Time: Wed Jul 09 03:26:57 1997
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Date: Wed, 09 Jul 1997 03:14:15 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: why do we even question rules of engagement? (fwd)
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<snip>
>
>Dear Friends,
>
>Remember the 18 year old U.S. citizen, after being stalked for 20 minutes,
>who was ultimately killed by a member of a Marine fire team (made up of
>four men).
>
>The following article may interest you.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Brian
>
>Anyone read the Declaration of Independence lately?
>
<snip>
>
>>Today's San Diego Union-Tribune has a feature story that I've attached
>>regarding the Texas incident of the United States Marines on drug
>>patrol, shooting to death an 18 year old U.S. citizen who had an antique
>>rifle. Worst yet information indicates the Marine tracked this young man
>>for twenty minutes. Looks as though the Texas Rangers are conducting
>>their own investigation and a war of words is occurring between the
>>Rangers and U.S. Government.
>>
>>Yesterday I learned that residents in the Santa Cruz mountains in
>>California are upset because low flying helicopters have been orbiting
>>and hovering around their homes disturbing them and even waking them at
>>night. The Sheriff's department there has reported these are military
>>helicopters taking part in a program to locate marijuana growers and
>>their plants.
>>
>>Congress has recently approved the use of 10,000 military troops here in
>>the United States to fight the "so called" drug problem.
>>
>>When our country is sending troops into foreign nations with or without
>>the U.N. participation, we Americans question the strategic and tactical
>>value of whether we should be there. When our politicians have approved
>>the use of our military domestically to fight a problem traditional law
>>enforcement should have jurisdiction of, why don't American's become
>>ALARMED? Think on these things:
>>
>>1. Why aren't more Americans questioning this?
>>2. How does this compare to Nazi Germany's history?
>>3. Understanding that the deployment of resources on our borders to
>> fight the alleged drug war is a beginning logistical step by
>>Washington to build the U.S. military to be used in the United
>>States.
>>4. Watching trends where the military's use will go from drug
>> interdiction to law enforcement which will include asset seizures,
>> searches of home, car and person, etc in the name of fighting crime?
>>
>>You may really think this is far fetched but I urge you to look into the
>>current asset forfeiture laws related to drugs in this county; military
>>training for domestic terrorism; joint agency task forces currently
>>conducting raids and arresting citizens; check points currently operated
>>by Border Patrol with the official reason to stop the illegal
>>immigration problem but these officers are arresting people weekly for
>>vehicle code violations and other crimes.
>>
>>It becomes harder to call our country a democracy if we are quickly
>>becoming a police state. Five years ago did you think we'd be
>>questioning the technicality of "rules of engagement" regarding U.S.
>>military versus U.S. citizens?
>>
>>Best Regards- Darren
>>
>>"The country must have a large and efficient army, one capable of
>>meeting the enemy abroad, or the must expect to meet him at home".
>>Wellington, letter in 1811
>>
>>July 6, 1997
>>1:18 pm
>>
>> [Image] A Marine team on drug watch; an 18-year-old with an antique
>>
>> [Image] rifle; they meet, there is gunfire, there is tragedy
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> July 6, 1997
>>
>> REDFORD, Texas -- This is Big Bend country, sweltering
>> desert carved by the Rio Grande, where the houses are of
>> mud brick, where traffic is a tractor hauling cantaloupes,
>> where everyone knows everyone else.
>>
>> For three days in May, however, the 80 or so folks living
>> here didn't know that four U.S. Marines from San Diego
>> County, well-armed and camouflaged, were lurking among
>> them, watching for drug smugglers from Mexico.
>>
>> By the end of that third day, they all knew.
>>
>> Esequiel Hernandez Jr., a local teen-ager, crossed paths
>> with the Marines amid the mesquite and cactus. What
>> happened next is still a matter of dispute and may become
>> the subject of a Texas trial, but one thing is beyond
>> question:
>>
>> A 22-year-old Marine corporal named Clementino Bañuelos
>> fired a single shot from an M-16 rifle. The 5.56 mm slug
>> punched into the right side of Hernandez's chest, broke
>> apart and ripped through six vital organs. The 18-year-old
>> staggered a few yards near an abandoned house and died.
>>
>> The incident happened amid rising violence along the
>> U.S.-Mexico border and just before Congress approved the
>> use of 10,000 troops in the fight against drugs.
>>
>> Five months earlier, down near Brownsville, an Army Green
>> Beret staked out at the Rio Grande shot and wounded a
>> Mexican national who fired at him. The man would live to
>> plead guilty to assaulting a federal officer.
