Darren, you might be interested in reading this article that appeared in today's "Chicago Tribune." A very thorough, balanced account of the events surrounding the tragic deaths of four Canadians in Afghanistan.
chicagotribune.com
2 pilots at center of storm
Supporters rally to defend two Illinois Air National Guard fliers who face stiff prison terms in the friendly fire deaths of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan
By Tim Jones and Flynn McRoberts
Tribune staff reporters
October 27, 2002
Maj. Harry Schmidt banked sharply to the right, maneuvering his American F-16 into position to drop a 500-pound laser-guided bomb on the flashes of artillery fire that cut through the darkness over southern Afghanistan. Twenty-eight seconds later, he radioed: "Bomb's away."
Several thousand feet below on the desert floor, Canadian Cpl. Rene Paquette, his machine gun resting at his side, had just turned his head toward his unit's anti-tank gunner when a sharp whistle split the night. A flash momentarily blinded the 33-year-old soldier. Suddenly, Paquette was tumbling through the air.
"I remember looking down and seeing the ground and thinking, `Why can't I touch it?'" he recalled.
Paquette didn't know that Schmidt, one of two Illinois Air National Guardsmen on patrol flights, had dropped the bomb, instantly killing four Canadian soldiers and wounding Paquette and seven others. Only seconds later, Schmidt and his flight commander, Maj. William Umbach, in another F-16, would learn that the threat from below was no threat at all. It was a company of Canadian soldiers on a nighttime training exercise a few miles from Kandahar, the Taliban's former spiritual capital.
"Be advised Kandahar has friendlies," came the radio voice of a controller on an AWACS radar plane, referring to Tarnak Farms, a former Al Qaeda training camp being used by the U.S.-led military coalition.
The crucial moments that Schmidt and Umbach, two veteran pilots, spent over Afghanistan late on April 17 quickly gave way to a roiling controversy about what happened, why and who is to blame for what occurred that night.
Now the two--one a farm boy from central Illinois, the other a native of St. Louis--face criminal charges of involuntary manslaughter, aggravated assault and dereliction of duty, and the possibility of 64 years' imprisonment.
With the United States considering deployment of thousands of troops in a war against Iraq, many inside and outside the military fear that the pursuit of charges against the pilots transmits a chilling signal.
"What kind of message does this send?" asked John Russo, a Korean War veteran and commander of a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Springfield, where the two pilots are based. "What if a field artilleryman gets his coordinates off by a decimal point? Are you going to send everyone to jail?"
The case represents a rare instance of the U.S. military recommending criminal charges against service members for a friendly fire incident during wartime. The episode also has drawn renewed attention to how the American military, since the Persian Gulf war, has asked the nation's Guard units to shoulder more and more of the burden of combat. Guard units now make up about half of U.S. forces in overseas engagements.
And it has led to a sophisticated fundraising and public-relations campaign on behalf of the pilots--fueled by allegations that the U.S. military is less concerned about justice and more concerned about appeasing Canada, an important ally.
One of the pilots' most vocal supporters has been Gov. George Ryan, who last week held a $50-a-person benefit at his Springfield mansion for their legal defense fund. The event drew hundreds of people but also complaints from some family members of the dead Canadian soldiers who accused Ryan of belittling their loss.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who is on a defense subcommittee, said diplomatic pressures must have been a factor in the charges against Schmidt and Umbach, both members of the 183rd Fighter Wing of the Illinois Air National Guard.
"It is clear that our close friendship with Canada was part of that consideration," Durbin said. "Unless the evidence is clear and overwhelming of wrongdoing, I hope these two pilots will be exonerated."
American and Canadian investigators saw no ambiguity in the pilots' actions. Under the rules of engagement, they said, the pilots should have flown away from the perceived threat. Instead of waiting for command and control to verify that the fire was from the enemy, the pilots "demonstrated poor airmanship and judgment and a fundamental lack of flight discipline," the U.S. report said.
Umbach, the commander of the flight, "failed to take control of the situation" and deferred to Schmidt, according to the U.S. report.
