Charges dropped against SF soldier with explosives
Marine_7002 sends us a link which reports that Trey Atwater, the Special Forces soldier arrested for attempting to carry explosives aboard a commercial airplane, which we discussed last month has had the charges against him dropped;
[U.S. Attorney Robert] Pitman said Atwater, who has served three tours of duty in Afghanistan with the Army Special Forces, had apparently forgotten the C-4 was there when he grabbed the backpack out of the garage of his home in North Carolina.
“Under the standards applicable to this prosecution, the government believes it cannot be proved that Atwater committed a criminal offense,” Pitman said. He said the lot number of the C-4 in Atwater’s backpack matched a lot number which had been ‘exclusively shipped to Afghanistan.’
I know this is terribly disappointing to Janet Napolitano, but that’s the way it shakes out sometimes. Some of us aren’t real terrorists.
Category: Military issues
Sounds like he’s still going to face some sort of punishment from the Army, however.
My guess is he’s looking at a General Officer Memo of Reprimand in his permanent file, minimum – if not a lot worse. Frankly, I’ve got little sympathy. He’s just given the Army and his Special Ops community a huge black eye. And it was due to either sloppiness, laziness, or stupidity.
This guy was stationed at Bragg. Best case: he’d apparently returned at some point from Afghanistan with about 5 lbs of C4 in his personal possession, was apparently unaware he had it, and was storing it at either his home or unit in his personal gear. Further, he’d also apparently already flown it across the country once – and still didn’t know he had it in his possession.
Now, just suppose someone had broken in at his home or unit area and stolen his gear? Gee – they just won the criminal lottery. I’ll guarantee you that someone would have been very interested in buying 5 lb of C4 from the thieves. The rest of us would just have to hope it was cops running a sting operation and not criminals or terrorists that ended up buying it.
Don’t laugh – shit like that does occasionally happen. A number of years ago during a field exercise, two numbnuts in a sister company in my battalion were authorized to go to the rear on a shower run (it was a 30+ day field problem). They decided to break down their weapons and hide them in their personal gear rather than turn them in at the field arms point. Some gear was stolen while they were gone – including their weapons hidden therein. The battalion was locked down for about a week as a result. I think the bozos ended up getting Field Grade Article 15s.
I’m pretty sure that accounting and proper storage of weapons/ammo/explosives is still deal in the Army today, and that unauthorized possession or storage of same is still a big NO-GO. The potential for theft of same is one of the reasons why.
Damn. First sentence last para above should read “. . . of weapons/ammo/explosives is still a big deal in the Army today, . . . .”
Must. Proof. Read. Better.
I flew with a lighter down in the very bottom of a side pocket on my backpack a few times before it was found during a search–and not even the first one. But you need to work pretty hard to hide stuff from the Army when you’re coming back from overseas. It can be done, but not accidentally.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the SF Bubbas didn’t have to go through regular customs like the rest of us. I can’t see this happening in a regular unit, last trip home i had to un-roll all of my socks, lol.
My question remains: why is Atwater tooling around the US with C4 anyway?
DaveO: His claim is that he forgot the material was in his ruck, and thus acted w/o intent.
I’m not sure I completely believe that, though. Seems to me I’d notice the difference between an empty ruck and one with 5+ lbs of stuff in it as soon as I picked it up. And I do believe I’d check to see what that 5+ lbs of stuff was if I was going to carry said ruck onto a commercial airplane.