Just when you thought you had seen it all in regards to corruption someone finds a new way to screw taxpayers for his own benefit:
YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — The former captain of the destroyer USS Mustin, a Navy special agent and a Singapore-based defense contractor have been arrested in connection with an alleged bribery scheme to swap classified ship information for luxury travel and prostitutes, U.S. prosecutors said Wednesday.
Cmdr. Michael Vannak Khem Misiewicz, a captain-select, who commanded Mustin and later served as deputy operations officer aboard the USS Blue Ridge for the Yokosuka-based U.S. 7th Fleet, was arrested Monday in Colorado, where he works at Peterson Air Force Base.
Naval Criminal Investigative Service supervisory agent John Bertrand Beliveau II was arrested in Virginia, and Leonard Glenn Francis, head of Glenn Defense Marine Asia, or GDMA, was arrested in San Diego on Monday, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Diego.
Misiewicz steered the aircraft carriers USS George Washington and USS John C. Stennis, the USS Blue Ridge and other ships to so-called “pearl ports” — international ports with lax oversight — where Francis’ company could overcharge the Navy for millions of dollars in services to moored ships, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday. [Stars and Stripes]
You can read more at the link but you would think it would be in the best interest of the Navy to use ports that cost less to dock and resupply at in the first place?
Even though there had been building renovations on barracks and such, the last flood was pretty much the last nail in the coffin for Camp Mobile.
Prior to the flood, MWR had taken possession of most of the buildings on the installation (bulk and frozen storage, automotive shop and a coin operated car wash which no one maintained). CECOM and ACAP also had offices there.
The runway is still in use, and occasionally units set up their TOC’s on the installation during exercises, but other than that, basically the only occupants are the security guards at the gate. It looks like a great place to film a Walking Dead episode.
SEOUL — It was a chilly Saturday night in early March when the first round of shots came, just loud enough to draw attention but too fleeting to cause panic among the late-night revelers in Itaewon, perhaps the city’s most infamous party district.
Kim Gi-wan, 26, had just said goodbye to his friends and was walking down the street when he heard them in quick succession. People nearby looked around in surprise, but nobody screamed. No one dove for cover or even stopped walking.
The idea of an intentional shooting in a country where gun ownership is virtually nonexistent was so unthinkable that most people just shrugged off the noise, including Kim.
“I thought maybe there was a military exercise going on,” said the salesman, who works at an Itaewon hip-hop clothing store that advertises “big sizes” for foreigners. Even though the sprawling U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan was just a short walk away, he had never heard shots from the base, so he assumed South Korean troops were training nearby.
A second round of fire followed further down the street, out of Kim’s hearing. Police quickly got an emergency call from a panicked man who claimed foreigners were shooting at him.
What followed was a commander’s nightmare — a string of worsening errors that made front-page news for days. It epitomized the microscope that all U.S. servicemembers, many still in their teens or early 20s and away from home for the first time, live under in South Korea.
As it turned out, there were no real bullets, just plastic pellets shot into a crowd from a car carrying three soldiers; one said it was all “for fun.” A military official called it “horseplay that led to greater consequences.”
But in a country where any misconduct by American troops is big news, things went downhill fast with a series of bad decisions.When it was over, one soldier underwent chest surgery to remove a bullet fired by a South Korean police officer. And South Koreans were left to chew on the latest in a decades-long string of offenses by U.S. troops that many feel show disdain for their country and their powerlessness to prosecute such cases. [Stars and Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link but there is really nothing new in the article. It just provides a good summary of what happened in one article. I do wish though the S&S would confront people who claim Korea is powerless to prosecute such cases despite the fact the few GIs who do commit crimes like the idiots in this article are prosecuted and punished by Korean courts.
If you are someone who is borderline on the tape test the Army is currently focusing on getting rid of you regardless of how fit you are:
Faced with a $37 billion budget shortfall and a significant reduction in troops, the Army is “trimming the fat” by reinstating a program that sends home soldiers who fail to meet body-fat standards, Fort Gordon officials said this week.
The Pentagon revised its body-fat regulations last month in an attempt to “return to the basics” and build a “leaner and meaner force” that includes only soldiers in peak physical condition, said Master Sgt. Christopher Wallace, the training coordinator for the Signal Corps’ Regimental Noncommissioned Officer Academy.
Though height and weight requirements remain unchanged, the Body Composition Program gives commanders the power to flag overweight soldiers and require them to see a dietician, develop an action plan and go through monthly assessments.
The Army was more lenient when soldiers were needed in Afghanistan and Iraq, Wallace said, and overseas command stations did not provide adequate space for troops to exercise.
Now, the Army wants “top-notch recruits who meet and beat the standard, instead of just barely making it,” Wallace said.
