Friendly Fire Pilots: 'We're Going to Jail, Dude'

Feb. 6, 2007 — -- A leaked video in which an American pilot is heard saying, "We're going to jail, dude," after U.S. troops killed a British soldier during a friendly fire incident in Iraq was released by The Sun newspaper Tuesday. Lance Cpl. Matty Hull died when troops fired on his convoy in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on March 28, 2003.

The incident occurred on the seventh day of the Iraq invasion as two A-10 Tankbusters patrolled the skies north of Basra.

On the cockpit video, the pilots identify four armored vehicles marked with orange panels meant to identify coalition forces. They can be heard saying, "There are no friendlies this far north on the ground." After firing, the pilots quickly realized their mistake.

"I'm going to be sick," they said on the tape. "Did you hear? Yeah, this sucks. We're going to jail, dude. We're going to jail, dude!"

A coroner investigating Hull's death had demanded that the video be released and presented as evidence in the inquest, but U.S. authorities refused. The leak means that the material is now in the public domain, the coroner's office said Tuesday, suggesting it may be shown when the inquest resumes Feb. 16.

U.S. military officials conducted their own investigation, but the findings have not been made public. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack talked about the incident Tuesday morning.

"I've only read parts of the transcript printed in some news media, and my reaction is that these people immediately understood that this was a terrible, terrible mistake, and that they felt an immediate remorse for what happened," he said.

British officials had also asked their U.S. counterparts to release the material to Hull's family but had been rebuffed.

"The main thing to stress is that we have always had a very clear view that what matters is the information should be available to the family and whilst the Americans cannot be legally obliged to help they should do so, bearing in mind they are our allies," said Constitutional Affairs Secretary Harriet Harman, who has had several meetings with U.S. Embassy officials.

Defense Claims No Intention to Mislead

The Pentagon declined comment Tuesday, but the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in London, David Johnson, told the BBC it would consider declassifying the video if the military determined it would not put forces at risk.

The Defense Ministry said it was unable to persuade the United States to declassify the footage, a recording British authorities initially claimed did not exist. The Defense Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that it had not tried to deceive Hull's family, and that the army's board of inquiry used a copy of the video in investigating the incident, but the video was U.S. government property and it was not authorized to release it.

"There has never been any intention to deliberately deceive or mislead Lance Cpl. Hull's "Horse" family," the Defense Ministry's statement said.

The ministry said when the army told the family the findings of its investigation, "we did inform them that some classified material had been withheld, but we did not specify its exact nature."

The coroner investigating Hull's death has adjourned the inquest until Feb. 16.

A U.S. Air Force official conducted an investigation into the incident in 2003, but the results were not released publicly, said Lt. Tony Vincelli, spokesman for the Boise, Idaho-based 190th Fighter Squadron, home of the A-10 jets.

The investigation did not result in a court-martial. Vincelli did not identify the pilots involved.

It is unclear whether the video will be shown at the inquest.

"It is in the public domain. There's no dispute of that, is there? It's all over the television," said Geoff Webb, a coroner's court official.

Additional reporting contributed by Kirit Radia of ABC News and Paisley Dodds of The Associated Press.