FORT IRWIN, Calif. -- A detachment of Reserve Marines from 2nd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment attended the Tactical Search and Site Exploitations course here June 23-27 in preparation for their upcoming deployment to Iraq.
The course focused students on gathering evidence on suspected insurgent activity by utilizing standard operational procedures and the latest state-of-the-art police equipment.
These police detective skills are vital for the Marines of 2/25, who are headed for a seven-month tour to Al Anbar province beginning in September, where they will conduct counterinsurgency operations in both urban and rural areas.
“If they employ proper systematic procedures and techniques, it will assist them in attacking the insurgency’s network, thereby denying the enemy resources for future attacks on Coalition Forces,” said Miguel Guerrero, the course’s lead instructor.
A veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Guerrero spent about a year in Al Anbar province in 2003 and retired from the U.S. Army in 2007 as a first sergeant. He has been instructing in support of the TSE program here since October.
Guerrero explained that all suspected criminals in Iraq, including insurgents, receive court trials where rules of evidence apply. Therefore, proper documentation, handling and preservation of evidence is crucial in ensuring that terrorist suspects are tried and convicted in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq in Baghdad.
“You have to be able to identify evidence of forensic value and obtain fingerprints to positively identify insurgents,” explained Guerrero. “This gives the commander the capability to be more effective in his (area of operations).”
The TSSE program was created in 2007 by the Joint Center of Excellence, a subordinate command of the Joint IED Defeat Organization.
“The skills taught here were identified as a requirement by (U.S. Central Command) commanders to attack the IED network in Iraq. We were missing and destroying a lot of intelligence and not fully exploiting the information that would allow us to defeat the IED network,” said U.S. Marine Maj. David Turner, the deputy chief of the JCOE’s training support division. “They didn’t know what to look for, what to do when they found it, or how to process it. Since creating this course, we’ve seen definite positive results in country,”
The Marines of 2/25, most of whom have had very little exposure to finding and documenting evidence on a crime scene, understand how relevant this training is for their upcoming mission.
“We are acquiring the most current and up-to-date skill sets that commanders in-theater have identified. This will lead to greater success in the Marine Corps’ efforts to empower the Iraqis and defeat the insurgency,” said Sgt. Seth Mansur, the battalion intelligence section’s senior analyst.
The Marines spent the first two days in the classroom, receiving instruction in evidence collection and operating systems such as the Handheld Interagency Identification Detection Equipment. The lightweight HIIDE, also used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, records and stores biometrics information such as fingerprints, iris scans and digital facial recognition photos, as well as detailed biographical data.
When on a future mission in Iraq, each Marine infantry company equipped with a HIIDE can use this tool to identify known or suspected insurgents they encounter.
“We’ve learned our lesson from Vietnam. You can’t fight an insurgency with brute force,” said Lance Cpl. Alexander Vassilopoulos, an assaultman and member of the company-level intelligence cell with Weapons Company, 2/25. “We are fighting smarter, not harder…. I believe we can actually win this war.”
A graduate of New York University’s film school, Vassilopoulos is an independent filmmaker in New York City. He joined the Marine Corps Reserve in 2006 because, “Like most New Yorkers, I was directly affected by the 9/11 attacks. Terrorism’s chief tactical advantages are cover and concealment. Twenty-first century technology can effectively neutralize these advantages. The next 9/11 could be prevented by something a simple as a fingerprint.”
Vassilopoulos explained that the new company level intelligence cell concept is a vital innovation in the structural organization of the Marine rifle company. It empowers leaders at all levels to obtain and use relevant, timely intelligence information to their advantage. This improvement is learned from earlier experiences in Iraq, when troops operating at the tactical level obtained critical intelligence, but by the time it was routed through channels to the battalion intelligence office, the information was sometimes no longer accurate or useful.
The HIIDE, according to Vassilopoulos, is an ideal tool to assist Marine infantry companies, oftentimes operating in remote desert areas far from U.S. bases in Iraq, in apprehending high-value targets. Not only does the HIIDE record data, but the instrument enables troops to set up checkpoints and catch known terrorist suspects whose biometrics information is already in the database.
On June 24, Marines were also introduced to the “Fido” operating system. This piece of gear, weighing about two and a half pounds and small enough to fit inside a day pack, is designed to detect explosive chemical materiel used to build IEDs. Troops can use the Fido when entering a house or area where suspected insurgent activity has taken place. The goal is evidence gathering and documentation.
“You are not police officers, but you are in a police officer role in Iraq,” said Gunnery Sgt. James Cortez, the instructor for the document media exploitation class. Drawing on his experiences in Iraq in 2004 to 2006, Cortez explained that the evidence Coalition Forces collect has great credibility in Iraqi courts.
“It’s like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,” said Cortez, “and you have to help them put the pieces of the story together.”
