You all might recall little Bowe Bergdahl. He was the U.S. Army private who walked off post one day and was last confirmed by our side as inquiring about finding Taliban agents from local villagers, before radio chatter confirmed he found what he'd gone searching for.
(For reference to anyone holding the Afghan War Diary files from the WL leak packages? There are a number messages in there, and we KNOW they are originals dating to the period by the source of the data, since many of us have had the same physical files since date of original leak).
Well, the whole thing has caught the eye of Vice News reporters and one in particular.
QuoteWASHINGTON (CN) - A Vice News reporter seeking records about the five Guantanamo Bay prisoners exchanged for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl filed four federal complaints this week.
God Bless real jounalism in this nation. It's just a shame it's more rare to find than gold nuggets in the wild sometimes.
QuoteBergdahl fell into Taliban hands shortly after leaving his combat outpost in the Paktika province on June 30, 2009.
An investigation into Bergdahl's disappearance and capture remains ongoing, and the Government Accountability Office announced in August that it was illegal for the
Defense Department to keep Congress in the dark about the prisoner exchange.
Yeah.. Right.. there is SO much to determine here, it must just boggle their brains with details over at State. I mean, he only walked away of his own free will. He was only confirmed as soliciting villagers in the area for information so he could link up with the local Taliban elements. He only sat with them for the entire period he did, to then walk away without so much as a mark on him. (People lose their heads for FAR less and after far less time as guests). Then....we also have the 5 released. I will say the best thing to do there is again, cast an eye back at Wikileaks for the Gitmo Prisoner files. These weren't 5 among the goat herders and village men captured by bad intelligence under the bounty programs run at the start of the war. These 5 were what they are said to be, and were known to be that well before the war began. They were/are 5 leadership grade fighters who are likely back with rank and position among the forces fighting us.
However, there is another thing here and as I was reading the article, it hit me like a brick between the eyes and caused me to stop cold on the sentence.
QuoteThe Vice News reporter, who notes that he has been published by The Guardian, Wall Street Journal and other publications, filed two other federal FOIA complaints Thursday.
One complaint against the State Department involves a woman who was released from a Pakistani prison in fall 2012 and "air-lifted from the prison in a helicopter piloted by a person bearing a shoulder patch with the marking 'Department of State Air Wing.'"
Source (http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/10/24/72774.htm)
Oh..Really? The article goes on with explanation to indicate this is not a new air wing for the US State Department, but something which has existed. Funny..I've never heard of it, or knew of it to add to a FOIA request on a given incident they may have been hip deep and entirely controlling for.
This matters. It matters in a big way for two reasons. First... HOW MANY 'pseudo-military' "wings" and "divisions" do otherwise NON-Military agencies now have in active operation??? How many "wings" that did not START that way have now morphed that way???
This matters more for the second reason......and the heart of this story. If you are a citizen or professional journalist and you are making a FOIA request on something like......US involvement in the evacuation of a woman from a Pakistani prison in the fall of 2012....and you do not even get right the AGENCY which flew the mission? Don't expect to get back anything but 'We regret to inform....." for a response.
Its precisely how BIG agencies like CIA, DIA and NSA have played games by shuffling entire file records between agencies, while under the same general security cover, so one can honestly say "Huh? We don't have that..sorry! Go FOIA someone else!".
Craaaazy times we live in today, where even a Department whose entire mission is diplomacy and the work toward peace, as opposition in policy theory to the DOD for the other end of that ....comes to merge with it in operational ways.
Don't forget the Bergdahl trade though. One outrage among many can come to get lost....but it was an outrage in its own right, to some thinking. We do deserve to eventually learn the truth of what was done in all our names.
Department of State Air Wing? That's news to me. I've tried to get info on my dad through FOIA. I got nada. He' been dead almost forty years. I didn't get to finish having my questions answered. I was barely nineteen when he died. What could still be so blasted secret that I can't know? It's frustrating, and I don't do séances, despite being a witch.
Shasta