to the 1993 U.S. military mission in Somalia recounted in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."
