Sharon Rondeau @ The POST & EMAIL: Fitzpatrick Court-Martial: Crime and Punishment of the Innocent
Thursday, 3 October 2013
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Fitzpatrick Court-Martial: Crime and Punishment of the Innocent
PEOPLE IN “POWERFUL” POSITIONS CHOSE COVER-UP RATHER THAN CONFRONTATION
Rep. Norman Dicks retired from the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012 after serving since 1976
(Sep. 30, 2013) — In April 1990, a sham court-martial was held charging CDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III with dereliction of duty for mishandling Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) funds on the USS Mars, on which he had served as Executive Officer. The alleged crime was fabricated, the adjudication panel rigged, and the outcome predetermined. In July of that year, a document titled “Response to Letter of Reprimand” which Fitzpatrick had never seen was filed with the court-martial record with his forged signature affixed to it.
After obtaining parts of the court-martial record piecemeal as a result of filing Freedom of Information Act requests, Fitzpatrick registered numerous criminal complaints with the U.S. Navy and Department of Defense alerting them to the forgery. He also cited Bitoff for his undue command influence in carrying out the court-martial instead of handing it to an impartial officer, as is required by the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
This year, undue command influence has been claimed by USMC Maj. James Weirick against Commandant James Amos for his conduct regarding eight Marines accused of abusing Taliban corpses, and Weirick now faces evaluations and possible expulsion from the Marines. Weirick considers himself a whistleblower, which federal law states will be protected from retaliation for contacting members of Congress or law enforcement to report a crime.
In September 1997, turning his anger against Fitzpatrick, then-Navy Judge Advocate General John Hutson agreed to open a criminal investigation in an attempt to prove that Fitzpatrick was lying about his claim of forgery. On December 4, 1997, the entire court-martial file was located, and NCIS Special Agent Richard Allen subsequently matched the paper, font and ink used to create the forgery with documents signed by Capt. Kevin M. Anderson, Fitzpatrick’s former defense counsel.
Anderson was approached by the NCIS in early 1998 and told investigators that he did not know the origin of the fraudulent document. Five years later, however, he told a Port Orchard Police Department detective that he produced the document but did not admit to signing it.
Fitzpatrick did not discover Anderson’s police report until more than a year later, at which time he brought the evidence to the NCIS in Silverdale. Instead of reopening or launching a new investigation, the NCIS falsely told Fitzpatrick that his allegations could not be pursued because of the years which had elapsed and ultimately threatened his life if he were to continue to expose what he knew in order to seek justice.
Fitzpatrick was residing in the Port Orchard area after his honorable discharge from the Navy on September 30, 1994. For nearly a decade, Rep. Norman Dicks, who represented the Sixth District of Washington in the U.S. Congress, had assisted Fitzpatrick in obtaining documentation from his court-martial. Sen. Patty Murray also made requests on Fitzpatrick’s behalf, including a memo written by Lt. Tim Zeller which showed clear collusion between Zeller and Adm. John Bitoff.
The UCMJ states that an accuser cannot also convene the court-martial, but Bitoff disregarded the rules and played both roles, using his own staff to steer the outcome and create the false documentation. In a letter to Dicks in 1999, Bitoff attempted to appear surprised and concerned at Fitzpatrick’s claim of a forgery having been placed in his file. At the same time, Bitoff admitted that he “brought the charges and convened the court-martial.”
BITOFF LETTER TO NORM DICKS – 30 APRIL 1999
In 2003, Rep. Dicks’s office suddenly became hostile and evasive toward Fitzpatrick without explanation. Fitzpatrick attributes the sudden change in demeanor to the revelation in 2003 that Anderson created and signed the fraudulent court-martial document in July 1990. Dicks’s and Anderson’s respective offices were located in close proximity, and the two were acquainted. Dicks was also well-known to Russell Hauge, lead prosecutor of Kitsap County, where Anderson served as a deputy prosecutor. Having committed the crime of forgery to frame Fitzpatrick, Anderson has now served more than 15 years in that position of public trust.
