Murky Pentagon contract to build silencers ends in guilty verdicts

WASHINGTON — A Navy intelligence official and a California hot-rod mechanic were found guilty Wednesday on federal conspiracy charges stemming from a mysterious scheme to manufacture hundreds of AK-47 rifle silencers for a secret military project.

Lee M. Hall, a civilian Navy intelligence official at the Pentagon, and Mark S. Landersman, the mechanic, were convicted of conspiring to build 349 untraceable silencers — without a firearms license — and shipping them across state lines for a sensitive mission that was never fully explained in court.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who delivered the verdicts after bench trials in Alexandria, Virginia, said she was unconvinced by defense attorneys' assertions that the silencers were needed for a clandestine purpose and were necessarily obtained outside of normal channels.

"I do not accept the argument that because this might have been covert, that somehow that excuses the participants from playing by the rules," she said.

Prosecutors had argued that the silencer contract was a $1.6 million sweetheart deal intended to enrich Landersman, a struggling auto mechanic and machinist from Temecula, Calif.

His brother, David Landersman, served as Hall's boss at the Pentagon as the senior director for intelligence in an obscure Navy office. Prosecutors have accused David Landersman of masterminding the contract to help his brother, who had been mired in bankruptcy. He has been labeled an unindicted co-conspirator in the case but has not been charged.

According to trial testimony, Hall and the Landersman brothers went to unusual lengths to conceal the silencer purchase from other Navy officials and contracting representatives. Three Navy officials said they had approved David Landersman's request to spend the money on intelligence studies, not a weapons deal.

Hall later told another Navy official that the silencers were intended for Navy SEAL Team 6, the elite commando squad that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. But representatives for SEAL Team 6 told agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service that they had not ordered the silencers and didn't know anything about them.

Although the purpose of the silencers was never established, the trial featured a constant undercurrent of intrigue with carefully couched references to classified projects and black operations. Many filings in the case were placed under seal. At the request of military officials, participants at the trial were prohibited from making overt references to the Navy SEALs.

Prosecutors portrayed Mark Landersman as a financially struggling auto mechanic without a federal firearms license who went on a spending binge as soon as he landed the silencer contract, buying fancy cars and investing $100,000 in a microbrewery.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Haynes said all the talk about classified projects and Navy commandos was "nothing more than a fantasy" concocted to cover up a simple case of fraud.

But defense attorneys cited evidence that Mark Landersman had worked for years to invent new silencer designs for military rifles and had received encouragement from Navy officials who work closely with the SEALs.

Rodney Lowell, the weapons accessory manager for the Naval Special Warfare Command, testified that he met with Mark Landersman in 2010 and 2011 to review a silencer prototype for sniper rifles used by the SEALs. Lowell said he thought the prototype was promising but that the Navy didn't have the money at the time to pay for initial testing.

If funds had been available, Lowell said, "I definitely would have written a check."

John Zwerling, a defense attorney for Mark Landersman, said he was "very disappointed" by the verdict. During his closing argument, Zwerling said even his client wasn't told what the silencers would be used for.

"He didn't know specifically what it was for or where it was going," Zwerling said. "It was clearly something for black ops."

Stuart Sears, an attorney for Hall, declined to comment. Both defendants are free on bond until their sentencing hearing Jan. 30. Hall faces up to 15 years in prison and Mark Landersman as much as five years.

Adding to the mystery of the case was the fact that the silencers were designed to fit Russian-made AK-47 automatic rifles, not standard-issue U.S. military weapons.

Prosecutors and a weapons tester for the Navy described the silencers as shoddily made, poorly designed and of limited use. According to testimony, the silencers only cost $10,000 in parts and labor to manufacture but were sold to the government for more than $1.6 million.

Defense attorneys said the price was reasonable because Mark Landersman had spent years working on the design. They also hinted that the silencers' poor performance was exactly why the Navy ordered them — suggesting obliquely that they were destined to end up in the hands of foreign guerrillas who may or may not have been friends of the United States.

Sorting out the truth of the case has been made even more challenging because of the destruction of potential evidence.

