General Koch intervened. “Gentlemen! Please! You’re in a courtroom and I shouldn’t have to remind you of that!”
“So… General… what did you do with the photograph once you had found it just lying there in front of you on the floor?”
“I snuck it out of the office and gave it to the Montagnard boy who came to empty our night pots and asked him to take it to the Special Forces men at A Shau.”
“Do you speak the Montagnard language?”
“No.”
“Then how did you communicate with a child well enough to tell him to walk twenty miles to an American base camp?”
“Sign language and a drawing in the dirt.”
“You must be very good at drawing.”
“I was motivated.”
Tallon backed off a little. He was being outmaneuvered by the general. “What is a ‘night pot,’ General?”
“A clay pot that was placed in the POWs’ cages and used for body functions.”
“And this little boy came every day to empty them?”
“Yes.”
“How old was the boy?”
“Between eight and ten. It’s hard to tell exactly with the Montagnards because they are a small-framed people.”
“And what you are trying to tell the court is that a tiny eight-year-old boy took the photograph and by himself went all that way through the jungle to deliver this picture”—Tallon held up the photograph for the press to see—“to a Special Forced A-camp twenty miles away?” Tallon walked over to where Garibaldi sat and waved the Polaroid shot in front of his face. “Do you expect us to believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t the true story that you collaborated with the enemy?” Tallon paused, waiting for Garibaldi to lose his temper over the accusation, and when he saw that it wasn’t having the effect he had wished for, he added, “Isn’t the truth that you agreed to help frame Specialist James by having the picture sent to the American camp and your payment was the box of highly desired candy?”
“No.”
“Isn’t it true that Specialist James underwent extreme torture at the hands of the enemy and had refused to compromise his high standards and that you and Corporal Barnett schemed to have James charged with treason and murder?”
“No.” Garibaldi’s voice remained extremely calm.
“Isn’t it true that the Montagnard boy worked for the NVA?”
“No.”
“I thought you said that the boy carried your night pots.”
“That’s true.”
“Then he worked for the NVA!”
“No… he worked to stay alive.” Garibaldi turned his head so that he could look directly into Tallon’s eyes. “There is a difference, you know.”
“Working carrying night pots or photographs is basically the same.” Tallon felt that he had pressed that issue enough and had made the point he wanted to make, so he changed the subject. “Now tell me, General… you testified yesterday that Specialist James struck you.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Across the side of my face.”
“When?”
“When he escorted Corporal Barnett and me down to the river to bathe.”
“He escorted you?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“No.”
“Who else was there?”
“Two NVA soldiers.”
“Then they escorted all three of you POWs.”
“You can say that if you like, but Specialist James was carrying an AK-47 assault rifle.”
Reporters in the back of the room started laughing. Sergeants Arnasao and Woods smiled over the witty remark. Spencer stared hard at the defense counsel, causing the man to blush when he looked over at him.
“It could have been empty and was being used as a decoy to divide you three POWs and conquer.”
“It could have.”
“Then you agree that it would be possible for the NVA to make it look like Specialist James was a traitor.”
“Yes.”
“Good! Then couldn’t it have been an NVA tactic to force James to brag in front of you about killing Americans and becoming an NVA general, as you testified yesterday?”
“It could have, but—”
“No buts, General! It could have happened!” Tallon spun around and looked at Brigadier General Heller and his trial team. “Your witness, counsel!”
“I have no questions at this time.” Heller nodded at Tallon.
“Present your next witness, please.” Koch spoke to Heller.
“I’d like Sergeant David Woods to take the stand, please.”
Woods looked over at Arnasao. They had expected Spencer to be the next one called. David swore in and took his seat in front of the rows of reporters.
“Sergeant Woods, would you please tell the board what happened during your visit to the Twenty-fourth Corps Headquarters in Vietnam.” Heller nodded for David to begin.
“Yes sir. I was leaving the snackbar in the headquarters building when I thought I saw James walking down the hall wearing a captain’s uniform and carrying a briefcase. I called out to him and he stopped walking and turned around with a very scared look on his face.”
“What did you do then?”
“I started walking toward him.”
“And what did he do?”
“He ran out of the building and disappeared. I followed him outside but he was gone.”
“Members of the board, I would like to submit as evidence exhibits A, B, H, and K. They are all statements taken under oath from officers and enlisted men at the Twenty-fourth Corps Headquarters who have positively identified Specialist James as the person who posed as a captain in the United States Army and was seen at the Twenty-fourth Corps Headquarters tracing battle overlays during a period when he was reported as being a prisoner of war in Laos and under enemy control!” General Heller looked at Tallon. “Your witness, counsel!”
Tallon leaned over and listened to the black lawyer from Detroit whisper in his ear before he approached Woods at the witness stand. “Tell me, Sergeant Woods… how far away from you was this person who you claim was Specialist James?”
“Ten feet.”
“Did he have his back to you?”
“Yes, until I called his name… James!”
