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Two years ago, I went to Iraq to talk to a man about what sounded like a murder. It had happened almost 17 years earlier. The killing of the man's sister, his nephew, so many others. 24 people in all. It was a killing that had gone unpunished, where not a single person had ever gone to prison. A killing committed by US Marines. The man whose family was killed is named Khalid Salman Rezif. Good morning. Hello. He met me in the lobby of a hotel in the city of Erbil, Iraq. Should we go? No, no, no, no problem. Pardon me. No, We headed up to a room with our producer, Samara Fremark, and our interpreter, a woman named Ayya Muthana. We all sat down. Mr. Khalid, why don't you sit here? Okay. Can I get you a water or coffee or anything like that?

Some water. Some water? I'd wanted to meet Khalid in his hometown.

It's called Haditha. But traveling to Haditha is dangerous for Western journalists. Remnants of ISIS are still active in the region. So Khalid agreed to meet us in a safer place, in Urbill, in the north.

.

He's thanking you for coming here. He says that you much blood, even the air smelled of it..There was blood on the walls, on the floors, in the furniture, even on the ceilings..And there were bloody drag marks leading out the door. But Where was Khalid's family?Where are they?What has happened? Where did they go? And then someone came by, told Khaled that the Marines had taken all the bodies to the hospital. The bodies? Khaled took off running for the hospital. At some point, one of his cousins drove up. He said, Jump in. And together, they drove the rest of the way. When Khalid got to the hospital, he found a crowd had gathered. People were walking in and out of a small air-conditioned room that the hospital was using as a morgue.Like a freezer for bodies.A freezer for bodies?Yes.There was a nurse there holding a list of names..And they said, Your relatives are all inside. You can go and identify them.Yes.The floor of the room was covered in bodies and body parts. Some of the bodies were in body bags, others were in trash bags. They started opening. He would go on to spend years wondering why. Why did this happen? He's actually devoted his life to answering that question. And now, I was wondering, too. I've spent the past four years, along with the rest of the In the Dark team, investigating the killings of Khaled's family and the others that day. A mass killing carried out by US Marines over just a few hours in Haditha. This story would take us to 21 states and three continents. We would talk to hundreds of people, Iraqi civilians, Marines, eyewitness, experts. We would obtain thousands of pages of government documents. We would look at photos, videos, drone footage, reports, intelligence assessments, handwritten notes, records from the peculiar and secretive parallel justice system that handles crimes committed by American service members. We would even sue the US military, all to find out what really happened that day in Haditha and why was no one punished for the killings. From The New Yorker, this is season three of In the Dark. Episode one, The Green Grass. In the days after the killings, Khaled walked around Haditha in a daze.He just lost his sister, his sister's husband, his nephew, so many other family members. Khaled told me what those days were like. The word he used the most was shocked.Seeing his family dying, like his whole family, he was shocked.Shocked when he saw the bodies of his family in the hospital. Shocked in the days that followed. But after a week of this, Khaled said, I woke up.He said that God gives some people a hidden power to just act when something happened in these situations.Khalid wanted to know why the Marines had killed his family. He wanted to know what had happened inside those houses, how the killings had happened. And he wanted the people responsible to be punished. An investigation, a prosecution, a punishment, the kinds of things that a person expects when their family is killed. What wanted was justice. But Khalid said the Marines hadn't even come to his family to apologize. They actually hadn't said anything to him at all about the killings. It was like it hadn't happened. And so Khalid and some other town leaders in Haditha gathered at the town's central library. Local leaders were there in the city council. Khalid was actually a member. They came up with a list of demands. They wrote them down in the form of a letter. Someone in the group translated the letter into English. Now they needed to get that letter to the Marines. But going to the American base was extremely dangerous. Insurgents monitored the road to the base to see it was coming and going. If they spotted an Iraqi civilian traveling there, sometimes that person