Navy security officers testified that they incinerated documents last year that had been seized from the offices of Hall and David Landersman — three days after The Washington Post published a front-page article about the unfolding investigation. Defense attorneys also accused the Navy of destroying a secret stash of automatic weapons that the silencers were designed to fit.

For Turkey and U.S., at odds over Syria, a 60-year alliance shows signs of crumbling

ANKARA, Turkey — The increasingly hostile divergence of views between Turkey and the United States over Syria is testing the durability of their 60-year alliance, to the point where some are starting to question whether the two countries still can be considered allies at all.

Turkey’s refusal to allow the United States to use its bases to launch attacks against the Islamic State, quarrels over how to manage the battle raging in the Syrian border town of Kobane and the harsh tone of the anti-American rhetoric used by top Turkish officials to denounce U.S. policy have served to illuminate the vast gulf that divides the two nations as they scramble to address the menace posed by the extremists.

Whether the Islamic State even is the chief threat confronting the region is disputed, with Washington and Ankara publicly airing their differences through a fog of sniping, insults and recrimination over who is to blame for the mess the Middle East has become.

At stake is a six-decade-old relationship forged during the Cold War and now endowed with a different but equally vital strategic dimension. Turkey is positioned on the front line of the war against the Islamic State, controlling a 780-mile border with Iraq and Syria. Without Turkey’s cooperation, no U.S. policy to bring stability to the region can succeed, analysts and officials on both sides say.

"If Turkey is not an ally, then we and Turkey are in trouble,” said Francis Ricciardone, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Turkey until the summer. “It is probably the most important ally.”

The airdrop by U.S. warplanes last week of weapons to a Kurdish group Turkey regards as a terrorist organization crystallized the apparent parting of ways. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not disguised his anger at the way President Obama ordered the airdrop. The U.S. president informed him of the decision in a telephone call barely an hour after Erdogan had declared to journalists that Turkey would never allow such assistance to take place.

On a tour of the Baltic states last week, Erdogan blasted Obama at every stop. “Mr. Obama ordering three C-130s to airdrop weapons and supplies to Kobane right after our conversation cannot be approved of,” he said during a news conference in Latvia. “The U.S. did that despite Turkey,” he fumed on another leg of the journey.

U.S. officials have sought to reassure Turkey that the airdrop was a one-time action, and the two countries have agreed on a plan to reinforce the beleaguered Syrian Kurds with Iraqi peshmerga fighters, which Turkey does not object to, because it has friendly relations with Iraqi Kurds.

But the Kobane dispute masked more fundamental differences over a range of issues, some of which have been brewing for years and others that have been brought to light by the urgency of the U.S.-led air campaign, analysts say.

“The Syria crisis is exposing long-unspoken, unpleasant truths about the relationship that were put to one side,” said Bulent Aliriza, a Turkish analyst with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We have this kabuki dance where Washington and Ankara say they agree, but they don’t.”

The tensions are not unprecedented, nor are the doubts about an alliance born in a different era, when fears of Soviet expansionism brought Muslim Turkey under NATO’S umbrella and extended the Western bloc’s reach into Asia.

The United State imposed an arms embargo on Turkey after Turkish troops invaded Cyprus in 1974. In 2003, there was fury in Washington when Turkey’s parliament refused to allow American troops to use Turkish soil as a staging ground for the invasion of Iraq, triggering a deep chill that took years to overcome.

The 2003 rupture may, however, have foreshadowed the beginning of a more fundamental shift in the relationship, with Erdogan embarking on a decade of transformation in Turkey that has perhaps forever changed his country, analysts say.

Turkey has grown and prospered under his rule, but it has also begun to tilt toward a more authoritarian, Islamist brand of politics that is increasingly at odds with the model of secularism and pluralism that the United States has held up as a key component of Turkey’s importance to the alliance.

In 2003, as now, Turkey made it plain it did not want to be used as a launching pad for attacks against fellow Muslims in the Middle East, a sentiment Erdogan has repeatedly expressed in his many recent comments critical of U.S. policy. He has accused the United States of being more interested in oil than in helping the people of the region and has made it clear that he does not regard the Islamic State as a greater threat than the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, the organization affiliated with the Kurdish Syrians the United States has been helping in Kobane.

