Anybody remember when there were allegations made that California NG units had been used to spy on peace mom protests? Great news! According to the Army, nothing wrong happened!
National Guard internal report rejects spying allegations
Much much more to follow
National Guard says internal report rejects spying allegations
DON THOMPSON
Associated Press
SACRAMENTO - The Army's inspector general has determined that an intelligence unit of the California National Guard was not established to spy on U.S. citizens and did not illegally gather information about a Mother's Day peace rally, state and federal Guard officials said.
Aren't you comforted? The Army has cleared the Army of all wrongdoing.
The California Guard's acting adjutant general, Brig. Gen. John R. Alexander, said Monday the confidential report clears the Guard of allegations that triggered an ongoing state Senate investigation and subpoenas.
Sen. Joseph Dunn, D-Garden Grove, said a series of e-mails and actions suggests the nation's largest National Guard force resorted to the same type of civilian monitoring that characterized Vietnam War-era protests. During the 1960s and 1970s, the military collected information on more than 100,000 Americans.
Of course, he must have been pulling that out of his ass. See, look what the inspector said!
"There was never the intent, desire or decision to ever collect intelligence information on any U.S. citizen," Alexander said in a written release. "Any statement to the contrary is flat wrong."
The confidential report itself might never be made public, Guard and Army officials said.
But trust them, it backs them up.
Jack Harrison, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau that oversees states' guard units, said the bureau agrees with Alexander's characterization. He said no further action is necessary.
Alexander took temporary command after Maj. Gen. Thomas Eres resigned abruptly in June amid questions about whether he falsified a marksmanship test and tried to arrange a military flight for a Republican group. The Army also had been reviewing potential accounting and operational improprieties, but Monday's report is limited to the intelligence unit, California Guard spokesman Col. Dave Baldwin said.
::Kyle's Mom:: what-what-what? Tried to arrange military flights for Republicans? Sorry Pat, we can't fly you down to Venezuala to blow Chavez up, but thanks for asking.
Baldwin, who was briefed on the report's contents, said it concluded that "there was no intelligence gathering or spying at the Mother's Day rally by the National Guard." He also said the investigation found that creation of the intelligence unit complied with federal laws and Army regulations, and that there was "no serious violation of intelligence oversight."
Baldwin said there might have been minor administrative errors but didn't have specifics.
Of course! We create intelligence units for, um, stuff, all the time!
As a precaution, Alexander is ordering Guard intelligence units to review what information can and can't legally be collected.
With a shredder?
Dunn was unconvinced, in part because he believes the legal terminology used in Alexander's announcement could be used to hide indirect surveillance activity and record-keeping by the Guard.
"I'm concerned that the Guard has been playing a game with us on this issue," Dunn said.
As for the inspector general's conclusion, "This is a little bit like the fox saying there aren't any hens in the hen house - at least not any more," Dunn said.
I said the same thing in the Open Thread!
He noted that the inspector general cleared the Army of wrongdoing during the Vietnam War era, only to have illegal spying unearthed by the U.S. Senate.
Burninated! By History!
Natalie Wormeli, an organizer with the anti-war activist group CodePink, said she wasn't surprised that the Army's internal investigation cleared the Guard but urged Dunn to continue his investigation in case state laws were violated.
Her group, along with Gold Star Families for Peace and Raging Grannies, were the subject of an e-mail chain originating in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's press office in which the Guard promised to monitor their Capitol peace rally. The Guard says that amounted to nothing more than watching television coverage of the event.
Of course it did. That's why they said to monitor instead of saying "watch this on TV". Was the television closed-circuit?
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But wait! There's more trouble from the California National Guard! Cause when the top is corrupt the roots follow.
6 in Calif Guard to face Court Martial for prison abuse
Six members of a California Army National Guard unit will face courts-martial for allegedly mistreating detainees in Iraq, military officials said Tuesday.
The trials were ordered after investigators reviewed allegations of prisoner abuse by 12 soldiers with the 1st Battalion of the 184th Infantry Regiment.
...
The soldiers, who were not identified, belong to the battalion's Fullerton-based Alpha Company. Some face charges of mistreatment of a person under their control, assault and making a false statement, while one soldier was charged with obstruction of justice, military officials have said.
Of course, this sort of thing will happen to the 184th when your boss is batshit crazy
SALINAS, Calif. -- In this Northern California farming region, where he lives on a remote ranch with his wife, a teenage son and a donkey named Burrito, Patrick Frey is a hero.
An admired educator, Frey readily accepted one of the toughest assignments in the Monterey County School District: oversight of the district's most severely impaired students. His efforts recently won him honors as "Teacher of the Year."
He is chivalrous -- he once interceded when a father was threatening to hit a student -- and he is romantic, penning poetry for a school literary magazine.
"He's loved by everyone," says fellow teacher Shane McDonough.
But under the relentless sun of Iraq, where he commands a California Army National Guard battalion of 800 men, some see Lt. Col. Patrick Frey in a very different light.
There, some of his soldiers call Frey an erratic egomaniac who rules through intimidation, preaching abstinence to soldiers who are going on leave, comparing his troops to his special-education students and brandishing a small hatchet that he uses to "knight" soldiers he is promoting.