would later end up decapitated on the.Anybody who goes to the American base, it was basically like a suicide.But Khalid was desperate.And so, eight days after killings, he and the other men headed down that suicidal road to the American base to meet with the Marines. That's after the break. Hi, it's Madelyne. I'm going to be honest with you. This season almost didn't happen, but we were able to report Season 3 to its conclusion and bring it to you because Because we join The New Yorker. At In the Dark, we believe that investigative reporting can lead to real change. That's why I'm asking you to become a New Yorker subscriber. The New Yorker brings you not just In the Dark, but amazing non-fiction stories from the best writers and journalists working today. People like Rachel Aviv, Patrick Radden Keith, and Ronan Farrow. The New Yorker relies on subscribers. You literally make our work possible. So please go to newyorker. Com/dark, and become a subscriber today. A subscription starts at just a dollar a week, and it gives you unlimited access to everything The New Yorker publishes. And of course, you get a tote bag. That's newyorker. Com/dark. I'm How are you? Hello. Come on in. I want to introduce you to an American who was at the base when Khalid and the other Iraqi men arrived.His name is Dana Hyatt. Our producer, Natalie Jablansky, went to his house in Connecticut to talk to him. Nice to meet you. I'm Natalie. Dana Hyatt. Hyatt's now retired from the military. He'd served 28 years. I see some Marines logos here on some photos.Got a little mini museum there. Oh, yeah. And then I taught school.Hyatt had kept a scrapbook of photos of his tribe in Iraq, and he showed it to Natalie.We can go through some of this stuff if you want.Let's take a look. Flipping through its pages, it's like a highlight reel of all the stereotypes the American military applied to Iraq during the war. You have the smiling Iraqi kids.Give up bubble gum, candy.The palm trees.This woman coming from the river area, palm fronds.The Marines hobnobbing with tribal leaders.Shakes, shakes, sheeks over there.The livestock in the streets.This guy is herding his sheep out here. Like biblical times. The houses, the way they look.This is right- And then there are the photos of zip-tied detainees lying in the desert. Yeah.So stuff happened.In Haditha, Hyatt was what's called a Civil Affairs Officer. His job was to build relationships with the civilians in town, win them over to the Marine side, what the military calls hearts and minds.The hearts and minds, helping to make Haditha better, helping to to, I don't know, improve their lives.When the Marines did something that harmed civilians, Hyatt's job was basically to paper it over, like he'd hand out money to repair homes the Marines had damaged. Here you go.Here's 20 bucks, here's $50, here's $10. Dollars, whatever.Hyatt wasn't involved in the killings of Khaled's family, but he had seen some of their bodies. Hyatt had gone with other Marines to the hospital that night when the bodies were unloaded from Humvees and put in the makeshift morgue where Khaled would later find What were you thinking at that point, or what did you make of that?I don't know. I was purposely not trying to think too much about it. I didn't want some of those visuals constantly being there later.Instead, Hyatt'san American journalist at Time magazine named Tim McGurk, who wrote a story about it, alleging that 24 civilians had been killed by US Marines. And the story blew up. Some are comparing the Haditha killings to the Vietnam Massacre at Me-Live.They actually went into the houses and killed women and children.And they members of Congress, vowed to look into what had happened. We will hold hearings and hold reviews, and there will be thorough oversight. Even President George W Bush waved in. The Haditha incident is under investigation.Obviously, the allegations Investigations are very troubling for me and equally troubling for our military, especially the Marine Corps.The US military ordered its own investigation into what happened in Haditha, and that first investigation would lead to more investigations, three of them in all. It would become one of the largest war crimes investigations in US history. Seemingly every day, the case file would grow. There would be statements taken, forensic evidence gathered, cases built against the Marines responsible. Eventually, four Marines were charged with murder. They faced the possibility of life in prison. Khaled Salman received thought he might finally get the justice he fought so long and so hard for. But that's not at all what happened. I first got interested in the Haditha case a few years ago when I was doing some research on war crimes committed by the US military. As a reporter, I spent a lot of