“There are growing doubts over whether the U.S. and Turkey share the same priorities and even whether they share the same goals,” Aliriza said. “Even when it comes to defining the enemy — there is no common enemy.”

Turkish officials bristle at suggestions that Turkey is in any way sympathetic to the Islamic State. It is Turkey that has to live with the jihadist group on its borders, not the United States, and Turkey that is most at risk of being targeted by the Islamic State in retaliation for waging war against it, the officials say.

Turks also do not mask their irritation with what they regard as a shortsighted and potentially dangerous U.S. strategy that they believe will not work and could backfire. Turkey believes Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is the root cause of the instability that gave rise to the Islamic State and that leaving him in place will serve only to prolong the war, a senior Turkish official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss policy on the record.

Turkey is hosting more than 1.5 million refugees, a huge social and financial burden that will continue to grow if the conflict in Syria is not resolved, the official said.

“They are across the Atlantic,” he said, referring to the United States. “We are a neighbor of Syria’s. We know that if Assad stays, the problem will continue for decades. The Americans have the luxury of cherry-picking the problems, but we need to see them as an entirety.”

Obama and other top U.S. officials have repeatedly said that Assad cannot be part of any long-term solution to the Syria problem. But, another Turkish official said, “saying it is one thing, and doing it is another.”

“Much, much more needs to be done,” the second official said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity. “To fix this region, we have to think big. We have to think long-term and have a holistic strategy underpinned by values that don’t change according to the season.”

U.S. officials acknowledge that Washington policymakers do not always sufficiently take into account the concerns of allies.

They also point to areas where Turkey is expanding its cooperation, including restricting the flow of foreign fighters across its borders and identifying the networks in Turkey that support them.

“We’ve seen some steps recently where they are more engaged on both of those issues,” said a senior administration official in Washington, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy. “We’re definitely encouraged there.”

And in some ways, the Syria crisis has brought Turkey and the United States closer after a year of building tensions, officials on both sides say. Obama and Erdogan had not spoken since January until they met in Wales in September to discuss the formation of the anti-Islamic State coalition. Lower-level officials have since been talking multiple times a day, Turkish and U.S. officials say. Vice President Biden has announced plans to visit Turkey in November in an effort to smooth over the ruckus over comments he made suggesting that Turkey is responsible for the rise of the Islamic State.

It is hard, however, to avoid the impression that Turkey and the United States are moving on separate tracks — “parallel tracks that don’t converge,” said Gokhan Bacik, a dean at Ipek University in Ankara.

“From now on, this is only a relationship of necessity,” he said. “There is nothing ideologically that the United States and Turkey share. Turkey has changed.”

Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

NATO cites “unusual” Russian air activity as intercepts rise

STUTTGART, Germany — Russian jets are conducting a growing number of patrols near NATO territory, prompting a spike in the intercepts carried out by alliance aircraft this year and raising concerns about air traffic safety, alliance officials said.

Since Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March, Russian aircraft have increased their activity near Russia’s borders with NATO, according to the 28-nation alliance. And in the past two days, Russian aircraft formations have grown in size, prompting NATO to scramble multiple fighters in response.

“These sizable Russian flights represent an unusual level of air activity over European airspace,” Lt. Col. Jay Janzen, a spokesman with Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium, said in a statement.

So far this year, NATO has conducted more than 100 intercepts of Russian aircraft, which is three times more than were conducted in all of 2013, according to NATO. In response to Russia’s increased activity in the region, NATO has beefed up its air policing mission in the Baltics from four to 16 jets.

Scrambles and intercepts are standard air policing procedure when an unknown aircraft nears NATO airspace. However, NATO officials say flights over international airspace also pose a potential risk to civil aviation since the Russian military often do not file flight plans and fly with their on-board transponders turned off, making them invisible to civilian air traffic control.

On Wednesday, NATO radars detected and tracked eight Russian aircraft flying in formation over the North Sea. In response, F-16 aircraft from the Royal Norwegian Air Force were scrambled to shadow the formation that included four Tu-95 Bear H strategic bombers and four Il-78 tanker aircraft.

