Marine who warned of insider attack in Afghanistan gets career ending evaluation

Marine Corps Times:

An insider attack that killed three Marines in Afghanistan last year is under new scrutiny as the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York investigates the case and a congressman questions why an officer who warned about potential danger beforehand received a career-ending evaluation.

Staff Sgt. Scott Dickinson, 29, Cpl. Richard Rivera, 20, and Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley, 21, died Aug. 10, 2012, after an attacker opened fire on them with an assault rifle at a base gym. A fourth Marine, Staff Sgt. Cody Rhode, sustained five gunshot wounds, including one that shattered his elbow, according to a Marine Corps news release. They were all members of a police advisory team attached to 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C.

The incident at Forward Operating Base Delhi came amid a wave of insider attacks across Afghanistan and raised serious questions about the ease with which it occurred. The alleged shooter is a teenage boy named Aynoddin who worked for Sarwar Jan, an Afghan police commander, according to media reports. Marine Corps Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Corps in January seeking related documents, but nothing has been released.

The incident captured the interest of Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and prosecutors in New York, where Buckley was raised on Long Island. In a July 11 letter to Commandant Gen. Jim Amos, King wrote that before the shooting occurred, Maj. Jason Brezler received “an emergency request for information” from deployed Marines with Kilo Company, 3/8, asking for information about an Afghan police official “whom they believed posed a security risk.”

Brezler, a mobilized reserve Marine at the time, “immediately told his fellow Marines what he knew about the peril they faced,” and realized afterward that he passed “imminent threat” information classified as “NATO SECRET” over an unclassified computer network, King’s letter states. Brezler, a member of a New York City fire department, reported his mistake to his chain of command in the Corps, and subsequently received an adverse fitness report.

King says in his letter that it is “unfair for Maj. Brezler’s good-faith effort to warn his fellow Marines, of what sadly proved to be mortal danger, to derail his reserve career.”
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“Jason Brezler chose the harder right over the easier wrong when he responded honestly to fellow Marines’ concerns about Sarwar Jan,” King said. “Why punish him for having the integrity and moral courage to warn about an imminent force protection threat? I hope he is not being retaliated against for blowing the whistle on Sarwar Jan’s criminal activities, which posed an insider threat that killed three Marines.”
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It is not like this guy was Snowden or Manning.  What he disclosed should not have been classified in the first place.  It should have been mandatory that it was disclosed in order to protect the lives of Marines from imminent danger.   I think fitness reports like this one are a disgrace.  The Commandant should reverse this one.