Army Reserve officer to plead guilty to giving secrets to Chinese girlfriend

HONOLULU — A civilian defense contractor accused of giving military secrets to a Chinese girlfriend half his age will be entering a guilty plea, his attorney said Tuesday.

Benjamin Bishop was expected to plead guilty in federal court on Thursday to one count of transmitting national defense information to a person not entitled to receive it and one count of unlawfully retaining national defense documents and plans.

Bishop, 60, was arrested last March at the headquarters for the U.S. Pacific Command, where he worked.

A document for the plea agreement filed Tuesday said Bishop emailed his girlfriend classified information on joint training and planning sessions between the U.S. and South Korea.

It said Bishop had classified documents at his Hawaii home, including one titled "U.S. Department of Defense China Strategy," another on U.S. force posture in Asia and the Pacific and a U.S. Pacific Command joint intelligence operations center special report.

An FBI affidavit last year alleged the then-59-year-old gave his 27-year-old girlfriend classified information about war plans, nuclear weapons, missile defenses and other topics.

Bervar has said the two were in love and that the case was about love, not espionage.

Bishop has been in federal detention in Honolulu for the majority of time since his March 2013 arrest.

U.S. District Court Judge Leslie Kobayashi allowed him to move to a halfway house last June. But a magistrate judge ordered him back to jail in December after he violated the terms of his release by emailing his girlfriend and writing her a letter.

The FBI alleged Bishop and the woman, now 28, started an intimate, romantic relationship in June 2011. The prosecution said she was a graduate student and she and Bishop were having an extramarital affair.

Utah state records show Bishop was married until 2012.

The FBI's affidavit alleged the woman may have attended an international defense conference in Hawaii, where she initially met Bishop, specifically to target people like Bishop who have access to classified information.

Authorities haven't released her identity or whereabouts. They also haven't said publicly whether they believe she was working for the Chinese government.

She was living in the United States as a student on a J-1 visa, according to the FBI.

Defendants must normally be indicted within a month of their arrest, but Bishop's defense team waived the deadline in exchange for an opportunity to view the prosecution's evidence, much of which is classified.

Bishop, who is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, worked in the field of cyber defense at Pacific Command from May 2011 until his arrest. Prior to that, he helped develop Pacific Command strategy and policy.

Bishop was familiar with the Pacific Command's highest priority capability gaps, the command's chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Anthony Crutchfield, said in a declaration filed in support of the prosecution's motion to have him detained without bail.

From 2010 to 2012, Bishop had access to "top secret" information on efforts to defend against a ballistic missile attack from North Korea, Crutchfield said.

Senator: CIA may have broken law, violated Constitution

WASHINGTON — The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee charged Tuesday that the CIA may have broken the law and violated the Constitution by secretly infiltrating computers used by her staff to assemble a scathing report on the spy agency’s now-defunct detention and interrogation program.

“The CIA just went and searched the committee’s computers,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Feinstein unleashed her stunning charges in an address on the Senate floor that lifted the veil on an extraordinary power struggle over the release of the report that has been raging behind the scenes for months between the CIA and the panel, created in 1976 to oversee U.S. intelligence organizations after a series of domestic spying scandals.

“The CIA’s search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution,” Feinstein said. “It may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities.”

In addition, she said CIA intrusions into her staff’s computers also may have breached the Fourth Amendment’s bar on illegal searches, a law prohibiting computer fraud and a 1981 presidential order that greatly restricts the agency’s authority to spy on American citizens.

CIA Director John Brennan denied Feinstein’s allegations after a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations marking his first year at the helm of the spy agency.

“Nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn’t do that,” Brennan said. “That’s just beyond … the scope of reason in terms of what we’d do.”

Denouncing the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques as an “un-American, brutal program,” Feinstein said the resolution of the battle would determine the ability of her committee to be an effective watchdog over the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies.

“The recent actions that I have just laid out make this a defining moment for the oversight (powers) of our Intelligence Committee,” Feinstein said. “How this will be resolved will show whether the Intelligence Committee will be effective in monitoring and investigating our nation’s intelligence activities.”

Many experts, including former U.S. military commanders and officials, have condemned as torture the use of the harsh techniques in the interrogations of suspected terrorists in secret CIA “black site” prisons overseas. The George W. Bush administration and the agency contend the methods were legal, although it has emerged that the CIA used some techniques before the program underwent a Justice Department legal review.

