Forwarded for Your information.
Chris
Fixing a Photo to Fit a Policy
By J. Michael Waller
The Defense Department appears to have doctored
a surveillance photograph as part of the Clinton
policy to go easy on Russia � leaving a wounded
U.S. Navy officer high and dry.
A recent CNN report alleged that the Defense Department misled the
public with an altered videotape of a U.S. attack on Yugoslavia. It
fizzled when the Pentagon attributed the error to a digital-compression
process designed to allow intelligence analysts to review combat
footage quickly. �The product was presented as the intelligence analyst
would normally see it, and that is not a manipulation,� Pentagon
spokesman P.J. Crowley claimed.
While that seemed to end the story, the allegation of manipulation
has revived questions about another image the Pentagon released to the
press. At issue is a Navy intelligence photo of a Russian spy ship
believed to have fired a laser at a Canadian military helicopter,
wounding members of its Canadian-U.S. crew over the waters off
Washington state in April 1997. The photo, as released by the Defense
Department, differs markedly from the original taken by the wounded
U.S. Navy intelligence officer aboard the helicopter: Details that Navy
imagery analysts interpreted as a laser beam had been removed from
the official photo.
The differences in the photographs, as well as a chain of policy
decisions made by the Clinton administration to exculpate the Russian
ship, and a Navy inspector-general�s, or IG�s, finding that the Navy
photographer suffered reprisal for reporting the laser incident to
Congress suggest that someone in the Defense Department doctored
the version of the photograph that the Pentagon Office of Public
Affairs released to the public.
Secret Defense and State department documents obtained by the
Washington Times show that senior Clinton-administration officials
conspired to cover up the April 4, 1997, lasing of U.S. Navy Lt. Jack
Daly and his Canadian pilot, Capt. Patrick Barnes, by the Russian
freighter Kapitan Man. The Office of Naval Intelligence, or ONI,
apparently responding to political pressure, retaliated against Daly for
pursuing the matter with Congress. Daly suffered laser burns to his
right eye, as well as vision problems and severe headaches.
Daly was the Navy�s foreign-intelligence liaison officer in
Esquimalt, British Columbia, heading a joint U.S.-Canadian
helicopter-surveillance operation against Russian, Chinese and other
spy ships operating in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which separates
British Columbia from Washington state, and in Puget Sound, the site of
major U.S. nuclear ballistic-missile submarine and aircraft-carrier
bases.
Daly didn�t realize he had been wounded by a laser, or �lased,�
until he returned to Esquimalt after photographing Kapitan Man and
handed his Kodak DCS-460 digital camera to Chief Petty Officer Scott
Tabor, a highly trained U.S. Navy imagery analyst on base. Tabor
processed the photos and discovered on frame 16 a bright red spot,
with a yellow halo and white core, emanating from the port side running
light on the bridge of Kapitan Man. Tabor showed the photo to Daly
and urged him to get immediate medical attention. An initial medical
evaluation, and months of subsequent tests by the U.S. military�s top
experts on laser eye injuries, confirmed laser burns on Daly�s retina.
Side-by-side comparisons of frame 16 and the photograph released
by the Pentagon, labeled frame 85, reveal the changes. (The numbering
discrepancy is explained by the way the digital camera, which can take
up to 52 pictures at a time, numbers the frames as they are downloaded
to a computer.) Both images first were published in October on the
Website of Reader�s Digest magazine. The photo on the right (at the
top of p. 25) is the original as shot by Daly and analyzed by Tabor. It
was taken at about noon under clear, sunny conditions, and the colors
of the water, sky and ship match the other photos on the string. A
bright red light is shown emanating from a black recessed panel just
below the bridge. Enlargement of that part of the photo shows a whitish
core and a yellow halo � indicating that it is not a normal running light
from a low-watt bulb shining through a heavy glass lens. Daly testified
before a congressional panel that Tabor interpreted the anomaly as a
laser beam.
A secret military memorandum to the Canadian minister of
national defense, obtained by Insight, states: �The analysis eliminated
the possibility that the light source was benign, e.g., port running light
and suggests a red laser produced the flash shown on the photo.�
That conclusion, along with the laser burns on Daly�s and Barnes�
eyes, led Canadian and U.S. authorities to conclude that Kapitan Man
fired a laser at the helicopter and wounded the crew. The State
Department revealed in May 1997 that it had filed a vigorous diplomatic
protest with Moscow.
