The Killings In Haditha

This segment was originally broadcast on March 18, 2007. It was updated on Aug. 22, 2008.

On Nov. 19, 2005, a squad of United States Marines killed 24 apparently innocent civilians in an Iraqi town called Haditha. The dead included men, women, and children as young as two. Iraqi witnesses said the Marines were on a rampage, slaughtering people in the street and in their homes. A year after the attack, four Marines were charged with murder.

Were the killings in Haditha a massacre? A military jury will decide. But, there's no question that Haditha is symbolic of a war that leaves American troops with terrible choices.

As correspondent Scott Pelley first reported in March 2007, the Marine making those choices in Haditha that day was a 25-year-old sergeant named Frank Wuterich. He was charged with 18 murders. Wuterich sat down with 60 Minutes for his only interview. He said he wanted to tell the truth about the day he decided who would live and who would die in Haditha.

Wuterich does not believe 24 dead civilians equates to a massacre. "No, absolutely not… A massacre in my mind, by definition, is a large group of people being executed, being killed for absolutely no reason and that's absolutely not what happened here," he says.

The day after the killings, bodies were wrapped to conceal the sight of 24 civilians: 15 men, three women and six children, killed by shrapnel and gunshot. A year after they died, the Marine Corps announced the charges, which included murder, dereliction of duty, false official statement, and obstruction of justice.

Prosecutors charged Wuterich and three of his Marines with unpremeditated murder - essentially killing without military justification. To understand how this happened, you need to know where it happened.

Haditha is a town of 70,000, in Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni resistance, where, among the residents, anti-American passions run high. In the months before Wuterich's unit arrived, other Marines there were suffering some of the heaviest causalities in all of Iraq, including the bombing of an armored vehicle that killed 14 Marines. Days before that, six Marines in Haditha were ambushed, tortured and killed. The enemy put it on the Internet where Wuterich and his men saw the bodies and the dog tags of their dead comrades.

In 2005, Wuterich's battalion, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, was to be next to occupy the hostile city.

As his battalion moved in, it discovered the dilemma that defines Iraq. In Haditha, the population is generally hostile to Americans, but only some are armed fighters. The fighters blend in. You can't pick them out unless they're shooting at you.

"When you got to Haditha with your Marines, who was in charge of the town?" Pelley asks.

"For the most part, I don't think anyone was in charge." Wuterich says there was no mayor, city government or police force that he knew of.

Wuterich commanded a squad of 12 men in Kilo Company. They moved into a school administration building they renamed Sparta. They couldn't see the enemy, but it was clear the enemy was watching them. A bomb was buried in the road, right in front of their building.

When he arrived in Haditha, Frank Wuterich had been a Marine more than seven years and was getting out. He didn't have to go to Iraq, but he wanted to see war, so he transferred from his California base to a unit headed into battle. The men in his squad were combat hardened, many on their second or third tours, men who had watched each other's backs through vicious fights.

"As you understood them, what were the rules for using deadly force?" Pelley asks.

Wuterich says the biggest thing was PID - positive identification.

"It means that you need to be able to positively identify your target before you shoot to kill," he says.

The kind of targets they were permitted to shoot to kill included, "…various things," Wuterich says. "Obviously, anyone with a weapon, especially pointed at you… Hostile act, hostile intent was the biggest thing that they had to have, so if they had used a hostile act against you, you could use deadly force. If there was hostile intent towards you, you could use deadly force."

The mission on Nov. 19, 2005, the day of the killings, began before 7 a.m. Wuterich led a convoy to a checkpoint, escorting fresh Iraqi troops and bringing breakfast to the Marines there. It was nothing more than an errand.

Wuterich recounts what happened next.

"Coming back to Sparta we came up going north on River Road… made a left on Chestnut… First two vehicles traveled without incident. My vehicle traveled without incident."

Then, Wuterich felt the blast wave from a "huge, huge" explosion. "It rocked the truck even that I was in. We see debris from our fourth vehicle hundreds of meters in the air above us coming down, you know, tires, all sorts of different parts. We knew the fourth vehicle had been hit."

The vehicle was devastated by a bomb buried under the road, detonated by remote control. Wuterich, in charge, called for backup and began planning his next move.

"Once we have security on the ground and the casualties are being attended to, you want to send somebody out to search for the triggerman," Wuterich says. He believes there was one.

Wuterich tells Pelley that until that minute, he had never been in combat before.

Up ahead, a white car was stopped by the side of the road. Five Iraqi men ranging in age from 19 to 29 were ordered out.

"So my immediate thought is okay, maybe this was a car bomb. Okay, maybe these guys had something to do with this IED," Wuterich says.

He says Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz, who was also charged with murder, yelled at the men to drop to the ground.

