CAMP PENDLETON — A Marine lieutenant testified Wednesday that he had never considered that Marines might have done anything wrong in killing 24 people in the Iraqi town of Haditha, even as he found the bodies of two women and six children huddled on a bed.
Lt. Max Frank, who had been ordered to take the bodies to the city morgue, said he assumed that the Marines had "cleared" three houses of suspected insurgents according to their standing orders -- by throwing in fragmentation grenades and entering with blasts of M-16 fire.
The smoke from the grenades, Frank said, would have kept the Marines from seeing that they were firing on women and children.
"It was unfortunate, but I had no reason to believe anything they had done was on purpose," Frank said during a videotaped deposition.
His testimony came on the first day of an Article 32 hearing, akin to a preliminary hearing, for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani. The Haditha killings are seen as the largest atrocity allegation against U.S. troops in Iraq.
Chessani, 43, is charged with dereliction of duty and violating a lawful order for not ordering a complete investigation of the incident as a possible war crime. He was the commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, but was relieved of command during the investigation that led to charges against him, three other officers and four enlisted Marines.
The military ordered an investigation only after Time magazine published a lengthy report that contradicted the Marines' initial account portraying the deaths on Nov. 19, 2005, as the result of a roadside bombing and crossfire between Marines and insurgents.
Sgt. Maj. Edward Sax, who was the battalion's senior enlisted man, testified Wednesday that he assumed Chessani had conducted an investigation immediately after the incident. Later, he said, he asked Chessani whether "the Marines had done the right thing."
Chessani replied, " 'Everything was OK,' " Sax said.
Sax indicated his confidence was shaken after he heard that the squad leader, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, had told his Marines to "shoot first and ask questions later."
"That's a bad and damning comment to make for a Marine leader," Sax said.
Wuterich faces 12 charges of unpremeditated murder for using "deadly force without conducting positive identification" to determine that the persons in the house, and in a car outside, were insurgents.
