US soldier killed in WW II finally being laid to rest

The remains of a U.S. World War II soldier, identified by French scientists earlier this year, are to be interred Wednesday on the 70th anniversary of his death.

Army Pfc. Lawrence Gordon was one of two soldiers killed on Aug. 13, 1944, when his M8 armored car was struck by a German anti-tank shell near Carrouges, France. His remains were first interred in an American cemetery as “unknown,” despite the fact that his bloody wallet was sent home to his family and the man killed next to him was identified.

The remains were then reburied seven months later as an unknown in a German cemetery in France because the body was found with German clothing or equipment.

Despite years of research and evidence compiled by an amateur research team that the remains actually belonged to the U.S. soldier, accounting officials at the Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command decided against exhuming and testing the remains last year. Instead, Gordon was positively identified Feb. 13 by France’s national crime laboratory with the support of German authorities.

Now, Gordon is being laid to rest next to family members at 1 p.m., the approximate time he was killed. His grave lies on a hillside overlooking a river and the town where he lived before the war.

According to his nephew, Lawrence, from Alberta, Canada, the remains were escorted through five U.S. states and over the border by U.S. law enforcement and the Patriot Guard before arriving in his hometown of Eastend, Saskatchewan, Canada this week.

“It feels pretty darn good,” Lawrence Gordon said Tuesday of the burial. “I am a happy man right now.”

According to the family, however, the U.S. military declined to provide an escort.

Emails from Army officials to Gordon provided to Stars and Stripes said the escort was not approved because the most direct route wasn’t being taken to the burial site. Gordon said they wanted to pass through Casper, Wyo., where the Canadian citizen worked on a ranch until he enlisted less than a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Not having an escort “doesn’t really sit well with me,” Gordon said. “My uncle made the ultimate sacrifice... I guess it’s fitting we’ll bring him home on our own.”

The younger Gordon said he has a “bad taste in his mouth” about the case’s handling, but he thanked the American people for their outpouring of support as his uncle’s body made the final journey home.

Officials from the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office have said they are investigating the handling of the case as the agency undergoes a much-publicized reorganization following a series of high-profile scandals involving the nation’s accounting community over the past two years. Army officials referred inquiries to DPMO, which did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

The research team behind the identification of Gordon’s remains began its work in 2011. While producing a documentary film about his grandfather, filmmaker Jed Henry discovered that a single member of Staff Sgt. David Henry’s 199-member Reconnaissance Company never made it home.

He began poring over records with a team of French and American researchers. They built a strong case but that wasn’t enough for Defense accounting officials, who denied a request to exhume the remains and perform a DNA test. However, they were able to convince French and German authorities.

“Thank God he was in a German cemetery,” Henry said Tuesday, still en route to Eastend. “If he was in an American one, there is no chance in hell he’d be home right now getting buried. He’d still be an unknown.”

Before the recent reorganization ordered by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, JPAC averaged more $1 million of annual budget per identification. To identify Gordon, Henry’s team spent about $25,000 total, mostly on travel costs.

The private nuclear DNA test that confirmed his identity cost about $1,000, Henry said.

burke.matt@stripes.com

Autopsy performed on Army officer found dead at Fort Gordon

By Travis Highfield

The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle

Published: August 13, 2014

An autopsy has been performed on an Army officer who was found dead in a training area at Fort Gordon, Ga., and an investigative team from Fort Rucker, Ala., has taken the lead in the investigation, post officials said Tuesday.

The autopsy, performed Sunday on 2nd Lt. Anthony Thomas Scardino, 27, was conducted by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, base spokesman J.C. Matthews said. The results are pending.

A centralized accident investigation team from the U.S. Army Combat Readiness/Safety Center arrived Sunday at Fort Gordon to take over the investigation into the incident. Matthews said that is standard procedure.

“Anytime there is an accident, particularly one with a fatality, the investigation team will get involved,” he said.

The body of Scardino, a member of the Mississippi Army National Guard, was found about 10 p.m. Friday after he went missing during a training exercise, officials said. About 90 soldiers and the post’s Directorate of Emergency Services were involved in the search.

According to a statement from the post, Scardino had three deployments — two to Iraq in 2006 and one to Afghanistan in 2009 — after enlisting as a satellite communication systems operator. He received a direct commission to second lieutenant on Nov. 30, as a Signal officer.

Scardino was temporarily assigned to the 442nd Signal Battalion 15th Regimental Signal Brigade at Fort Gordon for training at the time of his death.