"Normally, the Iraqis know the drill when you're over there. They know if something happens, they know exactly what they need to do. Get down, hands up, and completely cooperate. These individuals were doing none of that. They got out of the car [and] as they were going around they started to take off, so I shot at them," he tells Pelley.

As the men ran from Wuterich, he says he shot them in the back.

"How does these men running away from the scene, as you describe it, square with hostile action or hostile intent?" asks Pelley.

"Because hostile action, if they were the triggermen, would have blown up the IED. Which would also constitute hostile intent. But also at the same time, there were military-aged males that were inside that car. The only vehicle, the only thing that was out, that was Iraqi, was them. They were 100 meters away from that IED. Those are the things that went through my mind before I pulled the trigger. That was positive identification," Wuterich tells Pelley.

Other witnesses, including Marines, dispute that the men were running. Wuterich was charged with lying that day to the platoon sergeant, saying the Iraqi men fired on the convoy.

When the vehicle was searched, what was found?

"I believe nothing. I don't remember partaking in the search," he said. "But, as far as I know, there wasn't anything found."

And the men were not armed.

"How much time has passed from the moment of the explosion to the time that you killed these five men?" Pelley asks.

"I would say within about two minutes," Wuterich says.

Next, Wuterich went to his fallen Marines in the bombed Humvee. Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20, from El Paso, Texas, was the driver.

Wuterich describes what he saw. "Basically a pile of flesh, in essence. That may be a sight I'll never forget. He was missing one of his arms. His legs were completely severed from his body, but they were still attached because for some reason his Cami's didn't rip completely."

In two minutes, one Marine and five Iraqis were dead, but the killing had just begun. Next, Frank Wuterich would lead his men to kill 19 more Iraqi civilians.

Two other Marines were wounded and the medic was treating them. Wuterich was down to eight men and they came under rifle fire. He says he heard "Shots, sporadic shots, I think I heard two or three, two or three shots from the south and that was it."
He says he couldn't see where the fire was coming from, but a house to the south caught his eye.

"This building was right in the line of sight of this explosion here," Wuterich says.

"You did not see fire coming from the house, correct?" asks Pelley.

"I did not see muzzle flashes coming from the house, correct," Wuterich replies.

If he didn't hear rounds coming from the house, how did he identify the house as a threat?

"Because that was the only logical place that the fire could come through seeing the environment there."

When Wuterich's superior, Lt. William Kallop arrived, Kallop gave his okay to assault the house.

At this point it's important to know that even though Wuterich had never cleared houses in combat, two of his men had, and it had been a bitter experience. It was about a year before in Falluja. The residents had been ordered out of the city and the Marines were told anyone left behind was hostile. Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, one of Wuterich's men, was in that fatal Falluja house clearing.

In the incident, Marines tossed a grenade past the door and rush in. But the enemy returns fire. One Marine is killed and eight are wounded. Another veteran of Falluja was Lance Corporal Steve Tatum.

Now a year later, Sharratt and Tatum would be charged with murder for what they were about to do in Haditha. Tatum, Wuterich and two others ran from the road at the top, down the ravine to assault the first house -- Wuterich telling the Marines shoot first, ask questions later.

After hearing noises behind a closed door, they kicked in the door and threw in the grenade. "First man enters the room and engages the people in the room," Wuterich remembers.

He says he didn't fire any rounds in the house.

"Frank, help me understand. You're in a residence, how do you crack a door open and roll a grenade into a room?" Pelley asks.

"At that point, you can't hesitate to make a decision. Hesitation equals being killed, either yourself or your men," he says.

"But when you roll a grenade in a room through the crack in the door, that's not positive identification, that's taking a chance on anything that could be behind that door," Pelley says.

"Well that's what we do. That's how our training goes," he says.

Next, Wuterich says he glanced into the room and he saw bodies.

"…I remember there may have been women in there, may have been children in there," he says. "My responsibility as a squad leader is to make sure that none of the rest of my guys died ... and at that point we were still on the assault, so no, I don't believe [I should have stopped the attack], he tells Pelley.

Wuterich says the back door of the house was open. He hadn't seen the gunman, but he assumed the gunman fled next door. So the Marines hit the next house.

He says, "We went through that house much the same, prepping the room with grenades, going in there, and eliminating the threat and engaging the targets…There probably wasn't [a threat], now that I look back on it. But there, in that time, yes, I believed there was a threat."

Wuterich says he also didn't fire his weapon in the second house.

In that second house was the Younis family. A 41-year-old man, a 35-year-old woman, a 28-year-old woman, and the children -- Noor, 14; Sabah, 9; Zaineb, 3; and Aisha, 2. They were all killed by Wuterich's men.

How does he explain that?