Brennan denied that the CIA was trying to impede the release of the committee study, contending that 15 months after the panel approved the report, it still hasn’t been given to the agency to vet before a public release.

“We are not in any way, shape or form trying to thwart this report’s … release,” he said.

U.S. officials have said that the CIA didn’t actively monitor the computers, but instead it went back and scoured three years’ worth of logs in determining what they claimed was the unauthorized removal of highly classified materials from a secret CIA electronic reading room by the committee staff.

White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to discuss the dispute in any detail.

“What I can say is that you saw the CIA director say today that if there was any inappropriate activity by CIA, he would, of course, want to get to the bottom of it, and certainly the president would agree with that,” Carney said.

In her speech, Feinstein revealed that at one point in 2010, CIA officials misled the committee in claiming that the White House had ordered them to block her staff’s access to top-secret documents that they had been given permission to review.

“When the committee approached the White House, the White House denied giving the CIA any such order,” she said.

Feinstein leveled her charges a week after McClatchy first reported the allegations that the CIA secretly monitored computers used in researching and compiling the committee’s 6,300-page study of the agency’s detention and interrogation program at a secret CIA-leased facility in Northern Virginia.

In a separate report also confirmed by Feinstein, McClatchy disclosed that Democratic staffers printed out and took back to their secure space on Capitol Hill a copy of an internal CIA review. She and other Democratic senators assert the internal review proves that the CIA misled the committee in disputing key findings of the study.

“To say the least, this is puzzling,” said Feinstein. “How can the CIA’s official response to our study stand factually in conflict with its own internal review?”

Feinstein said that CIA Inspector General David Buckley had referred the CIA’s computer searches to the Justice Department “given the possibility of a criminal violation by CIA personnel.”

Shortly after the referral was made, she said, the acting CIA general counsel filed a “crime report” with the Justice Department “concerning the committee’s staff’s actions,” which she decried as a “potential effort” at intimidation.

She went on to point out that from mid-2004 until President George W. Bush halted the interrogation program in 2009, the same CIA lawyer was the main legal counsel to the agency unit that oversaw the program.

Feinstein apparently was referring to the agency’s senior deputy general counsel, Robert Eatinger. The CIA declined to confirm the identity of the individual to whom Feinstein was referring.

The CIA lawyer “is mentioned by name more than 1,600 times in our study, and now this individual is sending a crimes report to the Department of Justice,” she said. “The acting general counsel himself provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice about the program.”

Feinstein defended her staff, saying they had broken no laws in printing out and taking the internal CIA review out of the CIA facility and placing it in a safe in their high-security office in at the Senate.

“The staff members who have been working on this study … have devoted years of their lives to it, wading through the horrible details of the CIA program that never, never, never should have existed,” she said.

The study — which cost $40 million, took four years to complete and entailed a review of 6.2 million pages of top-secret CIA operational cables, reports and other documents — concluded that the agency’s use of harsh interrogation techniques produced very little intelligence of any value, according to lawmakers who have read it.

The program didn’t reveal the information that enabled the CIA to pinpoint Osama bin Laden’s suspected hideout in Pakistan at which the al-Qaida leader was killed by Navy SEALs in May 2011, they’ve said.

Moreover, the study found that the agency misled Congress, the Bush administration and the public about the usefulness of the interrogation techniques, they’ve said.

Under an arrangement with the CIA, the committee staff was provided with “a stand-alone computer system” to review CIA-approved documents to which only agency technicians would have access. The technicians were barred from sharing any information from the network with other CIA officials without the committee’s permission, she said.

The blocking of the staff’s access in 2010 to documents to which they had already been given access constituted the first of what Feinstein said were two secret searches of their computers by the CIA.

The matter was settled when the committee received assurances from the CIA and the White House that “there would be no further unauthorized access to the committee’s network or removal of access to CIA documents already provided to the committee,” she said.

Later in 2010, the staff found a draft summary of the internal review, which had been ordered by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta, using a search engine provided by the CIA to scour a database into which contractors dumped millions of top-secret documents after reviewing them numerous times to ensure that they were related to the study and weren’t covered by executive privilege, she said.

How the draft summary of the review got into the database remains unknown, although Feinstein suggested it may have been put there by a whistleblower.