For some though, it's not the alleged crime but the punishment that is at issue. In Canada, where officials loudly protested the bombing, even soldiers and their relatives have questioned the severity of the U.S. military's threatened penalty.
"They may be guilty as sin, but they're getting blackballed because there are other people just as responsible as they are," said Henry Kopp, of Westbourne, Manitoba, whose son Cpl. Chris Kopp escaped injury in the bombing. "The higher-ups will find a fall guy, and these guys are it."
Their ascent
Until that night over Kandahar, the careers of Umbach and Schmidt were marked by a commitment to military discipline--from their appointment to military academies to membership in the tight fraternity of fighter pilots.
In many ways, though, two very different people climbed into those F-16 cockpits last April.
While Umbach, a United Airlines pilot, is recognized for his easygoing nature, Schmidt became known for his intensity even in his earliest days in jet training. On Schmidt's first formation flight, his instructor took note of how aggressively his young student moved his plane into position. The next day, the instructor lightheartedly warned another teacher to "watch out on join up; that guy is psycho."
The name stuck. All fighter pilots get nicknames--known as call signs--and from then on, Schmidt was Psycho.
While he was a child in south St. Louis County, his passion for planes was evident. "In 6th grade, his teacher called and asked our help to tell him to stay in his seat," his mother, Joan, recalled after a recent candlelight vigil outside his former grade school. "He'd get out of his seat and fly paper airplanes out the window."
He was selected for the Naval Academy and later for the prestigious Top Gun weapons school, eventually becoming an instructor there. Later, he taught at the Air Force equivalent of Top Gun.
Before duty with the unit in Afghanistan, Schmidt had flown combat missions over Kosovo and Iraq's no-fly zones.
His resume was impressive. "If we were baseball players," said a fellow pilot with the 183rd, "he'd be one of the nine in the starting lineup at the World Series."
Last year, Schmidt decided to leave active duty and join the Guard unit in Springfield, moving his wife and two young sons within easy driving distance of their grandparents.
The unit's leaders were so eager to recruit Schmidt, 37, that they waited months for him to become available to join as a full-time instructor. Given his qualifications, Guard pilots expected him to have an attitude. Instead they found him amiable but blunt. Schmidt never hesitated to tell his students if they screwed up. "Harry didn't sugarcoat anything," said a fellow pilot in the 183rd who learned from Schmidt.
Umbach, 43, a part-time Guard pilot and squadron commander for nearly four years, is considered far more reserved. His call sign was Guido--a nickname given to him by another pilot who decided he "looked like an Italian pilot."
Umbach was upholding a family tradition when he started flying lessons as a teenager in the farming hamlet of Easton, about 35 miles northwest of Springfield. His late father, Joe, a veteran Korean War pilot, also was a longtime member of the 183rd.
A good athlete and strong student--he was valedictorian of his Easton High class--Umbach was nominated for an appointment to the Air Force Academy by then-U.S. Rep. Robert Michel (R-Ill.).
After serving seven years in the Air Force, he became a pilot for United and joined his father's old Air National Guard unit.
A week before Umbach's unit left for duty in Afghanistan, his family gathered for dinner. "Just in case," said his nephew, Rob, 19, who used to watch his uncle's jet soar above the family's central Illinois farmhouse. "I was scared for him to get hurt. I never thought this would happen."
The night in question
Arriving in Kuwait on March 16, the Illinois unit stepped quickly into a quiet routine, flying missions over Afghanistan as well as the no-fly zones over Iraq. The Afghan sorties were meant to provide coalition ground forces with air support on short notice, if needed.
Most runs were uneventful, as pilots killed time discussing baseball or the latest labor problems at their commercial airline employers.
The moon had set on the night of April 17 when Umbach and Schmidt, known as Coffee 51 and Coffee 52 for this flight, began the return leg of another quiet sortie. The humdrum nature of the flight over southern Afghanistan was interrupted about 9:20 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time when the pilots reported what they thought was surface-to-air fire.
Schmidt, wearing night-vision goggles, swooped down to inspect the activity. Two minutes later, he sought permission "to lay down some 20 mike-mike," meaning to fire on the site with his 20 mm cannon. Seconds later, Umbach cautioned, "Let's just make sure that euh, that it's not friendly, that's all," according to the cockpit transcripts included in the Canadian report.
