Unraveling a String of Veteran Marine Suicides, One by One

[angelburst29]

An indepth article on a Marine Regiment, that had returned from Afghanistan, seven years ago and it's high incidence in "suicides."

With a follow-up article, with interviews of many of the Veterans and how they have formed their own support group.

Unraveling a String of Veteran Marine Suicides, One by One
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/insider/unraveling-a-string-of-veteran-marine-suicides-one-by-one.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

In the 105-degree heat of a Las Vegas parking lot last June, a handful of infantry veterans dressed in black started gathering by the side door of a small church.

They were waiting for the start of a funeral for the latest suicide in a string of deaths since their infantry unit, the Second Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment, had returned from Afghanistan seven years before. There had been at least one death per year. In most years there were more. The men were in their late 20s. Almost all were out of the military. Often the funerals were the only time members of the old battalion got together.

I stood waiting with them. I had been reporting their story long enough that when anything happened, my inbox filled up.

As we waited, a rental car pulled up. A Marine, now working as a police officer, got out and came over to hug the other men waiting in the sun.

One made a grim joke: “Time for our annual reunion.”

My journey with the men of the Second Battalion had started six months before with a disagreement over coffee with a sniper. I had just met the former member from the battalion and I asked him what I always ask young veterans: “What should the media be reporting about that we are not?”

He didn’t hesitate: suicide.

“Look,” he said, “all I know is, in my battalion there have been 12 suicides since we came back, and it appears to be getting worse.”

From covering suicide, I knew it was an event so rare there are usually only a dozen per 100,000, so 12 deaths immediately struck me as high. I did a quick calculation that showed the rate was several times what was typical, even among young male veterans.

The high rate drove me to start looking into the story. As I did, the questions kept coming.

Those interviews showed a deep current of pain in the unit. I had started out trying to learn about the dead, but with each call I learned how wounded many of the living still were. Many were confused, alienated, depressed. Several had tried suicide. I talked to three men who had put a gun to their head and pulled the trigger. One, realizing his gun had misfired, pulled the trigger again.

I realized the story was not about the dead, but the living, and how they were working to try to save one another and themselves.


In Unit Stalked by Suicide, Veterans Try to Save One Another
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/us/marine-battalion-veterans-scarred-by-suicides-turn-to-one-another-for-help.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1

Almost seven years after the deployment, suicide is spreading through the old unit like a virus. Of about 1,200 Marines who deployed with the 2/7 in 2008, at least 13 have killed themselves, two while on active duty, the rest after they left the military. The resulting suicide rate for the group is nearly four times the rate for young male veterans as a whole and 14 times that for all Americans.

The deaths started a few months after the Marines returned from the war in Afghanistan. A corporal put on his dress uniform and shot himself in his driveway. A former sergeant shot himself in front of his girlfriend and mother. An ex-sniper who pushed others to seek help for post-traumatic stress disorder shot himself while alone in his apartment.

The problem has grown over time. More men from the battalion killed themselves in 2014 — four — than in any previous year. Veterans of the unit, tightly connected by social media, sometimes learn of the deaths nearly as soon as they happen. In November, a 2/7 veteran of three combat tours posted a photo of his pistol on Snapchat with a note saying, “I miss you all.” Minutes later, he killed himself.

The most recent suicide was in May, when Eduardo Bojorquez, no relation to Manny, overdosed on pills in his car. Men from the battalion converged from all over the country for his funeral in Las Vegas, filing silently past the grave, tossing roses that thumped on the plain metal coffin like drum beats.

“When the suicides started, I felt angry,” Matt Havniear, a onetime lance corporal who carried a rocket launcher in the war, said in a phone interview from Oregon. “The next few, I would just be confused and sad. Then at about the 10th, I started feeling as if it was inevitable — that it is going to get us all and there is nothing we could do to stop it.”

Feeling abandoned, members of the battalion have turned to a survival strategy they learned at war: depending on one another.
Doing what the government has not, they have used free software and social media to create a quick-response system that allows them to track, monitor and intervene with some of their most troubled comrades.