Last week, military officials confirmed that they had suspended the 50-year-old Frey, who served as a young man in Indochina near the end of the Vietnam War and later as a mercenary in Rhodesia. So far, he is taking the blame for what appears to be widespread soldier misconduct.
An investigation now appears to involve members of at least three of the five companies under Frey's control, no small concern considering that his unit -- the 1st battalion of the 184th Infantry Regiment, headquartered in Modesto -- represents a sixth of the California National Guard troops in Iraq.
Well, at least they're having the right guy, the unit CO, take the fall for it this time. But seriously, wtf, former mercenary? No warning signs there? It continues.
"His eccentricities were beyond what I, in my career, had ever seen," said Staff Sgt. Lorenzo Dominguez, a National Guard and Marine Corps veteran. Dominguez trained under Frey, has criticized the battalion's leadership publicly and is awaiting honorable discharge in California.
Dominguez recalled a promotion ceremony in December 2004 that Frey conducted at Doña Ana Army Camp deep in the New Mexico desert where the battalion conducted much of its training prior to deployment. It was, Dominguez said, "like a King Arthur thing."
"He screamed out: 'Take a knee!' Everyone was shocked."
"The guy getting promoted hesitated and finally dropped to a knee. [Frey] starts doing his knight routine with the hatchet, 'knighting him' with it. He moves it side to side, and you can hear him slapping his shoulders. Whack. And then he goes over to the other one. Whack. Then he orders him to stand up and then puts his hand up, almost like a baptismal thing."
"I understand pride. I understand military tradition," said Dominguez, who has served 14 years in three stints with the Guard and Reserve. "But I have never seen anything like that."
Of course, some people in the Guard like crazy.
"I absolutely would follow that man into the worst firefight in the world," said one platoon leader in the battalion, who spoke on condition that he not be named. He said that Frey has become a target of disgruntled soldiers and that Army leaders panicked at the prospect of another prisoner abuse scandal.
"I find him to be an inspirational leader, though I can see where someone a little less drawn by the romance of things might find him off-putting," the platoon leader added. "He is a very old-fashioned guy," he said, adding that he found Frey's hatchet somewhat romantic. "The symbolism is lost on the Nintendo generation."
Dominguez, however, said older veterans, particularly those who had participated in the active-duty military before joining the Guard, had a hard time respecting Frey.
"This wasn't awe inspiring. It was embarrassing," he said.
Hey! I'm Nintendo generation and I understand the hatchet! Didn't those little dudes in Super Mario Bros. throw hatchets at you? The turtle guys? Or were those hammers? It was 8 bit, who the fuck knows.
But by last fall, it was Frey's military unit that appeared to be in conflagration. Some of his soldiers staged an unusual rebellion by telling a Times reporter of their concerns about poor training and preparation for Iraq.
The soldiers said, among other concerns, that they had received very little "theater specific" training. They also said they received little training that would prepare them to fend off insurgents' roadside bombs.
The soldiers were bracing for Frey's response, and, several said, it was not long in coming. After they returned last November from a brief Thanksgiving leave, Frey marched the entire battalion into the New Mexico desert, said one member of the battalion who was there. Frey, the soldier said, was dressed in his full "battle rattle" -- full combat gear.
"He had somebody with a .50-caliber machine gun, with blanks," the soldier said. "They started firing. We didn't know what the hell was going on. Next thing you know, you see the colonel crawling in the dirt."
...
"They are rushing and dropping, getting up, then rushing and dropping," the soldier said. "That's how you rush the enemy. We were all standing there, watching this episode unfold. There was a little puddle of mud. They purposely crawled through it."
Frey stood and called for his assistant, who brought out a copy of the Times article. Frey read it to the battalion, and when he got to the end made it clear that he felt that any public criticism was akin to criticizing "anyone who would serve their country," the soldier said.
Yikes...
By then, the soldiers were operating under a host of restrictions on behavior and movement that many of them felt were excessive, even for the military. The soldiers were not allowed to drink alcohol, had little contact with their family and were placed under "lockdown" at Doña Ana, unable even to go to the Army's nearby base, Ft. Bliss, or to the nearby city of El Paso.
"Even to go to the PX, you had to be escorted," one soldier said.
Sounds like somebody was trying to keep another story from getting out.
After word arrived late last year that the 184th was being summoned to Iraq, Frey wrote a letter to the families of his soldiers, addressing it to "Night Stalker Families," using the self-declared nickname of the battalion.
"Love abounds in and around this task force, just as it would in any good family," he wrote. "Your rough, tough men have formed bonds as tender as any we've seen, though they disguise them with crude banter and coarse ways. They are not fooling anybody!"
Frey pitched the mission as a last and decisive struggle between good and evil.
"Our cause is just. Never doubt that!" he wrote. To "eclipse goodness forever is for good people to do nothing."
That barely even makes sense...
So, scary stuff from California. Do a Google News search for "California National Guard". I hit all this stuff by accident because I was looking for details about the initial illegal espionage. Hadn't known about any of this, for some odd unknown reason there hasn't been anything about it in the Stars and Stripes that I've seen.