The Tender Soldier: A True Story of War and Sacrifice (46 page)

Ayala excelled at basic training as he never had in high school:
“I, his father, warned and challenged him that he might not be able to cope with military service especially if a ranking soldier of small stature started yelling orders directly to his face. . . . Don proved us wrong. He did handle it well and became the ‘top trooper’ in his basic training group in Fort Benning, Georgia.” Ibid.

Ayala’s unit was sent to Grenada to stop the Soviet Union from gaining a new strategic foothold:
The account of Operation Urgent Fury is from Ayala, interview by author, August 18, 2009, and “Operation Urgent Fury: The Invasion of Grenada, October 1983,”
http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/grenada/urgent_fury.pdf
, accessed March 5, 2013.

he joined the 12th Special Forces Group in Los Alamitos:
Details of Ayala’s Special Forces
affiliations and activities are from Ayala, interview by author, August 18, 2009, and Thomas, letter to Judge Hilton, March 20, 2009.

A Special Forces buddy had started a company:
The company was Delta Investigations. Scott Guffey, interview by author, February 23, 2013.

It was DynCorp, the private security company hired to protect Hamid Karzai:
For DynCorp, Inc., being hired to take over Karzai’s protective detail in 2002, Jonathan D. Tepperman, “Can Mercenaries Protect Hamid Karzai?”
New Republic,
November 18, 2002.

nearly twice what he had been paid in Afghanistan:
Ayala recalled that he was being paid about $15,000 a month in Afghanistan by that time. In Iraq, at least initially, he worked for Triple Canopy.

When Ayala shot Abdul Salam, Warren told me:
Mike Warren, conversation, March 2009. See also letter of Michael J. Warren to Judge Hilton: “Don was extremely protective of Paula, I have no doubt that what happened to her, he blames himself and that guilt consumed him at the time of the shooting.”

that Paula Loyd’s death was a “tragedy”:
Nachmanoff, “Transcript of Sentencing,” May 8, 2009.

For manslaughter, the guidelines recommended six to eight years:
Based on a number of factors, a probation officer calculated that the sentencing guidelines in Ayala’s case called for seventy-eight to ninety-seven months’ imprisonment, or six to eight years.

Nachmanoff was asking the judge not to imprison Ayala at all:
“A just punishment would be probation,” Nachmanoff told the judge.

Most voluntary manslaughter cases involve fights:
“In 1997, the United States Sentencing Commission established the Manslaughter Working Group, which presented its report to the Commission in December of that year,” Nachmanoff wrote. “The group analyzed three years of Commission monitoring data, including 54 of the 60 federal voluntary manslaughter cases reported for fiscal years 1994, 1995, and 1996. Data derived from this study revealed that 82% of the voluntary manslaughter cases between these dates were the results of fights. Native Americans comprised 68% of the defendants, and family members and friends accounted for more than 50% of the victims. Alcohol was involved in roughly 50% of the cases. Needless to say, the present case does not fall within these typical fact patterns that reflect that most federal manslaughter cases occur on federal Native American reservations and/or between family members or friends.” “Defendant’s Position with Regard to Sentencing Factors,” 17, and Nachmanoff, “Transcript of Sentencing.”

The struggle to subdue the Afghan had been “very violent”:
Statement of Justin Skotnicki to Army investigators, “Defendant’s Position with Regard to Sentencing Factors,” 5.

Salam could be seen to pose a continuing threat:
At least one soldier told Army investigators that he “believed Mr. SALAM was still a threat even though his hands were
secured behind his back. Mr. SALAM had attacked Miss LOYD causing serious injuries, gave them a hard fight to get him down and was still resisting attempts to detain him by moving his body from side to side and kicking at them prior to being shot.” That Salam might have still been a danger “by possibly being armed with some type of self-explosive device,” “Defendant’s Position with Regard to Sentencing Factors,” 20.

A victim’s behavior . . . is an important factor in manslaughter sentencing:
“Defendant’s Position with Regard to Sentencing Factors,” 15.

“the kind of provocation that I think this court has never seen”:
Nachmanoff, “Transcript of Sentencing.”

Her assault was “a terrorist act”:
Nachmanoff, “Transcript of Sentencing.” For a detailed analysis of the Taliban’s “claim of responsibility,” see Chapter 9.

an “outstanding individual, a hero  . . . who’s dedicated his adult life to public service:
Nachmanoff, “Transcript of Sentencing.”