time in civilian courtrooms. I've watched hearings, read files, talked to lawyers and defendants. But war crimes are prosecuted in a different system in the United States, the military justice system. This bizarre, opaque, acronym-laden world that exists mostly outside of public view. In other words, exactly the world that interests me as an investigative reporter. The Haditha case in particular stood out to me because of a mystery at the center of it.Despite the fact that four Marines had been charged with murder. And in such a high-profile case, truly one of the biggest stories out of the entire Iraq war, not a single one of those Marines ended up serving a day in prison. Over the years, every single one of the cases against the Marines collapsed. There was not a single criminal conviction for the killings. How did that happen? As I kept reading about Haditha, I got even more interested because I realized that what actually happened that day was also a mystery. The most basic facts of the day, who killed who and why and how, were unclear. Depending on whose story you believed, the killings were a war crime, a murder, or they were legitimate combat action and the victims were collateral damage, or the killings were a tragic mistake, unintentional, sad, but not criminal. Basically, the only thing that everyone could agree on was that 24 people had died, and it was Marines who'd killed them. The Iraq war has been over for almost 13 years. Some people might say that what happened over there is old news. It's time to move on. But how can you move on from something that you never understood to begin with?Khaled Salman-Rasief in particular, was asking me not to move on, pleading with me, really. And so on this season of In the Dark, we are not moving on. We're going back to 2005 to figure out what really happened to Khaled's family that day, to investigate the Marines and what they did, and to find out why the military justice system never punished a single one of them for the killings. Coming up on this season of In the Dark, I remember I opened a Humvee, and I just see bodies stacked up, and I open another one, the same thing.I'm like, Shit.You and you and you.You and you. And you. They pointed at each one to go inside the house.To me, they were an enemy combatants. Were they 100% enemy combatants? I don't know.No.No. No. No. Actually, you were very surprised.She said it's insane. This is not what happened. I'm not interested in talking about that.I tried to move past all that, so no thank you on all that. Okay, guys, I have never had bigger news for you.I am freaking out this morning at 9:19 AM Central Time.So I said, Holy shit, this is amazing. Could you zoom in?Yeah. Especially to the position of them.No trespassing violator Survivors will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.You feel comfortable going in?Yeah.The sleeping cells, the militias, and the ICS, the IEDs, the motors or rockets.Can you Keep us safe of all this? Of course.What did I think? I assumed it meant that he had fucking shot someone.So he saw the Americans, and then he just disappeared. We don't know what happened to him.I don't know what's to be gained by this investigative journalism.Episode 2 of In the Dark is out now. Listen wherever you get your podcast. Podcasts, or you can listen ad-free at newyorker. Com. In the Dark is reported and produced by me, Madelyne Baron, managing producer, Samara Freemark, producers Natalie Jablonsky and Raymond Tungakar, and reporter, Parker Jesco. In the Dark is edited by Katherine Winter and Willing Davidson. Interpreting in a Rock by Aya Muthena. Additional interpreting and translation by Aya Al-Shikarchi. This episode was fact-checked by Lucy Croning and Lynéa Feldman-Emerson. Original music by Allison Leighton-Brown. Sound design and mix by John Delour. Our theme is by Gary Meister. Our art is by Emiliano Ponzi. Art Direction by Nicholas Conrad and Aviva Michaelov. Foyal legal representation from the Foyal team at Lovie & Lowy. Legal review by Fabio Bertoni. In the Dark was created by American Public Media and is produced by The New Yorker. Our managing editor is Julia Rothschild. The head of global audio for CondeNast is Chris Banon. The editor of The New Yorker is David Remnick. If you have comments or story tips, you can send them to us at inthedark@newyorker. Com. And make sure to follow In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts.Did you kill Marlene Johnson? I think you're one of the first people to have actually asked.From WBUR and ZSP Media, this is Beyond All Repair, a podcast about an unsolved murder that will leave you questioning everything.Wow, it just gets more interesting.Beyond All Repair. All episodes are out now. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.From PRX.