>>
>> But in the Redford incident, the victim was an American
>> citizen, the first to be intentionally killed by a U.S.
>> soldier on U.S. soil in nearly 30 years.
>>
>> A young man not yet old enough to drink.
>>
>> The Marines, part of an artillery regiment stationed at
>> Camp Pendleton, were watching for "mules" ferrying drugs
>> from Mexico across the Rio Grande.
>>
>> For three days at a time, four-man teams of Marines were to
>> hide amid the cactus, their human form disguised by shaggy
>> camouflage clothing called "Ghillie suits." Hiding and
>> sleeping by day, they were watching a ford of the river by
>> night.
>>
>> They also were watching over the mesas and gullies where
>> young Hernandez took his family's 42 goats each day to
>> graze.
>>
>> Neither the Border Patrol, which had requested the Marines,
>> nor El Paso's Joint Task Force 6 -- the Defense Department
>> office that had arranged for the Camp Pendleton unit to
>> come to Texas -- had told anyone in Redford of the
>> operation.
>>
>> "They were hiding not only from anyone doing anything
>> illegal, but they were hiding from us," says Leonel
>> Ceniceros, a member of the Redford committee trying to sue
>> the government over the matter.
>>
>> First encounter
>>
>> About 6:15 p.m. on a clear evening on May 20, Hernandez and
>> the Marines first encountered each other.
>>
>> The Marines have told military investigators and Texas
>> Rangers that Hernandez fired at them twice with his
>> antique, hand-me-down .22-caliber pump-action rifle and was
>> preparing to fire a third time before they shot back.
>>
>> Hernandez's father, Esequiel Sr., insists he heard only one
>> shot. So do other Redford residents, including Jesus
>> Valenzuela, a neighbor of the Hernandez family who saw
>> young Hernandez only minutes before he was shot.
>>
>> Investigators found spent .22-caliber shells where the
>> Marines said they first saw Hernandez -- and one spent
>> shell in his rifle -- but said that did not confirm that
>> Hernandez fired twice at the Marines.
>>
>> "That's an area where a lot of people go out to shoot at
>> tin cans. There were shells there that weren't even from
>> his gun," says Presidio County District Attorney Albert
>> Valadez.
>>
>> The Marines also said a 30 to 35 mph wind was blowing at
>> the time, making it impossible for them to orally identify
>> themselves to the young man. Locals scoff at this scenario.
>>
>> "You've seen what kind of terrain we have around here. It's
>> all desert, all dust and sand," says Mel LaFollette, a
>> retired Episcopal minister. "You get a 35 mile an hour wind
>> going and you're not even going to be able to see anyone at
>> 100 yards, much less shoot at 'em."
>>
>> More troubling to the Texas Rangers was that the Marines
>> apparently followed Hernandez for 20 minutes before
>> shooting him, according to Ranger Capt. Barry Caver of
>> Midland. The rules of engagement specifically state:
>>
>> "You WILL make every effort to avoid confrontation and
>> armed conflict with civilians."
>>
>> From beginning to end, Hernandez and the Marines never came
>> closer than 200 yards.
>>
>> By the end of this month, the case will go to the Presidio
>> County grand jury, which could file felony charges against
>> Bañuelos and/or the others, says Valadez.
>>
>> The Hernandez family is filing a wrongful-death suit. And a
>> group of Redford residents is trying to mount a
>> class-action lawsuit against the government.
>>
>> At Camp Pendleton, the Marines released a two-page
>> statement last week that read in part:
>>
>> "The incident is still under investigation by the U.S.
>> military and civilian law enforcement officials. The U.S.
>> Marine Corps is committed to the full factual investigation
>> into all of the events related to this tragic incident so
>> that it is never repeated."
>>
>> An angry town
>>
>> That sentiment is shared, angrily, in Redford and over in
>> neighboring Presidio, where Hernandez had attended high
>> school.
>>
>> "The way it looks to us, a real good kid was just
>> murdered," says Rose Adamson, a Presidio resident.
>>
>> Bañuelos is not talking. But along the river where
>> Hernandez lived and died, people are talking, and acting.
>>
>> From his trailer home, LaFollette, known locally as Father
>> Mel, is spearheading the class-action suit. He and a
>> handful of neighbors have formed the Redford Citizens
>> Committee for Justice.
>>
>> To LaFollette, the Hernandez shooting symbolizes years of
>> official disregard for this tiny community.