First Sgt. Roberto Berry, the head of the NCO Academy at Fort Gordon, said the Army began phasing in changes in November. Looming ahead were sequestration, which left a $37 billion hole in the Defense Department’s budget, and news that troop levels would be cut by 80,000 soldiers by the end of fiscal year 2017. [The Augusta Chronicle]
I wonder how much of a choice these defectors had in regards to returning to North Korea after they were caught in Laos?:
North Korea on Wednesday paraded before the state press nine young defectors who were coerced into returning from Laos last month. The teenagers, who are believed to be orphans, recited declarations of loyalty to the repressive state and accused South Korea of attempting to kidnap them.
The official KCNA news agency on Thursday said the young defectors “returned to the arms of their fatherland” after being tricked into leaving the North by the “puppet regime” of South Korea.
The young defectors had attempted to reach South Korea via China and Laos, but were taken back to North Korea late last month by North Korean agents, who apparently badgered them into submission in a Lao detention center. [Chosun Ilbo]
Two 2nd Infantry Division soldiers should be thankful they got off light with just fines after assaulting Korean policemen in two separate incidents:
Two U.S. Forces Korea servicemembers have been fined for attacking South Korean police officers and destroying property in separate St. Patrick’s Day incidents in Seoul.
A Camp Hovey-based private was fined 5 million won, about $4,400, for damaging property in a bar bathroom in the popular Hongdae entertainment district around 3 a.m., then punching in the face the police officer who tried to stop him, according to the Seoul Central District Court.
The 2nd Infantry Division would not release information about the case or the soldier’s identity, including his name.
The 2ID identified a soldier involved in a similar incident two hours later. Sgt. Jason Carmona of the 2nd Combat Aviation Brigade, was fined 3 million won, about $2,640, by Seoul Central District Court last month. He had been charged with damaging official goods and interfering with a public official in the exercise of duty.
A court spokesman said the sergeant, who is stationed in Seongnam, home to K-16 Air Base, was arguing with a Pakistani man in front of the Seogyo police station when South Korean police took the Pakistani into the station.
Carmona, 32, tried to go in, too, but was stopped by an officer. He then tore the doorknob off a gate, entered and pushed an officer down the stairs. The head detective of the Mapo police department said the officer was not seriously injured. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link, but both these guys committed their crimes after curfew so they have likely been given Field Grade Article 15′s for that which means they likely received worse punishment than what the Korean courts gave them.
The Songtan Entertainment District outside Osan Air Base has been declared off-limits for 18 hours every day starting Friday because of planned protests by area club owners over the decision to prohibit servicemembers from frequenting a half-dozen bars found to be promoting prostitution.
The entertainment district is to be off-limits from 11 a.m. to 5 a.m.
“This action is necessary to ensure the safety and welfare of military and civilian personnel and family members, and to avert incidents and provocations detrimental to the alliance between the United States and Republic of Korea,” said a statement posted on Facebook and attributed to the installation command.
Songtan is home to dozens of so-called “juicy bars” where primarily Philippine women are employed as hostesses, flirting with servicemembers and trying to get them to buy them expensive juice drinks.
While flirting is as far as things go at some juicy bars, others are notorious for forcing their hostesses to prostitute themselves when they fall short of drink-sale quotas.
A spokeswoman for the 51st Fighter Wing command said the bar owners’ association has said that between 50 and 150 supporters will protest for as many as 30 days.
“To ensure the safety and welfare of our service members, the Songtan Entertainment District will be temporarily placed off-limits for the duration of the protests,” said a release from the command. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link, but the S&S had to of course once again make the claim that the juicy girls are forced to prostitute themselves. This may have been true over a decade ago, but now the vast majority of the juicy girls know exactly what they are getting into when they come to Korea. With that said what is happening may be a reaction to the fact that the special interests have been looking to go after the US military bases overseas for promoting human trafficking. Remember what Anu Baghwati from SWAN said recently:
At bases overseas, there’s commercial exploitation of women thriving around them, women being trafficked,” she said. “You can’t expect to treat women as one of your own when, in same breath, you as a young soldier are being encouraged to exploit women on the outside of that base.”
Now that they have lost the sexual assault fight the special interests need to do something else in the meantime to go after the military and whats better than to demagogue the juicy girl issue? So the Osan AB leadership may be trying to get these clubs to clean up their act. The rumor mill though has been suggesting that these guys were supposedly brought on base and interrogated in way the bar owners thought was inappropriate. Then you add in last year’s Osan Handcuff Incident as well as past incidents such as the Osan Shakedown Scandal and guess things have finally boiled over.