If Ayala’s friends and relatives were surprised that he had killed the Afghan:
Ayala “always seemed calm under pressure,” his teammate Clint Cooper told Army investigators. Asked what he thought should happen to Ayala, Cooper said: “It’s hard for somebody who was not there to understand the emotion behind something like this; I mean the attack on Paula. We were all very close. . . . I think [Ayala] has paid a pretty high price and will continue to pay for the rest of his life.”

Ayala routinely scolded them for “morbid jokes”:
Statements of Lieutenant Matthew Pathak and Staff Sergeant Steven Anthony Smith, filed in federal court, May 1, 2009.

A manslaughter sentence can be reduced if the defendant can prove he was “suffering from a diminished capacity”:
“At the instant that Mr. Ayala learned of Salam’s despicable attack on Ms. Loyd, Mr. Ayala was primed to pull the trigger without regard for the consequences,” Nachmanoff and his co-counsel, Richard H. McWilliams, wrote. “The convergence of these prior stress injuries and the horror of learning about the nature and the brutality of the attack upon his friend created a rare ‘perfect storm’ of conditions, causing Mr. Ayala to abandon his years of discipline and to make the wrong choice.” This and other references to the Figley report in this paragraph are from “Defendant’s Position with Regard to Sentencing Factors,” 23–25.

Ayala had already been severely punished:
Nachmanoff, “Transcript of Sentencing.”

a moving sentencing documentary in which Loyd’s boyfriend, Frank Muggeo:
“Sometimes it seems like we’re forgetting that Paula was the victim,” Muggeo said in the documentary. “I don’t forget that. Her mother doesn’t forget that. And each time something happens to me or to her mother or to Don, it’s like they keep winning. And I don’t want them to win anymore.”

Rich was a veteran himself—a retired Marine general:
Nachmanoff was born in 1968. Rich was an infantry company commander at Gio Linh in 1967 and took his
LSATs in Da Nang. In September 1988, he was promoted to brigadier general and became director of the Judge Advocate Division. Lieutenant Colonel Gary D. Solis, U.S. Marine Corps,
Marines and Military Law in Vietnam: Trial by Fire
(Washington: History and Museums Division Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1989), 86–87.

“Ms. Loyd and her friends and supporters and family deserve all of our sympathy”:
This and other quotes from Rich in this section are from “Transcript of Sentencing.”

“It was an execution”:
United States of America v. Don Michael Ayala
, “Government’s Sentencing Memorandum,” May 8, 2009, 2.

“We know much about Paula Loyd and the defendant”:
“Government’s Sentencing Memorandum,” 3.

“he was a ‘frequent stranger’ in the village where he died”:
This detail is from Lieutenant Pathak’s statement to Army investigators.

“We know nothing at all about what caused him to torch Paula Loyd”:
“Government’s Sentencing Memorandum,” 3.

A few days before the sentencing, the government had entered fifteen photographs into evidence:
“Addendum to the Government’s Sentencing Memorandum,” filed May 4, 2009, by Michael E. Rich, Assistant United States Attorney, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division.

“The day of November 4, 2008, I wish it never occurred”:
Ayala, “Transcript of Sentencing.”

One photograph showed Salam’s forearm bearing a rudimentary tattoo of his name:
Abdul Salam might also be translated “Servant of the Peaceful One,” “Servant of the All-Peacable.”
Salam
means “peace” in Arabic, but it is also one of the names of Allah, so possibly: “God’s Servant.”

“You can’t forget that this didn’t occur here on the streets”:
Hilton, “Transcript of Sentencing.”

Chapter 8: Good Intentions

Paula Loyd had been the third:
Eight months measures the time from May 2008, when Michael Bhatia was killed, until Loyd died of her wounds in January 2009.

The previous May, a brilliant thirty-one-year-old:
For more on Michael Bhatia, see Adam Geller, “ ‘Professor’ Pays a Heavy Price,” Associated Press, March 15, 2009, and “Marshall Scholarships: 2001 Marshall Scholar Michael Bhatia,”
http://www.marshallscholarship.org/about/michael
, accessed July 16, 2012.

A month later, Nicole Suveges:
Ovetta Wiggins, “Johns Hopkins Grad Student Dies in Iraq,”
Washington Post,
June 27, 2008, and “American Grad Student Dies in Iraq,” CNN, June 26, 2008.

