Media Roundtable: Maj. Gen. Perkins, Maj. Gen. Bolger, May 12, 2009
Multi-National Force-Iraq
Maj. Gen. David Perkins, director for Strategic Effects, MNF-I, and Maj. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, commander, MND-B, speak with the press about the recent shootings.
TRANSCRIBED BY: SOS INTERNATIONAL LTD.
PARTICIPANTS:
Major General David Perkins, Major General Daniel Bolger, and reporters 1-8.
REP1 = REPORTER
MG PERKINS: I appreciate you all coming in here to...at the last minute. I mean it’s sort of crammed quarters so we have sort of...we’ll have video here and [unintelligible] so everyone can hear. Our focus today—and really is, we’re going to give you as much information as we have on the shooting and answer questions. You all know who I am. I think most of you know Major General Dan Bolger here, Commander of Multi-National Division – Baghdad. So you have...you can decide sort of what...where your questions want to go and sort of, you know, from the command point I’ll answer it but he’s a great expert as a standing commander, has soldiers that are experiencing a lot of the challenges, all that, and he can put a lot of this in context as well. So again, I appreciate everyone being here.
Obviously, first of all, all of us want to extend our sympathies and condolences to all the family members involved in the incident that occurred yesterday. It was very dramatic and traumatic when we lose our own, and especially when we lose them in a traumatic way like this. And it impacts all of us that wear the uniform and, quite honestly, that don’t as well.
There is an ongoing investigation into the incident and, therefore, what I am going to tell you today are the things that we know for sure. And that there obviously are a lot of things which we will need to find out, and that’s why we do investigations, to find out exactly what happened, to find out exactly what the facts are. So General Bolger and I are not going to speculate here or anything like that, but we will tell you exactly what we do know. We will take questions for possible further op...follow up if you have them, but if there are things that are sort of Department of the Army-wide or DOD, we can facilitate getting those answered from other people as well.
So unfortunately yesterday there were a total of five service members killed. Two were from the 55th Medical Company and were staff officers at the Liberty Combat Stress Control Center. One of them was a Navy officer and one was an Army officer. The other three were Army enlisted soldiers who happened to be at the center at the time. The suspect in the shooting is Sergeant John M. Russell.
REP1: J-O-H-N?
MG PERKINS: J-O-H-N. M. R-U-S-S-E-L-L. He was assigned to headquarters in Headquarters Company of the 54th Engineer Battalion out of Bamburg, Germany. He’s currently being held in military police custody on Victory Base. He is charged with five specifications of murder and one specification of aggravated assault.
The investigation is currently being conducted by the U. S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. There’s also an additional investigation under Army Regulation 15-6, which is being conducted into the general availability of Behavioral Health Sciences by the command...Health Services by the command as well as policies and procedures surrounding behavioral health services offered in Iraq. So what you have is a criminal investigation going on into the murders, and you’re having a 15-6 investigation being conducted in looking at the overall health services and specifically the policies and procedures surrounding behavioral health services offered here in Iraq.
Again, because the incident is under investigation, many of the details won’t be discussed. However, as you well know, all soldiers carry weapons with them in Iraq. The commander of the suspect, that being Sergeant Russell, had taken his weapon away. He had experienced or had been referred to counseling approximately the week beforehand, and through that process his commander had determined that it would be best for him not to have a weapon. The suspect was apprehended outside the clinic shortly after shots were heard. The 55th Medical Company provided immediate counseling for those who witnessed the shootings there at the clinic and those that were there at the time of the incident.
As I said, we have a continuing investigation going on. We’re looking into how the incident occurred, details about how it occurred. We’re also going to examine the steps taken to see if we can reduce the possibility of another event like this in the future. And further updates will be released by us as information becomes available. But at this point, it really is going into a criminal investigation so most of that information will be contained within the investigation until it is complete.