“It just got too close to home,” Fitzpatrick said of Dicks’s new hostility. “He knew these guys; their offices were just about next to each other.”
Dicks ultimately became responsible for not only refusing to assist Fitzpatrick further, but also for having him incarcerated.
She did not invite me in any farther. Right above us was a good-sized video camera. I conducted myself with complete professionalism and aplomb, and I said, “I’m here to get a status report.” She was decidedly nasty and malicious. She was new at that point. I hadn’t had that much interaction with her, but she was a very unpleasant person to work with.
She told me to leave, and I did, and later on, she called the police. I was leaving the building, and at the corner of Sixth and Pacific, a patrol car came speeding up, stopped and a cop saw me and approached me, asked me who I was, and I told him. He said he had just had a complaint from Paula Blake, and I said, “Well, I was just there.” And I told him what I just told you.
I was pretty upset by the confrontation, so I went immediately to the Bremerton Police Department, which wasn’t that far away downtown. I met with the sergeant and said, “I didn’t do anything wrong.” So he took down the information and I left.
The next thing I heard was that Cherylynne Fitz Williams went in and wrote out a request for a protection order against me and got it. She was complaining that I had interacted with her, but she wasn’t there that day at all.
So we went to court on the 27th, and the judge, whose name is Rio, said, “Don’t bother Scherri; the only way you can contact them is by mail.” And that was it.
Rep. Adam Smith represents the Ninth District of Washington in Congress
I had interaction with Rep. Adam Smith earlier, in 2001 and 2002. Adam Smith sent me a very nasty letter because I was trying to help out a soldier named Cory Cox, who lived in Adam Smith’s congressional district in Tacoma. I had met with Rep. Smith in his office and briefed him on the Cory Cox matter, and then I kept calling for updates and to see what kind of action he was taking. I got that nasty letter from him in 2002.
The order the judge handed down to me in 2003 looked very much like the letter that Rep. Smith sent to me in 2002: “You can’t contact this office unless you go through the mail.”
Cory Cox was let out of prison because of my intervention.
Rep. Smith’s was the first adversarial letter that I received. Then in 2003, all of a sudden, Scherri Fitz Williams, acting on behalf of Paula Blake, took up action against me and got the protection order issued. I said, “They’re lying; I did nothing wrong. There’s a video camera there; let’s have the footage. If Ms. Williams wants to make her case, then let her do it with the footage, and she said, “It’s not available,” and I was thinking, “Well, why not?”
For the longest time, Dicks was called “the third senator” from Washington State, so he was a very powerful man. Judge Riehl then took action against me and said, “You can’t send emails.”
In 2004, I was advocating on behalf of a chaplain and I was sending out an email about him. Scherri called the cops after she got the email. This is in a report dated April 26, 2004, and in it, she said I had violated the protection order by sending the email. The cop investigated and on the back of the report it says, “I contacted Williams via phone per her request. Williams stated that she works for Congressman Norm Dicks at this location, 500 Pacific Avenue. Williams stated she is a petitioner in a protection order against Fitzpatrick due to a problem he caused in the past.” I didn’t cause any problem in the past, as I’ve explained. “Williams stated she received an email today from Fitzpatrick which is a violation of the order. I observed the email as information and nothing threatening towards anyone.” That’s what it says.
“I’ve located the order, which is a protection order which is valid and served. The order prohibits Fitzpatrick to contact Williams in any form at work or residence. The notes state that Fitzpatrick can contact Norm Dicks through the U.S. Postal Service. “
The email was sent out to a list of people, and I just forgot to leave Norm Dicks’s name off of it.
A warrant was issued, and I was arrested. Nothing came of it; I was released, and the whole thing went away. Scherri had complained about me in April 2004, and I was arrested in August. I was in jail for a day or a little less. I was released, and that was the end of that. But that was all Norm Dicks’s doing.