'Hannibal Procedure': Israeli tactic to stop soldier capture criticized

JERUSALEM — An Israeli military tactic that allows overwhelming fire to stop the capture of soldiers — even at the risk of killing them — is facing criticism after its use in the Gaza war killed some 100 Palestinians.

The military used the "Hannibal Procedure" after soldiers feared militants had captured an officer, unleashing heavy shelling on the southern Gaza town of Rafah. Now, a group is calling on the military to abandon the practice, saying it puts captured soldiers at unreasonable risk and can lead to civilian deaths.

In an army with a strong ethos of "no soldier left behind," there is a near obsession with preventing the abduction of Israeli troops, in part because past cases have ended in painful, lopsided prisoner exchanges after years of protracted negotiations. New recruits learn that if they see a soldier being captured and rushed away in a car, they should shoot at the vehicle to stop its progress, even if it risks the soldier's life.

The "Hannibal Procedure" was designed in the mid-1980s by Yossi Peled, then head of Israel's Northern Command, after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two soldiers in southern Lebanon.

The actual order was drafted along with two of his top staff officers, Col. Gabi Ashkenazi, who later became the Israeli military chief, and Col. Yaakov Amidror, who recently ended a term as Israel's national security adviser. Hannibal was a legendary military commander who battled the ancient Romans, though officials say the name was selected randomly by a computer.

Peled declined to comment, but Amidror stood behind a rationale he said was often misinterpreted. He said it gives young soldiers on the ground clear guidelines for such a situation.

"The order is that you cannot kill the soldier, but you can endanger him. A soldier in that situation knows he is in danger anyway," he said. "How is it any different than giving a soldier an order to charge forward into live fire? You are also putting his life in danger that way. That's what soldiers do."

However, its application in the Gaza war has angered critics who say it may have led to the deaths of scores of Palestinians on Aug. 1, when Israeli soldiers feared militants had captured Lt. Hadar Goldin.

Hamas fire killed Goldin and two other Israeli soldiers near Rafah, along Gaza's southern border with Egypt, shortly after an internationally brokered cease-fire took effect.

According to Israeli media reports, three bodies were found at the scene shortly after the ambush, but upon closer inspection, troops realized that one of them was a Hamas militant disguised in an Israeli uniform — raising fears that Hamas had captured Goldin.

That's when "Hannibal" allegedly went into effect, with Israel unleashing a massive barrage of airstrikes and artillery fire aimed at blocking any potential escape routes of the kidnappers. Defying protocol, a fellow officer rushed into one of the tunnels and found some personal effects belonging to Goldin that helped the military later rule him dead.

The military would not officially confirm whether "Hannibal" was enacted after Goldin's disappearance, but multiple officials say the rare order was given. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists.

The heavy shelling leveled the area in Rafah, killing some 100 Palestinians, Palestinian health officials say. They could not offer a breakdown of the number of civilians and militants killed.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a prominent rights group, asked the government this week to strike down the doctrine and investigate its use.

"A protocol that puts the life of the captured soldier in jeopardy to thwart a kidnapping is fundamentally unacceptable," ACRI wrote to Israel's attorney general on Monday. "Implementing this protocol in populated areas, wherein the soldier and his captors are surrounded by a civilian population that is not taking part in hostilities, is strictly prohibited."

Israel's Justice Ministry declined to comment, merely saying it received the letter.

The fear of being captured runs deep in Israeli society, where military service is mandatory for most Jewish men. Islamic militant groups have put a premium on capturing soldiers. When they have succeeded, they have not extended international prisoner of war rights, preventing visits from the Red Cross and keeping word of their captives' status secret.

Asa Kasher, a philosophy professor who authored the military's official code of conduct in the 1990s, said the "Hannibal Procedure" has been grossly misunderstood and strikes a delicate balance between protecting the lives of soldiers and carrying out military responsibilities. Much of the directive remains classified, but Kasher stressed the conventional wisdom of a "dead soldier being better than a captive soldier" was a fallacy.

"That is just an awful saying and totally untrue. It goes against every value of the" Israeli military, he said.

However, Tamar Feldman, an ACRI lawyer, said the practice violates the potential captive's human rights. When employed in a crowded area such as Gaza, it raised even more questions.

"A command that subjugates the life of a soldier to an unknown political gain ... is both cynical and revolting," she wrote. "Activating this protocol in the heart of an urban and civilian environment is particularly grave; it shakes the foundations of law and morality and must be absolutely condemned."

