it's. physicist changing the world lights now. old pictures of today's the long long distance from around the globe. up to. the research of dr scott's a retired lieutenant colonel at the harvard business school highlights the difficulties in determining both the cause of and criminal culpability in friendly fire incidents so friendly fire have a perverse relationship with friendly fire paratrooper an eighty second airborne division was a victim of friendly fire in operation urgent fury and grenada and so for years this was ninety three i've had a perverse sense of curiosity how could sometimes some of the best trained best equipped people in the world sometimes fall short of the mark in his book friendly fire dr snoeck investigates an encounter in a no fly zone in which two u.s. f.

fifteen fighters shot down two u.s. army black hawk helicopters instantly killing twenty six u.n. peacekeepers this happened in one thousand nine hundred four full three years after the end of the first gulf war is that a high shooting war going around there's not a lot of bad guys around on the ground or in a lot of enemy planes flying around near broad daylight unlimited visibility relatively benign conditions that it's on camp lane this one in the fall before on the call sheet that morning the two f. fifteen pilots were briefed that they would be the first aircraft to enter the no fly zone by regulation no helicopters were allowed to fly into the zone without fighter coverage however unbeknown to the f. fifteen pilots a last minute early morning trip was scheduled to get peacekeepers to appeal a town deep in northern iraq when the pilots entered the no fly zone that morning they were alarmed to see two helicopters appear on their radar nobody's supposed to be in front of them that day so you're already expectations these are probably

enemy helicopters that speeded that out too that this since all you're trying to figure out is a hit as in which soviet designation helicopters were the army's rules of engagement the f. fifteen approached the blackhawks to visually confirm that they were enemy aircraft before firing they were trained on this they take a lot of pride in this. but of course a black hawk a u.s. army black hawk. was configured these two black hawks were configured slightly different that day normally a black hawk they have little wing lights on the side and sponsons in on this particular day the black hawks are going about one hundred miles to the town of erbil inside deep inside northern iraq and so they attached external fuel tanks to the blackhawks and these little wings in that change the shape. what shapes what we see every day it's largely shaped by our expectations. by what we want to see what we expect to see and also then the ultimate you know sort of

the physical stimulus that actually enters or i so it was a very ambiguous stimulus the speed the distance and everything camouflaged in a very strong set of expectations the visual identification has happened the intersection of a strong set of expectations possibly a little desire to maybe see an enemy aircraft and a very ambiguous stimulus that actually came in the eyes of what we do as humans we fill in the blanks. and then finally both shooter and target aircraft were quipped with. a specially designed electronic equipment something we call i. identify friend or foe and this is equipment designed specifically to prevent this type of x. and remember her. so how in the world could this happen. the helicopters were inside the no fly zone and squawking a code that coalition aircraft when they're in turkey they didn't realize that

three years before the air force had changed to two different codes they only get one cog in the code they always squad fifteen's are checking for that correct code and of course it's coming back sour because the f. fifteen because helicopters are critical for turkey and the f. fifteen s are looking for the code in the no fly zone because they're. what keeps me awake at night is in complex organisations like this good people highly trained highly quit doing what they do every day normal behavior normal organizations can actually result in terrible tragedy i would not want to subscribe to the proposition therefore that every episode of friendly fire can simply sort of be. dismissed it as an unfortunate reflection of the fog and friction of war there would be some episodes i imagine where one might say in this case the friendly fire episode was preventable. and therefore the people who failed to prevent it the

people who perpetrated it ought to be held responsible ready reading. we're doing a lot of stupid over here. never forget those words. he said we're going on a mission for a couple of days after that. but he said we're doing a lot of stupid. and i didn't know what that meant because i had no idea what they were doing and when you look at what happened and how it happened it was stupid the army creed has x. amount of lies logged in the last three or four lines one of them is i will never leave a fallen soldier or fallen comrade sensually i will never leave a man behind and what happened here what happened that day if on the battlefield was he got left behind not by another one of his peers but by his superior by the

commanding officer on the battlefield he got left behind. around four am on january sixteenth two thousand and eight during operation hood harvest six individuals were spotted fleeing across an open field in an attempt to evade u.s. forces. are on right now. private first class dave sherrod and seven members of the aerial reaction force landed nearby to intercept the six individuals believed to be on are members of al qaeda. departing the apache the aerial reaction force advanced towards

a large thick and also referred to as a burn where the six suspected insurgents had taken cover. when dave was a little kid. he wanted to be exactly like it stan and his dad was a football player macho and dave was not a macho kid but he wanted to be like his stand and so i think he he almost forced his own personality to be more like dad which was tough and so on the exterior at times he was very tough but inside he just had

a really sweet heart we just had this bond that was it was father and son but it was something way beyond father and son i i was so heavily invested in making sure that he grew up knowing he was loved beyond the way he was loved knowing that he was just important and. secure safe. they were so close that the points that made me jealous is as a son because i felt like i was almost living in the shadows of bubbles like dave could do wrong he was just a guy that dead once you knew. you wanted to be on his side you wanted him to to like you because. he was still great guy.