Again, we all offer our sympathy and condolences to all the families affected by this tragedy. What I’d like to do now is turn it over to General Bolger to talk a little bit about, as a commander, how these things are dealt with and what kind of things are available to soldiers and what they do, and then we’ll just open up to questions after that.
MG BOLGER: Thanks, Dave. Speaking for me, as the Multi-National Division – Baghdad commander, I’ve got to tell you that yesterday was a particularly rough day for all of us to get this kind of news. It is tremendously sad to lose soldiers and to lose them under these kind of circumstances as it appears so, really, our thoughts and prayers are with the families and with the other soldiers in that unit because it’s going to be tough and it’s going to take awhile to get through this.
And the thing that I’d like to mention, though, is that when we face these things, we do investigate it as Dave said, and try to figure out what happened. And I’m sure in no position to speculate right now because I don’t know much more than what Dave just told you. But I do know that the strength of the Army is within the units and that’s true for Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, all...Air Force, all of these folks in the Armed Forces, and it’s the units working together that usually gets us through these things. So I know from MND-Baghdad, that’s what we’re going to do to work our way through this particular tragedy.
MG PERKINS: I guess we’ll just open it up to questions. Anything? Yes.
REP1: [Unintelligible].
MG PERKINS: Yeah.
REP1: Can you just talk about the sequence of events? [Unintelligible]...
MG PERKINS: Mm-hmm.
REP1: ...that the sequence of events that day from what you know. We’ve heard reports that he was there as a patient, but then he left, and then he came back. And then also what you know about...from his biographical information. If he’s had a long history of sort of seeking counseling?
MG PERKINS: Mm-hmm.
REP1: If he had problems for awhile or if it was something [unintelligible] come up.
MG PERKINS: With regards to the details of the sequence of events, that is one of the first things that the investigation focuses on, because what you get are, as you said, many different reports. And we have found going through those things that you can have five people, eye witnesses to an event, and then you can separate them and ask them what they saw and you’ll get five completely different accounts. So again—and that’s just what we have. We have many different accounts as to exactly what happened and the sequence that it happened. And you can imagine when something occurs like this, and in the end you have five people murdered, that you have a fairly chaotic situation then. And for any one person probably to have had a perfect understanding of what happened is probably unlikely, which is why we conduct a very thorough investigation and get many different points of view, take the forensics that are there, and put it all together and get a complete story.
With regards to the history of the soldier, really at this point we just know that his chain of command had concerns about him. He had been undergoing counseling within the command. Again, they had already taken the immediate measure of removing his weapon. And because, as General Bolger said, we are very sensitive to this, we obviously—the fact that we have facilities like this in a combat zone I think shows the amount of attention that is paid to this. The commands are very well aware of what services are available so the commander knew this was available and referred him over here to the clinic.
REP2: Any [unintelligible] where he got that second weapon?
MG PERKINS: No. Again, we know it was not his weapon because his had been taken away by the chain of command. But that is what the investigation will determine, where that came from.
Yes, sir.
REP3: Yeah, do you know the type of weapon that was used to commit the murders? And also where the sergeant is at this point in Iraq, prior to the incident.
MG PERKINS: He is with 54th Engineer. At the time, they are stationed there at Victory. So I mean...
REP3: [Unintelligible]?
MG PERKINS: Well, that is where his unit is right now. I mean...so that’s where he’s been. And what was the previous question?
REP3: What kind of weapon was involved in the murders?
MG PERKINS: I don’t have the detail of that right now. We can get that for you...I can get it.
REP3: [Unintelligible] sidearm or an assault rifle?
MG PERKINS: It was a personal weapon so prob-...either an M4 or a pistol.
REP4: Yes, do you have the soldier’s age, hometown, and can you tell us whether he had been deployed previously to this deployment?
MG PERKINS: He had had a previous deployments to Iraq, at least two other times, unknown for the duration because again, you can track what unit he was in, whether he was here for the whole time for that unit or not is unknown. But it looks like this was probably his...I think third deployment to Iraq.
[Overlapping questions.]