The patrolling Airborne Warning and Control System plane denied the request at 9:25, telling Umbach: "Hold fire. I need details on SAFIRE [surface-to-air fire]."
Four seconds later, Schmidt radioed that he had spotted "some men on a road and it looks like a piece of artillery firing at us.
"I am rolling in in self-defense," he said as he positioned his F-16 to drop a 500-pound laser-guided bomb.
Half a minute later, Schmidt released the bomb, which took 22 seconds to reach its target. "Shack!" he exclaimed, reporting a direct hit.
Ten seconds later, the warning of friendly forces came from the AWACS, telling Schmidt and Umbach to leave the area "as soon as possible."
In a question that hangs over the controversy, Umbach asked the AWACS controller: "Can you confirm that they were shooting at us?"
"You are cleared self-defense . . . " the AWACS controller replied--reflecting what the Canadian report termed "confusion" in the surveillance plane since Schmidt's initial "self-defense" call.
Returning to their base in Kuwait, Umbach and Schmidt crossed the tarmac with stoic looks on their faces. But their colleagues already knew that something terrible had happened near Kandahar. The two pilots were soon debriefed and made their way to the chow hall.
About 6 a.m., one of their fellow pilots ran into Schmidt and Umbach as they left the cafeteria. Unaware of what had happened, that pilot asked: "Hey, how'd it go last night?" What the pilot thought would be 30 seconds of small talk turned into a somber recitation of a nightmare. At the end of it, Schmidt put it simply: He'd done what he felt he had to do to keep Umbach alive, safe from enemy fire.
Not long after that exchange, the telephone rang in Schmidt's home back in Sherman, just north of Springfield. His wife, Lisa, answered. She later told her mother-in-law that she almost didn't recognize her husband's voice because it was so filled with grief and shock.
"The people I killed were not the enemy," Harry Schmidt told his wife, according to Joan Schmidt, who was helping her daughter-in-law take care of the couple's young sons.
The deaths shook Canada, which hadn't suffered a combat fatality since the Korean War. Initially, many Canadians were furious at President Bush's failure to mention the deaths in several public appearances the day the news was disclosed.
The Bush administration later tried to make up for the perceived slight. Despite Bush's opposition to allowing U.S. soldiers to be judged by international tribunals, the American military signed off on a joint inquiry board with the Canadians to investigate the Tarnak Farms incident.
The U.S. and Canadian reports differ in one fundamental way: The American version downplays any role in command failures while focusing on the responsibility of the pilots. For instance, it suggests that Schmidt felt "peer pressure" to back up his Top Gun reputation and burnish his new squadron's credibility.
His fellow pilots in the 183rd dispute such assertions. "Anyone with [Schmidt's] resume has nothing to prove to anyone," one of them said. "He's settling down, raising a family. He just got a house built. What does he need to prove?"
The U.S. report slammed the leadership of their Guard unit, saying it was "characterized by ineffective leadership and complacency in the enforcement of discipline and standards." Umbach, it stated, was serving as squadron commander even though his superiors believed "his promotion potential was minimal, given that he had not completed professional military education required for officers of his grade."
Umbach's attorney, David Beck, said his client wasn't told the reason he had been passed over for promotion more than a year ago. But Beck noted that an Air Force board recommended Umbach for promotion to lieutenant colonel just days after the April 17 incident; that promotion is on hold while the charges are pending.
The Canadian inquiry gave greater attention to whether the pilots knew about the ground training exercises at Tarnak Farms, which had begun in February. The report found that information was "intentionally removed" from the mission data given to Umbach and Schmidt in order to simplify the briefings and flight maps.
"This fact alone contributed significantly to the lack of knowledge of the Tarnak Farm range," the Canadian report said.
Some pilots also believe that the limitations of night-vision goggles, which both pilots wore, may have played a role. Dan Lohmar, an F-16 pilot in the 183rd who arrived at the Kuwait base shortly after the incident, said the goggles "allow you to see everything."
