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by T. Christian Miller
Los Angeles Times, Nov. 27, 2005
WASHINGTON -- One hot, dusty day in June, Col. Ted Westhusing
was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport, a
single gunshot wound to the head.
Col. Ted
Weshusing
The Army would
conclude that he committed suicide with his service pistol. At the time,
he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq.
The Army closed its
case. But the questions surrounding Westhusing's death continue.
Westhusing, 44, was
no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army's leading scholars of military
ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to
be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy;
his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.
So it was only
natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of possible corruption by
U.S. contractors in Iraq. A few weeks before he died, Westhusing received
an anonymous complaint that a private security company he oversaw had
cheated the U.S. government and committed human rights violations.
Westhusing confronted the contractor and reported the concerns to
superiors, who launched an investigation.
In e-mails to his
family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had
reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country
had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to
rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.
His death stunned
all who knew him. Colleagues and commanders wondered whether they had
missed signs of depression. He had been losing weight and not sleeping
well. But only a day before his death, Westhusing won praise from a senior
officer for his progress in training Iraqi police.
His friends and
family struggle with the idea that Westhusing could have killed himself.
He was a loving father and husband and a devout Catholic. He was an
extraordinary intellect and had mastered ancient Greek and Italian. He had
less than a month before his return home. It seemed impossible that
anything could crush the spirit of a man with such a powerful sense of
right and wrong.
On the Internet and
in conversations with one another, Westhusing's family and friends have
questioned the military investigation.
A note found in his
trailer seemed to offer clues. Written in what the Army determined was his
handwriting, the colonel appeared to be struggling with a final question.
How is honor
possible in a war like the one in Iraq?
Even at Jenks High
School in suburban Tulsa, one of the biggest in Oklahoma, Westhusing stood
out. He was starting point guard for the Trojans, a team that made a
strong run for the state basketball championship his senior year. He was a
National Merit Scholarship finalist. He was an officer in a fellowship of
Christian athletes.
Joe Holladay, who
coached Westhusing before going on to become assistant coach of the
University of North Carolina Tarheels, recalled Westhusing showing up at
the gym at 7 a.m. to get in 100 extra practice shots.
"There was never a
question of how hard he played or how much effort he put into something,"
Holladay said. "Whatever he did, he did well. He was the cream of the
crop."
When Westhusing
entered West Point in 1979, the tradition-bound institution was just
emerging from a cheating scandal that had shamed the Army. Restoring honor
to the nation's preeminent incubator for Army leadership was the focus of
the day.
Cadets are taught to
value duty, honor and country, and are drilled in West Point's strict
moral code: A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal -- or
tolerate those who do.
Westhusing embraced
it. He was selected as honor captain for the entire academy his senior
year. Col. Tim Trainor, a classmate and currently a West Point professor,
said Westhusing was strict but sympathetic to cadets' problems. He
remembered him as "introspective."
Westhusing graduated
third in his class in 1983 and became an infantry platoon leader. He
received special forces training, served in Italy, South Korea and
Honduras, and eventually became division operations officer for the 82nd
Airborne, based at Ft. Bragg, N.C.
He loved commanding
soldiers. But he remained drawn to intellectual pursuits.
In 2000, Westhusing
enrolled in Emory University's doctoral philosophy program. The idea was
to return to West Point to teach future leaders.
He immediately stood
out on the leafy Atlanta campus. Married with children, he was surrounded
by young, single students. He was a deeply faithful Christian in a
graduate program of professional skeptics.
Plunged into
academia, Westhusing held fast to his military ties. Students and
professors recalled him jogging up steep hills in combat boots and
camouflage, his rucksack full, to stay in shape. He wrote a paper
challenging an essay that questioned the morality of patriotism.
"He was as straight
an arrow as you would possibly find," said Aaron Fichtelberg, a fellow
student and now a professor at the University of Delaware. "He seemed
unshakable."
In his 352-page
dissertation, Westhusing discussed the ethics of war, focusing on examples
of military honor from Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to the Israeli army.