much blood, even the air smelled of it.

.

There was blood on the walls, on the floors, in the furniture, even on the ceilings.

.

And there were bloody drag marks leading out the door. But Where was Khalid's family?

Where are they?

What has happened? Where did they go? And then someone came by, told Khaled that the Marines had taken all the bodies to the hospital. The bodies? Khaled took off running for the hospital. At some point, one of his cousins drove up. He said, Jump in. And together, they drove the rest of the way. When Khalid got to the hospital, he found a crowd had gathered. People were walking in and out of a small air-conditioned room that the hospital was using as a morgue.

Like a freezer for bodies.

A freezer for bodies?

Yes.

There was a nurse there holding a list of names.

.

And they said, Your relatives are all inside. You can go and identify them.

Yes.

The floor of the room was covered in bodies and body parts. Some of the bodies were in body bags, others were in trash bags. They started opening. He would go on to spend years wondering why. Why did this happen? He's actually devoted his life to answering that question. And now, I was wondering, too. I've spent the past four years, along with the rest of the In the Dark team, investigating the killings of Khaled's family and the others that day. A mass killing carried out by US Marines over just a few hours in Haditha. This story would take us to 21 states and three continents. We would talk to hundreds of people, Iraqi civilians, Marines, eyewitness, experts. We would obtain thousands of pages of government documents. We would look at photos, videos, drone footage, reports, intelligence assessments, handwritten notes, records from the peculiar and secretive parallel justice system that handles crimes committed by American service members. We would even sue the US military, all to find out what really happened that day in Haditha and why was no one punished for the killings. From The New Yorker, this is season three of In the Dark. Episode one, The Green Grass. In the days after the killings, Khaled walked around Haditha in a daze.He just lost his sister, his sister's husband, his nephew, so many other family members. Khaled told me what those days were like. The word he used the most was shocked.Seeing his family dying, like his whole family, he was shocked.Shocked when he saw the bodies of his family in the hospital. Shocked in the days that followed. But after a week of this, Khaled said, I woke up.He said that God gives some people a hidden power to just act when something happened in these situations.Khalid wanted to know why the Marines had killed his family. He wanted to know what had happened inside those houses, how the killings had happened. And he wanted the people responsible to be punished. An investigation, a prosecution, a punishment, the kinds of things that a person expects when their family is killed. What wanted was justice. But Khalid said the Marines hadn't even come to his family to apologize. They actually hadn't said anything to him at all about the killings. It was like it hadn't happened. And so Khalid and some other town leaders in Haditha gathered at the town's central library. Local leaders were there in the city council. Khalid was actually a member. They came up with a list of demands. They wrote them down in the form of a letter. Someone in the group translated the letter into English. Now they needed to get that letter to the Marines. But going to the American base was extremely dangerous. Insurgents monitored the road to the base to see it was coming and going. If they spotted an Iraqi civilian traveling there, sometimes that person would later end up decapitated on the.Anybody who goes to the American base, it was basically like a suicide.But Khalid was desperate.And so, eight days after killings, he and the other men headed down that suicidal road to the American base to meet with the Marines. That's after the break. Hi, it's Madelyne. I'm going to be honest with you. This season almost didn't happen, but we were able to report Season 3 to its conclusion and bring it to you because Because we join The New Yorker. At In the Dark, we believe that investigative reporting can lead to real change. That's why I'm asking you to become a New Yorker subscriber. The New Yorker brings you not just In the Dark, but amazing non-fiction stories from the best writers and journalists working today. People like Rachel Aviv, Patrick Radden Keith, and Ronan Farrow. The New Yorker relies on subscribers. You literally make our work possible. So please go to newyorker. Com/dark, and become a subscriber today. A subscription starts at just a dollar a week, and it gives you unlimited access to everything The New Yorker publishes. And of course, you get a tote bag. That's newyorker. Com/dark. I'm How are you? Hello. Come on in. I want to introduce you to an American who was at the base when Khalid and the other Iraqi men arrived.His name is Dana Hyatt. Our producer, Natalie Jablansky, went to his house in Connecticut to talk to him. Nice to meet you. I'm Natalie. Dana Hyatt. Hyatt's now retired from the military. He'd served 28 years. I see some Marines logos here on some photos.Got a little mini museum there. Oh, yeah. And then I taught school.Hyatt had kept a scrapbook of photos of his tribe in Iraq, and he showed it to Natalie.We can go through some of this stuff if you want.Let's take a look. Flipping through its pages, it's like a highlight reel of all the stereotypes the American military applied to Iraq during the war. You have the smiling Iraqi kids.Give up bubble gum, candy.The palm trees.This woman coming from the river area, palm fronds.The Marines hobnobbing with tribal leaders.Shakes, shakes, sheeks over there.The livestock in the streets.This guy is herding his sheep out here. Like biblical times. The houses, the way they look.This is right- And then there are the photos of zip-tied detainees lying in the desert. Yeah.So stuff happened.In Haditha, Hyatt was what's called a Civil Affairs Officer. His job was to build relationships with the civilians in town, win them over to the Marine side, what the military calls hearts and minds.The hearts and minds, helping to make Haditha better, helping to to, I don't know, improve their lives.When the Marines did something that harmed civilians, Hyatt's job was basically to paper it over, like he'd hand out money to repair homes the Marines had damaged. Here you go.Here's 20 bucks, here's $50, here's $10. Dollars, whatever.Hyatt wasn't involved in the killings of Khaled's family, but he had seen some of their