Three Marine officers issued censures in Haditha slayings

Three senior Marine officers have been given letters of censure for failing to launch a war-crimes investigation of the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, the Marine Corps announced Wednesday.

The letters will go into the personnel files of Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, who was commanding general of the 2nd Marine Division; Col. Robert G. Sokoloski, a lawyer who was chief of staff to the division while it was in Iraq; and Col. Stephen W. Davis, former commanding officer of the 2nd Marine Regiment.

The recommendation to issue the censures was made by Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, commanding general of the Marine Forces Central Command. The Haditha case involves the largest number of war crimes allegations against Marines in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Mattis is responsible for investigating and prosecuting possible crimes in the November 2005 killings in Haditha, which include murder charges filed in December against four enlisted Marines and dereliction of duty charges against four lower-ranking officers for not investigating the incident properly.

Mattis determined that the actions of Huck, Davis and Sokoloski did not rise to the level of criminal acts or a deliberate cover-up, officials said.

But he found that their failure to fully investigate the shootings constituted a “lack of due diligence” expected of top-level officers.

Mattis’ determination was endorsed by Marine Commandant Gen. James T. Conway. The letters of censure were signed by Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter, who has the sole authority to issue them.

“While these three officers have served their country and corps exceedingly well for decades, their actions, inactions and decisions in the aftermath of the Haditha incident did not meet the high standards we expect of Marine senior officer leadership,” Conway said in a statement.

Although a censure letter does not force an officer to retire, it signals that the officer will never be promoted, said Gary Solis, a former Marine attorney who teaches military law at Georgetown University.

The 2005 Haditha incident started when a roadside bomb exploded beneath a Humvee in a Marine convoy, killing a Marine and injuring two.

Within minutes, Marines had killed five Iraqi men who had driven to the scene of the explosion and later, in “clearing” three houses while hunting for insurgents, killed 19 more Iraqis, including three women and seven children.

Murder charges have been dropped against two of the four enlisted men. A hearing officer has recommended charges be dropped against a third, and a preliminary hearing is underway here for the squad leader, Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich. He faces 13 counts in the deaths.

Of the officers who were accused of dereliction, charges have been dropped against one, two others are awaiting preliminary hearings, and a fourth, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, the battalion commander, is awaiting Mattis’ decision on a hearing officer’s recommendation for a court-martial.

Huck, who is now deputy assistant commandant, had announced plans to retire. Davis and Sokoloski remain at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Davis is chief of staff to the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force; Sokoloski is the staff judge advocate of the unit.

According to testimony during preliminary hearings for two officers, senior officers knew quickly that women and children had been killed in Haditha but thought that the deaths, while tragic, were the result of “troops in contact” with insurgents. No evidence has surfaced that any of those killed were insurgents or that insurgents had used the houses to attack Marines.

The Marine statement also says that Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson, former commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, has been exonerated of culpability.

“The Marine Corps is taking an aggressive action to make certain that no one ever says about the Marine Corps what some sectors of the public have said about the Army with regard to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal -- that no officer ever gets punished,” said Solis.

“These letters are not usually made public,” he said in a telephone interview.

During the preliminary hearing for Chessani, Huck testified that he had been misled by Chessani’s initial report. Although it mentioned the civilian deaths, it also suggested that Chessani had gone to the scene and determined that the Iraqi deaths came either in the bomb blast or in crossfire as the Marines fought insurgents.

“There is a high level of confidence when a formal report comes through and says the battalion commander is on the scene,” Huck testified.

Huck visited Haditha two days after the killings for a routine briefing. But testimony suggests he asked few questions and accepted uncritically Chessani’s assessment that the killings occurred as Marines responded to a “complex, coordinated” attack by insurgents.

At the time, he congratulated the Marines on their reactions to the roadside bombing and their officers on the briefing they provided. Two months later, the military officials, stung by a Time magazine report that disputed the official version of events, launched an investigation.

The investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service led to the criminal charges. After a separate investigation led by a two-star Army general, the Marine chain-of-command was criticized for missing numerous “red flags” that should have led to a more complete review of the incident.

That report, by Army Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell, says that “virtually no inquiry at any level of command was conducted” and that reports filed by Chessani and others were “forgotten once transmitted.”

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tony.perry@latimes.com