But after a secret policy decision by Deputy Secretary of State
Strobe Talbott, Ambassador James Collins and others, the
administration attempted to sweep the matter under the rug. The
official line immediately changed. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon
told reporters at a May 15, 1997, briefing in response to a Times story,
�Upon examination, many naval officers believe that the red dot is the
port running light.� ONI conducted an internal investigation that did
anything but back up its wounded officer, and let the Russian ship off
the hook. On releasing sections of the ONI report and the doctored
frame 85 on June 26, Bacon stated conclusively, �The Navy has
determined that this was a running light � a port running light. The
starboard running light, which is green, is over on the other side. So
they rejected this picture as indicative of a laser.�
How did the running light, in the view of the Pentagon, morph from
conclusively being not a running light and probably a laser, to precisely
the opposite in just two months? ONI imagery analysts are afraid to
speak, even on background. Tabor is at sea and has indicated through
intermediaries that he is unwilling to talk to reporters. Insight attempted
to interview two ONI imagery analysts, but both refused out of fear
that the Navy would retaliate against them.
Other knowledgeable Navy sources interviewed by Insight say
that honest differences of opinion could exist among imagery analysts
about whether the light anomaly is indeed a laser flash, though the U.S.
Army Medical Research Detachment at Brooks Air Force Base
reproduced the image almost exactly on Daly�s digital camera by using
a helium neon laser. Even so, there is no disputing that the photograph
released by the Pentagon was altered to remove the telltale yellow and
white pixels.
Pentagon public affairs insists it didn�t alter the photo and that it
published the image on its Defenselink Website just as it was received.
�This would be as we got the photo from whoever released it,� Terry
Mitchell of the audiovisual office of Defense Department Public
Affairs tells Insight.
ONI released the photo along with a report signed by Rear Adm.
L.L. Poe, then ONI director. But Poe had headed ONI for only a few
days and wasn�t involved in the report. Earl Sheck, a civilian, ran ONI
day-to-day as its executive director at the time, and supervised the
internal report. Reached at his Pentagon office, after his recent
transfer from ONI, Sheck does not deny the discrepancy between
frame 16 and the Pentagon�s frame 85. He tells Insight that he
wouldn�t comment without coordination with Pentagon public affairs.
He referred Insight back to Mitchell. Mitchell did not return a follow-up
call.
ONI already has been found guilty of wrongdoing. The Navy IG
found in August 1999 that ONI illegally retaliated against Daly for
having made protected communications to Congress, stating that the
insertion of derogatory information in his personnel file was �an
unfavorable personnel action taken by ONI and constituted reprisal.� In
the IG report, Sheck called Daly �overly paranoid.� The IG instructed
that the derogatory information be removed from Daly�s file and that a
special review board consider him for promotion. After having passed
him over twice, the Navy decided to promote Daly last September.
ONI appears to be the source of confusing and inaccurate
Pentagon information on the Kapitan Man issue. Some believe that
ONI officials supervising the probe did not want to make a conclusive
finding that would upset White House policy of exculpating Moscow.
Daly testified before a congressional panel that �ONI�s single analyst
with a background in lasers reported to his Air Force counterpart that
he had been instructed to stay out of the investigation and attempted to
unduly influence her not to publish a report on the incident.� ONI did
not even interview Tabor, the imagery analyst at Esquimalt, or Barnes,
the helicopter pilot, for its report. Daly testified, �On two separate
occasions and in front of witnesses, two individuals from ONI
knowledgeable about the investigation admitted to being influenced by
senior officials within the organization and to limit the extent of the
investigation.�
When ONI completed its investigation, it sent the report to the
Pentagon under Poe�s signature, along with the altered photograph. On
June 26, 1997, Pentagon spokesman Bacon released the photo along
with a summary of the ONI report, a news release and a set of
questions and answers about the incident. The briefing led the public to
conclude that Daly and Barnes probably were lased, but not by Kapitan
Man; that the laser that wounded them probably was an innocent range
finder, not a weapon or espionage device; that Kapitan Man was not a
spy ship; that the Canadian-U.S. helicopter crew did not single out
Kapitan Man for special surveillance, so the Russian vessel was not
even under suspicion; that the administration did not limit the length or
scope of the ship inspection; and that no one on the ship had anything to
hide.