MG PERKINS: I don’t have it offhand. I mean we can follow up on that though.
REP5: Can you tell us anything about his unit?
MG PERKINS: His unit’s from Bamburg, Germany, but you mean his hometown and state [unintelligible]. Yeah, yeah. Bamburg is where he’s...
REP5: ...what is unit was doing here and how long it had been here and whether he was [unintelligible]?
MG PERKINS: It is the 54th Engineer Battalion out of Bamburg. I believe they are on their way out there in the process of being redeployed, so they’ve probably been here around a year or so.
REP5: [Unintelligible] processing [unintelligible] they would have potentially [unintelligible] or were they...had they been brought to Liberty on their way to being processed?
MG PERKINS: No. I believe that is where they are based.
REP5: Okay. So they would have been [unintelligible] around prior to that? Any idea?
MG PERKINS: Well, what happens is, especially as you get down to smaller-sized units, you get task-organized. So actually for one part of your rotation you could be in Location X and then the next part of the rotation moves somewhere else. So I mean you...and even when you take a battalion of engineers many times, it’s task-organized out into very small units – squads, platoons, or something like that. So you really would have to follow his particular unit, the history of where they have been in Iraq.
REP6: You said he...his commander had recommended his weapon be taken away...
MG PERKINS: Correct.
REP6: ...and counseling this past week. Now, is that at that clinic? And does that clinic have any in-patient facilities? Or does that mean he goes everyday to that...?
MG PERKINS: No, he was staying with the unit and then would go there and get treatment at the clinic.
REP7: Do you know how long he’d been...?
MG PERKINS: And [unintelligible] like the clinic—within the unit you have counselors, you have chaplains, and things like that. So it’s a totality of the services that are provided. It doesn’t mean that that’s the only place that they go.
MG BOLGER: They will look at it. If they think an individual that they assess, that they can be handled in an out-patient way, they’ll do that. But it’s also available. If they want to hospitalize him, they can use, you know, combat support hospitals or even evacuate him to Landstuhl or Walter Reed, something like that if they [unintelligible].
MG PERKINS: But he was not...I need to clarify. He was not an in-patient at that clinic for a week. He had been with the unit and was...had gone there in an out-patient status based on the recommendation of his chain of command and health professionals within his chain of command.
REP7: Is there any information about medication, whether he was on medication or not?
MG PERKINS: I don’t have any details on that.
REP7: Do you know how long he was in the Army? How many years?
MG PERKINS: Excuse me, I don’t. We can get that information. I don’t know when he enlisted in the Army. No, he’s...54th Engineer Battalion. [Unintelligible].
REP6: You talked about the...about how the clinic [unintelligible]. Can you give a bit more detail? People are recommended to this clinic or...?
MG BOLGER: I can [unintelligible].
MG PERKINS: Yeah, go ahead.
MG BOLGER: [Unintelligible].
MG PERKINS: Yeah.
MG BOLGER: I can handle that. The way they do this in the Army for these folks—and this clinic in particular would treat any service—if you’re Multi-National Division – Baghdad, for example, you can either be recommended by your chain of command or by a medical professional, [unintelligible] your platoon medic. So it’s, hey, maybe you need to go to a clinic and such. And it’s part of an overall thing[?] of health. So you may be sent to the dental clinic if you have tooth problems, the medical clinic if you’re sort of having trouble breathing or whatever. And the mental health clinic handles everything, so normal occupational mental health aspects – anger management, smoking cessation – it does those as well. So—and that’s important to remember because they said that this range is available. So you can really do...you can be sent by the docs, you can be sent by your sergeants or officers if they say, hey, I think you might want to go check this out, or you can be sent by yourself. And should you be sent by yourself, one of the options you have is you can make it somewhat private. So they’ll tell your chain of command being...you’re there, but until they determine with you sort of what your issue is, they won’t necessarily go back and say, hey, this guy’s got this particular problem. And they do that latter one, really, to make sure that guys are not afraid to go in because there’s always a stigma assigned, particularly for mental health issues.