Norm Dicks was behind it, and he could have stopped any of it from going forward. Scherri was not in the office when I first presented myself in October the year before. So Norm said, “Hey, we have to make this guy go away.” So Scherri went in and she filed a complaint, naming herself as the target of the incident that she alleged, and she wasn’t even physically present there that day. I told the judge that. I said, “She wasn’t there; I didn’t interact with her. I wasn’t there that long, and the only person I interacted with was Paula Blake, and the whole thing is captured on the video camera which is right there…” But the video was not brought into evidence.
The rig is in. Dicks was behind all of this, and before that, Congressman Adam Smith.
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The Post & Email: U.S. Marine Corps Retaliates Against Judge Advocate Whistleblower
Tuesday, 1 October 2013
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U.S. Marine Corps Retaliates Against Judge Advocate WhistleblowerPosted By Sharon Rondeau On Friday, September 27, 2013 @ 10:43 PM In National |
IN CASE EERILY SIMILAR TO THAT OF CDR WALTER FRANCIS FITZPATRICK, III
by Sharon Rondeau
Maj. James Weirick, a judge advocate of the U.S. Marine Corps, has been removed from his position and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation following his outspokenness on allegations against Commandant James Amos of undue command influence, cover-up and suppression of evidence against eight Marines
(Sep. 27, 2013) — On Friday, the Marine Corps Times reported that Marine Corps Maj. James Weirick, a staff judge advocate who alleged undue command influence on the part of Marine Corps Commandant James Amos against eight Marines accused of abusing Taliban members’ corpses in 2011, was removed from his post and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, among other things.
Twenty-three years ago, CDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III was railroaded in a sham court-martial orchestrated by his admiral, John Bitoff, and members of his staff, based on false charges and a fraudulent signature.
The Navy, though well aware that a forgery has been maintained as authentic for nearly a quarter-century, refuses to comment on their continued cover-up and the false conviction used against Fitzpatrick for having spoken out about his superior officers. Fitzpatrick’s Navy career was ruined as a result.
Fitzpatrick has told The Post & Email that the military “justice” system “is not justice at all” but only a “function of command.”
Weirick’s attorney, Jane Seigel, told the Times that “I think this is a last-ditch effort by some very heavy hitters to completely undermine the credibility of Maj. Weirick. If they push this rock down the slippery slope, he’ll end up out of the Marine Corps.”
Last month, Weirick filed a complaint with the Department of Defense (DOD) Inspector Generalagainst Amos and his advisers for attempting to influence the outcome of the courts-martial against the eight accused Marines. A general whom Amos had tasked with conducting the investigation against the Marines corroborated Weirick’s claims that Amos wanted “harsh punishment” meted out against the defendants, that Amos “suppressed evidence” and orchestrated a cover-up.
When a military judge ordered Amos’s emails to be made public, the Marine Corps quickly dropped the charges against Capt. James Clement, who was the last of the eight to be disciplined. Clement’s attorneys had claimed that the case against their client was tainted with “blatant unlawful command influence that denied their client a fair court-martial.” Lead attorney John Dowd called the case “the largest case of unlawful command influence in the Corps’ history.”
The Marine Corps is a department of the U.S. Navy.
Putative Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel expressed support for Amos at the end of July. However, in early 2012, Amos had appeared to admit his involvement in the outcome of the cases.
The Marines who have received some form of punishment may have reason to seek new trials or expunging of their records.
Weirick has been ordered to relinquish his personal firearms maintained at his home, undergo a “risk assessment” and the psychiatric evaluation.
One player in the Fitzpatrick court-martial with whom The Post & Email has spoken attempted to convince us that Fitzpatrick was mentally unstable, although he would not speak on the record. Another hung up on us and then pretended he was not at home. A third spoke to us at length but refused to go on the record, stating, “If somebody did this [forged Fitzpatrick’s signature], they did bad…”
Through his attorney, Weirick said that he plans to comply with all requests from his chain of command, but in August he said that he “would not back down.” In addition to the DOD, he had taken his complaint to Congress, after which Rep. Walter B. Jones attempted to obtain information on the status of Weirick’s complaint.
