TORONTO, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- It was five months ago that I first wrote about Majors Harry Schmidt and William Umbach, the two American pilots who were charged last week with involuntary manslaughter. It was the day after the two airmen, on patrol in their F-16's near Kandahar, Afghanistan, had dropped a laser-guided bomb on a detachment of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry conducting a nighttime live-fire exercise. The 500-pound ordnance killed four Canadian soldiers and injured eight.
I quoted from Tom Wolfe's book, "The Right Stuff", which told us that if a fighter jock is given to supplication before getting into the cockpit, his most fervent prayer will be: "Please, don't let me screw up!" I added that until the two boards of inquiry that had been convened, one U.S. and one Canadian, had a chance to look into the tragedy, we won't know if the American pilots screwed up or not. I suggested that a key question for the inquires will be whether the Americans had been briefed about the Canadian night training exercise.
The second time I wrote about the topic was in June. My comments came after the report of the U.S. board of inquiry had been leaked to the New York Times. The leak suggested that the report was going to come down hard on the pilots, especially on Major Schmidt, Major Umbach's wingman, because he "did not take time to assess the threat properly before striking."
At that time I wrote that the leaked report raised as many questions as it answered. I suggested that before we could call for the U.S. pilots to be pilloried or eviscerated -- as some politicians and journalists seemed ready to do -- we should know a number of additional facts. For instance, we should know if Majors Schmidt and Umbach's pre-flight briefing on the night of April 18 included notification about the Princess Pat's live-fire exercise near Kandahar.
If it didn't, we should know why. "Did the Canucks forget to tell the Yanks," I asked, "or did the Yanks forget to tell their pilots?"
Last week, just as we were learning about Majors Schmidt and Umbach being charged with involuntary manslaughter, we also learned the answer to my question. Apparently the Yanks forgot to tell their pilots.
Worse than forgot, in fact. The Yanks made a deliberate decision not to tell their pilots because it would have involved the intelligence bureaucracy in too much paperwork. According to a previously secret report by a Canadian Board of Inquiry, just released by the Department of National Defense, U.S. military communications had "systemic shortcomings." As reported by Canada's National Post on September 14, "details about the ground force movements near Kandahar were intentionally deleted from the 'airspace control orders' given to pilots flying missions over Kandahar because the document was considered cumbersome."
Intentionally deleted! "Why was it left up to pilots whizzing by at 20,000 feet to determine whether muzzle flashes on the ground were hostile or friendly?" I asked in June. Now we know the reason. It was left up to the pilots because a "cumbersome" document detailing ground force movements was "intentionally deleted" from their briefing.
Clearly, the military brass's solution to cumbersome documents isn't to simplify them, but to drop them down some Orwellian memory hole. If some allies get killed as a result of pilots being forced to guess, the brass can always charge the pilots with manslaughter for having guessed wrong.
Canada's Board of Inquiry, although it criticizes what it calls "shortcomings" in communications between ground and air forces, ultimately also ends up blaming the pilots. "Even though it is reasonable to believe that the ground firing exercise at Tarnak Farm might have been perceived as enemy surface-to-air fire," the report offers, "a longer, more patient look from a safe altitude and range, combined with a good knowledge of the airspace and the threat in the area, should have confirmed that the event observed was neither a direct threat to their formation or enemy activity of a significant nature."
Let me paraphrase Canada's advice to fighter pilots: When it is reasonable to believe that you're taking enemy surface-to-air fire, don't just respond, but sit there. Take a longer and more patient look. Climb to a safe altitude and range to give the enemy a fighting chance to escape. In addition, acquire a good knowledge of the airspace and the threat in the area, especially if the information is intentionally withheld from your briefing.
Canada's Minister of National Defense, John McCallum, seemed pleased. "The fact that the Americans have laid such serious charges against the two pilots," he observed "has proven that they have taken the deaths of our four soldiers and the injuries of eight very seriously."
A prominent Canadian defense attorney had a different view. Eddie Greenspan considered the manslaughter charges against Majors Schmidt and Umbach an indication that the U.S. military, far from being serious, was looking to shift the blame on the lowest-ranking scapegoats.
"The people who should be charged are the ones who withheld vital information from the pilots," said Greenspan, who successfully defended Pvt. David Brockelbank against a charge of torture and negligent performance of a military duty in Somalia.
"If there is any justice in a military court, the pilots should be acquitted," he said.
(George Jonas is a Canadian columnist and pilot)