>>
>> "The school board doesn't care about Redford. The county
>> doesn't care about Redford," he says. "Now we've been
>> invaded by the Marines and a kid has been killed."
>>
>> For Hispanic committee members like rancher Jesus
>> Valenzuela, it's the ultimate form of what he considers
>> government harassment.
>>
>> "You can't go out of your house without the Border Patrol
>> asking you questions, without them looking at you with
>> binoculars," he says.
>>
>> It's hard to imagine Redford as a site for controversy of
>> any sort, this dot along Farm Road 170 en route to Big Bend
>> National Park. There's no gas station, no stoplight, no
>> McDonald's.
>>
>> The big news here usually involves announcements about the
>> annual Onion Festival or the latest pesticide approved for
>> use against the sweet potato whitefly.
>>
>> Still, it is a place rich in history and heritage, even if
>> it is dirt poor in almost everything else.
>>
>> Ask someone how long his family has lived in this scattered
>> dust stop and the answer may take you back more than a
>> century. Remains of wagon trails run just off the pavement.
>>
>> When someone here tells you that his
>> great-great-grandfather was kidnapped by Apaches, he's not
>> kidding.
>>
>> The Mexican town of Ojinaga lies just across the river from
>> Presidio. Pancho Villa fought a battle here during the
>> Mexican Revolution, which prompted the U.S. Army to install
>> a fort at Redford to discourage him from going any farther
>> north.
>>
>> "So you see, we've been run over by the military before,"
>> says LaFollette.
>>
>> If Redford seems an unlikely place for a major incident,
>> Esequiel Hernandez Jr. seemed even less likely to be its
>> victim. He is described as an introverted teen-ager with a
>> love of horses and history and culture.
>>
>> When his high school started a Spanish folkloric dance
>> class, he was the only boy who signed up. The kid who would
>> later be described as shy, meek and polite by his teachers
>> still managed to persuade five other boys to eventually
>> join him.
>>
>> His only known brush with the law occurred in February, and
>> that was accidental, according to Joe Harris, acting Border
>> Patrol chief in the Marfa sector, which includes Redford.
>>
>> Hernandez and a friend were out grazing Hernandez's goats
>> and "plinking" at tins cans with Hernandez's .22-caliber
>> rifle. Their shots passed close to a pair of Border Patrol
>> agents, who hurriedly left the area as soon as they heard
>> the shots.
>>
>> Seeing the agents emerge from the desert scrub, Hernandez
>> and his friend followed them back to their station and
>> apologized for firing in their area.
>>
>> "As far as we were concerned, the incident was closed,"
>> says Harris. Asked if it was the Border Patrol's belief
>> that Hernandez was deliberately shooting at the agents,
>> Harris says emphatically, "No, that is not true."
>>
>> The Pentagon insists that armed troops manning border
>> observation posts are thoroughly trained on the rules of
>> engagement months in advance, from their commanders on
>> down. Those rules prohibit soldiers from doing much more
>> than defending themselves if attacked.
>>
>> No escape
>>
>> None of that offers much comfort, however, to the father of
>> Esequiel Hernandez Jr.
>>
>> Today, Esequiel Hernandez Sr. walks the same desert mesas
>> his son walked and tries to get on with his life at his
>> adobe compound, wiping the brow under his battered baseball
>> cap. He has a wife and seven other kids to think about,
>> three sons and four daughters, a slew of nieces and
>> nephews. There are horses to water, trucks to keep running.
>>
>> But there is no escape. There are too many reminders. Foil
>> packets of military rations and strips of burlap the
>> Marines used to form their shaggy camouflage still litter
>> the desert floor, as do those bright yellow strips of
>> barrier tape now so familiar to big-city dwellers.
>>
>> It's all there, within a single sweep of his vision.
>>
>> The adobe house he built himself in which his son "Juni"
>> was born.
>>
>> The spot above the river where his son and the Marines
>> first saw each other.
>>
>> The abandoned house near where his son was shot.
>>
>> The Baptist Church where his funeral was held, attended by
>> some 800 people, 10 times the population of Redford.
>>
>> The rough-hewn cemetery where his son lies buried.
>>
>> And every time a television crew or newspaper reporter
>> pulls up in front of his place for one more interview, one
>> more photo, the wound on a father's soul rips open one more
>> time.
>>
>> "It hurts, it hurts and I cry," he says softly.
>>
>> Then he turns back to his goats.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> Copyright 1997 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
>>
>
>
========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell : Counselor at Law, federal witness
B.A., Political Science, UCLA; M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine
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