Fitzpatrick had approached his U.S. representative, Norman Dicks, and U.S. Senator Patty Murray, both of whom were told by the Navy that they could not obtain a copy of an incriminating document signed by Lt. Timothy Zeller which stated that “no record” of the communication with Bitoff would be maintained on his computer or in his files. A year later, Navy Deputy Inspector General Derek Vander Schaaf located and sent the memo to Murray, who forwarded it to Fitzpatrick.
It took Fitzpatrick many years and FOIA requests to acquire many of the documents from his court-martial, with some still kept obscured the Navy nearly a quarter-century later.
When Weirick asked to obtain emails from Amos and his advisers about their possible roles in attempting to fix the outcomes against the Marines, he said, “I lack the power or authority to get the emails and other requested materials in the possession of the Commandant and his staff. To ensure a fair proceeding I need the assistance of those with much greater authority. I should have acted earlier, but I truly believed those with the authority to accomplish this would adhere to the Rule of Law and our shared value of due process. This, sadly, has not been the case. Both civilian and uniformed counsel for the Commandant have thwarted my efforts and remained silent, or possibly assisted in, this unlawful command influence.”
By August, Weirick’s allegations reportedly had “received attention in national media, on Capitol Hill and throughout the Defense Department.”
Media Affairs for the Navy and Army have refused to research, respond to or counter The Post & Email’s assertion of the forgery in Fitzpatrick’s court-martial file. A formal letter addressed in April 2012 to Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert, a former classmate of Fitzpatrick’s, was met with no response.
Emails to primary participants in the Fitzpatrick court-martial, the creation of the forgery, and to those continuing to keep the deceit obscured have gone unanswered. Because the allegations against more than 100 former and current Navy and NCIS officers are criminal in nature, they can still be prosecuted.
“Here we see the DNA markers in the case of the Marine snipers as you see in what happened to me,” Fitzpatrick said. “Whenever you try to stand up and expose the command influence, you are yourself targeted for elimination, and this is what’s happening to Maj. Weirick,” Fitzpatrick said. “He’s been relieved of his position; he’s been ordered to turn in his sidearms; he’s been ordered to go to a psychological evaluation; these things happened to me as well.”
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Sharon Rondeau at The Post & Email: Fitzpatrick: Navy “Willing to Destroy Subordinates to Protect the Institution”
Monday, 30 September 2013
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Fitzpatrick: Navy “Willing to Destroy Subordinates to Protect the Institution”
Posted By Sharon Rondeau On Wednesday, September 25, 2013 @ 10:30 PM In National |
“A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE”
Comparison of true signature of Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III (top) and that which appears on a July 17, 1990 Response to Reprimand letter (bottom) and is an obvious forgery
(Sep. 25, 2013) —In a previous report, The Post & Email described how a culture of corruption permeated the U.S. Navy from at least the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, encompassing the Tailhook scandal and the court-martial of Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III.
In 1989, several charges without any basis in fact were brought against Fitzpatrick by his commanding admiral, John Bitoff, with the assistance of his staff JAG, Tim Zeller and Bitoff’s chief of staff, Capt. Mike Edwards. A Marine Corps attorney was hand-picked by Bitoff to serve as Fitzpatrick’s defense attorney.
While “convicted” on one of the several charges, Fitzpatrick has shown that the entire proceeding was carried out behind closed doors and the outcome predetermined. Although Fitzpatrick was accused of misusing $10,400, the NCIS was not contacted to initiate an investigation.