She denied news reports in some publications that quoted unidentified U.S. officials who suggested that committee staffers “hacked” through a firewall into a CIA network to obtain the draft Panetta review. She also rejected contentions that the committee wasn’t entitled to some parts of the draft even though they were marked “privileged” and “deliberative.”

The Senate’s top legal adviser determined that “Congress does not recognize these claims of privilege when it comes to documents provided to Congress for our oversight duties,” she said. “So we believe we had every right to review and keep the documents.”

The Panetta review consisted of summaries of the documents provided to the committee compiled by a separate team of CIA officials, some of whom also included their own analysis of the contents of the materials.

“What was unique and interesting about the internal documents was not their classification level but rather their analysis and acknowledgment of significant CIA wrongdoing,” Feinstein said.

Panetta ordered the review after determining that no records were being kept of the contents of the documents, U.S. officials have said. They’ve denied that the review represented a formal examination of the interrogation program, downplayed its importance, and said that the reviewers’ analyses were personal observations that weren’t subjected to the agency’s formal evaluation procedures.

The staff decided to print out the draft Panetta review and take it to Capitol Hill because the CIA had “previously withheld and destroyed information about its detention and interrogation program,” Feinstein said, referring to the agency’s destruction over the objections of the Bush administration of videotapes of interrogation sessions.

“There was a need to preserve and protect the Panetta review in the committee’s own secure spaces,” she said. “The relocation of the internal Panetta review was lawful.”

On Jan. 15, she said, Brennan requested an emergency meeting with her and Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., the committee vice chairman, to inform them that “without prior notification or approval, CIA personnel had conducted a search — that was John Brennan’s word — of the committee’s computers.”

Feinstein was roundly praised by Democratic senators and prominent human rights and civil liberties groups for her speech. It was a marked contrast to criticism of her defense of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ communications data.

“I commend Chairman Feinstein for speaking so forcefully in defense of the indispensable role that Congress plays under our Constitution in overseeing the executive branch and in particular the intelligence community,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Chairman Feinstein described a troubling pattern of interference and intimidation by the CIA that raises serious questions about possible violations of the Constitution and our criminal laws.”

Air Force to eliminate nearly 500 aircraft in 25 states, D.C. and overseas

WASHINGTON — The Air Force plans to cut nearly 500 planes from its inventory over the next five years if the Defense Department’s Fiscal 2015 budget request is approved by Congress, the service announced Monday.

The reductions — which would affect the active duty, Guard and Reserve — would be implemented in 25 states and the District of Columbia, according to a diagram provided by the Air Force. Only 47 planes would be eliminated overseas at a time when officials are emphasizing the importance of maintaining a strong forward presence to deter adversaries and respond quickly to crises.

The drawdown was necessitated by budget constraints imposed by Congress. The Air Force’s proposed base budget is $109.3 billion, down from the $114.1 billion originally proposed for this year, but slightly higher than the $108.8 billion actually enacted by Congress. If sequestration goes back into effect in fiscal 2016, the service’s budget would take further hits.

“Our challenge in a constrained funding environment is to maintain the balance between having a ready force today, and a modern force tomorrow,” Air Force budget director Maj. Gen. Joe Martin told reporters at the Pentagon last week.

The cuts would entail the elimination of the entire A-10 and U-2 fleets, as well as significant reductions in the number of F-15s and MQ-1s.

“In addition to fleet divestment, we made the tough choice to reduce a number of tactical fighters, command and control, electronic attack and intra-theater airlift assets so we could rebalance the Air Force at a size that can be supported by expected funding levels. Without those cuts, we will not be able to start recovering to required readiness levels,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III said in a news release.

The Air Force’s top budget priorities are the F-35 tactical fighter, the KC-46 tanker and the new long-range bomber, and the Pentagon is trying to protect those programs from the budget axe, officials said.

The procurement budget for the F-35, which has been plagued by cost overruns, technical problems and schedule delays, would rise to about $4.3 billion from $3.3 billion this year, funding the purchase of 26 planes. The Air Force would buy seven new tankers at a cost of $1.6 billion. Money for research, development and testing for the new bomber would more than double from $359 million this year to $914 million, Martin said.

As the war in Afghanistan draws down and China continues to rise militarily, the U.S. military is trying to move assets to the Asia-Pacific region and prioritize high-end platforms over personnel.

“The FY15 [budget proposal] request favors a smaller and more capable force — putting a premium on rapidly deployable, self-sustaining platforms that can defeat more technologically advanced adversaries,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last month.

