Officer to Criticize Air Force in Bombing
Jan. 16, 2003 -- The commanding officer of two U.S. Air Force pilots facing possible charges of manslaughter in a military court after mistakenly bombing Canadian forces in Afghanistan last spring is expected to give testimony highly critical of his superior officers and their conduct of the air war.
MORE INVESTIGATIVE NEWS:
• Air Force's Bombing Tape Cuts Evidence • Probe Spreads From Ricin Raids
Col. David Nichols, of the 332nd Air Expeditionary Group, spent 13 months as a commander in the Middle East, overseeing thousands of air sorties, and was the commander of Majs. Harry Schmidt and Bill Umbach at the time of the friendly fire incident.
He could testify as soon as today or Friday in the military's article 32 hearing that began Tuesday to decide whether Schmidt and Umbach should be court-martialed for bombing a Canadian training exercise near Kandahar last April.
Read Nichols' statement.
Four Canadians died and eight others were wounded when Schmidt hit their position with a 500-pound bomb. The pilots could face charges including involuntary manslaughter and dereliction of duty, and could be sentenced to up to 64 years in prison.
The Air Force says Schmidt and Umbach were told to hold fire and should have fled the area until commanders could figure out whether there were friendly troops in the area.
Click for video recorded from the cockpit the day of the bombing
But Nichols wrote in response to an official reprimand of his own actions in the incident, that instead a "failure of leadership" is to blame. He has documented his own and other commanders' repeated, unsuccessful efforts to focus the Air Force higher command on problems with the conduct of air operations that they believed would lead to fratricide.
In his statement, obtained by ABCNEWS, Nichols cites numerous examples.
"I, my deputy and my OSS/CC called the CAOC (Combined Airspace Operations Center) Director and multiple people on the J3 staff over 100 times with concerns over the lack of friendly ground order of battle information and airspace control measures," he wrote.
Nichols also pointed out several near misses involving U.S. aircraft that also went unaddressed.
"After a mission in early March where a B-52 dropped JDAMS [satellite-guided bombs] through my formation (We had this happen to at last 3 of our formations in a 4 day period, I was VERY concerned.)"
In addition to citing the same confusion that Nichols does, lawyers for Umbach and Schmidt contend that the Air Force policy of making pilots take amphetamines on long missions contributed to the incident.
Read the lawyers' contentions
Read ABCNEWS' previous coverage of go-pills
The hearings, the rough equivalent of a civilian grand jury proceeding, are expected to last two weeks.
— Rhonda Schwartz and Madeleine Sauer
Air Force Version of Bombing Tape Cuts Evidence
Jan. 16 — A cockpit videotape of the friendly fire bombing, entered into evidence and released publicly by the Air Force Wednesday, omitted sections in which Majs. Harry Schmidt and Bill Umbach relayed information to airborne air traffic controllers in an attempt to determine whether the ground troops were allies.
On the entire tape, obtained exclusively by ABCNEWS, Schmidt can be heard asking controllers in the AWACS (airborne warning and control system) plane overhead: "Bossman, there was no ROZ [restricted operating zone] in effect in that area tonight as far as our brief was concerned, do you concur?"
The AWACS controller responds, "Bossman concurs," meaning that the controller agreed there had been no word of allied troops in the area that night.
Today in court, lawyers for the pilots introduced omitted sections of the cockpit videotape. In a press conference, Charles Gittins, Schmidt's lawyer, said that the exchange showed that controllers had no better information about the Canadian exercise than the pilots.
"If you listen to the end of the audiotape, the part that nobody has played before, when Harry Schmidt asks 'Can you confirm that we didn't have any ROZ operating that night?' the single command and control that they had that night confirmed that there was no ROZ active that night," Gittins said.
Lt. Colonel Jennifer Cassidy said that government attorneys decided which sections of the videotape would be released to the press. She said that the government had no plans to release additional portions of the cockpit videotape to the public.
Similar portions of Schmidt's conversation with the AWACS plane were also omitted from transcripts included in the final investigative summary released by the Canadian military, following its joint investigation with the United States.
— Jill Rackmill, Brian Ross and Madeleine Sauer
Probe Spreads From Ricin Raids
Jan. 16 — With 15 people under arrest and one police officer killed since anti-terrorism police discovered traces of the deadly poison ricin in a North London apartment 10 days ago, British officials say they are increasingly concerned about the growing number of Algerian Islamic extremists in their country.
Intelligence sources told ABCNEWS that British investigators are widening their probe, expecting to make further arrests of the ring of Algerians who are believed to be members of the Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, as they are known.
The number of Algerians, and extremists among them, has risen over the past 10 years in England from the low hundreds to tens of thousands, many of whom escaped from France after French authorities launched an aggressive campaign against GIA and its sympathizers following bombings of the Paris Metro in 1995.
The GIA started its violent campaign to establish an Islamic fundamentalist regime in Algeria in 1992, and officials say the group has tried to obtain poisons and toxins for a number of years.
Authorities believe that in the past, the material the group acquired was sent back to Algeria for use in assassination attempts against members of political opposition groups.
Since ricin is not believed to be an effective toxin for causing mass casualties, investigators find it more likely that the traces of ricin they discovered during last week's raid on a North London apartment, was destined for use against domestic political opponents in Algeria, not massive terror attacks in the United Kingdom.
What is ricin and what does it do?
It was in the latest raid Tuesday that an unarmed British police officer was fatally stabbed in Manchester, England.
Investigators told ABCNEWS that the officers were executing an arrest warrant, when they detained three men of North African origin.
Only one of the three arrested was named on the warrant. The detainees were not handcuffed while the unarmed officers searched the apartment, and one of the men got up became agitated, managed to arm himself — it is thought with a kitchen knife — and attacked the officers in the flat, killing one and injuring four others.
Officials say they hope that the police officer's death may add to public pressure for reforms of Britain's counterterrorist laws, which remain restricted by reforms passed in the 1970s.
The officer's death illustrates a weakness of the liaison relationship between the MI5 in London, and British Special Branch police officers who report to local police chiefs, sources said. The MI5, as a domestic intelligence organization, has no authority outside of London to enforce laws or make arrests.
— Risa Molitz