Six of the Russian aircraft then turned back to the northeast toward Russia, while two of the bombers continued southwest, parallel to the Norwegian coast, NATO said in a statement.

That set off a series of NATO intercepts from multiple countries as alliance fighters monitored the two Russian aircraft, which traveled over the North Sea and over the Atlantic Ocean west of Portugal before turning north for the west coast of the United Kingdom. By late Wednesday, the Russian aircraft appeared to be headed back to Russia, NATO said. F-16s from the Portuguese air force and British Typhoons were scrambled while military radar tacked the movements of the Russians.

“The bomber and tanker aircraft from Russia did not file flight plans or maintain radio contact with civilian air traffic control authorities, and they were not using on-board transponders,” NATO stated.

Also on Wednesday, NATO radars detected and tracked four Russian aircraft — two Tu-95s and two Su-27 Flanker fighter jets — flying over the Black Sea in international airspace. Turkish air force fighter jets intercepted the planes, NATO said.

The Russian air force routinely uses its Tu-95s, powered by massive counter-rotating turboprops, for long-range maritime reconnaissance and search-and-rescue patrols. Like the B-52 Stratofortress, its U.S. counterpart from the 1950s, the Bear has been continuously modernized and upgraded and is expected to remain in service for another two decades.

Meanwhile, German Typhoon aircraft on Tuesday intercepted seven Russian fighters flying in international airspace over the Baltic Sea. In this case, Russian aircraft had filed a flight plan and were using transponders, but did not maintain contact with civilian air control as is standard protocol, NATO reported.

A German air force spokesman said allies have grown accustomed to scrambling jets in response to Russian activity, but said what is unusual in recent instances is the size and scope of the Russian formations.

“The special character of this situation was that we not just had to deal with one, but with seven, planes,” the German spokesman said.

Russia maintains a major air force base in Kaliningrad, home to Russia’s Baltic fleet, and training flights are routine in the region. NATO officials have stated they don’t oppose Russian maneuvers in international airspace, but that they should follow flight protocols, such as filing flight plans and making their movements visible to civil air traffic control.

Marcus Klöckner contributed to this story.

vandiver.john@stripes.com

Anti-Islamists take most seats in Tunisia poll

TUNIS, Tunisia — A liberal party with ties to the deposed regime took the most seats in Tunisia's parliamentary elections, leaving the once dominant Islamists running a close second, the election commission announced in the early hours of the morning Thursday.

The Nida Tunis (Tunis Calls) Party, running on an explicitly anti-Islamist platform, won 85 of the 217 seats in parliament, giving it the right to name a prime minister and lead a coalition government.

The moderate Islamist Ennahda Party, which had previously dominated the parliament, won 69 seats, or nearly 32 percent, of the new parliament, representing a loss of some 23 seats.

Since overthrowing its dictator in 2011 and kicking off the Arab Spring pro-democracy wave, Tunisia has been buffeted by economic turmoil and terrorist attacks.

Analysts have described Sunday's election as a referendum on the Islamist-led coalition's stormy two years in office and punished them for a poor economic performance and unfulfilled expectations of the revolution.

Nida Tunis is led by Beji Caid Essebsi, an 87-year-old veteran politician who previously served as foreign minister in the 1980s and parliament speaker in the early 1990s under later deposed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

The party, which includes businessmen, trade unionists and politicians from the old regime, has all but ruled out forming a coalition with the Islamists, describing it as "against their nature," and will turn to a collection of smaller parties to garner the necessary 109-seat majority.

Running a distant third was the Free Patriotic Union of Slim Rihai, a millionaire football club owner and political neophyte, with 16 seats.

In fourth place came the left-wing coalition of parties known as the Popular Front, which had two of its members assassinated by extremists in 2013.

The liberal Afek Tounes came in fifth place with eight seats.

The remaining 24 seats were split among another dozen small parties.

Election Commission head Chafik Sarsar said Nida Tunis lost one seat in the southern city of Kasserine following reports of widespread election violations by its partisans in that city.

Alone among countries that experienced the Arab Spring, Tunisia's transition to democracy has remained on track, while Libya and Syria have descended into civil war and Egypt's military overthrew the elected president.