A ROK Head was kind enough to send me pictures of the various banners that the business owners have strung up around the Songtan ville in response to what they believe is the heavy handedness of the Osan AB leadership:
Just to show that this type of thing is not limited to Osan, a couple of years ago business owners in Pyeongtaek were making the same complaints about the leadership “tyranny” at Camp Humphreys. Even before that I can remember when they hung a banner outside Camp Humphreys saying “Commander Michael J. Taliento Jr., You go back to Afghanistan again”. Colonel Taliento who was the post commander at the time cracked down on the human trafficking and underage drinking going on outside the post at the time which caused much anger with the locals back then. So what is going on now is nothing new and it is going to be interesting to see which side wins out on this issue.
Commanders will be allowed to keep their authority:
In a dramatic hearing Wednesday focused on sexual assault in the military, the Senate Armed Services Committee knocked down an effort to strip military commanders of oversight in the prosecution of serious crimes by their subordinates.
The 17-9 committee vote to leave prosecutions within the chain of command cut across party lines, and represented a victory for the Pentagon. Leaders including Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and each of the service chiefs have argued that military commanders are best able stem a tide of sexual assaults that Defense Department statistics indicate has been rising in recent years.
But a senator who voted to maintain the status quo, Maine independent Sen. Angus King, warned that legislators would have little choice but to reduce the authority of commanders in criminal cases if the Pentagon doesn’t quickly reverse the trend.
“In a sense, I see this as a last chance for the chain of command to get it right,” King said. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read much more at the link, but I respectfully disagree with Senator King’s statement. As I have already shown the statistics for military sexual assaults last year were inflated due to adding assaults from prior years to the 2012 statistics along with other reasons such as an increase in baseless claims. The military has made a big effort in recent years to get people to report sexual assaults and her statement runs counter to this. So instead of trying to count every report there is, the military for the 2013 statistics can show improvement by just recalculating their statistics. They can do this by just including reports from 2013 and reports from prior years would be counted to the year’s that they happened. This would show instant progress and not bring attention to reports people filed from prior years.
Something that has changed is this:
Levin’s amendment would set up an appeals system that would give service secretaries the final say on commanders’ prosecution decisions, and makes it a crime to retaliate against those who report sexual assault.
Gillibrand said the time to let the military solve its own sexual assault problem had passed.
“The chain of command has told us for decades that they would solve this problem, and they have failed,” she said.
Gillibrand argued that the amendment does not address the main problem — a climate of fear faced by sexual assault victims when considering whether to report a crime to a commander who may be biased in favor of a higher-ranking perpetrator.
I do not have a problem with Levin’s amendment though I would like to see how retaliate is defined. For example if someone files a report that is considered baseless can they not be prosecuted for filing a false report? As far Congresswoman Gillibrand’s complaint it runs counter to the facts that show commanders are overwhelming prosecuting servicemembers under their command for sexual assault even when the evidence does not support a prosecution. There are servicemembers that had to be released from jail by the US Court of Appeals due to having their Constitutional rights to a fair trial trampled on by the witch hunt against anyone accused of sexual assault. In the article even Congresswoman McCaskill had to cede this point. Anyway this issue is not over, expect the special interests to try and bring it up again next year, but hopefully the Pentagon gets their act together on how they compile the statistics so they do not give the special interests ammunition to bash them with.
When people think of provocations from North Korea most people today think that the deadliest incidents from the rogue regime have been targeted against South Korea. The largest loss of life from one provocation by North Korea was the sinking of the ROK Navy ship the Cheonan in 2010 that killed 46 personnel on the ship and wounded 56 more. What many people don’t realize is that the US military historically has been subject to many provocations from North Korea as well to include the 2nd deadliest attack, the shoot down of an EC-121 reconnaissance plane that killed all 31 men on board.
This deadly attack occurred on April 15, 1969 when the EC-121 which used the call sign “Deep Sea 129” was shot down in international waters 167 kilometers off the coast of North Korea. The EC-121 is an intelligence gathering platform that picks up radio transmissions in the area that it is conducting surveillance of. The mission of the Deep Sea 129 would not only be to pick up radio transmissions from North Korea, but from China and Russia as well. The military has conducted these flights on behalf of the National Security Agency (NSA) for many years.