And I’ll tell you, the one thing, if we’ve learned anything in this war, we’ve learned—I should say, from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, previous wars—is that, you know, not all injuries are physical. And so you’ve got to have that door open for the guys. And that’s one of the things we emphasize in our training. It is particularly challenging for a fellow like Sgt Russell, he’s a noncommissioned officer and all that kind of stuff, so he’s in a leadership capacity. And to make that trip down there is a tough decision for either him or his chain of command to make but we’re willing to make and we have those facilities and care available.
REP7: [Unintelligible] Stress Management Clinic?
MG BOLGER: Chronic Stress Clinic is what they call it. If you went by, that’s what the sign said. It’s located right around the corner from where my headquarters is.
REP7: Okay. [Unintelligible]?
MG BOLGER: I think you probably had a normal daily amount of people coming and going, nothing unusual. In this case though, he was referred by his chain of command and had seen previous people in his chain of command within the unit prior to him going there. So it’s sort of a triage process, like Ann said. You know you go see a chaplain or a squad leader or something and they determine, hey, I think we need to get more help.
REP8: [Unintelligible] the Combat Stress Clinic. Had he been treated inside the unit until that point or had he been going to the Combat Stress Clinic on a regular basis for the past week?
MG PERKINS: I believe he had been there before; I don’t know how often. He had been there before.
MG BOLGER: And the other thing that’s important to remember is this is not the only such facility in Iraq so, as Dave mentioned, within the unit you have chaplains. And then in each brigade of about 3,000 or 4,000 men and women, you also have social workers, psychologists who are available to begin the assessment on these type of issues. And we’ve found that’s really necessary.
One of the goals in mental health on the battle field is you always want to, just like with our wounded, like a bullet wound or something, you want to treat it as far forward as possible. So we try really hard to get those folks out of patrol and out to the small facilities to meet with folks and see this early. [Unintelligible] because I mean otherwise you’ve got guys like me and Dave who, although we know a lot about working with soldiers, we’re not mental health experts, so we really want to bring in that expertise as early as we can and as far down as we can.
MG PERKINS: [Unintelligible] clarify. I’m not sure if he actually had been to the clinic before. He had been seen by his chain of command – chaplain, things like that – about the week prior to, but that could have been the first time he was...that he actually physically had gone to the clinic.
REP2: His weapon was taken the week before?
4
MG PERKINS: It had...he...as of yesterday, he did not have his weapon. The date that it was taken away, I don’t know.
REP7: Can you tell us what the policy is regarding weapons at the clinic? [Unintelligible] check him in before going to counseling to the counseling room [unintelligible] weapon on him?
MG PERKINS: I don’t know.
MG BOLGER: I do know that one. I can state, having brought in our guys who’ve been wounded and things like that. Typically, when you go into a clinic, they’ll put you up in an arms room type area. And that’s just for safety because a lot of times, particularly on the battlefield, when you pick somebody up, the weapons are loaded, they may be damaged in the incident. This particular clinic I have not been to so I don’t know what the policy is.
But I think...but back to what Dave said that, in general, the general rule at Camp Victory is soldiers maintain weapons and some ammunition with them at all times to be ready in case we have an emergency. That particular clinic though, we’d have to check with them, you know, what their rules are. I know that when you go into the aid station to get sewed up or for something like that, they definitely segregate your weapons just for safety because they’re moving so much stuff around quickly and you’ve got oxygen and things there.
REP1: For cases like this where his commander was worried enough that he took his weapon away...
MG PERKINS: Yeah.
REP1: ...is he supposed to be alone at all? Like...I mean don’t people have to go [unintelligible] anyway and would, you know, when he left the clinic, when [unintelligible] this weapon, I’m assuming he was alone then. And then do you also know if he was suspected then of having depression or if the weapon was taken away because they thought he was going to use it on himself or against others?