Fitzpatrick has reported that Anderson created and signed a fraudulent response letter to a Letter of Reprimand issued by Bitoff which Fitzpatrick discovered only after submitting multiple FOIA requests for his file. Anderson also made it appear that Fitzpatrick had received a copy of the response letter during the summer of 1990 when he had not. 7 JULY 1990 KEVIN ANDERSON LOR RECEIPT
As accuser, Bitoff was not allowed to convene the court-martial as stated in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). An officer whom Bitoff initially disqualified from participating in the alleged investigation for conflict of interest was later placed on Fitzpatrick’s panel which then issued the “guilty” verdict on the charge of misusing ship’s funds.
In a letter to Rep. Norman Dicks, who requested an explanation from the Navy on Fitzpatrick’s behalf in 1999, Bitoff lied by stating that he was “surprised” when he discovered that Zeller had conducted the investigation instead of the NCIS. He then admitted that he had acted as both Fitzpatrick’s accuser and convening authority. He also expressed “concern” that Fitzpatrick had charged the Navy with the crime of forgery.
Prior to the court-martial, the logs maintained by Fitzpatrick showing how the ship’s funds were spent were declared “missing” and have not reappeared. Fitzpatrick said he was meticulous with his record-keeping and that all funds were spent in keeping with a vote by the crew.
Only two months before the charges were brought against Fitzpatrick, he earned an outstanding review from his commander, Capt. Michael Nordeen of the USS Mars, where Fitzpatrick was executive officer.
Of Bitoff’s motives for framing him, Fitzpatrick told The Post & Email:
Bitoff forced me out of the naval service because of my character…Bitoff used the court-martial process to punish me, using me as an object lesson throughout the fleet.
Years later, after Fitzpatrick persistently brought the forgery to the attention of the Navy JAG Corps, he was threatened with another court-martial if he were found to have fabricated the story. Reluctantly, Navy Judge Advocate General John Hutson directed the NCIS to open an investigation with the purpose of proving that Fitzpatrick was lying.
Hutson and a subordinate admiral, Don Guter, warned the NCIS of Fitzpatrick’s claim and the decision to launch an investigation. In an interoffice memo generated the same day, September 5, 1997, NCIS Assistant Deputy Director Ernie Simon wrote, “…if you can prove the forgery, it totally supports his 10 years worth of contentions and makes the NAV look really bad.”
Instead of finding that Fitzpatrick had lied, an Inspector General for the Judge Advocate General of the Navy, Rand Pixa, and NCIS Special Agent Richard Allen discovered that there was a forgery in Fitzpatrick’s court-martial file after the paper, font size and type matched other documents which Kevin Anderson was known to have generated with his own signature affixed.
When Anderson was confronted by the NCIS in early 1998, he said he knew nothing about how or when the document had been created and placed into Fitzpatrick’s file. However, five years later, in 2003, he told a police detective that he created the letter bearing the forged signature, although he did not admit to signing Fitzpatrick’s name to it.
The signature intended to look like Fitzpatrick’s is missing the “III” after his name and his last name is misspelled. Fitzpatrick has always included the “III” when signing his name, including during the period in question.
Inspector General Derek Vander Schaaf had issued a scathing report on the Tailhook matter in 1992 which was the catalyst for the resignation of two Navy admirals, one of whom was the Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy. All told, Vander Schaaf identified 51 officers who had lied to his investigators. The irresponsible behavior of those involved in abusing female members of the Navy may have contributed to the suicide of Chief of Naval Operations Jeremy Michael Boorda in 1996. Boorda also knew about Fitzpatrick’s claim of forgery and fraud in regard to his court-martial and had sought, and received, assurance from Adm. Ronald J. Zlatoper which lacked any fact-finding that Fitzpatrick’s court-martial had followed proper procedure.
Vander Schaaf was able to procure a long-sought “Thanksgiving Day memo” written by Zeller to Bitoff which stated that no record of the communication would be retained on Zeller’s computer or in any file.
Repeated attempts to reach Anderson, Zeller, and the former JAG officers involved, particularly over the last several weeks, have been met with complete silence with the exception of one former JAG attorney who was willing to answer all of our questions in a two-part interview. That officer revealed that the place where Fitzpatrick’s file was reported to have been found by Pixa did not exist.