By the end of the deployment, 20 Marines in the battalion had been killed and 140 had been wounded. Many lost limbs. Some were badly burned; others were so battered by blasts that they can scarcely function day to day.

Others returned unscathed, but unable to fall in with civilian life. Members of the battalion say what they brought home from combat is more complex than just PTSD. Many regret things they did — or failed to do. Some feel betrayed that the deep sacrifices made in combat seem to have achieved little. Others cannot reconcile the stark intensity of war with home’s mannered expectations, leaving them alienated among family and friends. It is not just symptoms like sleeplessness or flashbacks, but an injury to their sense of self.


(Detailed interview with the remaining Marine Veteran's of the Battalion, their stories, the non-help or delayed processes of the VA and the ways - they have tried to cope.

 

[Palinurus]

Thanks for finding and sharing this, angelburst29.

If it's not a matter of collective 'greenbauming' of some sort or another, those devastating experiences must have come very close to individual 'soul smashing' or to other forms of utter and complete depersonalization. OSIT.

 

[angelburst29]

If it's not a matter of collective 'greenbauming' of some sort or another, those devastating experiences must have come very close to individual 'soul smashing' or to other forms of utter and complete depersonalization. OSIT.

U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html?_r=2

September 20, 2015 - Dan Quinn was relieved of his Special Forces command after a fight with a U.S.-backed militia leader who had a boy as a sex slave chained to his bed.

KABUL, Afghanistan — In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.

“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”

Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.

The policy has endured as American forces have recruited and organized Afghan militias to help hold territory against the Taliban. But soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages — and doing little when they began abusing children.

“The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,” said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. “But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.”

The policy of instructing soldiers to ignore child sexual abuse by their Afghan allies is coming under new scrutiny, particularly as it emerges that service members like Captain Quinn have faced discipline, even career ruin, for disobeying it.

After the beating, the Army relieved Captain Quinn of his command and pulled him from Afghanistan. He has since left the military.

Four years later, the Army is also trying to forcibly retire Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, a Special Forces member who joined Captain Quinn in beating up the commander.

“The Army contends that Martland and others should have looked the other way (a contention that I believe is nonsense),” Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who hopes to save Sergeant Martland’s career, wrote last week to the Pentagon’s inspector general.

In Sergeant Martland’s case, the Army said it could not comment because of the Privacy Act.

When asked about American military policy, the spokesman for the American command in Afghanistan, Col. Brian Tribus, wrote in an email: “Generally, allegations of child sexual abuse by Afghan military or police personnel would be a matter of domestic Afghan criminal law.” He added that “there would be no express requirement that U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan report it.” An exception, he said, is when rape is being used as a weapon of war.

The American policy of nonintervention is intended to maintain good relations with the Afghan police and militia units the United States has trained to fight the Taliban. It also reflects a reluctance to impose cultural values in a country where pederasty is rife, particularly among powerful men, for whom being surrounded by young teenagers can be a mark of social status. (?*%#%&#@*??)

Some soldiers believed that the policy made sense, even if they were personally distressed at the sexual predation they witnessed or heard about.

“The bigger picture was fighting the Taliban,” a former Marine lance corporal reflected. “It wasn’t to stop molestation.”

Still, the former lance corporal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid offending fellow Marines, recalled feeling sickened the day he entered a room on a base and saw three or four men lying on the floor with children between them. “I’m not a hundred percent sure what was happening under the sheet, but I have a pretty good idea of what was going on,” he said.

But the American policy of treating child sexual abuse as a cultural issue has often alienated the villages whose children are being preyed upon. The pitfalls of the policy emerged clearly as American Special Forces soldiers began to form Afghan Local Police militias to hold villages that American forces had retaken from the Taliban in 2010 and 2011.

By the summer of 2011, Captain Quinn and Sergeant Martland, both Green Berets on their second tour in northern Kunduz Province, began to receive dire complaints about the Afghan Local Police units they were training and supporting.