“Please, just answer yes or no.” Tallon was trying to intimi date the young soldier. “Do you understand the seriousness of the charges against Specialist James?”
“Yes.”
“Do you hate black soldiers?”
“No.”
“Just a little?”
“No.”
“Then you are totally not prejudiced?”
“No.”
“You are prejudiced?”
“No.”
“What are you?”
Woods paused for a long time and then said, “I can’t answer that question yes or no, General.”
Tallon smiled. The young sergeant wasn’t going to be easy. “Tell me, Sergeant, how well do you know Specialist lames?”
“We went to Recondo School together. I know him pretty well.” Woods glanced over at lames sitting behind his table, next to his civilian lawyers.
“Well enough to be able to recognize him from the back?”
“I’m a recon man, sir…I can do that in the dark.”
“Really? Aren’t you bragging just a little bit?”
“Nope… as long as I have enough light to see a little.”
“Fine. Let’s see just how good you are.” Tallon looked over at General Koch. “Sir, I would like to conduct an experiment.”
“As long as you keep it inside the courtroom, counselor.” General Koch looked again at Colonel Chan for a legal opinion and received a nod in agreement that the procedure was proper.
“Thank you. We will.” Tallon beckoned one of the guards to come over to his defense table. “Would you escort Sergeant Woods outside for a minute please and wait until I ca
ll for him to come back inside. Thank you.”
Woods and the MP went out into the hallway. David lit a cigarette and stared out the window, wondering what the defense counsel was up to. The door opened a few minutes later and Tallon called them back inside. The courtroom lights had been turned off and only a faint light glimmered in a projection booth high up on the back wall, throwing off just enough light to cast dark shadows in the room but not enough light to see anything except the outlines of a dozen men standing in a row next to the wall at the far end of the room.
“Now, Sergeant Woods… is there enough light?” Tallon’s voice was extremely cocky.
“Give me a second for my eyes to adjust.”
“Sure, take all the time you need.”
David waited until his eyes were accustomed to the light and looked around the room before telling Tallon that he was ready. He had located the row of board members and Arnasao and Spencer sitting in the front row of the audience.
“Can you see the row of men standing next to the opposite wall?” Tallon’s voice almost broke out in a mocking laugh.
“Yes sir.”
“How far away do you think they are?”
Woods located himself in the room and made the easy judgment call from having seen the room lit up before. “Thirty-five feet.”
“And you said that Specialist James was ten feet away from you and had !us back to you, right.
“Yes… in a lit hallway.”
“Right, Sergeant… but you said that you could identify him in the dark.”
David had used the time to examine each of the men’s silhouettes while the defense counsel talked. He was sure that James wasn’t standing against the wall. He was being tricked. Woods glanced back over to where Arnasao sat and noticed that his arm lay along the back of the chair. Arnasao saw the angle of Woods’s head and guessed that he was looking over at him, and he pointed with his whole hand up to the back row. Woods saw James’s head and shoulders silhouetted against the wood paneling. Tallon had screwed up. If the counsel had sat him down a couple of rows, James would have blended in with the massed crowd.
“Well, Sergeant, have you located Specialist James in that row of men?”
“No sir.”
“Then you can’t identify him in the dark as you said you could.”
“I didn’t say that, General. I said that I couldn’t locate him in that row of men against the wall. He’s not there… he’s sitting up there in the spectator stands.”
The lights came back on and flashbulbs hurt everybody’s eyes as the news people took pictures of the soldier who could see in the dark.
“Thank you, Sergeant.” Tallon’s voice was curt. “Your witness, counsel!”
General Heller stood up smiling. “I have no further ques tions, sir,” he said to the president of the board.
The rest of the morning the lawyers called on witnesses for and against Specialist James, with most of the witnesses for him coming from the membership of the Brotherhood and the Detroit mosque. The trial counsel tried sticking to the charges against James, while the defense tried lining up character witnesses who praised James’s childhood.
Right before it was time to break for lunch, Brigadier General Tallon called for Corporal Barnett to appear on the witness stand. The courtroom was stunned by the cheap tactic. Spencer smiled and swore in before the president of the board. He had been waiting for anything to happen and wasn’t shocked or caught off guard, as the media was, by Tallon’s waiting until everyone was tired and hungry before calling the star witness.
“I know you have been called here by the trial counsel, but I feel that you also are a prime witness for the defense. You were a prisoner with Specialist James, and if I’m not mistaken, you were captured by the North Vietnamese during the same battle.” Tallon looked at Spencer, who just looked back at him.
“Well? Were you?”
“What?”
“Captured during the same battle with James?”
“Yes.”
“Were you both beaten by the NVA soldiers?”
“No.”
“Specialist James has testified already that he was beaten by the NVA when he was captured. Are you calling him a liar?”
“Yes.”
A buzz filled the courtroom from whispered conversation in the press booth.
“I see.” Tallon went back over to the defense table and conversed with the other lawyers and with James. He approached Spencer again smiling. “Do you remember any photographs being taken while you were being tortured?”