The briefing also led to the conclusion that no evidence existed
that Kapitan Man had been modified in a way that would accommodate
a laser, or even suggesting a laser had been aboard; that the red light
Daly photographed was definitely not a laser beam but an innocent
running light; that not a shred of evidence exists that the laser could
have been fired from the ship; and that the eye injuries of Daly and
Barnes were not permanent and would heal quickly.
All those conclusions are false.
The Pentagon and the Clinton administration clearly were
convinced that the Russian ship fired the laser. The Defense
Department pushed for a complete search of the ship, and the State
Department filed a diplomatic protest with Moscow. The evolution of
assessments of the photo � from definitely being a laser beam to
differences of opinion over the image to a 100 percent conclusion that
the red spot was not a laser beam � and the production of a doctored
photograph to reinforce that new conclusion indicates a political
motivation to mislead, and not an objective intelligence assessment.
The Pentagon even tried to cast doubt on whether Daly and
Barnes were lased at all, ultimately concluding that the laser burns
might have been caused by an innocent device such as a laser range
finder. In reality, no one in the U.S. military seems to know what type
of laser wounded Daly and Barnes. Burns caused by laser range
finders, Pentagon spokesman Bacon stated at the time, would heal
within a matter of months. Daly and Barnes both tell Insight � and
reports from the U.S. military laser eye-injury experts at Brooks Air
Force Base confirm � that their conditions are worsening after nearly
three years.
Bacon carefully chose his words when he implied that Kapitan
Man was not a spy ship. �We have no direct evidence that the Russian
merchant vessel Kapitan Man was on an intelligence-gathering mission
at the time of the incident of 4 April 1997,� he said. In fact, the
Pentagon long had suspected the vessel and others of the Far Eastern
Shipping Co., or FESCO, as being spy ships. Three weeks before the
incident, then ONI chief Michael R. Cramer had been briefed about the
problem of FESCO merchant ships and their threats to the U.S. Navy.
A top-secret Defense Department report written two days after the
lasing said Kapitan Man �is suspected of having submarine-detection
equipment on board.� A secret Canadian military document termed
Kapitan Man a �high-interest� vessel, a euphemism for spy ship.
Another, dated three days after the lasing, called Kapitan Man �a
suspected SSN/SSBN surveillance vessel� � a spy ship deployed
against U.S. attack submarines and ballistic-missile submarines. U.S.
searches of Kapitan Man in 1993 and 1994 uncovered expendable
bathythermographs used for antisubmarine warfare, and sonobuoys to
pick up the sounds of ships and submarines at sea.
The Canadian helicopter on that fateful day, according to Bacon,
was on �routine maritime patrol� at the time of the incident and did not
single out Kapitan Man for surveillance. Insight has obtained
declassified Canadian military documents indicating that this is untrue.
According to the documents, U.S. and Canadian forces had been
watching Kapitan Man for days as it �loitered� 10 miles off Vancouver
Island March 29-30, 1997, along with a sister ship, the Anatoly
Kolesnichenko. On April 1, Rear Adm. Russell Moore, commander of
Canada�s Maritime Forces Pacific, ordered P-3 Aurora surveillance
planes to follow Kapitan Man as it steamed off the coast of Vancouver
and directed that the Barnes-Daly helicopter photograph the vessel at
close range once it sailed into the Straits of Juan de Fuca.
In a scripted Q&A, the Pentagon asks, �Is it true that the State
Department restricted the search of the ship to public areas?�
answering, �No, this is not true. ...� Secret U.S. documents published
by Times reporter Bill Gertz in his book, Betrayal, and secret Canadian
documents obtained by Insight, agree that the Clinton administration did
indeed try to limit the ability of investigators to search the ship.
Ambassador Collins, the documents show, basically gave the Russians
control of the probe by giving them 24 hours� notice of the search, and
by limiting the search of the 570-foot ship to two hours instead of two
days. Collins also limited the search to the �public areas� of the vessel.