First, they were told, one of the militia commanders raped a 14- or 15-year-old girl whom he had spotted working in the fields. Captain Quinn informed the provincial police chief, who soon levied punishment. “He got one day in jail, and then she was forced to marry him,” Mr. Quinn said.

When he asked a superior officer what more he could do, he was told that he had done well to bring it up with local officials but that there was nothing else to be done. “We’re being praised for doing the right thing, and a guy just got away with raping a 14-year-old girl,” Mr. Quinn said.

Village elders grew more upset at the predatory behavior of American-backed commanders. After each case, Captain Quinn would gather the Afghan commanders and lecture them on human rights.

Soon another commander absconded with his men’s wages. Mr. Quinn said he later heard that the commander had spent the money on dancing boys. Another commander murdered his 12-year-old daughter in a so-called honor killing for having kissed a boy. “There were no repercussions,” Mr. Quinn recalled.

In September 2011, an Afghan woman, visibly bruised, showed up at an American base with her son, who was limping. One of the Afghan police commanders in the area, Abdul Rahman, had abducted the boy and forced him to become a sex slave, chained to his bed, the woman explained. When she sought her son’s return, she herself was beaten. Her son had eventually been released, but she was afraid it would happen again, she told the Americans on the base.

She explained that because “her son was such a good-looking kid, he was a status symbol” coveted by local commanders, recalled Mr. Quinn, who did not speak to the woman directly but was told about her visit when he returned to the base from a mission later that day.

So Captain Quinn summoned Abdul Rahman and confronted him about what he had done. The police commander acknowledged that it was true, but brushed it off. When the American officer began to lecture about “how you are held to a higher standard if you are working with U.S. forces, and people expect more of you,” the commander began to laugh.

“I picked him up and threw him onto the ground,” Mr. Quinn said. Sergeant Martland joined in, he said. “I did this to make sure the message was understood that if he went back to the boy, that it was not going to be tolerated,” Mr. Quinn recalled.

There is disagreement over the extent of the commander’s injuries. Mr. Quinn said they were not serious, which was corroborated by an Afghan official who saw the commander afterward.

(The commander, Abdul Rahman, was killed two years ago in a Taliban ambush. His brother said in an interview that his brother had never raped the boy, but was the victim of a false accusation engineered by his enemies.)

Sergeant Martland, who received a Bronze Star for valor for his actions during a Taliban ambush, wrote in a letter to the Army this year that he and Mr. Quinn “felt that morally we could no longer stand by and allow our A.L.P. to commit atrocities,” referring to the Afghan Local Police.

The father of Lance Corporal Buckley believes the policy of looking away from sexual abuse was a factor in his son’s death, and he has filed a lawsuit to press the Marine Corps for more information about it.

Lance Corporal Buckley and two other Marines were killed in 2012 by one of a large entourage of boys living at their base with an Afghan police commander named Sarwar Jan.

Mr. Jan had long had a bad reputation; in 2010, two Marine officers managed to persuade the Afghan authorities to arrest him following a litany of abuses, including corruption, support for the Taliban and child abduction. But just two years later, the police commander was back with a different unit, working at Lance Corporal Buckley’s post, Forward Operating Base Delhi, in Helmand Province.

Lance Corporal Buckley had noticed that a large entourage of “tea boys” — domestic servants who are sometimes pressed into sexual slavery — had arrived with Mr. Jan and moved into the same barracks, one floor below the Marines. He told his father about it during his final call home.

Word of Mr. Jan’s new position also reached the Marine officers who had gotten him arrested in 2010. One of them, Maj. Jason Brezler, dashed out an email to Marine officers at F.O.B. Delhi, warning them about Mr. Jan and attaching a dossier about him.

The warning was never heeded. About two weeks later, one of the older boys with Mr. Jan — around 17 years old — grabbed a rifle and killed Lance Corporal Buckley and the other Marines.