the aerial reaction force surrounded the thicket demanding that the insurgents surrender instead the insurgents opened fire in the chaos private first class danny kinney was killed moments later special as john six b. was killed. in the midst of exploding grenades and machine gun fire specialist rafael collins private first class brandon clan staff sergeant christopher mcgraw and private first class sharon tried to maintain their positions. collins in quin later received silver stars for their heroic actions.

for thirty minutes the enemy engaged the soldiers many men down as blackhawks above attempted to provide cover. for the order to really. get a good. reinforcements finally arrived from second platoon charlie company. they quickly destroyed the last of the insurgents and moved to secure the area and locate the wounded unable to determine how many soldiers were still on the ground officers called for help from the pilots above.

all of the wounded were located except private first class share it over the radio second platoon notified air cover that clearly not able to work i want to show carefully. sixty six minutes after the fighting began share a badly wanted was located with a faint pulse he died on the helicopter headed for the combat support hospital within a few days of private first class share its death the family began receiving information about the circumstances surrounding his death well yeah i believe they told us that it was a it was a fight and he was killed by a grenade fire it just seems like that's what the casualty officer told us because that's what was in the paper the casually officer came to the house and said well we think it may have been friendly fire and that was like whoa.

and then i asked i said well would you have whoever is in charge over there in iraq call me up and tell me what's going on and he said i will and we got a phone call from his lieutenant colonel the next day who vehemently denied to me that it was friendly fire then i said to him would you please. tell me what happened and he told me what happened then i said would you please send me an e-mail recounting exactly what you just told me which he did which i have. in the e-mail the lieutenant colonel wrote as dave's elements surrounded the position the enemy opened fire at very close range touching off a fierce grenade and small arms fire that resulted in the deaths of dave corporal john sigsbee and private first class danny kemi in the next week dave was laid to rest at arlington national cemetery.

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we have a new group of specialists here now all of them are young how are they going to get along with each other and i don't know. who. i used to be a bureaucrat. seriously. what adventures await in this mysterious land where they live what do they eat and what are they actually doing in antarctica. right from the sea. first rate. and i think that you're. on a reporter's twitter. and instagram. to be in the know. that. the army

did it right that are only. four months after the incident they even vicki received the final incident report in direct contradiction to the lieutenant colonels initial e-mail the report stated that his son had been killed by friendly fire when his commanding officer lieutenant hanson shot him believing that he was the enemy. confused by the conflicting accounts of his son's death dave reached out to private first class jimmy's father dog a police officer in illinois became somebody who i spent literally hours on the telephone with and i shared this e-mail with him had been sent to me being a cub he looked at this and instantly instantly had heartburn with serious issues with it after months of asking for additional information about the conflicting reports of their son's deaths and getting no answers from the army dave met with doug to meet in person for the first time at

a ceremony at fort campbell when we were at fort campbell and we were visiting for this memorial service we had kind of gotten to a point where we both felt like we could release it and let it go after the ceremony the two fathers were talking in one of their rooms when there was a knock at the door to one listed men who had bottle information about the night that their boys were killed and of them video of the incident they did that because they were sick and tired of the way that fort campbell had treated this that there are superior officer treated this and they said there was a cover up going on. i was furious i was absolutely furious here is you know here's this organization that's supposed to protect me my son gave his life to protect me and they can't even tell me the truth they're covering up you know it was it was awful for the first time. the family was able to truly begin to understand what happened that night. well it's four o'clock in the morning there's very low

visibility it's eight degrees. and our guys have we know exactly where they are but we haven't got a clue what they're in there doing as it turns out they're all sitting back to back just waiting for our guys to come. they were told that the enemy was unarmed that we surrounded the thicket you never surround the enemy because once the firing begins you've got a circular firing squad tactically it was a nightmare. in the initial minutes of the firefight they've avoided enemy gunfire and return fire into the thicket. i can see dave he's hugging the earth his feet are moving he's squirming trying not to be seen the rounds are going over his head it's chaotic out the field. after five minutes of fierce fighting dave attempted to reestablish his position further back. i want to talk about it. and as