The documents support Daly�s testimony that two ONI officials
admitted to being pressured to limit the scope of the probe.
Bacon also claimed that the Russian crew had nothing to hide,
saying the searchers �were granted access to every part of the ship to
which they requested access with one exception� � a locked library
room. He dismissed concerns that a laser could have been hidden in
that compartment.
A Defense Department news release stated that the search
�discovered no sign of any recent modifications to the ship that might
have indicated, for example, the removal of a laser from the area below
the port bridge where the red light had been imaged.� Again, critics
say, this was a deceptively worded statement. The boarding team
indeed discovered such modifications and photographed one on the
starboard side of the bridge. The suspect port running light, just below
the windows of the bridge, can be accessed from the inside to change
the bulb. U.S. Navy inspectors, according to a source close to the
probe, removed the access panel of the green starboard light and made
a remarkable discovery: The light assembly had been modified with a
hinged plate and a quick-release wing bolt that allowed the entire
fixture to be removed in seconds and replaced on a homemade bracket
with something else. A U.S. Navy photographer took close-up pictures
of this assembly � but only on the starboard side of the ship. Navy
sources close to the probe say the inspectors did not open the access
panel on the port side that was the subject of the controversy, but they
offered no explanation.
Earlier, Navy Intelligence had taken an aerial photo of a sister ship
of Kapitan Man, the Anadyr, with a strange device protruding from the
port side running light. The photo is blurry and inconclusive, but a U.S.
Navy analyst tells Insight that the shape, size and dimensions are
consistent with a Netherlands-manufactured laser device.
No one seems to know what type of laser might have been
involved. One theory is that the laser could be installed in the
running-light assembly from inside the bridge and operated from the
window with a joystick. In frame 16, a man can be seen on the bridge
in the window over the suspected laser flash, but it is unclear what he
is doing. In frame 85, the windows are darkened, obscuring the human
figure.
The only close-up shot the boarding party took of the red port
running light on Kapitan Man was taken from outside the ship at an
indirect angle. But even that shot shows shiny scratches on the rusty
steel of the outer light housing, indicating that something had been
removed very recently. The Pentagon never officially released that
photo, even though spokesman Bacon told reporters that there was �no
sign that anything had been attached and removed. � There was
actually a layer of dirt or grime on parts of the ship that would have
made it pretty easy to see if there had been a tripod set up there or if
people had been running around moving equipment on the deck of the
ship, and there was no indication that they had been.�
It is unlikely the ONI would have informed Bacon; its report, in
contradiction of the photographic evidence, states that �there was no
indication of abnormal activity on the ship.�
While the U.S. and Canadian governments denied that a laser
incident involving Kapitan Man had occurred, both took emergency
action. They immediately terminated all helicopter surveillance patrols
over the Strait of Juan de Fuca and canceled the program. Based on
U.S. Navy imagery analysis, Canada scrambled to find protective
equipment for its pilots and air crews against �laser threats,� according
to a declassified memorandum. The incident, according to Ottawa,
showed the high vulnerability of laser threats and a �strong possibility�
that a �legitimate threat exists even in our own backyard.�
The Air Force and Navy showed equal concern, acquiring
protective equipment for their personnel. After an Air Force
intelligence expert on lasers from Wright Patterson Air Force Base
briefed the Air Force chief of staff on the lasing, she was sent on a
two-year global tour to brief pilots and special-operations crews on the
dangers of laser weapons. But ONI retaliated against Daly, according
to the Navy Inspector General, calling him a security risk and inserting
negative information in his file.
There are other anomalies as well. The section of the ONI report
released to the press concluded that the red dot in the photo �has been
conclusively established to be the port running light.� Only when
doctored to remove the white and yellow pixels could the photograph
lead analysts to arrive at such a definitive conclusion.
Another section of the ONI report, a section which was not
officially released to the public but which Insight has secured, tells a
different story: �it cannot be conclusively ruled out� that the red dot is a
laser beam. That suppressed finding, like the suppressed original photo,
contradicts the administration�s absolutist line. But it still doesn�t
answer the central question: Who in the Department of Defense is
responsible for faking a photograph and causing the Pentagon
public-affairs office to mislead the American people about the lasing of
a U.S. Navy officer, and why?