Fugitive Philippine ex-general wanted in kidnapping case captured

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine security forces on Tuesday captured a fugitive former army general wanted in the kidnapping of two students, fulfilling a promise by President Benigno Aquinio III to bring high-profile criminal suspects to justice, official said.

Military spokesman Lt. Col. Ramon Zagala said military intelligence and National Bureau of Investigation agents arrested Jovito Palparan in a hideout in district of Manila district.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said the arrest of Palparan shows that the Aquino government is determined to "end the culture of impunity" characterized by rampant human rights violations under Aquino's predecessor, Gloria Arroyo.

Palparan, 63, has been on the run since December 2011 after a court issued a warrant for his arrest in the kidnapping and disappearance of two female left-wing activists in Bulacan province north of Manila in 2006.

The two remain missing. The retired major general, who was in charge of a regional army unit, has denied any involvement.

Human rights groups and a U.N. investigator have blamed security forces for the deaths and disappearances of about 1,000 activists between 2001 and 2010 under Arroyo. The former president gave the military a free hand in what it called an all-out war against communist rebels.

Aquino's government has said it wants justice for the missing students, Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan, to improve the Philippines' human rights record after a decade of abuses under the Arroyo administration.

"The human rights community, domestic and international community, has long waited for this," de Lima told reporters.

She said an arraignment date will be set by a court in Bulacan's provincial capital of Malolos.

A breakthrough in the case came late Monday when naval intelligence agents checked a tipoff from an informant and spotted Palparan in the crowded suburban Manila neighborhood, said Ano, who headed a task force assigned to capture the fugitive general.

In 2012, Aquino doubled the reward for the capture of Palparan, along with a former governor wanted in the killing of an environmentalist and a former congressman convicted of murdering his wife, to 2 million pesos ($45,600), with officials saying the president was unhappy at the lack of progress in arresting high-profile fugitives.

Associated Press writer Jim Gomez contributed to this story.

US preparing to give long-range weapons to Kurdish fighters

47 minutes ago

Peshmerga Special Forces, the elite troops of Kurdistan, rest in the shade of an earthen berm they will use to protect the approaches to the capital Irbil on Aug. 7, 2014 in Iraq. This is the most front line position of the Kudish defenses, with militants from the Islamic State about one mile away.
Mitchell Prothero/MCT

By David S. Cloud and Brian Bennett

Tribune Washington Bureau

Published: August 11, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration and U.S. allies are preparing to rush antitank weapons and other arms to Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq who are battling Islamic militants near Irbil, officials said.

The CIA had already rushed small shipments of arms to the Kurds in recent days as U.S. airstrikes targeted the militants’ convoys and mortars.

The Pentagon now is preparing to take over and ratchet up the resupply effort. A Pentagon official said the U.S. would provide weapons that can destroy armored U.S.-made Humvees, armored personnel carriers and other heavy equipment the militants captured from fleeing Iraqi security forces.

The decision to arm the Kurds represents an about-face for the United States, which has long had a policy of funneling military aid only to Kurdish troops, known as peshmerga, through Iraq’s central government in Baghdad.

The White House decided to switch course after Kurdish troops last week abandoned positions outside Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital, in the face of a militant offensive because they ran out of ammunition, and resupply efforts from Iraqi and Kurdish stockpiles faltered, officials said.

U.S. officials emphasized the decision to arm the Kurds and to send ammunition was done with the approval of Iraqi officials in Baghdad.

A Kurdish leader confirmed that regional forces had begun receiving heavier weapons from U.S. stockpiles to help repel militants pushing into Kurdish towns.

The Kurdish forces need anti-armor and antitank weapons, he said, speaking anonymously in discussing sensitive negotiations with the Obama administration.

“This war against ISIS is a war of firepower,” the Kurdish leader said in a phone interview from Irbil, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “Really there is no match between the weapons they have acquired and our weapons.”

He said the Kurdish forces have requested long-range range anti-armor mortar rounds, shoulder-fired rockets and heavy machine guns.

Robin Williams, boisterious comedian, Oscar-winning actor, dies at 63

SAN FRANCISCO — Robin Williams, a brilliant shapeshifter who could channel his frenetic energy into delightful comic characters like "Mrs. Doubtfire" or harness it into richly nuanced work like his Oscar-winning turn in "Good Will Hunting," died Monday in an apparent suicide. He was 63.

Williams was pronounced dead at his San Francisco Bay Area home Monday, according to the Sheriff's Office in Marin County, north of San Francisco. The Sheriff's Office said the preliminary investigation shows the cause of death to be a suicide due to asphyxia.