MG PERKINS: I’ll discuss the weapon first. Obviously, exactly the details of his mental state, whatever, [unintelligible] you know, the exact details of that. Suffice it to say that by his actions or what he had said, his chain of command was concerned enough 1) that he was in a formalized counseling process and going for mental health, you know, assistance, and 2) that, again, either by his actions or things he had said, that there was a concern that he should not have a weapon. And so the chain of command confiscated his weapon, which is something that is...it’s not done routinely to average soldiers, but it is a routine tool that a commander and chain of command has. Because, again, as General Bolger said, as we go...when we get ready to deploy, we go through a lot of training looking for signs of mental distress, whether...it’s either anger management kind of stuff, or suicidal or things like that. A lot of time is spent training up for that once you get ov-...out of here.
And so when you see signs like that, you sort of have a toolkit, a commander has a toolkit. He’s got his chaplain, he’s got his chain of command, he has things he can do by putting him under watch, he can take weapons away, he can send them to clinics like this. And you can see in this case, the tools were all being used. He had been seen by the unit. They had made an initial diagnosis that whatever they had observed led them to have a level of concern that he should not have a weapon. They removed the weapon, they thought that he needed a higher level of care than the unit could provide, so they sent him to the clinic. I mean you see the...all the kind of things that we’re taught to do were in place.
REP8: The medics that were killed in the attack...
MG PERKINS: Oh, the sta-...yeah, the staff.
REP8: The staff. Were they just...were they specifically treating him or were they just there at the time?
MG PERKINS: Well, and that’s exactly what the investigation.... All we know is they obviously were there at the clinic, unfortunately, and were, you know, part of casualties there. What specific relationship they had to him, history, I mean that’s exactly what we have to find out.
REP2: Can you tell us their positions at all?
MG PERKINS: All of them...the two officers were part of the resident staff there.
REP2: [Unintelligible]?
MG PERKINS: Pardon?
REP3: Was one of them the director?
MG PERKINS: I don’t have that detail. Their next of kin still have not been notified so I can tell you there were two officers who serve on the staff there.
REP6: I know you’re still trying to figure out the chronology of the event, but was everyone shot inside of the clinic? Or was...do you understand that part of the event? Could you tell us a little bit about that?
MG PERKINS: Yeah, I mean exactly where everybody was, where he was, time-motion kind of stuff, I mean that’s exactly what we...is what the investigation has to come to grips with because those things are very important when it comes to, you know, how did it occur, how do you prevent it in the future, etc., like that. So those levels of details, nobody has exactly.
REP7: Is that why you can’t exactly say they were shot inside the [unintelligible] clinic?
MG PERKINS: They were shot at the clinic, I think that’s pretty safe to say. I haven’t heard of any of them being outside the clinic.
REP8: But he was picked up outside the clinic.
MG PERKINS: He was picked...he was apprehended outside the clinic.
REP8: [Unintelligible]?
MG PERKINS: Well, it appears so. But again, I would...when we say sort of sequence of events and who did what to who, we like to absolutely know about it and not sort of speculate or go off of what we heard. So our investigation, once done, will be very...almost minute-by-minute: exactly who was where, what happened, etc., like that.
REP7: Can you clarify how long they were from being deployed back to Germany and was it weeks away or...?
MG PERKINS: Yeah. We can find that out. I don’t know what their fixed[?] force[?] location.
REP7: Do you know what kind of thing they were doing? Would they have been...[unintelligible] anything about where that unit had been and what they’d been working on? Were they EOD or...?
MG BOLGER: No, no. They’re an engineer unit.
MG PERKINS: It’s a combat engineer unit.
MG BOLGER: They’re not a-...they were not assigned to MND-Baghdad so they were not in Multi-National Division – Baghdad. But we have similar units to that in Multi-National Division – Baghdad and they do a variety of missions: road repair, clearing routes, building of civilian and military faculties.
REP7: [Unintelligible] who were they assigned to then? Which division?