By the fall of 2008, reports of trouble:
Geller’s story mentions that Bhatia and his
teammates hung articles sent by colleagues in Fort Leavenworth on their office wall in Khost: “Critics were not letting up in their condemnation of the Human Terrain project. The team kept score, posting what they considered the most outrageously off-base characterizations of their work. ‘Mercenary anthropologists,’ one critic called them. ‘The Army’s new secret weapon,’ another said.” Geller, “ ‘Professor’ Pays a Heavy Price.”

It emerged that among the Human Terrain social scientists deployed to Iraq:
Dan Ephron and Sylvia Spring, “A Gun in One Hand, a Pen in the Other,”
Newsweek,
April 21, 2008. The story notes that of nineteen Human Terrain Team members operating on five teams in Iraq at the time, “fewer than a handful can be described loosely as Middle East experts, and only three speak Arabic.”

In Afghanistan, a Human Terrain Team leader:
“Memorandum for Commander, Task Force Gladiator, Bagram Airfield: Battalion Commander’s Investigation of Congressional Inquiry on Behalf of Dr. Marilyn Dudley-Flores,” March 29, 2009. The investigation started in response to an inquiry from Dudley-Flores’s congressional representative, California Democrat Lynn Woolsey, through whose office Dudley-Flores had filed a formal complaint. The executive summary, forwarded to Woolsey’s office four months later, found that Dudley-Flores and her female colleagues were subject to “an egregious example of hostile work environment,” but it also noted “sufficient evidence” to support Dudley-Flores’s teammates’ allegations that she “systematically exaggerated her civilian and military experience and personal connections to famous people.” The military officers who conducted the investigation were clearly flummoxed by the Human Terrain Analysis Team’s dysfunction and lack of professionalism. “In this case,” military officials wrote, “poor and unverified credentials, and exaggerations of pertinent experience on the part of team members contributed to a toxic environment” in which the team, “rather than being an enabler, actually became a distraction from the CJTF-101 mission.” Thanks to John Stanton for sharing these documents with me. See also Stanton, “Death Threat Tarnishes U.S. Army Human Terrain System,” February 26, 2009,
http://zeroanthropology.net/2009/02/26/some-breaking-news-on-the-human-terrain-system-death-threats
/, accessed September 16, 2012.

The military asked that the team leader:
Cover letter from Lieutenant Colonel David L. Dellinger to Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, April 26, 2009. The team leader, Milan Sturgis, and his colleagues, were contractors, not DOD civilians. They were dismissed from their contracts with HTS, a Human Terrain System official said, but another contractor promptly rehired them, which meant they simply moved to other jobs within the program. To observers, it looked like impunity. “You fuck up, you move up,” Major Robert Holbert, who worked in the program’s training directorate, told me. “They all kept working for HTS.” Holbert, interview by author, August 9, 2012.

Meanwhile, the United States was planning to send more troops:
The 2009 expansion raised the Pentagon’s requested number of Human Terrain Teams in Afghanistan from six to thirteen. See Gezari, “Rough Terrain.”

The training consisted:
My description of training is based on visits to Leavenworth to observe Human Terrain System training in February and December 2009 as well as interviews with dozens of program administrators, staff, and Human Terrain System field team members.

several weeks known as “immersion”:
The Afghan “immersion” course in Omaha was up and running when Loyd and Cooper did their training in 2008, but the Iraq immersion program didn’t really get off the ground until late 2008 or early 2009, according to Holbert, who was the Human Terrain System’s primary coordinator for Afghan and Iraqi immersion courses and academic outreach during that period. The Human Terrain System assigned incoming trainees to learn about one country or the other depending on where it intended to send them, but the decision sometimes had little to do with the skills they already possessed. One trainee who spoke Dari quit in disgust after failing to convince program administrators to send him to a part of Afghanistan where Dari is prevalent; instead, he was sent to Helmand, where the main language is Pashto. The unpredictability of military deployments also meant that things could change at the last minute, that people trained for Iraq could be sent to Afghanistan and vice versa. Finally, most team members were not told exactly where they would be sent (to which province or geographic area) until very late in their training. Iraq and Afghanistan are extremely complex and vary greatly from place to place, so the lack of geographic specificity made it nearly impossible for team members to research their areas ahead of time and led to intense frustration among those who took the job seriously.