The Marin County coroner's office said Williams was last seen alive at home at about 10 p.m. Sunday. An emergency call from his house in Tiburon was placed to the Sheriff's Department shortly before noon Monday.

"This morning, I lost my husband and my best friend, while the world lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings. I am utterly heartbroken," said Williams' wife, Susan Schneider. "On behalf of Robin's family, we are asking for privacy during our time of profound grief. As he is remembered, it is our hope the focus will not be on Robin's death, but on the countless moments of joy and laughter he gave to millions."

Williams had been battling severe depression recently, said Mara Buxbaum, his press representative. Just last month, he announced he was returning to a 12-step treatment program he said he needed after 18 months of nonstop work. He had sought treatment in 2006 after a relapse following 20 years of sobriety.

From his breakthrough in the late 1970s as the alien in the hit TV show "Mork & Mindy," through his standup act and such films as "Good Morning, Vietnam," the short, barrel-chested Williams ranted and shouted as if just sprung from solitary confinement. Loud, fast and manic, he parodied everyone from John Wayne to Keith Richards, impersonating a Russian immigrant as easily as a pack of Nazi attack dogs.

He was a riot in drag in "Mrs. Doubtfire," or as a cartoon genie in "Aladdin." He won his Academy Award in a rare dramatic role, as an empathetic therapist in the 1997 film "Good Will Hunting."

He was no less on fire in interviews. During a 1989 chat with The Associated Press, he could barely stay seated in his hotel room, or even mention the film he was supposed to promote, as he free-associated about comedy and the cosmos.

"There's an Ice Age coming," he said. "But the good news is there'll be daiquiris for everyone and the Ice Capades will be everywhere. The lobster will keep for at least 100 years, that's the good news. The Swanson dinners will last a whole millennium. The bad news is the house will basically be in Arkansas."

As word of his death spread, tributes from inside and outside the entertainment industry poured in.

"Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between. But he was one of a kind. He arrived in our lives as an alien — but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit. He made us laugh. He made us cry. He gave his immeasurable talent freely and generously to those who needed it most — from our troops stationed abroad to the marginalized on our own streets," President Barack Obama said in a statement.

Following Williams on stage, Billy Crystal once observed, was like trying to top the Civil War. In a 1993 interview with the AP, Williams recalled an appearance early in his career on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson." Bob Hope was also there.

"It was interesting," Williams said. "He was supposed to go on before me and I was supposed to follow him, and I had to go on before him because he was late. I don't think that made him happy. I don't think he was angry, but I don't think he was pleased.

"I had been on the road and I came out, you know, gassed, and I killed and had a great time. Hope comes out and Johnny leans over and says, 'Robin Williams, isn't he funny?' Hope says, 'Yeah, he's wild. But you know, Johnny, it's great to be back here with you.'"

In 1992, Carson chose Williams and Bette Midler as his final guests.

Like so many funnymen, Williams had dramatic ambitions. He played for tears in "Awakenings," ''Dead Poets Society" and "What Dreams May Come," which led New York Times critic Stephen Holden to write that he dreaded seeing the actor's "Humpty Dumpty grin and crinkly moist eyes."

But other critics approved, and Williams won three Golden Globes, for "Good Morning, Vietnam," ''Mrs. Doubtfire" and "The Fisher King."

His other film credits included Robert Altman's "Popeye" (a box office bomb), Paul Mazursky's "Moscow on the Hudson," Steven Spielberg's "Hook" and Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry." On stage, Williams joined fellow comedian Steve Martin in a 1988 Broadway revival of "Waiting for Godot."

"Robin was a lightning storm of comic genius and our laughter was the thunder that sustained him. He was a pal and I can't believe he's gone," Spielberg said.

More recently, he appeared in the "Night at the Museum" movies, playing President Theodore Roosevelt in the comedies in which Ben Stiller's security guard has to contend with wax figures that come alive and wreak havoc after a museum closes. The third film in the series is in post-production, according to the Internet Movie Database.

In April, Fox 2000 said it was developing a sequel to "Mrs. Doubtfire" and Williams was in talks to join the production.

Williams also made a short-lived return to TV last fall in CBS' "The Crazy Ones," a sitcom about a father-daughter ad agency team that co-starred Sarah Michelle Gellar. It was canceled after one season.

"I dread the word 'art,'" Williams said in 1989 when discussing his craft with the AP. "That's what we used to do every night before we'd go on with 'Waiting for Godot.' We'd go, 'No art. Art dies tonight.' We'd try to give it a life, instead of making "Godot" so serious. It's cosmic vaudeville staged by the Marquis de Sade."

