Six years ago, reporter Paul Szoldra broke a story about an insider attack in Syria that military news website Task and Purpose hyped as one of the things “the Pentagon denies ever happened.”
Paul reported that two Marines at a remote outpost in Syria, Sgt. Cameron Halkovich and Cpl. Kane Downey, had just begun their rounds as sergeant and corporal of the guard, when one of the Syrian partner force members fired on the men, hitting Halkovich twice in the leg. Downey responded by shooting the attacker, removing the attacker’s weapon, then turning to tend to Halkovich’s wounds by applying a tourniquet and calling for aid.
Since Syria was part of my beat for Stars and Stripes, I felt our readers deserved to know about the story. So, I did a brisk report on it myself, after trying to confirm some details with U.S. Central Command and the U.S.-led Inherent Resolve mission. Though the military coalition had completed an investigation, I got very little in the way of useful official information.
“Until we have thoroughly reviewed the redacted report, we have no specific details to offer on this incident,” the coalition told me in a statement.
Halkovich was awarded a Purple Heart for his wounds in April 2018, which was confirmed in photos of the award ceremony posted to the Defense Department’s photo and video website repository DVIDShub.net. The information on the site did not provide details of how or where he was wounded.
But Paul had seen something I didn’t have access to: the citation for the Joint Service Commendation Medal that Downey was awarded for his actions. So I decided to see if I could get it under FOIA.
It only took six years for U.S. Central Command to provide me the records. A whopping four pages. Twenty-one redactions, consisting mostly of personal details like names or signatures.
It doesn’t add much to the public record, but it does confirm the reported details and makes it a lot harder for anyone to deny it happened.
Here are the records.
Enclosure-TAB-A-Documents-for-Release