"We reacted to how we were supposed to react to our training and I did that to the best of my ability. You know the rest of the Marines that were there, they did their job properly as well. Did we know that civilians were in there? No. Did we go in those rooms, you know, it would have been one thing, if we went in those rooms and looked at everyone and shot them. You know, we cleared these houses the way they were supposed to be cleared," he says.

Prosecutors have charged Wuterich with murdering 18 people. Among them the people at the car and those in the first house when he ordered his men to "shoot first, ask questions later." Prosecutors say he shot six people in the second house. Wuterich told 60 Minutes that he never fired his weapon. The rules said Wuterich and his Marines were supposed to identify a threat before firing, but the rules also said they could use all necessary force to defend themselves.

"In an insurgency situation, Marines don't get a second chance If they aren't able to fire first, they die," says Neil Puckett, who, along with Mark Zaid, are Wuterich's civilian attorneys.

How can they make the argument that these killings are within the law?

"They're within the law because they were not done without legal justification or excuse," Puckett says. "They were done in a combat environment, in a tactical situation, in order to protect the lives of the remaining Marines who survived the IED that day. And that makes them lawful."

Zaid adds: "And these three one Marines knew -- their buddies and colleagues who had tried to do similar take downs of houses where they tried, in fact, to knock first and shoot later. And the Marines who tried that were dead."

60 Minutes wanted to know more about how Marines face this choice - between killing civilians or risking their men. We spoke to a Marine who led a platoon through some of the most hostile territory in Iraq. Donovan Campbell, now a Reserve Captain, estimates he cleared at least 50 houses.

"We have a saying: 'Always know your target and what's beyond it. And no matter what, whether you think you're probably going kill everyone inside, you still need to know exactly what your target is. 'Who is it that I'm shooting when I go through the door,'" Campbell says.

Campbell was not in Haditha and he makes no judgment about what the Marines did there. But he told 60 Minutes, in general, identifying the enemy is critical and has everything to do with the amount of force used to clear a house.

Are there circumstances under which you'd declare an entire house hostile and go in with the intention of just killing everyone inside?

Campbell says yes. "You have to have the context of heavy enemy involvement in the area and then I think you have to have a more specific operating context that deals specifically with that house. You know there are several insurgents inside and you need to go in and get them out because they are attacking you."

How does one know? Campbell tells Pelley almost always, you have to see them.

"In your opinion," asks Pelley," you have to lay eyes on someone with a weapon in that house in order to assault the house and kill everyone inside?"

Campbell says, "Yes, but you never go in with the intention of I'm going to kill every living soul inside."

There was a third house that morning. Wuterich and Sharratt found a man with a rifle inside. They killed him and three others. Later, more armed Iraqis were spotted. They were killed by an air strike.

There were also survivors from the first two houses. Two of them were girls who told reporters that the Marines shouted at their families before they started firing.

Pelley tells Wuterich, "the accusation is made that your men went berserk that you got hit by an IED, one of the favorite guys in the squad was cut in half and lying in the road and your guys went nuts. You dropped the five guys next to the car because they happened to be there and then you went to the closest house and then you went down the hallway throwing grenades and shooting and you just killed everybody you could find."

"That's absolutely untrue," Wuterich responds. "My emotion was pushed back. My training came to play… but going completely crazy and acting wild, I don't know who came up with that, but it's false."

There's no evidence the Marines at Haditha tried to hide the high number of casualties. But for reasons we don't know, a higher Marine headquarters issued a press release that said 15 civilians had been killed by the roadside bomb. Two months later, photos showing gunshot wounds were obtained by Time magazine's Tim McGirk. Opponents of the war, notably congressman John Murtha, seized on them.

"Our troops overacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood," Rep. Murtha said.

On June 1, 2006, President George W. Bush said "…the allegations are very troubling for me and equally troubling for our military, especially the Marine Corps."

Wuterich finished his Iraq tour and, before he was charged, he was promoted by the Marine Corps. He's back home on a base in the U.S., and when 60 Minutes visited, he and his wife Marisol were planning a birthday party for one of their two daughters. Not long after, Marisol gave birth to a third little girl. Wuterich's enlistment is up, but he's being kept in the military, at a desk job, until his court martial.

"What I did that day, the decisions that I made, I would make those decisions today," he says.

"What I'm talking about is the tactical decisions. It doesn't sit well with me that women and children died that day," Wuterich says.

"There is nothing that I can possibly say to make up or make well the deaths of those women and children and I am absolutely sorry that that happened that day."

What was Wuterich thinking when he went to bed that night?

"That I'm not sure I want to go to sleep tonight, because I don't know what I'm going to dream."

In the meantime, all the Marines who followed Wuterich that day have had their charges dropped. The charges against Wuterich have been reduced to manslaughter. Wuterich and his wife have divorced. His court martial is expected to proceed when the issue of the 60 Minutes tapes is resolved in court.

Produced by Shawn Efran and Solly Granatstein