A Purple Heart That Means Justice

[thedrifter]

A Purple Heart That Means Justice

By Ed Offley



It?s not much recompense for a lost military career and a chronic, painful injury that will likely afflict him for the rest of his life.



But retired Lt. Cmdr Jack Daly said last week that he will accept the Purple Heart medal should the U.S. Navy accept the recommendation of the Defense Department to award it to the retired intelligence officer.



What?s unique and ultimately troubling about this case is that it does not stem from the global war on terrorism, or the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, or Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Navy is considering awarding Daly the Purple Heart for an obscure incident six years ago that occurred inside U.S. territorial waters involving a Russian merchant freighter and a joint U.S.-Canadian naval intelligence surveillance mission.



Daly, who was photographing the Russian ship from a Canadian military helicopter, received permanent eye injuries from a laser fired from the ship in April 1997 as the vessel proceeded down the Strait of Juan de Fuca separating Canada?s Vancouver Island and the Olympic peninsula of Washington state. The helicopter pilot, Canadian Capt. Pat Barnes, was also injured by the laser severely enough that his flying career was over.



The Kapitan Man was one of a small fleet of modern cargo vessels that sprang into service in the Pacific not long after the United States ended a long ban against Soviet-bloc ships being able to enter U.S. territorial waters or ports. The Kapitan Man and other vessels ostensibly belonging to the Far Eastern Shipping Co. appeared at the same time that a Cold War-era fleet of Soviet electronic intelligence ships (AGIs), that for decades had loitered just outside the three-mile limit, all vanished.



What happened to Daly and Barnes was never in doubt: Within hours of their surveillance flight on Apr. 4, 1997, each of the two came down with a burning sensation in the eyes and an extreme headache. Years later the chronic conditions would fade, then reappear. Medical specialists concluded that the injuries were laser burns.



Hours after the incident, Canadian intelligence officials filed a ?significant incident report? that went to the the top of both the Canadian and U.S. governments, followed several days later by Daly?s own report to the Office of Naval Intelligence. As recounted by Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz in his book, Betrayal (Regnery, 1999), an ONI official asked Daly why he waited two full days before filing his report. Daly responded, ?Because of the ramifications. This could be construed as a hostile act in U.S. waters involving a Canadian helicopter and a Russian-flagged merchant vessel. We wanted to make sure we had some evidence before we said anything.?



What Daly told Gertz and other reporters, including me, and later testified to Congress, ONI and its Canadian counterparts had been watching the Far Eastern Shipping Co. fleet for years. They had compiled a list of evidence that in addition to carrying freight, the Kapitan Man and its sister ships had been engaged in military intelligence-gathering missions. Eyewitnesses had seen the ship deploying sonobuoys and other devices in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound that are used to locate and track submarines.



One-half of the U.S. Navy?s Trident missile submarine fleet is based in Washington state and muse transit the Strait of Juan de Fuca to reach the open ocean.



Because the ship was entering Puget Sound on a scheduled three-day port visit to Tacoma, Wash., Pentagon officials pressed for a search by a joint Coast Guard-Navy inspection team. As Gertz subsequently learned, the matter quickly became a matter of concern to the White House and State Department, which agreed on the inspection.



Unbeknownst to the Pentagon, Navy or Jack Daly, however, a State Department official tipped off the Russian Embassy to the supposedly secret plans to search the vessel, and ? in Gertz? account of the incident in Betrayal, ?The National Security Agency later confirmed ? officials at the Russian embassy in Washington had directed an official at the Russian consulate in Seattle to have the Kapitan Man?s captain get rid of the laser ?. ?



Several days later while visiting ONI headquarters at the Pentagon, Daly was told by a colleague, ?You not know the pressure I am under to sweep this [incident] under the rug.? Forced to choose between a veteran U.S. naval intelligence officer wounded in a certain hostile act on one hand, and maintaining friendly relations with the Russian government on the other, the White House and State Department had taken sides with Moscow.



The Navy and Defense Department ultimately concluded that Daly and Barnes had indeed been hit by a laser but that there was no evidence it had come from the Russian ship ? ignoring a key fact that one of Daly?s photographs showed a bright red light emanating from the ship.



Daly was ordered to discuss the incident with no one. After two staff members of the House Intelligence Committee interviewed him over the Kapitan Man affair, he was passed over for promotion, given a damaging officer evaluation report and directed to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.



But Daly fought back. The Navy inspector general?s office in 2000 found that a superior officer?s denial of his promotion to lieutenant commander was a wrongful punitive act and overturned the recommendation. At the urging of then-Sen. Robert C. Smith, R-NH, the Defense Department inspector general reviewed the entire incident and last week asked the Navy to consider awarding Daly the Purple Heart medal.



A Navy spokesman this week told DefenseWatch, ?As directed by the Defense Department, we are reviewing Lt. Cmdr. Daly?s record and the information surrounding this incident to make a determination whether or not a Purple Heart is warranted.?



If this unprecedented step does occur, the award will be significantly much more than a kiss-and-make-up gesture between Daly and the service for which he dedicated most of his adult life. After all, the official criteria for the Purple Heart is explicit, according to the DoD?s own directive: ?Awarded to any member of the U.S. armed forces killed or wounded in an armed conflict? [emphasis added].



Those who have followed Daly?s struggle recognize that the Purple Heart not only symbolizes recognition for his injuries, but confirmation of a long-delayed act of justice.



Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com.

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/c....3225279510806

Sempers,

Roger
:marine:


Do You think he deserves the Purple Heart?


Yes


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