It is a dense, searching and sometimes personal effort to define what,
exactly, constitutes virtuous conduct in the context of the modern U.S.
military.
"Born to be a
warrior, I desire these answers not just for philosophical reasons, but
for self-knowledge," he wrote in the opening pages.
As planned,
Westhusing returned to teach philosophy and English at West Point as a
full professor with a guaranteed lifetime assignment. He settled into life
on campus with his wife, Michelle, and their three young children.
But amid the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, he told friends that he felt experience in Iraq
would help him in teaching cadets. In the fall of 2004, he volunteered for
duty.
"He wanted to serve,
he wanted to use his skills, maybe he wanted some glory," recalled Nick
Fotion, his advisor at Emory. "He wanted to go."
In January,
Westhusing began work on what the Pentagon considered the most important
mission in Iraq: training Iraqi forces to take over security duties from
U.S. troops.
Westhusing's task
was to oversee a private security company, Virginia-based USIS, which had
contracts worth $79 million to train a corps of Iraqi police to conduct
special operations.
In March, Gen. David
Petraeus, commanding officer of the Iraqi training mission, praised
Westhusing's performance, saying he had exceeded "lofty expectations."
"Thanks much, sir,
but we can do much better and will," Westhusing wrote back, according to a
copy of the Army investigation of his death that was obtained by The
Times.
In April, his mood
seemed to have darkened. He worried over delays in training one of the
police battalions.
Then, in May,
Westhusing received an anonymous four-page letter that contained detailed
allegations of wrongdoing by USIS.
The writer accused
USIS of deliberately shorting the government on the number of trainers to
increase its profit margin. More seriously, the writer detailed two
incidents in which USIS contractors allegedly had witnessed or
participated in the killing of Iraqis.
A USIS contractor
accompanied Iraqi police trainees during the assault on Fallouja last
November and later boasted about the number of insurgents he had killed,
the letter says. Private security contractors are not allowed to conduct
offensive operations.
In a second
incident, the letter says, a USIS employee saw Iraqi police trainees kill
two innocent Iraqi civilians, then covered it up. A USIS manager "did not
want it reported because he thought it would put his contract at risk."
Westhusing reported
the allegations to his superiors but told one of them, Gen. Joseph Fil,
that he believed USIS was complying with the terms of its contract.
U.S. officials
investigated and found "no contractual violations," an Army spokesman
said. Bill Winter, a USIS spokesman, said the investigation "found these
allegations to be unfounded."
However, several
U.S. officials said inquiries on USIS were ongoing. One U.S. military
official, who, like others, requested anonymity because of the sensitivity
of the case, said the inquiries had turned up problems, but nothing to
support the more serious charges of human rights violations.
"As is typical,
there may be a wisp of truth in each of the allegations," the official
said.
The letter shook
Westhusing, who felt personally implicated by accusations that he was too
friendly with USIS management, according to an e-mail in the report.
"This is a mess …
dunno what I will do with this," he wrote home to his family May 18.
The colonel began to
complain to colleagues about "his dislike of the contractors," who, he
said, "were paid too much money by the government," according to one
captain.
"The meetings [with
contractors] were never easy and always contentious. The contracts were in
dispute and always under discussion," an Army Corps of Engineers official
told investigators.
By June, some of
Westhusing's colleagues had begun to worry about his health. They later
told investigators that he had lost weight and begun fidgeting, sometimes
staring off into space. He seemed withdrawn, they said.
His family was also
becoming worried. He described feeling alone and abandoned. He sent home
brief, cryptic e-mails, including one that said, "[I] didn't think I'd
make it last night." He talked of resigning his command.
Westhusing brushed
aside entreaties for details, writing that he would say more when he
returned home. The family responded with an outpouring of e-mails
expressing love and support.
His wife recalled a
phone conversation that chilled her two weeks before his death.
"I heard something
in his voice," she told investigators, according to a transcript of the
interview. "In Ted's voice, there was fear. He did not like the nighttime
and being alone."
Westhusing's father,
Keith, said the family did not want to comment for this article.