he sprints backwards he is shot by his lieutenant. and the way we have figured this elf ballistically and through the autopsy reports it had to have been. extreme close range he is shot in the back the lower left buttock but he fell just feet away from the man who shot him and the man who shot him his lieutenant had to have gone. like this to do it he would have had to swallow at this kind of angle now maybe he thought it was one of the terrorists trying to run out whatever day falls feet from him just feet from him four seconds later hanson gets up and retreats even more and knew early on that dave was mistakenly shot by lieutenant handsome but it wasn't until receiving the video's nearly. year later that they fully understood how the commanding officer's actions

following the shooting further impacted their son's death as two dead there's one one on the bed two on the battlefield left who are alive and fighting and one who is dying who is still alive. then that's my son. and this guy gets on the chopper an injured in the battle lieutenant hanson boarded the first helicopter out of the zone with two badly injured soldiers he's the one guy who knows where his men would be but he left his men on the battlefield he walked. the time five of his memory on accounted for and lieutenant hanson took the only active radio. the one guy who has any means of communication has got on a chopper left. this son of a bitch shoots my brother in the leg not intentionally because it because it was night time it was four in the morning there was fit a very little store cover very little and light stayed there to point out his

position because when they got to him there was a faint heart beat. so that there's this whole idea of brotherhood and author and then and camaraderie in this sense it was and in this context it has absolutely no place. so he goes silent of these guys and they're trying to assess where people are assess what the situation is and he's silent dave is out there for. many minutes vick eighty. yeah dying. there's precious minutes spent trying to find him they don't know where he is.

when they found him he had a pulse and they worked c.p.r. on him till they put him on the bird so he lost precious minutes because his lieutenant left him on the battlefield and didn't apprise anybody who landed where his men were. with the new information in hand dave contacted army officials and demanded that they reexamined the actions of lieutenant hanson in hopes of appeasing the sheriff family colonel mcbride wrote a scathing reprimand of lieutenant hanson. colonel mcbride writes you are hereby reprimanded for failing to exercise adequate command and control over your platoon your conduct contributed directly to the death of one of your soldiers from friendly fire your mission was ill planned and poorly executed resulting in grievous consequences to the unit based on your actions i have grave doubts concerning your potential for future military service as it turns out the letter

was filed locally in iraq what does it mean to file a letter it was shredded now they happened with it doesn't go past like asian nobody ever sees it and so when lieutenant hanson comes up for a promotion nobody sees this and he skates up to being captain which is what happened he gets promoted to captain that really was the final poke in the eye for us frustrated by lieutenant hansen's promotion dave contacted a former student james me a military affairs correspondent with the new york daily news as meet gather documents and video for a lead story army officials began to question the motives of the family. in an internal e-mail to higher ranking officers uncovered by me a public affairs officer notes that we may rapidly be reaching the point where respecting slash understanding mr sharon's grieving process becomes secondary to defending the actions of the leadership involved in this incident i've been

described as a grieving father who will say anything to bring published city who will say anything i think the subtle implication they're not so with the occasion if you will is that i'll make up things in order to try to publicize what happened to my son because i'm so overwrought with grief just people don't take accountability for their actions. and. this i forgive them i would but i have a lot of anger in my heart in my mind towards this man for what he did and the more i find out about the situation the more it it just it's unbelievable. you know there's a sort of old since the. soldier who gives his life for his country is a hero. and these people have given their life for their country. so there is a feeling i think i'm actually feeling the why should i burden the family

complicate. things further for them i would love to believe that they're trying to protect us from the pain knowing our sons were killed by friendly fire. but it's just not knowing the truth causes more pain. people might think that you can take it but what you want to know is you want to know exactly what happened you want to invision exactly what happened you want a picture of the. individuals. may sometimes act in a way to cover their own. but the army is an institution i think. generally avoid such cover ups in. we make mistakes and i think any honest person in the army understands that we make mistakes as well and good that they're.

all my to sit back and judge a man in the heat of combat. and i don't know what that's like you don't know what that's like and then nobody who's never been in it doesn't really have any idea if you watch it on the movie or whatever it happens. unfortunately it happened to us. fire in his shoes oh do the same thing. illegal for justice justice for your son. are you looking for the truth. you know the the the simple things which don't seem like big things to ask for a start to deal with the world's largest army bureaucracy. hope that justice is done and where if we get justice maybe everybody who has

suffered a little bit and then even know it gets a little justice maybe the little guy wins some day.

where vick got. the days a lot. and now don't know me. all bad. you just may. as a i have a brother i used to have that don't knock him now. down

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