Four Marine Corps aviators are being made into scapegoats and rushed to justice for a fatal collision between their jet and an Italian ski gondola cable, their lawyers say.
The military is expected to recommend by late July whether the four should be court-martialed. A hearing, similar to a civilian grand jury, ended Tuesday for the pilot and navigator of the EA-6B Prowler; a hearing was held last month for the anti-radar jet's back-seat crewmen.The four were charged with manslaughter and homicide because of political pressure as high up as the White House, defense lawyers said Tuesday.
The crew was stationed at Aviano Air Base in northwestern Italy to fly missions over Bosnia.
"The commander-in-chief of this country got a telephone call from the premier of Italy who said, `We're going to shut down your bases,' " said Dave Beck, lawyer for Capt. Joseph Schweitzer, 30, of Westbury, N.Y., the plane's navigator.
Frank Spinner, lawyer for pilot Capt. Richard Ashby, 30, of Mission Viejo, Calif., said the Marine Corps was more concerned with "finding someone to blame than they are about safety."
Ashby and Schweitzer were charged along with Capts. Chandler Seagraves, 28, of Nineveh, Ind., and William Raney, 26, of Englewood, Colo. The rear-seat crew members operated radar detection and jamming equipment.
The four fliers have denied flying too low and too fast, the major contention in the government's case.
Defense attorneys contend the plane dipped accidentally below a minimum 1,000-foot altitude, hitting the ski gondola cable at 370 feet. But prosecutors claim the crew was joy riding recklessly.
"You just don't blink your eyes and drop 600 feet," prosecutor Maj. Vernon Couch said.
Col. Thomas Blickensderfer, a member of the initial investigative board sent to Italy the day after the disaster, testified at the hearing he was told before he even left the United States that the incident would be handled differently.
Traditionally after such an accident, an aircraft accident board is convened and holds secret hearings to determine the technical reasons for it. Crews cannot be prosecuted for anything they say while the board is in session.