MG BOLGER: Multi-National Division – South.
MG PERKINS: And what you’ll find, specifically engineer units as General Bolger said, generally get a multitude of hats. They do many different things, like he said. I mean route clearance, building things, working with Iraqis. So they tend to be used in many different ways and especially, as with just about every unit here, when you show up after you spend a year or 15 months, you have done so many different things throughout so many different parts of Iraq, it’s hard to say this is what this person did for his tour in Iraq.
MG BOLGER: That is particularly true for engineering. [Unintelligible] because they get tasked to small units so although his headquarters may be assigned to one of the Multi-National Division as Dave suggested that the individual platoons and companies move around based on the mission.
MG PERKINS: Yeah. Generally, an engineer battalion doesn’t operate as a battalion. They have lots of different capability and then they take pieces of the engineer battalion and they get passed out and they work for this for awhile, then that [unintelligible] is complete, and then they may be task-organized and do something else. But they are probably one of the more versatile of units that you have in the military.
REP4: Was there a...[unintelligible] suspect, was there anybody else in the clinic during the incident?
MG PERKINS: I believe there were, but I don’t know any of the details. I don’t know how many people were in the clinic and, you know, what they....
REP2: Do you know what they [unintelligible]?
MG PERKINS: None of...nobody else was wounded with gunshot fire or anything other than the people that I discussed here.
REP2: [Unintelligible]?
MG PERKINS: [Unintelligible] other...I’ve seen other reports of other people wounded or he shot himself or something like that and that’s not true.
REP2: [Unintelligible] are they...?
MG PERKINS: They were...they happened to be there in the clinic, for any number of reasons they could have been there.
REP8: Can you tell us something about where they came from or what units they were in?
MG PERKINS: No, again, next of kin have not all been notified. All I can tell you is, it’s like General Bolger said, people can come in there for smoking cessation, they could be in there as a courier, you know, moving material. So I mean they, unfortunately, were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
REP6: You mentioned that he was apprehended outside. Could you tell us how he was apprehended? You know people jumped on him, someone take away his weapon.
MG PERKINS: Well, I would...what I was told is that the MPs were notified, that they were located very close to that, and they came over right away, and then the MPs apprehended him there. So I imagine when the shooting occurred, somebody in the clinic called the MPs.
REP7: [Unintelligible] or...
MG PERKINS: Pardon?
REP7: Is the clinic closed now or open?
MG PERKINS: I have no report that it is no longer conducting business. The people that were there at the clinic have been...you know they are being treated sort of for shock and given mental counseling and everything like that. But...and we can confirm that. But I believe the clinic is still open for business.
REP2: Can you make available [unintelligible]?
MG PERKINS: Yeah. To talk about the program and what they do, sort of an expert? Yeah. Yeah. We could do that.
REP7: And this other investigation [unintelligible].
MG PERKINS: Yeah. 15-6. Yeah.
REP7: [Unintelligible]. What are the things they’re looking at? A. And B, are soldiers medicated for mental disorders and allowed to remain on combat duty?
MG PERKINS: Yeah. I’ll answer the 15-6 one. What a 15-6 one, it’s a typical investigation tool that commanders have. And they can use it for anything; anything they have a concern about, you can conduct a 15-6. [Unintelligible] maintenance in your unit or something like this. So what the focus of this one is on, really, looking at the overall health services here in theater and specifically the mental health services: do we have the right kinds, are we doing the right things to diagnose people, do we have the right treatment available? You know...I mean it’s do...are we doing all that we can, first of all, with what we have? Do we need additional resources?
And generally, the most important thing that comes out of it, are there things that we can do in the future that would present something...or prevent something like this? Are there procedures at the clinic? Are there warn-...different warning signs that the unit knows? Really to...it’s to take a look at this incident without necessarily looking at the criminal aspect but, say, institutionally, can we do better and can...what can we learn from this so in the future, we can prevent something like that.
REP2: Do you have any figures on...?