To maintain capability at lower cost, some assets will be moved from the active duty force to the Reserve. The size of the Reserve fleet will only decrease by 17 aircraft, according to the diagram.

“Wherever possible the Air Force leveraged opportunities to rebalance personnel and force structure into the Reserve component,” Air Force Secretary Deborah James said in the news release. “For that reason, at most Air Reserve component locations where we divested aircraft, we replaced the existing flying missions with a new mission and preserved the majority of the manpower to ease the transition.”

In addition to getting rid of aircraft, the service also plans to slash personnel. The Air Force would reduce its end strength from 503,000 airmen to 483,000 in fiscal 2015. The removal of 17,000 active duty airmen and 3,000 Air Reserve members would be accomplished through the elimination of weapons systems, reductions in headquarters staffing and paring back aircrew-to-cockpit ratios as combat in Afghanistan winds down, officials said last week.

The Air Force plans to use voluntary force reduction measures to thin out the ranks, as well as involuntary programs if necessary, Martin said.

At this point, these Air Force plans are just proposals because Congress has yet to approve them. Certain measures, such as the elimination of the A-10, will be strongly opposed by some lawmakers.

At a budget hearing last week, Sen. Carl Levin D-Mich., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said some of the proposed force structure reductions would be “difficult for many to support.”

Senators Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., John McCain, R-Ariz. and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., have all come out against the elimination of the A-10. Ayotte’s husband is a former A-10 pilot. McCain and Chambliss each represent states where dozens of the aircraft are based.

harper.jon@stripes.com

Twitter: @JHarperStripes

Restriction of 'good soldier' defense at center of Senate bill

SAN DIEGO — The U.S. Senate is poised to approve an amendment Monday that will severely restrict the use of the “good soldier” defense and, supporters say, strengthen reforms to the Uniform Code of Military Justice to protect and empower victims of sexual assault.

Critics say the move does not go far enough.

Under the amendment, sponsored by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., defendants could no longer use their good military character as a defense unless it directly related to an element of the crime with which they are charged. Critics contend that the “good soldier” defense is inherently biased in favor of long-serving, senior personnel. The bill also requires military attorneys assigned to victims of sexual assault to discuss the merits of having their case heard in the military or civilian justice system; allows victims to say where they would like the case to be heard; and sets up a confidential process that allows victims of sexual assault to challenge the terms or characterization of their discharge.

The amendment also requires that the civilian service secretary review any case in which the prosecutor recommends moving forward and the commander disagrees; changes passed in the National Defense Authorization Act in December call for review only if the commander disagrees with his or her legal counsel about moving forward. Additionally, the amendment clarifies that the sexual assault prevention-related changes that passed in the NDAA pertain to military service academies.

“This debate has been about one thing: getting the policy right to best protect and empower victims, and boost prosecutions of predators,” McCaskill said Thursday afternoon. “I believe we’re on the cusp of achieving that goal.”

Congress approved a raft of reforms in December as part of the 2014 defense bill. But even as military and congressional leaders address the crimes, the number of reports continues to grow. Preliminary data released last month showed about 5,400 instances of sexual assault and unwanted sexual contact were reported in fiscal 2013, up 60 percent from 2012.

The final vote on McCaskill’s amendment, scheduled for Monday evening, follows a week of developments in several military sexual assault cases:

• On Friday, a Fort Hood soldier was charged with 21 counts of pandering, conspiracy, abusive sexual contact and other crimes. He had been the coordinator of the post’s sexual assault harassment prevention program before he was accused of setting up a prostitution ring.


• Also Friday, an Army captain testified that Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair twice forced her to perform oral sex while the pair were serving in Afghanistan. Sinclair has pleaded guilty to adultery, improper relationships with three other women, impeding an investigation and viewing pornography in a war zone, but he denies the assaults.


• On Wednesday, sources confirmed that the top Army prosecutor for sexual assault cases is under investigation for allegedly groping and trying to kiss a fellow Army lawyer at a sexual assault legal conference; he has been suspended from his duties.

The vote also comes just days after another bill aimed at combating sexual assault in the ranks fell to a filibuster. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s bill, the Military Justice Improvement Act, would have removed prosecution authority from the victim and accused’s chain of command in the most serious offenses, including sexual assaults.

Gillibrand had been rallying bipartisan support for the measure for months, but the bill came in five votes shy of breaking the 60-vote threshold it needed to survive a filibuster.

Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School and supports Gillibrand’s proposal, said removing the good soldier defense is a good idea because it tends to give greater advantage to men and senior personnel to the detriment of women and lower-ranking troops.

“It represents putting your hand on one side of the scale,” he said.

Fidell said McCaskill’s amendment is nothing more than window dressing.

“This is taking a structure from 1774 and turning it into a structure from 1784,” he said. “This should be called the military deck chairs amendment of 2014.”

He is still hopeful that some version of Gillibrand’s bill will pass.

“I think the fact that the forces of reaction having done their damnedest were unable to get more than 45 votes is tremendously telling,” Fidell said. “I’m hoping that she will take advantage of this sort of timeout to critically review the bill, think of ways to make it even better, simpler, shorter, clearer … and when she comes out of the starting gate next time, I don’t see any erosion in her 55 votes.”

But Tim MacArthur, an attorney with Tully Rinckey who serves in the Army reserve and worked as a prosecutor and defense counsel while on active duty, said he does not anticipate that command authority will be taken out of the military justice decision-making process. Plus, he said, the system as it stands allows prosecutors who disagree with a commander on charging decisions to go to a different commander.

“At the end of the day, I think it’s a pretty fair system,” he said.

Gillibrand on Thursday praised the reforms that have already passed but said Congress has not gone far enough.

“We owe so much to those who bravely serve our country, and I will never quit on them,” Gillibrand said. “We will continue the fight for justice and accountability.”

Advocacy groups for victims of sexual assault in the military also vowed to keep fighting.

“Today’s disappointment is merely a detour in our march to justice,” said Lory Manning, a retired captain and senior policy fellow for the Service Women’s Action Network.

hlad.jennifer@stripes.com

Twitter: @jhlad

Man learning to dive to find remains of wife lost in tsunami

TAKENOURA, Japan — On a chilly morning in March, a 57-year-old Japanese man adjusted his diving mask before heading out to sea from the tsunami-hit northeast coast.

Yasuo Takamatsu is learning to scuba dive in hopes of finding the remains of his wife.

As Japan marks the third anniversary of the 2011 tsunami Tuesday, 2,636 people remain missing, their bodies presumably swept out to sea. Another 15,884 have been confirmed dead.

Takamatsu's wife, Yuko, was at her office when the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that spawned the tsunami struck offshore at 2:46 p.m. At 3:21 p.m., she sent him an email: "Are you OK? I want to go home." That was the last time he heard from her. She was 47 when she died.

Of 13 people who sought refuge on the roof of the two-story bank building, only one survived. Four bodies were found, while the other eight remain missing.

"She wrote, 'I want to go home,' " Takamatsu said. "Because I know that, that she feels that way, I want to look for her myself rather than depend on others to do it."

One recent Sunday, he and his instructor dived to a depth of almost 7 meters (23 feet), spending a little more than one hour underwater during the course of two dives.

It will take many more dives before Takamatsu, who retired from working as an aircraft mechanic with the Japanese military and is now a bus driver, will be experienced enough to take part in underwater searches.

"I haven't quite been able to get used to the buoyancy while diving," he said. "I need to get better, to find my wife."

His diving instructor, Masayoshi Takahashi, conducts searches underwater with other volunteers at least twice a month. They still find belongings, and on occasion bones.

Takamatsu is not asking for much, just something that would bring her home.

"Of course, I hope her body would show up," he said. "I suppose it would be her remains by now. I hope I could find something."

US soldiers in Korea get 15 minutes of foreign fame on reality TV show

SEOUL — Storming buildings during a mock assault, swapping items in Meals, Ready to Eat, and sleeping in unheated tents in the dead of winter may all be part of a U.S. soldier’s normal life during an exercise.

But rocking out at a pop concert, or having television cameras record your every move? Not so much.

A handful of 2nd Infantry Division soldiers recently became mini-celebrities in South Korea after appearing on “Real Men,” a popular reality television show about the Korean military. Each episode features Korean celebrities — singers, actors, comedians and TV personalities — experiencing some aspect of military life while being embedded with the South Korean armed forces.

The show has catapulted some of the American soldiers to their 15 minutes of foreign fame, at least when they leave Camp Casey, where all are stationed.

“People will ask me about it and want to take pictures with me; everyone from little kids to grown men and women,” said Staff Sgt. Jesse Kennedy, 27, one of three soldiers who was featured prominently in the episode. “Before, nobody knew who I was, and now everybody knows who I am.”