His personal life was often short on laughter. He had acknowledged drug and alcohol problems in the 1970s and '80s and was among the last to see John Belushi before the "Saturday Night Live" star died of a drug overdose in 1982.

Williams announced in 2006 that he was drinking again but rebounded well enough to joke about it during his recent tour. "I went to rehab in wine country," he said, "to keep my options open." The following year, he told the AP that people were surprised he was no longer clean.

"I fell off the wagon after 20 years and people are like, 'Really?' Well, yeah. It only kicks in when you really want to change," he said.

Born in Chicago in 1951, Williams would remember himself as a shy kid who got some early laughs from his mother — by mimicking his grandmother. He opened up more in high school when he joined the drama club, and he was accepted into the Juilliard Academy, where he had several classes in which he and Christopher Reeve were the only students and John Houseman was the teacher.

Encouraged by Houseman to pursue comedy, Williams identified with the wildest and angriest of performers: Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin. Their acts were not warm and lovable. They were just being themselves.

"You look at the world and see how scary it can be sometimes and still try to deal with the fear," he said in 1989. "Comedy can deal with the fear and still not paralyze you or tell you that it's going away. You say, OK, you got certain choices here, you can laugh at them and then once you've laughed at them and you have expunged the demon, now you can deal with them. That's what I do when I do my act."

He unveiled Mork, the alien from the planet Ork, in an appearance on "Happy Days" and was granted his own series, which ran from 1978 to 1982 and co-starred Pam Dawber as a woman who takes in the interplanetary visitor.

"I am completely and totally devastated," Dawber said in a statement. "What more can be said?"

Following his success in films, Williams often returned to television — for appearances on "Saturday Night Live," for "Friends," for comedy specials, for "American Idol," where in 2008 he pretended to be a "Russian idol" who belts out a tuneless, indecipherable "My Way."

Williams could handle a script, when he felt like it, and also think on his feet. He ad-libbed in many of his films and was just as quick in person. During a media tour for "Awakenings," when director Penny Marshall mistakenly described the film as being set in a "menstrual hospital," instead of "mental hospital," Williams quickly stepped in and joked, "It's a period piece."

Winner of a Grammy in 2003 for best spoken comedy album, "Robin Williams — Live 2002," he once likened his act to the daily jogs he took across the Golden Gate Bridge. There were times he would look over the edge, one side of him pulling back in fear, the other insisting he could fly.

"You have an internal critic, an internal drive that says, 'OK, you can do more.' Maybe that's what keeps you going," Williams said. "Maybe that's a demon. ... Some people say, 'It's a muse.' No, it's not a muse! It's a demon! DO IT YOU BASTARD!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! THE LITTLE DEMON!!"

In addition to his wife, Williams is survived by his three children: daughter Zelda, 25; and sons Zachary, 31, and Cody, 19.

Italie reported from New York. Associated Press writer Lynn Elber also contributed to this report.

Military high court to hear HIV-positive airman's conviction appeal

By Roxana Hegeman

The Associated Press

Published: August 11, 2014

WICHITA, Kan. — The nation's highest military court has agreed to review the evidence used to convict a Kansas airman of aggravated assault for exposing multiple sex partners to HIV at swinger parties in Wichita, an appeal the defense contends could potentially remap HIV testing and prosecution in the U.S. military.

The attorney for David Gutierrez said Monday that the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces is expected to hear arguments sometime later this year.

The court will also consider whether Gutierrez's due process rights were violated because of how long the appeal has taken.

Gutierrez was a sergeant at McConnell Air Force Base when he was sentenced in 2011 to eight years in prison and stripped of his rank for aggravated assault. He was also found guilty of violating his commander's order to notify partners about his HIV status and use condoms. The military judge also convicted Gutierrez of indecent acts for having sex in front of others and adultery.

Prosecutors at his trial had argued Gutierrez played Russian roulette with his sexual partners' lives. Several people who participated in swinger and partner-swapping events with Gutierrez and his wife testified that they never would have had sex with him had he told them he was HIV-positive.

Defense attorney Kevin McDermott said the military's case was based on old attitudes about AIDS and the virus that causes it "and how infectious it was and how much of a death sentence it was at that particular time." The virus isn't as easily transmitted through heterosexual sex as once thought, he said, and people can now live a long time with it.

"Really what this case is hoping to do is to get the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and every other military panel up to speed with what is going on with HIV today and to perhaps change those attitudes and mores," McDermott said.