MG BOLGER: He had a question on medication; I want to make sure that we answer him. And that is soldiers can receive a variety of medication for a variety of things, but the health care professionals—and remember, every battalion has a surgeon, a doctor in it to look at this—they’ll always review with the chain of command and say, okay, Private So-and-so is taking this. Here are the signs, contraindications. In some cases the docs will say, hey, I recommend this guy not go out on patrol for awhile because it’s going to make him sleepy or whatever the case may be. But that’s an interactive effort with the chain of command. And, in particular over here in combat, certain things that you may have to take for an illness would be assessed so he could probably say, no, I think you probably need to stay on base for awhile until we get through this.
So that...I know for us in Multi-National Division – Baghdad, we have folks in those categories and we look at them all carefully as individuals. And it’s not—I want to make sure you realize—it’s not just the mental stuff. I mean you’ve got pain medication, all this stuff. And a lot of it, because of the extreme heat and the weight and all that, can really create problems if you’re not assessing it all very carefully.
MG PERKINS: Yes, ma’am.
REP5: How many such clinics are there in Iraq? And how long...what [unintelligible] been open for?
MG PERKINS: I don’t know how long this one has been open. I don’t know if we do know how many there are in Iraq.
[Brief, off microphone discussion with an aide.]
MG PERKINS: Any other questions while we’re looking [unintelligible]?
REP2: Do you have any figures as to how many soldiers [unintelligible] would have come through that clinic and whether it’s an increase over [unintelligible]?
MG PERKINS: Yeah, I mean we’d have to...I don’t have that data with me. We’ll have to take a look at it.
MG BOLGER: I know one thing that has increased since last year is we’ve encouraged people to do the self referral. And part of it is, well we...again, back to removing the stigma from this kind of treatment. You know a soldier wouldn’t think twice if they sprained their ankle getting out of a armored personnel carrier on a patrol to go get it taped up. And you’ve got to have the same thing when they’re feeling mental stress or depression or something. So we’ve actually encouraged them and said, hey, go! You know we’re not going to hold this against you. We’d rather have you self refer and tell your sergeant that I need some help than sit and, you know, have an incident that would be tragic. So I would hope that when we look at the stats that they show an increase because we’ve been encouraging folks to take advantage of this opportunity and help [unintelligible] and help their unit [unintelligible].
MG PERKINS: The general makes a good point. Not only that, I think we’ve done a better job at educating the chain of command so they say, look. There’s a soldier, he used to be very outgoing; he’s very quiet now, he just stays by himself, he won’t talk to other.... In other words, we’re trying to educate the chain of command to be cognizant of the signs that something is different about the soldier, and if that happens, then we need to get him help. So, hopefully, we are better as an Army, better as a military recognizing the signs of it and getting them, sort of in a proactive manner, some help rather than waiting too long. So, yeah, I would say it probably...we would hope [unintelligible].
[Overlapping dialog.]
MG PERKINS: We are better at using the tools that we have available.
Do we know?
AIDE: I’ll have to verify the number, sir, and get back to them. I need to do some digging with the medical command back home and get you the correct statistic.
MG PERKINS: Because there’s different kinds of levels of facilities and all that. So it’s...we want to be able to put it in context. But—and a good person to do that is we’ll arrange a session with a mental health specialist that could talk in detail about how these systems work [unintelligible].
REP6: Do you know if there have been any other incidents where there’s been gunfire or people wounded at one of these clinics in the six years that...?
MG PERKINS: Oh, in the last six years? I personally don’t know of one but, you know, we’d have to confirm that.
REP7: Would this be, as you [unintelligible] other clinics [unintelligible] Iraq?
MG PERKINS: Probably the fact that it’s just out at Victory, yeah. I mean it’s a bigger base. I mean it’s just, the PX is bigger out there. I mean it’s your largest concentration of people that we have out there.
REP1: Do you know anything about whether he has a wife or children or anything?
