Report rips platoon boss behavior in fratricide - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Report rips platoon boss behavior in fratricide

A new investigation into the 2008 friendly fire death of Pfc. David Sharrett II in Iraq blasts the platoon leader who shot Sharrett and abandoned him as he lay dying, saying the officer displayed “serious personal judgment errors.”

After a botched pre-dawn raid, then-1st. Lt. Timothy Hanson left the battlefield on a helicopter while Sharrett and two of his soldiers were still missing, the report stated. Sharrett was found clinging to life at least 10 minutes after Hanson left.

“[Hanson] failed to uphold the Soldier’s Creed to include the Warrior Ethos,” wrote the chief investigator, Brig. Gen. David Bishop, chief of staff of Third Army, U.S. Army Central, “and he displayed a lack of regard for completing his assigned mission and ensuring the welfare and safety of his Soldiers which calls into question his leadership.”

The new investigation, dated March 31, is the third since Sharrett was killed. It backtracks on the first investigation’s widely reported conclusion that Hanson “misidentified” Sharrett as an insurgent and shot him because Sharrett failed to switch on his infrared beacon.

“I find no evidence to support that finding,” Bishop stated in the report, obtained by Army Times.

Though evidence suggests Hanson may have been within six feet of Sharrett when he shot him, Hanson repeatedly told Bishop in an interview that he was firing only at the thicket, that he never targeted an individual and was unaware he hit anyone. Hanson also told Bishop he was disoriented by the intensity of the firefight.

According to Sharrett’s father, Dave Sharrett, Bishop has recommended that Hanson receive a general officer reprimand. Sharrett Sr. said the Army official who ordered the new investigation, Director of the Army Staff Lt. Gen. William Troy, told him this.

The Army has redacted the wording of this recommendation in the report, as well as the names of many of the players; however, Army Times was able to independently identify Hanson and some others.

Hanson, who received a local letter of reprimand following the engagement, has since become a captain in the Reserve. He declined to comment when reached by Army Times.

Sharrett’s father has for years met with his son’s colleagues and superiors, investigators and other officers in an effort to wrangle information about how his son died. Sharrett’s father said facts about the case have only come to light through his efforts and those of James Gordon Meek, a family friend and former reporter for the New York Daily News.

Sharrett’s father ripped into Hanson’s superiors — Maj. Michael Loveall and Lt. Col. Robert McCarthy — for their failure to mete out sterner punishment in light of the “depth and dimension of Hanson’s cowardice.”

“He’s radioactive to the Army,” he said of Hanson, “but the thing that’s still massively problematic to me is they never asked his superiors, given the fact that they knew what this guy did, why they never held him accountable.”

Sharrett’s father called the latest investigation, “an enormous waste of paper and time and effort.

“General Bishop’s conclusions are just awful about this guy,” Sharrett said of Hanson. “He should have been charged, and his captain and his colonel chose to overlook this thing.”

Loveall declined to comment and McCarthy did not respond to an email from Army Times.

Bishop stated in his report that he found no evidence that called into question the leadership or actions of Hanson’s superiors and recommended no adverse action be taken against them for their planning of the mission, or their communications with Sharrett’s father.

Though Sharrett’s father claims he was stonewalled and repeatedly misled by his son’s superiors, the investigation attributes this to a series of unintentional miscommunications and misunderstandings.

At various points in the days after Sharrett’s death, his commanders denied to Sharrett’s father that it was fratricide or omitted that information in an email to him. At one point, a commander claimed certain information about the incident was classified, the report said.

Hanson received a reprimand in his local Iraq file, which was shredded when he redeployed. Sharrett’s father had been told Hanson would receive a harsher reprimand in a permanent personnel file from the battlefield commander, but it never happened, according to the report.

Brig. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the general officer at Fort Campbell, Ky., where Hanson had been reassigned, did not support the harsher action, the report said.

In a letter to Sharrett’s father, Troy addressed his criticism.

“You asked why Lieutenant Hanson was not held accountable by his chain of command in theater,” Troy wrote. “The only answer I can give you is one you have heard before, that it was the judgment at the time by his chain-of-command.”

In the letter, Troy defended Townsend’s choice not to upgrade Hanson’s reprimand.

“General Townsend’s independent decision reflected his professional judgment as a commander in a position of authority,” Troy wrote. “I don’t see a need to question his judgment, but neither was I influenced by it as I considered the recommendations of General Bishop’s investigation.”

Clearing area of insurgents

Hanson’s eight-man team was part of 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry Regiment, which was then conducting Operation Hood Harvest to clear insurgents from the Bichigan Peninsula in northern Iraq.

On Jan. 18, 2008, the team surrounded six men hiding in a dense thicket, believing them unarmed.

The thicket erupted into a fierce firefight, in which Pfc. Danny Kimme, 27, of Fisher, Ill., and Cpl. John P. Sigsbee, 21, of Waterville, N.Y., were killed by enemy fire. Sharrett, 27, of Oakton, Va., was killed by a round from Hanson’s weapon.

The reports said Hanson turned left during the firefight, away from the thicket at 12 o’clock and shot Sharrett in the left buttock as Sharrett ran past Hanson’s flank.

Hanson maintained in the interview that he believed he was returning enemy fire at the thicket and never saw or heard Sharrett as he ran past. “I shot what I thought was the bush and I took off. I didn’t hear anything,” Hanson told Bishop.

In the midst of the firefight, Hanson “excitedly” called in helicopter fire support and backup from his higher headquarters, according to the report. Another soldier told investigators there was “terror on his face,” but that Hanson still functioned.

After the firefight subsided and backup arrived, an uninjured Hanson, “inexplicably” and without orders to do so, left the battlefield in a helicopter, the report stated. At the time, Sigsbee, Sharrett and Kimme were still on the battlefield and their whereabouts were unknown.

“I believe that [Hanson’s] inexplicable departure from the battlefield violates a key tenet of our Warrior Ethos by leaving four soldiers behind,” Bishop’s report stated.

The report called Hanson’s battle handover to a junior soldier with 2nd Platoon inadequate, as he did not provide the locations of his men and was not ordered to leave.

By leaving, Hanson, “abdicated his duty” as the team leader and “failed to act in accordance with the Army’s expectations of an officer of his grade and experience.”

Soldiers at the scene eventually discovered Sharrett breathing faintly and had him evacuated.

“Another person looking in that area may have helped locate him sooner,” the report said of Sharrett. “This is only speculation, and there is no way of knowing if the additional 10-13 minutes would have made a difference in saving PFC Sharrett’s life.”

Although Hanson has said he sought to return to squadron headquarters at Forward Operating Base Paliwoda to report, his commanders already knew about the engagement. Investigators concluded, “the reasonable person … would have remained on the scene where his greater duty was to regain accountability of his soldiers and tend to their safety.”

“My mission was over,” Hanson is quoted in the report. “We had failed that mission and I thought that the squadron would want a debrief right away on what happened, so l got on the bird and we went to Joint Base Balad and dropped off the wounded and then refueled and went back to Paliwoda.”

Hanson had boarded the helicopter with two wounded men, but if his intent was to escort them to the hospital at Balad, he never did so, the report stated.