Despite three years of political wrangling, economic turmoil and a rising number of terrorist attacks, Tunisian politicians from different parties managed to work together to pass a new constitution and hold elections for a permanent government.

Presidential elections featuring dozens of candidates are set for Nov. 23.

For-profit colleges face 'gainful employment' rule

WASHINGTON (AP) — For-profit colleges that don't produce graduates capable of paying off their student loans could soon face the wrath of the federal government.

Schools with career-oriented programs that fail to comply with the new rule being announced Thursday by the Obama administration stand to lose access to federal student-aid programs.

To meet these "gainful employment" standards, a program will have to show that the estimated annual loan payment of a typical graduate does not exceed 20 percent of his or her discretionary income or 8 percent of total earnings.

The Education Department estimates that about 1,400 programs serving 840,000 students won't pass. Ninety-nine percent of these programs are offered by for-profit schools, although affected career training programs can come from certificate programs elsewhere in higher education.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the department wants to make sure that programs that prey on students don't continue abusive practices.

However, Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, calls the effort "nothing more than a bad-faith attempt to cut off access to education for millions of students who have been historically underserved by higher education."

Some questions and answers arising from the new rule:

Q: Who goes to for-profit colleges?

A: Students seeking training in areas such as nursing, truck driving, culinary arts and auto repair. Such fields attract many nontraditional students, including veterans and workers laid off during the economic downturn. About two-thirds are over the age of 24. Half have dependents and almost 40 percent work full time while enrolled, according to the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities. Students at for-profit schools are more likely to live at or below the federal poverty level and receive food stamp benefits than students in other sectors of higher education. About 1.3 million students enrolled last spring at a for-profit school, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. That was about a 5 percent decline from a year earlier.

Q: In what ways are for-profit colleges under fire?

A: The regulation, which goes into effect on July 1, is the latest step in a yearslong fight by the Obama administration to improve outcomes and end aggressive recruiting at for-profit colleges. In 2012, the for-profit colleges convinced a judge that similar regulations were too arbitrary.

Last summer, the Education Department reached an agreement with Corinthian Colleges, a chain based in Santa Ana, California, to sell or close its more than 90 U.S. campuses.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau earlier this year filed suit against the large, for-profit college chain ITT Educational Services Inc. alleging that it pushed students into high-cost private loans that would likely end in default. The company denied the charges.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has aggressively investigated the industry. At the state level, several attorneys general have also pursued action.

"These regulations are a necessary step to ensure that colleges accepting federal funds protect students, cut costs and improve outcomes," Duncan said.

Q: Why is the sector a target?

A: The industry has among the highest student loan default rates and lowest graduation rates in higher education. Some veterans' advocates have accused it of aggressively targeting veterans because of their federal GI Bill money. Critics say the schools are too expensive and a waste of money not just for students, but for taxpayers who fund the GI Bill and other loan and grant dollars used by a large chunk of students to help pay to attend for-profit colleges.

Q: What's the other side of the story?

A: For-profit colleges argue that they provide educational programs to students who have historically been left out of higher education and that the regulations would reduce the educational opportunities for students most in need of training programs. They say it's unfair to target just career-oriented programs because poor outcomes can be found in other areas of higher education.

"We will vigorously contest all these issues to help ensure that students, employers and communities are not harmed by such an arbitrary and biased regulation," Gunderson said.

NORTHCOM assumes oversight of Alaskan Command

This story has been corrected.

Oversight of Alaskan Command was transferred to U.S. Northern Command this week, according to a statement released by Alaskan Command on Wednesday.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel approved the move Monday, reassigning control of ALCOM from U.S. Pacific Command, which is headquartered in Hawaii.

NORTHCOM is the combatant command responsible for North America and the Arctic, and the shift is expected to better align ALCOM with its emphasis on cold-weather training and missions, the statement said.

The move is not expected to have an effect on ALCOM’s force size or budget.

The realignment is “a more cohesive approach” to defending North America, according to Gen. Charles Jacoby, who commands both NORTHCOM and the U.S.-Canada North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD.

"This is an important step in integrating our defenses across North America,” Jacoby said in the statement. “It places our nation in a better position to plan and execute homeland defense and civil support missions in Alaska, and reflects the growing strategic value of the Arctic to our nation’s defense.”

