User:Geo Swan/Andrew Ledford -b

At some point in the past I started an article on Andrew Ledford, a graduate of the US Naval Academy, a former Captain in the US Marines, a former Lieutenant in Navy SEALs, who was court martialed over his role in the death during interrogation of Manadel al-Jamadi.

Ledford was acquitted.

The article was prodded in January 2010. The individual who prodded it did not observe the recommended courtesy of leaving a heads-up on my talk page. The entry in the deletion log said "Expired PROD, concern was: This article is slightly slanderous in light of the guy being found innocent."

Ledford was found innocent. at a court martial -- where two CIA officials kept interrupting sat ready to interrupt the proceedings when they thought the testimony was going to breach a "national security" secret.

What was the secret? Respected journalists speculated that the SEAL team commanded by Ledford, together with attached elements of the CIA, had waterboarded al-Jamadi in 2003, in their "Romper Room"

Is it possible that the initial article lapsed from neutrality? Sure. I aim for neutrality, try hard for it, but I never claimed I would succeed 100 percent of the time. As I write this comment, I have no idea what I actually wrote, over two years ago. The administrator who deleted the article has told me they would email me a copy, but they haven't done so yet.

So, what does our obligation to write from a neutral point of view require of us with regard to Ledford?
 * 1) Of course it should say he was charged;
 * 2) Of course it should say he was tried and acquitted;
 * 3) However, should multiple knowledgeable, authoritative commentators have speculated about his role, I think the article should include a neutral reflection of those comments.

It seems to me that so long as that coverage of what RS have said was neutrally written, I would question whether it is fair to call that coverage "slanderous". Geo Swan (talk) 00:50, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

update
The deleting administrator has emailed me the source text for the original article. They said it only had two edits, my original edit, and the edit from the prod placer.

I strongly disagree that the article was even "slightly slanderous". It eschewed provocative language, and it did not use the frightening pictures we have of the corpse of the victim, Manadel al-Jamadi.

I assembled a list of some references, below. I also drafted a list of two dozen things we know about Ledford. Possibly it is an excess of caution, even though I tried to draft that list using neutral wording, I will not include it here in user space.

The way I see it Lieutenant Ledford's acquittal is of limited meaning, for various reasons I won't list here. I see important parallels between how I think his role in Al-Jamadi's death should be covered and how we should cover OJ Simpson's murder trial. Both men were acquitted. But we wouldn't let OJ's acquittal prevent us from giving appropriate neutral coverage to questions authoritative reliable sources raised about his trial, his acquittal. I think exactly the same principle should apply to Lieutenant Ledford's role.

Does Ledford merit an individual article? Or doesn't BLP1E say that as someone known only for "one event" whatever is notable about him should be covered in the article about that event?

My reading of BLP1E is that it has room for exceptional cases -- instances where although the individual is only known for one event that event is sufficiently important they merit an individual article. This is further complicated by our failure to define "one event".

An acquittal, under the circumstances of Lieutenant Ledford's court martial, is of limited meaning -- particularly when there are lots of highly authoritative reliable sources that raise questions about his role.

Here in Canada the Police investigate a couple of hundred murders a year. In the USA it is tens of thousands. Almost none of the victims or suspects ever merit an individual wikipedia article. This is due to the "dog bites man -- man bites dog" principle. Dog bite men, women and children all the time, and such bites are practically never remarkable. Similarly almost all murders are processed in the same way -- the law enforcement and justice systems working as per usual -- and that is practically never remarkable. When there is something really different about a murder, and there are reliable sources to cover it, we should cover it -- just as the rare instance of "man bites dog" is remarkable.

Ledford's court martial is remarkable. I believe it is remarkable in just the same way OJ Simpson's murder trial was remarkable. OJ Simpson was also acquitted. OJ's acquittal should not keep us from neutrally covering the opinions of reliable sources that questioned that verdict. Neither, I believe, should it keep us from neutrally covering the opinions of reliable sources that raised questions about Lieutenant Ledford's role.

Doesn't BLP1E say we have to cover Ledford's role in an article about the event? I don't think so, for two reasons.