Nearly three dozen 2ID soldiers appeared on the episode, which was taped in January and aired several times last month. The soldiers, all with the 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry (Mechanized), 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, lived and trained alongside their South Korean counterparts at a 17th Infantry Division base for two days, with the experience culminating in a raid on a mock village. The exercise was scheduled before the filming proposal was submitted, 2ID said.

The 90-minute episode included often-mundane interactions between the men. When soldiers from the two countries first meet, they compare ranks, and the Americans answer questions about their ages, favorite Korean foods, and show off their 2ID Indianhead patch.

The show is heavy on the laugh track and corny music, and is as much a comedy as a reality show. One scene pokes fun at a Korean soldier who scrunches his eyes shut while riding in a wind-rocked Black Hawk, declaring that he will never fly in a helicopter again.

In another scene, South Korean soldier-celebrity Sohn Jin-young, a runner-up in a Korean singing competition similar to “American Idol,” tells the 2ID soldiers, in English, “I am locker” — presumably meaning to explain that he is a rock musician — before pulling out his guitar and singing “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.”

Munhwa Broadcasting Corp., the South Korean network that produced the show, declined to speak with Stars and Stripes.

A proposal submitted by the network to the U.S. military’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs in Los Angeles, which coordinates military involvement with the entertainment industry, described the show’s purpose: “Through Korea’s top celebrities’ first-hand army experience, the show portrays not only the rigorous training exercises that soldiers go through, but also the fun that they have despite the tough training. Furthermore through these portrayals, the show reveals the comradeship in the army and emphasizes the essential role that the military plays for the security of the nation.”

A production agreement with the Department of Defense allowed 2ID to participate in the program.

“With the exception of any content considered operationally sensitive, the production company received a general release to use the footage they filmed,” 2ID officials said.

The soldiers were not paid to appear in the show.

“Real Men,” which began airing in April 2013, has resonated with the public in South Korea, where all able-bodied males are required to complete two years of military service. Most serve during their late teens or early 20s, sometimes interrupting their college careers to do so.

Previous episodes have included training in martial arts, scaling buildings, hostage rescue, tank maneuvering and meal preparation. The show featuring the 2ID troops also reflects country’s interest in both American culture and the U.S. military, which is often perceived as being inaccessible behind the walls of the many installations across the country, sometimes in the middle of major cities, including Seoul.

Many South Koreans have little one-on-one interaction with the 28,500 U.S. troops regularly stationed in the country.

In this episode, the U.S. troops not only ate in the Korean base cafeteria, but they also conducted a joint air assault, flying in on Black Hawks and clearing two buildings of a fake bomb.

“From the U.S. side, we were treating this as a training event, and if there were cameras there, so be it,” said platoon leader 2nd Lt. Nicholas Kardong, 23.

During training, the 2ID soldiers coached their South Korean counterparts on U.S. methods for conducting raids, such as approaching and clearing rooms.

“I was surprised at how seriously they took the training,” Kardong said. After the air assault mission, the soldiers watched a presentation that showed key moments of the mission, including when participants were “killed” and removed from the game.

“They took their removal very seriously,” he said. “They were clearly disappointed.”

At the start of the two-day filming process, camera crews selected a handful of soldiers who would be featured in the program, basing their decision on who was most outgoing and animated.

“At night it would kind of get annoying, because you just wanted to go to sleep and they kept wanting to film, but other than that, it was just another exercise,” said Pfc. Brandon Fleck, 20, who, along with Kennedy and Pfc. Joshua Lovelace, were spotlighted in the program.

He said he was surprised by the attention the soldiers have received since the show aired.

“I didn’t expect it to be that big,” he said. “I thought it was a little tiny show they were doing it for.”

Not so much. Six Korean celebrities — five of whom have completed their military service — took part in the filming.

“All the Koreans got nervous around them, but we didn’t know who they were so I didn’t get nervous at all,” said Lovelace, 22.

In one scene, Kennedy got a round of applause when he arrived at the group’s tent with a box of soft drinks and a plastic grocery bag filled with snacks.

“What is this?” a puzzled Korean soldier asked as he unrolled one of the offerings — a fruit roll-up that appeared to be several feet long. Two soldiers were shown nibbling opposite ends of the same snack before the screen flashed to an image of a man and woman eating a strand of spaghetti, Lady and the Tramp-style. Another soldier looped a length of his fruit roll-up around his neck.