ALCOM Commander Lt. Gen. Russ Handy said the transfer will improve partnerships with Canada and international allies in the Arctic.

The realignment was recommended by Jacoby and PACOM commander Adm. Samuel Locklear, the statement said.

U.S. Northern Command, created in 2002 in response to the 9/11 attacks, is headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colo., and is the single military command responsible for defending attacks on the U.S.

NORAD was established in 1957 as part of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and is used to defend North American airspace.

Alaskan Command closely integrates headquarters activities with Alaskan NORAD Region, 11th Air Force and U.S. Army Alaska.

Department of Defense forces in Alaska include more than 22,000 Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine personnel, and 4,700 Guardsmen and Reservists.

news@stripes.com

A previous version of this story misstated the acronym for U.S. Northern Command. It has been corrected.

'Basetrack Live' takes intimate look at Marine's journey to war and back

Back from two tours with the U.S. Marines in Iraq, Tyler La Marr couldn’t let it go when a civilian woman in a Wal-Mart started talking about all the horrors of the U.S.-led war in that country.

“I told her that until you decide to put a rifle in your hand and go to Iraq, maybe you should just shut up about things you don’t know,” he recalled.

He was angry. Angry at what he saw as a distorted picture of the conflict portrayed by the media and angry with a public that understood very little about the war or those fighting it.

“But looking back,” he said, “that’s all the information” she had.

At a time when 1 percent of Americans enlist in the nation’s all-volunteer Army, the gap between the public and those who have served is widening, especially as hundreds of thousands of troops have gone to war in the past 13 years.

La Marr found a way to bridge that gap, starring in a multimedia performance called “Basetrack Live,” which uses storytelling, music, photos and video to tell the story of a Marine’s journey to Afghanistan and back home.

The show, which is touring the country through March, is coming to the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park, Md., on Saturday.

Inspired by an online project by photojournalists embedded with the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines in Helmand province in 2010, “Basetrack Live” is the story of enlisted Marine A.J. Czubai and his wife, Melissa, and how the two experience his deployment and post-deployment struggles. The two-person show is interlaced with live music, ranging from classical to hiphop, and a constant background stream of documentary photos and video from Afghanistan.

“What I love about ‘Basetrack’ is that it exists at the intersection of art and journalism,” show creator Edward Bilous said.

Bilous, director of the Center for Innovations in the Arts at The Juilliard School, developed the show four years ago, after seeing the online Basetrack. He has worked on several military-themed productions and said he is drawn to troop experiences because he believes their sacrifices are not well understood.

“It’s absolutely a non-partisan piece — not pro-war, against war, red state or blue state,” Bilous said. “Just an authentic look at the experiences these men and women have in the context of war.”

La Marr, who spent six years in the Marines and founded The Society of Artistic Veterans, said he wants to help audience members get past the empty “thank you for your service” gestures and build genuine understanding of what veterans experience.

“I wanted to really start a conversation and give people an inside look into this very private part of military life,” he said.

“Basetrack Live” focuses on the personal side — Melissa spends much of the show speaking into a computer, simulating the Skype conversations that have become a lifeline for deployed troops trying to stay in touch with their loved ones. It’s not gory or action-packed, and La Marr and the show’s creative team hopes to get away from the hero and ticking time bomb narratives so often associated with troops.

“We don’t need to be bubble-wrapped and handled with care just because (we) may have PTSD,” he said. “At the end of the day we’re still people; we’re husbands and sons and wives and brothers.”

The show is a stand-alone piece of art, Bilbous said. But he also hopes those who see the performance will take its lessons home with them.

“We’re taking one very specific story of one veteran and his family and putting it on stage as an example of the kinds of experiences these men and women have and hoping the conversation will continue beyond the stage and into their homes and schools,” he said.

La Marr has his own advice for anyone struggling with how to approach a veteran to ask about their service: “If you really want to know something from a veteran … just ask them three questions: when did they serve, where did they serve and what was their job. And they’ll tell you what they’re willing to tell you.”

druzin.heath@stripes.com

Twitter: @Druzin_Stripes