CDR FITZPATRICK: Look at what these people were doing 20 years ago, and they thought they got away with it. Now here we are 20 years later, and they’re caught in it. There isn’t a single officer or person who is at this moment defending the court-martial of Walt Fitzpatrick as legitimate; not even John Bitoff…with the exception of Kevin Anderson, the man who forged my name.
A four-star admiral…this is as high as you get in the military. If there were anything that they could hang their hat on that Fitzpatrick’s court-martial was legitimate, they ought to contact me right away.
If they could prove that my signature on that document was really my signature, which of course they can’t, we should be hearing from them right now.
DOJ’s spying on reporters. Someone must have had some pangs of conscience.
CDR FITZPATRICK: Yes, you have some of the institutional ineffectiveness of an organization unable to keep its dirty laundry concealed, but there are people like Richard Kadelec , the guy who dropped the dime on Zeller. They never in their wildest imaginations think that I would actually find the kind of document record that I now hold.
There are two different dynamics going on here. In fact, Tim Zeller knew what I was doing; he wrote about it. He said, “Fitzpatrick waits until new people come into a job, and then he starts to ask them questions, thinking that he’s going to get different answers.” It’s been a highly effective method, because that’s exactly what’s happened. New people come in and they release information about which they have no idea of the significance. So there is that dynamic going on where there is an institutional weakness where they can’t cover up for each other as effectively as they would want to if they could stay in the same jobs for years and years. They move on and other people come along.
But the other thing that you have is that there are people who want this information to be known and acted on, and I can’t tell which is which; I can only speculate.
THE POST & EMAIL: It sounds like the people who leaked the IRS’s targeting of certain groups and the Thanksgiving Day memo. Had he not told me about that memo, we wouldn’t know about any of them.
THE POST & EMAIL: Did you ever speak with him?
CDR FITZPATRICK: I did speak to him. I was standing in a phone booth at the end of Pier #3 at the Naval Air Station at Alameda, CA. This is where the USS Carl Vinson was tied up at the dock. Because I didn’t want anyone listening in on my conversation, I left the ship and walked to the foot of the pier and made a phone call from the phone booth to Combat Logistics Group 1. I wanted to get a hold of the attorney who had replaced Zeller, and the guy I reached was a First Class Petty Officer called a legalman. He was not a trained attorney; in the Navy, we call them “legalmen.” This was on July 2, 1993, and Richard Kavlick told me about the Thanksgiving Day memo that he had seen, and he said, “Hey, Commander, you need to get your hands on this. I can’t release it, because if I release it, they’ll know it came from me.”
That was on a Friday, and on the 5th of July, after the July 4 weekend, I called Congressman Dicks’s office and I said, “We need to get this memo.” It was Congressman Dicks who sent in the first Freedom of Information Act request in July 1993. The Navy came back out of San Diego and said, “You can’t have it.”
In the meantime, I went to Sen. Patty Murray and told her the same thing. So Sen. Murray said, “OK, fine, I’ll ask for it.” And she did. And the judge advocate general of the Navy, Rick Grant, told her, “You can’t have it.” What he told her was, “I don’t have access to it, Senator, so go away; you’re bothering me.”
It was at that point that Sen. Patty Murray said, “Fine; we’ll go to the Department of Defense Inspector General’s office and we’ll ask them if they can get their hands on it.” So that’s what happened, and that’s where Derek Vander Schaaf comes in.
THE POST & EMAIL: Derek Vander Schaaf seems like a “good guy” in all of this.
CDR FITZPATRICK: Yes, and he was a good guy in Tailhook as well. He was the one who blew the scandal wide open and said that the 35 admirals and generals who avoided criminal responsibility should have faced the consequences. This is the same environment now in which the court-martial of Walt Fitzpatrick is starting to emerge, and Vander Schaaf realized that. He went looking for the memo, and he got it. On July 8, 1994, he turned it over to Patty Murray, and on the same day, she turned it over to me. A year and a week after my conversation with Richard Kavlick, we finally got our hands on the memo…and it was as powerful and explosive as it could be. And it should have been enough at that point to order a new hearing.