Lance Corporal Buckley’s father still agonizes about whether the killing occurred because of the sexual abuse by an American ally. “As far as the young boys are concerned, the Marines are allowing it to happen and so they’re guilty by association,” Mr. Buckley said. “They don’t know our Marines are sick to their stomachs.”

The one American service member who was punished in the investigation that followed was Major Brezler, who had sent the email warning about Mr. Jan, his lawyers said. In one of Major Brezler’s hearings, Marine Corps lawyers warned that information about the police commander’s penchant for abusing boys might be classified. The Marine Corps has initiated proceedings to discharge Major Brezler.

Mr. Jan appears to have moved on, to a higher-ranking police command in the same province. In an interview, he denied keeping boys as sex slaves or having any relationship with the boy who killed the three Marines. “No, it’s all untrue,” Mr. Jan said. But people who know him say he still suffers from “a toothache problem,” a euphemism here for child sexual abuse.

 

[angelburst29]

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,39620.0.html

Sorry Jeep, looks like both of us were on the same wave length in Posting (the above) article.

Guess, the Universe wants "the Truth" exposed!

No More WAR!

 

[angelburst29]

An update on Sgt 1st Class Charles Martland. The U.S. Army has reversed it's decision and Sgt. Martland will retain his Army status.

In that regard, it's good news but on the down side - I wonder what the odds are, if he's placed back in active service that "an accident" will be waiting for him? Pat Tillman, killed in Afghanistan in 2004, comes to mind.

Army retains decorated Green Beret it planned to kick out over confronting Afghan child rapist
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/04/29/army-retains-decorated-green-beret-it-planned-to-kick-out-over-confronting-afghan-child-rapist.html

In a stunning reversal, the U.S. Army decided late Thursday to retain a decorated Green Beret it had planned to kick out after he physically confronted a local Afghan commander accused of raping a boy over the course of many days.

Sgt 1st Class Charles Martland, confirmed the Army's decision to retain him when reached by Fox News, who has been covering the story in depth for the past eight months and first broke the story of the Army's decision in August to kick out Martland over the incident, which occurred in northern Afghanistan in 2011.

"I am real thankful for being able to continue to serve," said Martland when reached on the telephone by Fox News. "I appreciate everything Congressman Duncan Hunter and his Chief of Staff, Joe Kasper did for me."

As first reported by Fox News, while deployed to Kunduz Province, Afghanistan, Martland and his team leader confronted a local police commander in 2011 accused of raping an Afghan boy and beating his mother. When the man laughed off the incident, they shoved him to the ground.

Martland and his team leader were later removed from the base, and eventually sent home from Afghanistan. The U.S. Army has not confirmed the specifics of Martland's separation from service citing privacy reasons, but a “memorandum of reprimand” from October 2011 obtained by Fox News makes clear that Martland was criticized by the brass for his intervention after the alleged rape. Asked for comment in September 2015, an Army spokesman reiterated, "the U.S. Army is unable to confirm the specifics of his separation due to the Privacy Act."

An Army spokesman said Thursday that Martland's status has been changed, allowing him to stay in the Army in a statement to Fox News.

"In SFC Martland’s case, the Army Board for Correction of Military Records determination modified a portion of one of SFC Martland’s evaluation reports and removed him from the QMP list, which will allow him to remain in the Army," said Lt. Col. Jerry Pionk.

Martland's former Special Forces team leader, now out of the Army and living in New York said the Army is a better place with Martland in its ranks.

"This is not just a great victory for SFC Martland and his family- I’m just as happy that he can continue to serve our country and inspire his peers, subordinates and officers to be better soldiers. Charles makes every soldier he comes in contact with better and the Army is undoubtedly a better organization with SFC Martland still in its ranks," said Martland's former team leader Danny Quinn when reached by Fox News Thursday.

Quinn is a 2003 graduate of West Point.