bodies. Hyatt had gone with other Marines to the hospital that night when the bodies were unloaded from Humvees and put in the makeshift morgue where Khaled would later find What were you thinking at that point, or what did you make of that?I don't know. I was purposely not trying to think too much about it. I didn't want some of those visuals constantly being there later.Instead, Hyatt'san American journalist at Time magazine named Tim McGurk, who wrote a story about it, alleging that 24 civilians had been killed by US Marines. And the story blew up. Some are comparing the Haditha killings to the Vietnam Massacre at Me-Live.They actually went into the houses and killed women and children.And they members of Congress, vowed to look into what had happened. We will hold hearings and hold reviews, and there will be thorough oversight. Even President George W Bush waved in. The Haditha incident is under investigation.Obviously, the allegations Investigations are very troubling for me and equally troubling for our military, especially the Marine Corps.The US military ordered its own investigation into what happened in Haditha, and that first investigation would lead to more investigations, three of them in all. It would become one of the largest war crimes investigations in US history. Seemingly every day, the case file would grow. There would be statements taken, forensic evidence gathered, cases built against the Marines responsible. Eventually, four Marines were charged with murder. They faced the possibility of life in prison. Khaled Salman received thought he might finally get the justice he fought so long and so hard for. But that's not at all what happened. I first got interested in the Haditha case a few years ago when I was doing some research on war crimes committed by the US military. As a reporter, I spent a lot of time in civilian courtrooms. I've watched hearings, read files, talked to lawyers and defendants. But war crimes are prosecuted in a different system in the United States, the military justice system. This bizarre, opaque, acronym-laden world that exists mostly outside of public view. In other words, exactly the world that interests me as an investigative reporter. The Haditha case in particular stood out to me because of a mystery at the center of it.Despite the fact that four Marines had been charged with murder. And in such a high-profile case, truly one of the biggest stories out of the entire Iraq war, not a single one of those Marines ended up serving a day in prison. Over the years, every single one of the cases against the Marines collapsed. There was not a single criminal conviction for the killings. How did that happen? As I kept reading about Haditha, I got even more interested because I realized that what actually happened that day was also a mystery. The most basic facts of the day, who killed who and why and how, were unclear. Depending on whose story you believed, the killings were a war crime, a murder, or they were legitimate combat action and the victims were collateral damage, or the killings were a tragic mistake, unintentional, sad, but not criminal. Basically, the only thing that everyone could agree on was that 24 people had died, and it was Marines who'd killed them. The Iraq war has been over for almost 13 years. Some people might say that what happened over there is old news. It's time to move on. But how can you move on from something that you never understood to begin with?Khaled Salman-Rasief in particular, was asking me not to move on, pleading with me, really. And so on this season of In the Dark, we are not moving on. We're going back to 2005 to figure out what really happened to Khaled's family that day, to investigate the Marines and what they did, and to find out why the military justice system never punished a single one of them for the killings. Coming up on this season of In the Dark, I remember I opened a Humvee, and I just see bodies stacked up, and I open another one, the same thing.I'm like, Shit.You and you and you.You and you. And you. They pointed at each one to go inside the house.To me, they were an enemy combatants. Were they 100% enemy combatants? I don't know.No.No. No. No. Actually, you were very surprised.She said it's insane. This is not what happened. I'm not interested in talking about that.I tried to move past all that, so no thank you on all that. Okay, guys, I have never had bigger news for you.I am freaking out this morning at 9:19 AM Central Time.So I said, Holy shit, this is amazing. Could you zoom in?Yeah. Especially to the position of them.No trespassing violator Survivors will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.You feel comfortable going in?Yeah.The sleeping cells, the militias, and the ICS, the IEDs, the motors or rockets.Can you Keep us safe of all this? Of course.What did I think? I assumed it meant that he had fucking shot someone.So he saw the Americans, and then he just disappeared. We don't know what happened to him.I don't know what's to be gained by this investigative journalism.Episode 2 of In the Dark is out now. Listen wherever you get your podcast. Podcasts, or you can listen ad-free at newyorker. Com. In the Dark is reported and produced by me, Madelyne Baron, managing producer, Samara Freemark, producers Natalie Jablonsky and Raymond Tungakar, and reporter, Parker Jesco. In the Dark is edited by Katherine Winter and Willing Davidson. Interpreting in a Rock by Aya Muthena. Additional interpreting and translation by Aya Al-Shikarchi. This episode was fact-checked by Lucy Croning and Lynéa Feldman-Emerson. Original music by Allison Leighton-Brown. Sound design and mix by John Delour. Our theme is by Gary Meister. Our art is by Emiliano Ponzi. Art Direction by Nicholas Conrad and Aviva Michaelov. Foyal legal representation from the Foyal team at Lovie & Lowy. Legal review by Fabio Bertoni. In the Dark was created by American Public Media and is produced by The New Yorker. Our managing editor is Julia Rothschild. The head of global audio for CondeNast is Chris Banon. The editor of The New Yorker is David Remnick. If you have comments or story tips, you can send them to us at inthedark@newyorker. Com. And make sure to follow In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts.Did you kill Marlene Johnson? I think you're one of the first people to have actually asked.From WBUR and ZSP Media, this is Beyond All Repair, a podcast about an unsolved murder that will leave you questioning everything.Wow, it just gets more interesting.Beyond All Repair. All episodes are out now. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.From PRX.