The South Korean version of MREs, which included fried rice, kimchi and almond cake, got positive reviews from the Americans.

“It was a little better than ours,” Kennedy said. “After a while, you just get tired of eating the same things over and over again, you know.”

Stars and Stripes’ Yoo Kyong Chang contributed to this report.

rowland.ashley@stripes.com

Twitter: @Rowland_Stripes

The effort to make sure troops' gear never fails. Ever.

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Some might consider it a miracle that Harper Morrissey is alive.

Harper is only 4 months old, and it’s what happened more than a year before she was born that might seem out of the ordinary.

On Aug. 9, 2012, Harper’s father, Sgt. Joe Morrissey, was on a route-security mission in Zharay District, Afghanistan, when he was struck by enemy fire.

The rounds “felt like a sucker punch,” as they hit his body armor and knocked the wind out of him, said Morrissey, 26, of Port Charlotte, Fla.

But thanks to the ceramic plate inside his flak vest, Morrissey not only survived being shot, he was uninjured and able to return fire at the enemy.

The plate — with a hole big enough to fit your thumb in — stopped the 7.62 mm round.

And while some would call it miraculous, the researchers at the Project Executive Officer Soldier program say it’s just another day at the office. The PEO Soldier researchers have heard these stories thousands of times. In fact, there’s an entire division of the program that collects battle-damaged Kevlar helmets, ceramic plates, and other pieces of protective equipment to make sure it lives up to Army standards.

Since 2007, PEO Soldier has collected more than 25,000 pieces of equipment, and research shows that not one single helmet, not one single plate has failed. Ever.

“That doesn’t mean that we protected every soldier,” said James Zheng, PEO Soldier project manager and soldier protection and individual equipment chief scientist. “For example, an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) at close range — you can’t protect against that. But small-arms fire, for example, it protected the soldier every time.”

Zheng’s team — including five personnel collecting gear in Afghanistan — estimate that they have received only about a quarter of the battle-damaged helmets and plates worn by U.S. personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We don’t get everything,” Zheng said but added: “Even with 25 percent, we can still learn a huge amount.”

Until recently PEO-Soldier focused mostly on collecting and examining the gear, but now that there’s a large amount of data the researchers are analyzing it with a view toward developing better protective equipment, he said.

The battle-damaged gear is turned in by units or medical examiners. The researchers record the name of the person who was wearing it, the type of attack it was exposed to and where and when it happened. They also collect soldiers’ medical records, Zheng said.

Helmets and plates are photographed, and some are X-rayed or placed in a CT scanner. The researchers examine each item to determine whether it was struck by a bullet or a bomb.

“We look at any remaining projectiles (embedded in the gear) and analyze them to find out where they hit and the damage they caused,” Zheng said.

Much of the information gathered from the research — such as the likelihood that a particular area on a soldier’s body might be susceptible to a gunshot in combat — is classified, PEO Soldier spokesman Doug Graham said.

However, Zheng said, analysts are looking at such things as the percentage of soldiers injured or killed in attacks where a helmet is struck by a bullet.

“By this analysis we find that much of the (gear) defeated threats that it wasn’t designed to defeat,” Zheng said.

For example, Kevlar helmets are designed to stop only the sort of 9 mm rounds typically fired by handguns and fragmentation from explosions. However, in many cases helmets stopped 7.62 mm rounds fired by AK-47 rifles from a distance, he said.

The battle-damaged equipment is often covered in the blood of the soldiers who were wearing it.

“We see blood all the time,” said Zheng, whose staff treat bloody items as biohazards.

It’s a sobering thought that some of the soldiers who wore the gear into combat never made it home, he said.

However, those whose lives were saved by the equipment are often grateful.

After the 2012 battle in Afghanistan, Morrissey turned in his damaged plate, which was sent to the PEO Soldier researchers for analysis.

A month after the battle, he returned home to get married. A little more than a year later, his daughter Harper was born.

“Since I got back, my wife and I have had a baby and we are trying for another,” he said. “None of that would have happened without that plate.”

When possible, PEO-Soldier returns items to troops as souvenirs.

Morrissey was given his plate — mounted on a plaque — during a ceremony at Fort Belvoir, Va., in September 2013. It now sits on top of his dresser at home.

robson.seth@stripes.com

Twitter: @sethrobson1