On June 4,
Westhusing left his office in the U.S.-controlled Green Zone of Baghdad to
view a demonstration of Iraqi police preparedness at Camp Dublin, the USIS
headquarters at the airport. He gave a briefing that impressed Petraeus
and a visiting scholar. He stayed overnight at the USIS camp.
That night in his
office, a USIS secretary would later tell investigators, she watched
Westhusing take out his 9-millimeter pistol and "play" with it, repeatedly
unholstering the weapon.
At a meeting the
next morning to discuss construction delays, he seemed agitated. He stewed
over demands for tighter vetting of police candidates, worried that it
would slow the mission. He seemed upset over funding shortfalls.
Uncharacteristically, he lashed out at the contractors in attendance,
according to the Army Corps official. In three months, the official had
never seen Westhusing upset.
"He was sick of
money-grubbing contractors," the official recounted. Westhusing said that
"he had not come over to Iraq for this."
The meeting broke up
shortly before lunch. About 1 p.m., a USIS manager went looking for
Westhusing because he was scheduled for a ride back to the Green Zone.
After getting no answer, the manager returned about 15 minutes later.
Another USIS employee peeked through a window. He saw Westhusing lying on
the floor in a pool of blood.
The manager rushed
into the trailer and tried to revive Westhusing. The manager told
investigators that he picked up the pistol at Westhusing's feet and tossed
it onto the bed.
"I knew people would
show up," that manager said later in attempting to explain why he had
handled the weapon. "With 30 years from military and law enforcement
training, I did not want the weapon to get bumped and go off."
After a three-month
inquiry, investigators declared Westhusing's death a suicide. A test
showed gunpowder residue on his hands. A shell casing in the room bore
markings indicating it had been fired from his service weapon, a 9mm
pistol.
Then there was the
note.
Investigators found
it lying on Westhusing's bed. The handwriting matched his.
The first part of
the four-page letter lashes out at Petraeus and Fil. Both men later told
investigators that they had not criticized Westhusing or heard negative
comments from him. An Army review undertaken after Westhusing's death was
complimentary of the command climate under the two men, a U.S. military
official said.
Most of the letter
is a wrenching account of a struggle for honor in a strange land.
"I cannot support a
msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am
sullied," it says. "I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. Death
before being dishonored any more."
A psychologist
reviewed Westhusing's e-mails and interviewed colleagues. She concluded
that the anonymous letter had been the "most difficult and probably most
painful stressor."
She said that
Westhusing had placed too much pressure on himself to succeed and that he
was unusually rigid in his thinking. Westhusing struggled with the idea
that monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war. This, she said, was
a flaw.
"Despite his
intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important
goal for people working in the private sector was surprisingly limited,"
wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach. "He could not shift his mind-set from the
military notion of completing a mission irrespective of cost, nor could he
change his belief that doing the right thing because it was the right
thing to do should be the sole motivator for businesses."
One military officer
said he felt Westhusing had trouble reconciling his ideals with Iraq's
reality. Iraq "isn't a black-and-white place," the officer said. "There's
a lot of gray."
Fil and Petraeus,
Westhusing's commanding officers, declined to comment on the
investigation, but they praised him. He was "an extremely bright, highly
competent, completely professional and exceedingly hard-working officer.
His death was truly tragic and was a tremendous blow," Petraeus said.
Westhusing's family
and friends are troubled that he died at Camp Dublin, where he was without
a bodyguard, surrounded by the same contractors he suspected of
wrongdoing. They wonder why the manager who discovered Westhusing's body
and picked up his weapon was not tested for gunpowder residue.
Mostly, they wonder
how Col. Ted Westhusing -- father, husband, son and expert on
doing right -- could have found himself in a place so dark
that he saw no light.
"He's the last
person who would commit suicide," said Fichtelberg, his graduate school
colleague. "He couldn't have done it. He's just too damn stubborn."
Westhusing's body
was flown back to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Waiting to receive it
were his family and a close friend from West Point, a lieutenant colonel.
In the military
report, the unidentified colonel told investigators that he had turned to
Michelle, Westhusing's wife, and asked what happened.
She answered:
"Iraq."
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