First, BLP1E recommends that we should usually cover the noteworthy details in the article about the event. In particularly significant instances we do provide individual articles about individuals known only for one event.

Second, personally, I think this section of BLP should be rewritten -- as it is not whether one EVENT is involved that matters. Rather, I suggest that when an individual's participation in a single evnt is relevant to multiple TOPICS that is grounds for there to be an article about that individual. I think the topic of Lieutenant Ledford is relevant to a number of topics.

We have an article on Manadel al-Jamadi, and we have an article on Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse. We shouldn't try to shoehorn the topic of Manadel al-Jamadi into the article on Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse for various reasons, including that (1) he was also abused in the SEAL HQ at BIAP, and it seems that this is where the fatal blow was inflicted; (2) other articles should link to the Manadel al-Jamadi article where it is not relevant to link to Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse.

Authoritative RS have compared al Jamadi's death during interrogation with that of another Iraqi officer Abed Hamed Mowhoush. And authoritative RS have compared the role of Lieutenant Ledford with that of Warrant Officer Lewis E. Welshofer Jr. who was convicted in Mowhoush's death. Both the article about Welshofer and that about Mowhoush need work. Both should be able to link directly to articles about Lieutenant Ledford and al-Jamadi. Geo Swan (talk) 18:52, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

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<!-- p 161

It was about 2:00 a.m. on November 4, when a convoy of Humvees and blacked-out Chevy Suburbans approached the three-story apartment block were al-Jamadi lived. SEAL Dan Cerrilo was first in, and he rushed the door, striking al-Jamadi with it, and then striking him on the face with two fists. The pair struggled ferociously, and his stove fell on him. The he was grabbed and thrown into the back of a Humvee.

The SEALs took al-Jamadi back to their Navy camp near Baghdad Airport, Camp Jenny Pozzi. The commander of the SEAL platoon, Lieutenant Andrew Ledford, was later put on trial at a court-martial in San Diego, accused of allowing al-Jamadi to be severely beaten. He was cleared by the jury of the charge of improper conduct. But in testimony, witnesses testified that al-Jamadi was punched, kicked, and struck by the SEALs at the camp, among other places in a tiney space known as the Romper Room. Al-Jamadi was stripped, and water was poured all over him. Among those there were the SEALs and CIA officers, the latter including an interrogator and polygraph expert named Mark Swanner and "Clint C," a private contract translator for the agency.

One CIA interrogator, recalled a SEAL, had pushed "his arm up against the detainee's chest, pressing on him with all his weight." A CIA guard also testified he heard an agency interrogator threaten to "barbecue" al-Jamadi if he didn't begin to talk. Al-Jamadi apparently moaned, "I'm dying. I'm dying," to which the interrogator responded, "You'll be wishing you were dying."

As he was taken away to a waiting Humvee, the court heard al-Jamadi was "body-slammed" into the vehicle by SEALs, who confessed he had presented no threat.

p 167

The details of what exact methods the CIA was now entitled to use were for long to remain classified. Two memos, one written in August 2002, and another in March 2003, were said to define the "enhanced" interrogation techniques permitted for CIA use, including some quite shocking. Among those techniques was said to be "water boarding," the simulated drowning of a prisoner. At the San Diego trial of the SEAL commander, Lieutenant Ledford, two CIA representatives appeared in court to ensure that none of these secrets were revealed. When defense lawyers asked a witness "what position was al-Jamadi in when he died." the CIA objected that this information was classified, as they did when asked about the role of water in al-Jamadi's interrogation. The hearing was frequently conducted behind closed doors, with reporters and the publice told to leave. Effectively, Ledford was on trial for what his men did prior to the CIA interrogation. What actually happened at the interrogatoin was kept secret. Not surprisingly, the jury found Ledford not guilty.

Most observers and witnesses did generally report that the CIA's interrogations in Iraq and Guantanamo were often far more professional and subtle than those of military interrogators. They were far less prone to the kind of randomly violent abuses and frustrated lashing-out committed by some poorly trained army interrogators. Whatever the CIA did was more deliberate. -->