“No…I was preoccupied.” The tiny little smile attached to the corner of Spencer’s mouth brought roars of laughter from the spectators and forced the president to use his gavel to regain order in the courtroom
“Then you never saw anyone take any photographs?”
“I already said no.”
“Don’t get cocky, Corporal!”
Spencer stared at the brigadier general while the trial counsel appealed the treatment of the witness.
“All right, I withdraw my last remark.” Tallon was regrouping—nothing was going right for him. “Did Specialist James take part… any part… in torturing you while you were a POW?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure that he did it of his own free will?”
“Yes.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Look at his face in the picture. Is that an expression of a man who is being forced to beat another prisoner or the face of a man enjoying what he’s doing?”
“I’ll ask the damn questions, soldier!”
Major General Koch beat the desktop with his gavel to regain control. “Gentlemen! Please… I must have order. Corporal Barnett, please answer only the questions you are asked!”
“Yes sir.”
“Now, Corporal Barnett… we all know that you are a decorated war hero. You even hold the Medal of Honor, our nation’s highest award for valor.... Congratulations!” Tallon smiled. “Let me ask you a question, though: do you hate black people?”
“Most of them.” Spencer didn’t hesitate.
“Do you hate Specialist James?”
“Yes.”
The courtroom became a tomb of quiet.
“Well, if you hate black people, just because they’re black… and you hate Specialist James, who’s very black… how do we know that you’re not lying about him beating you?”
Spencer sat quietly in his chair. Brigadier General Heller felt his heart beating faster. Slowly Spencer leaned over and untied his shoes. He slipped off his socks and held his feet up so that the members of the board could see the soles of his feet. The scar tissue could be seen from across the room. He held his feet up for a full minute and then stood up and unbuttoned his shirt and laid it over the back of his chair, followed by his T-shirt. The crisscrossed pattern of the scars made good material for the photographers’ cameras.
“If you want me to drop my pants, I’ll show you the scars from the bamboo rod James used to whip me with when I was tied to a bamboo pole.” Spencer’s voice carried no malice, just fact.
Tallon’s breath caught in his throat as he stood looking at the handsome soldier’s scarred body. He was James’s defense attorney, but he also was an Army officer and a human being.
Spencer saw the look in Tallon’s eyes and added, “They don’t hurt anymore, but they sure did when James and Sweet Bitch were putting them there.”
The sound of the gavel striking the table filled the room. “This general court-martial is adjourned until two P.M.” Major General Koch had seen enough and so had the board for one session. Everyone in the courtroom needed a break from the tension that was building up. Reporters raced from the building to make telephone calls back to their offices. They all sensed a big story brewing.
Brigadier General Talton and all of James’s lawyers sat around the large table in the mess hall. The conversation was grim.
“We are not going to win our case if we can’t establish ourselve
s during the Articles 104 and 105—aiding the enemy and misconduct as a prisoner—portion of this court-martial. As far as I’m concerned, we already lost the Article 106 charges when they accepted those damn statements as evi dence from those men who identified James dressed as an Army captain,” said the Black Muslim lawyer.
“I agree, counselor, but the critical charges are coming up next—Article 118.... If they can make murder charges stick, James is going to jail for a very long time. He can survive the charges under Article 106 for spying and even all the rest because we can say that he broke under torture… but killing one’s fellow American soldiers in combat is going to be impossible to appeal and plead mercy.” Tallon looked over at the black lawyer and added, “Remember that there’s a death penalty for murder in the military.”
“There’s a death penalty for spying and one for aiding the enemy.” The deep voice of the civilian lawyer got even deeper.
“Yes, I know that, but like I said earlier, we can get around a death sentence on those charges because of the extreme pressure a POW is under. Nobody nowadays expects a prisoner of war to withstand extreme torture and not talk.”
“It looks like that white corporal did....” The black lawyer tried smiling but Tallon caught the hate in his voice and looked hard into the man’s eyes.
“There are no witnesses to any murder that James is charged with, and all twenty-three counts are based on what James said to General Garibaldi and Barnett while he was a POW.... That won’t count for a number of reasons, with the best one being that James can’t testify against himself.” TalIon didn’t like the look in the black lawyer’s eyes and he stopped talking to look at the rest of the black lawyers who had all come from the same black law firm in Detroit. There was something very wrong in the way they looked and acted, almost as if they were not Americans but representatives of a foreign country.
“Let’s see how it goes this afternoon.” The senior civilian lawyer pushed away his steel tray and stood up. “Personally, I think there is enough doubt to sway the board on the aiding-the-enemy charges, and we can always fall back onto severe brainwashing to get James to copy those overlays in the headquarters building.... Maximum would be a couple of years in a federal stockade.”
“I agree. We do have a chance, and when you add in all theracial unrest throughout the country… they just might drop the whole damn thing to hold down black rioting in the big cities.” Tallon saw the sparkle in the senior lawyer’s eyes. He had made that statement to see what the effect would be.
Court Martial Page 16
