Murder at Camp Delta by Joseph Hickman

Author:Joseph Hickman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

CHAPTER 16

Seton Hall

MY assignment with the Air Cavalry concluded shortly before Barack Obama’s election in November 2008. I had received stellar performance evaluations and was chosen to become an army recruiter in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Recruiting was a plum job in the military because the hours were good and it wasn’t physically demanding. It was also one of the most rewarding assignments. As a recruiter, I was able to help young people find options in the military that would change their lives for the better.

Yes, I still believed that the military was a life-changing, positive experience, and yes, I was leading a sort of double life. I still believed in the principles of the military that I had signed up for as a young man: protecting the country, defending the Constitution, duty, and honor. I believed that the young people I was helping to recruit were being offered the greatest reward there was: to serve one’s country. But I had lost faith in the command. My initial reading of the NCIS report suggested that the agency itself—one of the most venerated investigative services of the federal government and the home of hard-nosed, honest investigators ready to kick ass in the name of truth, justice, and the American Way—had been deceived or co-opted into perpetuating a cover-up.

At the same time, I felt it was my duty to pursue my own investigation into the NCIS report. To challenge the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was tantamount to heresy. Contradicting senior military commanders like Admiral Harris and possibly top civilian leaders perhaps as high up as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could destroy my career. Inadvertently disclosing secrets could subject me to prison. I would also be going against the media and running the risk of public ridicule. I didn’t take any of this lightly, but I saw no other way. As a young marine, I was trained to charge into enemy machine-gun fire if necessary. I felt that pursuing the truth no matter the obstacles was just as important as defending my country. It was a matter of honor.

I was still open to the possibility that I was wrong about what had happened at Gitmo, and that somehow I was missing key information or perspectives that would prove the NCIS report was right. I just wanted to know the truth.

As far back as that ten-day leave in July 2006 when I first began researching Gitmo, I wondered to whom I might tell my story. At the time, I still believed that military investigators would interview me about what I had seen the night the deaths occurred, but given my experience after the May riot, I was not entirely optimistic about how they would respond. And I was not sure that I could go to a reporter without more evidence.

I had come across the work of law professor Mark Denbeaux, the director of Seton Hall University Law School’s Center for Policy and Research. In February 2006 the Center for Policy and Research issued its

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