"Flying over Springfield at 20,000 feet, I can see incoming flights to Chicago and St. Louis clearly. Eighty miles looks like 20 miles . . . and 20 miles can look like 1 mile," Lohmar said.
"I don't question his [Schmidt's] judgment. He perceived they were both being shot at. The rules of engagement say you have the right to defend yourself," Lohmar said.
A recurring question, though, is why the pilots didn't increase their altitude and fly away from the perceived threat, as the rules of engagement require. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserves, said the rules of engagement are extremely important because of the "increasing lethality" of U.S. bombs.
"In World War II if you dropped a bomb there was only a 3 percent chance of hitting the target. Today the odds are overwhelming that you will [hit the target], so it had better be a correct decision," Kirk said.
Even those who concede that Schmidt and Umbach acted in error wonder why this incident has attracted such great interest from the military and why the two pilots face the potential of spending the rest of their lives behind bars. Less than three months after the pilots' friendly fire incident, an Air Force AC-130 gunship fired on an Afghan village northwest of Kandahar, killing dozens of women and children at a wedding party where guns were fired in celebration.
A two-page report issued by the U.S. Central Command last month exonerated the gunship pilots, saying the air strike was provoked by hostile anti-aircraft fire, even though the report acknowledged there was no evidence of anti-aircraft weapons at the scene.
Air Force officials insist Umbach and Schmidt are not being treated differently. They reject any suggestion that the charges smack of scapegoating or are an effort to placate a key coalition partner.
"It didn't matter that those were Canadian soldiers or U.S. soldiers," said Col. Richard Harding, staff judge advocate for the 8th Air Force, which is overseeing the proceedings.
`Support, not prosecute'
The campaign to defend Umbach and Schmidt began on the back porch of Umbach's younger brother Bob's farmhouse in Easton.
It was Friday, Sept. 13, and the family had just learned that an Air Force investigator was recommending criminal charges. Bob Umbach and his wife, Patti, sat in stunned silence. Their two teenage children, Rob and Jena, disappeared into the house.
When they came back, Rob was holding a printout of what became the effort's unofficial motto--"Support, Not Prosecute, Our American Pilots."
From there, the effort ballooned. Benefits spring up almost daily at local golf courses and VFW posts, which are filled with men who have had their experiences with friendly fire.
Russo, 71, commander of the VFW post on the north side of Springfield, remembers getting strafed by a Marine plane while serving in the Korean War. Echoing many of the pilots' local supporters, Russo says it's self-serving for the military to place virtually all the blame on Umbach and Schmidt.
"To put it in the vernacular, [it] rolls downhill," he said. "And these guys are at the bottom of the hill right now."
The pilots' backers have mounted an elaborate campaign, including a Web site, that is meant to keep their case in the minds of a public whose attention may turn to war in Iraq just as their legal proceedings begin this winter.
One of Umbach's neighbors, Mike Williams, is the chief policy adviser for Illinois' agriculture director. He has contacted the state's congressional delegation and plans to ask all registered lobbyists in Illinois to publicize the pilots' case in their newsletters.
The other goal is to raise money for the pilots' legal defense. The families have hired attorneys who have represented defendants in some of the highest-profile military cases in recent years.
Schmidt's lawyer, former Marine naval flight officer Charles Gittins, represented one of the officers in the case of an American jet that sliced a gondola's cable in Italy, killing 20 people. Beck, Umbach's attorney, defended the navigator in the gondola case.
The pilots' families estimate that legal expenses could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars if the military proceeds with a court-martial and the pilots have to appeal.
In Winnipeg, Manitoba, Paquette has had time to reflect on that night six months ago and its aftermath.
The concussive wave of the 500-pound bomb ruptured his eardrums, damaged his ribs and filled his lungs with fluid.
Paquette still faces surgery on his ears. But his views on the U.S. military's pursuit of charges against the pilots who caused his injuries are shaped by a soldier's pragmatism and a young father's compassion.
"I don't believe that they should fly again. I think they should lose their commission," he said. "In the end, it was just bad judgment and bad error."
Long jail terms seem "extreme," Paquette said. "It's still wartime, and mistakes are made."
"They're family men," he added, "and I don't want to ruin any more families."
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