Cortez also emphasized the importance of maintaining chain of custody, imploring the Marines, “You’ve got to handle evidence properly from the cradle to the grave, the cradle being the time you collect it and the grave the time it is used in a criminal court.”
The students began putting their classroom instruction into practice on the morning of June 25. Working in squads, they wrote an operation order and executed the mission of searching a suspected house for weapons, IED-making materials, documents and electronic media that can be used in prosecuting terrorists.
“If you go in and tear the place apart, you’ll definitely miss critical pieces of evidence,” instructed Kevin Stettler, a JCOE staff member who spent 23 years in the U.S. Army as a combat engineer, including time in Iraq. He showed the Marines how to thoroughly and methodically check a room for false walls, trap doors and hiding places inside furniture.
“It’s all about exposure and experience,” said Stettler.
Much like detectives on a crime scene, the Marines, with the help of an Iraqi interpreter, questioned the inhabitants and labeled, photographed and bagged each piece of evidence, ranging from C-4 plastic explosives to schematics identifying suspected weapons caches.
“As a police officer, I found the tactical questioning and evidence handling lessons to be very interesting and right on track with what I have learned in my career back home,” said Cpl. Collin Congleton, a member of the 2/25 Scout-Sniper Platoon and a five-year veteran of the Jersey City Police Department.
“As a Marine, I think the classes on locating possible weapons caches and searching open areas will be extremely beneficial in combat,” said Congleton. “The Iraqi role players added an element of realism to the training that was excellent.”
The broiling desert afternoon greeted the Marines June 26 when they went out to a remote training area to look for buried caches.
The students, laden with bulky uniforms and more than 50 pounds of personal protective gear, scoured the barren terrain looking for landmarks and other tell-tale signs of buried weapons and munitions.
Using an F-3 metal detector, the Marines went over the areas where they believed the caches were hidden. When receiving a high-pitched squelch from the machine, they used shovels to dig around the suspect area and unearth 50-gallon drums filled with mock AK-47 rifles, ammunition, bomb vests and various types of explosive ordnance. They marked and photographed the evidence, then recorded the specific location to send detailed reports to explosive ordnance disposal teams.
“This (F-3 metal detector) is a step-up from the equipment we used the last time I was there,” said Lance Cpl. Robert Schimilewske, a Company E rifleman who deployed to Iraq in 2005-2006 with 1st Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment.
Schimilewske, who is putting his junior year on hold at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, admitted that “searching the desert floor for hours upon hours can become monotonous.” However, he explained that the training will definitely benefit the battalion when they are in Iraq.
Evening found the Marines squads huddled around laptop computers in their Spartan open-bay billeting, working on their reports to document the morning’s house searches. This homework assignment required a narrative description of the houses, all actions taken by Marines while searching, sworn statements, biographical information about the inhabitants and a list of all illegal items found.
The report also included detailed floor plans of the houses, which the Marines created using a software program they’d experimented with in class. The program included the capability to embed links to high-resolution photographs taken by Marines during the search. When analyzing the floor plan at a later date, military intelligence personnel and Iraqi court judges can view exactly where the illegal items were found.
All this evidence-gathering and procedure is new to Gunnery Sgt. Kevin Lowe, the 2/25 intelligence chief, who returned from his last tour in Iraq in September 2003. Lowe and his intelligence team had no training of this type prior to his first deployment.
“This training will help us to catch and hopefully convict most of the bad guys that are out there trying to hurt us and the people of Iraq.”
A 19-year veteran of the Marine Forces Reserve, this will be Lowe’s fourth mobilization, and his second tour in Iraq. In his civilian career, Lowe is an installation technician for a telecommunications company in New York City.
The June 26 training schedule sent the Marines back into the urban training facility to practice more detailed building searches. Learning from the previous day’s lesson, the students checked places they’d missed the day before, such as under carpets and inside appliances. Each of the four squads significantly improved in their teamwork and techniques.
“Today definitely went a lot better than yesterday,” said Lance Cpl. Michael Shapanus. He explained that the search teams worked more methodically and optimized their time on the search site. Shapanus, an involuntary augment from 1/25, is a union sheet metal worker in Boston, Mass.
On the final day of the program June 27, the students spent the morning conducting a third occupied house search and follow-on submission of a full report. Each of the four teams found nearly every illegal item in their respective search house.
“I saw those guys on Wednesday, and I watched them today. The change is phenomenal,” said instructor Lonnie Beck, drawing from his 12-month experience in Iraq from 2004-2005 with the U.S. Army’s 185th Cavalry Regiment.
That afternoon, students typed up their final search reports, completed a written course assessment and received their graduation certificates from instructors at an informal ceremony with the instructors.
Not only will this qualification be a boon to the Marines’ military careers, but they will now be an added asset to 2/25 in the upcoming deployment.
The 33 course graduates embarked on the three-hour drive through the Mojave Desert back to Twentynine Palms, Calif., where they will continue infantry training with their battalion until they deploy to Iraq in September.