MG PERKINS: I think we will...the unit is looking at getting personal details, really.
REP1: And my question about whether he was allowed to be alone, like having [unintelligible]...
MG PERKINS: Well, everybody...the policy is everybody has the...we don’t travel alone anywhere. And so I am sure that there was a plan that he was with somebody, exactly the events surrounding the...what immediately precipitated [unintelligible] are some of the things we have to find out. But the policy was that none of us travel alone. And I am sure that’s the policy with him. He was not traveling alone, whether he became alone is what the investigation will find out.
REP6: And just in terms of [unintelligible] military justice, he was charged with these five—is charged the right word?
MG PERKINS: Yes. [Unintelligible] charges.
REP7: One count of aggra-....
REP6: And then what happens next, after he goes to Germany?
MG PERKINS: Well, and then what happens is there is an investigating officer is then appointed and their going through this, and now he’s in the legal system. So he’ll get defense lawyers and prosecution. I mean so they’ll start the...the chain of command will start moving through and decide how they use the UCMJ, you know, what they do with it. But the investigation is on. It’s a criminal investigation now, just like any other criminal investigation.
REP2: To clarify, the aggravated assault, that was...is that before the murders?
MG PERKINS: It was in the incident that occurred. So there were five murders and an aggravated assault.
REP2: The aggravated assault....
REP6: Can you clarify he has been charged?
MG PERKINS: He has been charged or else I wouldn’t release the name.
REP6: Oh, yeah.
REP8: And the aggravated assault victim wasn’t injured?
MG PERKINS: He was not one of the ones murdered or shot. So he was...
REP8: He wasn’t injured?
MG PERKINS: All I know is that within this event that occurred yesterday, five people were murdered and there’s a charge of aggravated assault. How...what relationship that has to the people that were murdered, I don’t...we don’t have the details.
REP2: Wouldn’t he have had to be hurt for that charge to be [unintelligible]?
MG PERKINS: I’m not aware. He had to have been on the receiving end of an assault by this person so obviously there was some type of physical activity involved with an additional person there.
MB BOLGER: [Unintelligible].
MG PERKINS: Or it could be a threat with a weapon or something. Yeah, that’s true; that’s a good point. I mean he doesn’t have to physically [unintelligible].
MG BOLGER: Something beyond just a verbal....
MG PERKINS: Yeah.
[Overlapping questions.]
MG PERKINS: Okay. One last question.
REP7: [Unintelligible] motive?
MG PERKINS: No. I mean clearly not. I mean and that’s...those are the exact type things that investigations determine. And as you can imagine, a very complex series of events yesterday, a very unfortunate series of events.
Well, again, thank you all for coming here. We have some do-outs that we’ll get back to you all. I know we’re working with the unit already to get some of the personal data – hometown, etc., sort of like that, family. We will also get...arrange for a session with one of the mental health specialists that can kind of tell you the details of how that operates in here. Again, both the general and I express our condolences for all the people affected by this, the families and everyone else. This is a very tragic event. And again, Dan, any other [unintelligible] comment.
MG BOLGER: No, just to reiterate what Dave said. Things here are challenging enough every day and a tragedy like this just reminds us how much we have to depend on each other—and we have to depend on each other to go out and get us through all of our operations. But particularly when something like this happens, we have to be careful not to judge too harshly and to extend the sympathy that’s due to all these soldiers and families involved in this incident.
MG PERKINS: Which is why we are very intent in doing a very thorough and accurate investigation because probably one of the biggest things, as an institution, that the investigation gives us insight to is to how we can improve ourselves and get better at...and prevent this. So we are the biggest consumer of sort of exactly what happened, which is why speculation does not serve us well or rumor. We need to know the facts because we will spend a lot of time trying to prevent these types of things in the future.
REP7: Real quick question. Do you know if all the victims were men?
MG PERKINS: I do not know. And pending next-of-kin notification, a lot of those details will come out.
Again, thank you all. I appreciate it.
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