"I am thrilled beyond words that my brother is able to continue his career of service to country. The relentless defense of Charles as a soldier and a man of integrity by his friends, family and colleagues sent a clear message that abhorrent decision making made in the interest of self promotion and lacking common sense will not be tolerated. Charles is where he belongs. He is an elite warrior. He belongs on the front lines. Our enemies last vision in this life should be of Martland's face. They have earned that right," said Casey a former Special Forces teammate of Martland's who asked that only his first name be used due to the sensitive of his current work.

The American Center for Law and Justice, who was involved with a writing campaign to save keep Martland in the Army, called the decision a “significant victory."

“The decision by the Army to retain this hero is long overdue and represents a significant victory for SFC Martland,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. “Justice has been served. The U.S. military has a moral obligation to stop child sexual abuse and exonerate SFC Martland for defending a child from rape. The Army finally took the corrective action needed and this is not only a victory for SFC Martland, but for the American people as well.”

"The Army did the right thing and we won -- the American people, won," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a phone interview with Fox News. "Martland is who we want out there."

Martland grew up south of Boston, in Milton, Mass. An all-state football player in high school, he set his sights on playing college football after graduating in 2001. Martland went for the Florida State University team, which just finished a season ranked fourth in the nation.

He made the team, impressing legendary head coach Bobby Bowden and famed defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews. Still, he often remained on the sidelines.

When Pat Tillman, a former NFL football player who volunteered for the Army Rangers, was killed in Afghanistan in 2004, he saw Tillman's sacrifice as motivation to apply for another elite program.

Martland dropped out of college and graduated in 2006 from Special Forces Qualification Course, one of the U.S. military's toughest training programs. Over the years he became a jumpmaster, combat diver and sniper.

After a deployment to Iraq in 2008, he deployed to Afghanistan in January 2010 as part of a 12-man unit. He and his team found themselves fighting large numbers of Taliban militants in volatile Kunduz Province.

In 2014, three years after being sent home from Afghanistan, Martland was runner-up Special Warfare Training Group Instructor of the Year from a pool of 400 senior leaders in Special Forces.

 

[angelburst29]

It doesn't surprise me - that it took a year to update this situation?

Last fall, the Navy Department had a controversial disciplinary case before it: Maj. Jason C. Brezler had been asked by Marine colleagues to submit all the information he had about an influential Afghan police chief suspected of abusing children. Brezler sent a classified document in response over an unclassified Yahoo email server, and he self-reported the mistake soon after. But the Marine Corps recommended that he be discharged for mishandling classified material.

Navy analysis found that a Marine’s case would draw attention to Afghan ‘sex slaves’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/09/01/navy-analysis-found-that-a-marines-case-would-draw-attention-to-afghan-sex-slaves/

The Navy Department, which oversees the Marine Corps, had the ability to uphold or overturn the decision. However, rather than just looking at the merits of the case, Navy officials also assessed that holding new hearings on the case would renew attention on the scandal surrounding child sex abuse in Afghanistan, according to military documents newly disclosed in federal court.

The documents, filed Tuesday in a lawsuit by Brezler against the Navy Department and Marine Corps, also show that Marine and Navy officials in Afghanistan were aware in 2012 of allegations of abuse against children by the Afghan police chief but that the chief was allowed to keep his position in Helmand province anyway. This became a major issue after a teenage boy who worked for the chief — and allegedly was abused by him — opened fire on a U.S. base Aug. 10, 2012, killing three Marines and badly wounding a fourth.

The five-page legal review, written last October by Lt. Cmdr. Nicholas Kassotis for Vice Adm. James W. Crawford III, the judge advocate general of the Navy, recommended that the Marine Corps’ actions against Brezler be upheld. Calling for a new administrative review, known as a Board of Inquiry, would delay actions in the case another six to nine months and possibly increase attention on the case, “especially in the aftermath of significant media attention to the allegations regarding the practice of keeping personal sex slaves in Afghanistan,” Kassotis wrote. A month later in November, acting assistant Navy secretary Scott Lutterloh upheld the Marine Corps’ decision.