We didn’t know about the rest of the memos. After the first one, the other ones started to seep out. That’s how all of that happened.
Back in the early 1990s, they knew that they had put Steve Letchworth into the panel, knowing that he had an axe to grind going in and that he should have been disqualified from that position.
THE POST & EMAIL: Should that one thing not have been enough to nullify it?
CDR FITZPATRICK: Correct. So I point now to the forgery and I say, “Excuse me, but the forgery was meant to cover up all of this, and the first person to use it as it was intended by Bitoff to be used in covering up what Bitoff had done was Judge Advocate General of the Navy Rick Grant.
THE POST & EMAIL: They all insisted that everything was done properly, but all of your appeals were denied for no reason.
CDR FITZPATRICK: That’s because I didn’t have enough information in that day to prove that these people were involved in a criminal enterprise.
THE POST & EMAIL: It seems as if they were battling to keep the lid on it as you were getting closer to exposing what they had done.
CDR FITZPATRICK: That’s correct, and that’s why they went into a panic when it finally got into The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, first as a story, and then as an editorial in the days before Mike Boorda came into the job as Chief of Naval Operations. So the third person who participated in representing the forgery as an authentic writing and confession was Mike Boorda, who shot himself in the chest two years later because he had to live with it.
In the meantime, more things were building up and more was coming out, and I hadn’t gone away, and he knew that. He knew I wasn’t going to go away.
So how many admirals and generals do we have wrapped up in this thing right now? It’s a whole bunch of people.
THE POST & EMAIL: You mentioned that you have contacted all of them, plus many reporters at the same time.
CDR FITZPATRICK: I don’t want anybody to think that we’re doing anything behind closed doors. I am doing this publicly and openly. As a reporter, you have to be able to independently verify that everything I say is as I have presented it.
Why do we say that this is the most-examined court-martial in the history of the country? These confrontations are being made in public with reporters watching, and if there were a squeak of protest from anybody, we would have heard it way before now. Instead, what we’re getting back is confirmation of the information we have. At this point, Tim Zeller has gone dark and quiet and is trying to keep this as buried as he can. And the one who did come forward said, “Well, that’s not the way I remember things.”
THE POST & EMAIL: When I spoke to him, I tried to keep a completely open mind.
CDR FITZPATRICK: Now Pixa becomes a question mark. He’s the guy who held the other guy out to dry. So I went and found Rand Pixa. We thought we knew what had happened to this court-martial record, but we really don’t. All we know is that its chain of custody is murkier now and that the one guy who had it in his hand that we know of is Rand Pixa. “Well, how did you get it, sir?” Is Rand Pixa coming forward? He’s been confronted. He’s working in DC, for goodness sakes.
It’s Rand Pixa who was good friends with Diane Carr and Kevin Anderson when they all worked together at the Navy Legal Service office at Treasure Island, CA. When the forgery was discovered, Pixa didn’t have any idea that it was going to lead back to Anderson.
One of the guys wearing a white hat is Richard Allen. He knew what was going on and did his best to get the word out. He did a very effective job with that but was overruled by his admirals and generals at the NCIS. He found this and said to Capt. Pixa, “Do you see these documents?”
I haven’t seen the original of anything, but Allen told me that the first thing he examined was the kind of paper that was used. I don’t know what type it was, but it stood out from the other paperwork in the record. Then the special agent said, “Well, this paper looks like that one,” and he started taking a look at the type, fonts, style, and he saw that they were identical. Then he saw that the other writings were signed by Kevin Anderson using his own name. Then Kevin Anderson became Suspect #1 in the moment.
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In our next installment, The Post & Email will explain how Rep. Norm Dicks became hostile to Fitzpatrick and why, then had him arrested.
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