There are lots of reports out there on the Stryker Brigade cases now in the Article 32, UCMJ, process. One of the highlighted issues has been the reports that SPC Winfield’s father made numerous attempts to tell the Army what was going on. Here is an interesting CNN piece:
Charles Keyes, “Father: Frustrated in trying to raise alarm about soldiers (sic)”
Winfield described to CNN’s Chris Lawrence his repeated attempts to warn the military about what was going on in the unit in which his son, Spc. Adam Winfield, was serving.
Mr. Winfield is a former Marine.
The father told CNN he reached out to an Army hotline and a member of Congress but was shunted to voice mail both times and never got a response.
The father did speak to a staff sergeant at his son’s home base, the command center at Fort Lewis in Washington. He received what he described as a brushoff and was told his son should try to avoid the soldiers and wait until he cycled back to the United States.
In terms of contacts CNN reports:
The Army is investigating the call, CNN has learned, looking at who received Winfield’s warning of a possible war crime underway, and what happened to follow it up.
"We take what the father says very seriously. We know for a fact that he did call, and phone records prove the first call to Fort Lewis headquarters lasted seven to eight minutes. The commander at Lewis-McCord started an immediate investigation. He also called Army CID (criminal investigation) as well, they’ve started a separate investigation into the calls," an Army official said.
Adam Winfield’s attorney Eric Montalvo said the Army inspector general also told Christopher Winfield that nothing could be done and that his son should lay low.
So what about the IG?
But spokesman Col. Thomas Collins said the Army has not yet found evidence that shows the elder Winfield called the Army inspector general.
The Army inspected the phone records of the Winfield family, with their consent, and determined that Christopher Winfield mistakenly called the inspector general of another federal agency, not the inspector general of the Army, Collins said.
Question, assuming Mr. Winfield called the wrong IG, what IG did he call, what was he told, and what did that IG do in response to an obviously concerned parent?
Here’s a piece on ABC.
After an internal investigation, the Army has issued a statement saying that the parents of a soldier charged with murdering unarmed Afghans never called the Army’s inspector general. The Army acknowledges that Christopher and Emma Winfield did call several numbers at their son’s Army base in the U.S., and had an extended conversation with someone at the base’s command center, but says the Winfields failed to leave a message with the criminal investigations unit at the base.