Brezler’s case has drawn new attention in recent months as critics of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have compared her email controversy to Brezler’s, noting that the officer’s military career is on the brink of being over. He sued the Marine Corps and Navy Department in 2014, saying that he was a victim of reprisal for discussing his case with a member of Congress, and it has languished in court since. Brezler wants to block his dismissal, which is now on hold.

Navy and Marine Corps officials declined to discuss the case or the new documents filed in it, citing the pending litigation. A spokesman for the Justice Department, which is handling the lawsuit for the government, also declined to comment.

The Navy Department’s observation about Brezler’s case was made as another U.S. service member’s career was in jeopardy because of his response to alleged child sex abuse in Afghanistan. In that instance, Army Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland made headlines after the Army decided last year to involuntary separate him from the service because of a reprimand he had received for hitting an Afghan Local Police (ALP) official in 2011 after the man laughed about kidnapping and raping a teenage boy. The Army overturned its decision in April and allowed Martland, a Green Beret, to stay in the military after Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.) intervened.

The Martland case opened a dialogue in which numerous veterans of the war in Afghanistan said they were told to ignore instances of child sex abuse by their Afghan colleagues. The Defense Department’s inspector general then opened an investigation into the sexual assault reports and how they were handled by U.S. military officials who knew about them.

Brezler’s attorney, Michael J. Bowe, said Wednesday in an email that his client is entitled to a “real review” of his case — “not a whitewash designed to avoid uncomfortable press stories about child rape by our ‘partners’ in Afghanistan.

“Our service members deserve better,” he added.

A spokesman for Hunter, Joe Kasper, said that the Navy Department is “right to be worried about granting Brezler a new, impartial review of his case” because it “can’t sustain a case based on the facts and the moral imperative” that prompted Brezler to send the warning to other Marines that landed him in legal trouble.

“The Navy surely watched the Army struggle with the Martland case, and the Army was ultimately left no choice but to retain Martland,” Kasper said. “The Brezler case is no different in that, at its foundation, there’s a corrupt Afghan commander that exploits children. It’s something that Americans won’t tolerate, and good luck to the Navy as it tries to explain that Brezler was better to keep quiet, avoiding scrutiny altogether, than attempt to save several Marines that were killed. On that aspect alone, the Navy loses.”

Acting Defense Undersecretary Brian P. McKeon, said in a letter to Hunter last month that Gen. John “Mick” Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, reaffirmed in May “tactical guidance” for U.S. troops that directs them to report potential instances of sex abuse to their commanders.

“General Nicholson also issued a specific human rights policy directing further education of U.S. and coalition military personnel on their responsibilities to report human rights violations,” McKeon wrote.

The Marines killed by the police chief’s servant were Staff Sgt. Scott Dickinson, Cpl. Richard Rivera Jr. and Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley. A fourth Marine suffered five gunshot wounds but survived. The teenager who killed them has been identified by the Marine Corps as Ainuddin Khudairaham. He is said to have bragged about the attack afterward, boasting “I just did jihad.”

A 300-page, declassified copy of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) probe of Brezler’s case filed this week as part of his lawsuit said that an officer in Afghanistan, Capt. Brian Donlon, sought information about Sarwar Jan because he recalled being told that he was “a bad guy who raped and tortured the people.” The police chief and Brezler had encountered each other previously in another part of Helmand province, Now Zad district, and Brezler had helped get him removed from his job.

Donlon did not open the file Brezler attached to an email sent from the United States and reported his violation, Donlon told investigators afterward. Donlon sent an email to Brezler informing him the document he sent was classified, and then both Marines reported it to their respective commanding officers.

Marine officials have said that while Brezler did send a classified email to Donlon, he actually faced scrutiny from the Marine Corps because he had other classified documents illegally stored that he planned to use while writing a book.

Brezler’s attorney has countered that virtually no instances of inadvertently spilling classified information have led to penalties as stiff as his, and that if he had not voluntarily turned over his electronics after reporting his violation, he would not be in trouble now.