The routine flight of the Deep Sea 129 began at 0700 local time when it took off from Atsugi, Japan. On board were 8 officers and 23 enlisted men under the command of LCDR James Overstreet. The plane first flew over Japan and then over the Sea of Japan. Once over the Sea of Japan the EC-121 flew in a clockwise ellipse as it collected signal intelligence from the region. LCDR Overstreet was given orders that his flight pattern would not go any further than 90 kilometers from North Korea. Radars at Osan Airbase in South Korea as well as back in Yokota Airbase in Japan tracked the missions progress as well as looking for any aircraft being dispatched from North Korea. At 12:34 local time radars at Osan Airbase detected that two MIG-17s had been launched by North Korea. At 13:00 Deep Sea 129 issued a routine report and everything seemed normal. At 13:22 the radars as Osan lost track of the two MIG-17s and reacquired them at 13:37. When the aircraft were reacquired it became obvious that the MIGs were dispatched to intercept the EC-121. At 13:44 Deep Sea 129 was alerted that they were being intercepted. At 13:47 the MIGs had reached the vicinity of Deep Sea 129 and then at 13:49 the EC-121 disappeared from the radar screen.
After the EC-121 disappeared from the radar screen the operators originally thought that it may have followed normal procedures and dropped to an altitude below radar coverage. This thought prevailed because the operators figured that if the MIGs were acting hostile to the EC-121 than LCDR Overstreet would have radioed something back to Japan. However, after 10 minutes had past and no radio transmission had been received from LCDR Overstreet, people began to fear the worst. Two US jets were dispatched from Japan to conduct a Combat Air Patrol of the area where the EC-121 had last been tracked. By 14:44 almost an hour after Deep Sea 129 was last tracked, the CAP planes could not find the EC-121 and the command in Japan decided to send an urgent message back to the Pentagon and the White House that they feared the EC-121 had been shot down.
The reactions from political leaders in Washington once the news was heard was initially very harsh. On Capitol Hill, Mendel Rivers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, proclaimed: ‘There can be only one answer for America-retaliation, retaliation, retaliation!’ Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. L Mendel Rivers, called for military retaliation against North Korea with “whatever is necessary. If nuclear weapons are required, let them have it. It’s time to give them what they ask for.”
As the political leadership back at the US reacted to the shoot down the military command back in Japan prepared a massive search and rescue effort to recover the plane and any survivors. The plane had life rafts the crew could have used if the plane crashed intact. The seas were not too rough and temperatures were in the 40s. So if the crew survived the crash they had a high chance of survival in the conditions if found quickly. The search was conducted by C-130s from Japan that were supported by a K-135 Stratotanker to provide fuel support. These search and rescue aircraft were further supported by CAP aircraft. In total 26 aircraft were used during the search and rescue operation. Besides the aircraft two American destroyers, the USS Dale and the USS Tucker reached the suspected crash site around 9PM. The Soviet Union would also dispatch two destroyers to search for survivors as well. The Soviets were probably eager to show the US they did not support the North Koreans actions by assisting with the search and rescue. The Soviet destroyer the Vdokhnovenie recovered pieces of the downed aircraft as well as the only two bodies found during the entire search effort. The bodies of LTJG Joseph R. Ribar and AT1 Richard E. Sweeney were turned over to the USS Tucker on April 17th. This ended the search and rescue operation and the bodies of the other 29 crew members were never recovered.
With the end of the search and rescue operation, US President Richard Nixon had to decide on what to do in response to North Korea’s deadly provocation. During this time period North Korea had even taken the rare step of bragging on their state radio station of shooting down the aircraft that they said was flying over their territorial waters. Despite calls for retaliation from various political figures Nixon decided to go with most other officials were recommending which was essentially to do nothing. With the war raging in Vietnam many US officials thought it was unwise to open up a possible second front war on the Korean peninsula. So he decided not to do anything provocative against the North Koreans such as bombing the airfield where the MIGs that shot down the EC-121 flew from. Instead he conducted a show of force by continuing the reconnaissance flights while backed with appropriate naval and Air Force support to protect them. This showed American resolve to the North Koreans while not creating a second war in Asia.
What I cannot understand is why the EC-121 was left without escort of some kind in the first place? The mission of the EC-121 was very similar to what the USS Pueblo ship was doing when it was fired upon and captured by the North Koreans in 1968. Considering that North Korea had shown previously an intent to target US reconnaissance efforts it seems surprising to me that the Pentagon was allowing the EC-121 flights off the coast of North Korea to continue with out a fighter escort or at least ships in the Sea of Japan that could provide better early warning of any potential North Korean fighters trying to intercept them.
Below is a list of all the lives that were lost by this act of North Korean aggression. Like all the other lives brought to an early end by the thugs and killers of the Kim regime in North Korea these men should not be forgotten:
Petty Officer 1st Class Eli Redstone rings the bell twice for each of the 31 U.S. troops killed on April 15, 1969, when North Korean fighters downed their EC-121 reconnaissance plane over the Sea of Japan. Wednesday’s ceremony marked the 40th anniversary of the attack. Matthew M. Bradley/Courtesy of the U.S. Navy