. He would go on to spend years wondering why. Why did this happen? He's actually devoted his life to answering that question. And now, I was wondering, too. I've spent the past four years, along with the rest of the In the Dark team, investigating the killings of Khaled's family and the others that day. A mass killing carried out by US Marines over just a few hours in Haditha. This story would take us to 21 states and three continents. We would talk to hundreds of people, Iraqi civilians, Marines, eyewitness, experts. We would obtain thousands of pages of government documents. We would look at photos, videos, drone footage, reports, intelligence assessments, handwritten notes, records from the peculiar and secretive parallel justice system that handles crimes committed by American service members. We would even sue the US military, all to find out what really happened that day in Haditha and why was no one punished for the killings. From The New Yorker, this is season three of In the Dark. Episode one, The Green Grass. In the days after the killings, Khaled walked around Haditha in a daze.

He just lost his sister, his sister's husband, his nephew, so many other family members. Khaled told me what those days were like. The word he used the most was shocked.

Seeing his family dying, like his whole family, he was shocked.

Shocked when he saw the bodies of his family in the hospital. Shocked in the days that followed. But after a week of this, Khaled said, I woke up.

He said that God gives some people a hidden power to just act when something happened in these situations.

Khalid wanted to know why the Marines had killed his family. He wanted to know what had happened inside those houses, how the killings had happened. And he wanted the people responsible to be punished. An investigation, a prosecution, a punishment, the kinds of things that a person expects when their family is killed. What wanted was justice. But Khalid said the Marines hadn't even come to his family to apologize. They actually hadn't said anything to him at all about the killings. It was like it hadn't happened. And so Khalid and some other town leaders in Haditha gathered at the town's central library. Local leaders were there in the city council. Khalid was actually a member. They came up with a list of demands. They wrote them down in the form of a letter. Someone in the group translated the letter into English. Now they needed to get that letter to the Marines. But going to the American base was extremely dangerous. Insurgents monitored the road to the base to see it was coming and going. If they spotted an Iraqi civilian traveling there, sometimes that person would later end up decapitated on the.

Anybody who goes to the American base, it was basically like a suicide.

But Khalid was desperate.

And so, eight days after killings, he and the other men headed down that suicidal road to the American base to meet with the Marines. That's after the break. Hi, it's Madelyne. I'm going to be honest with you. This season almost didn't happen, but we were able to report Season 3 to its conclusion and bring it to you because Because we join The New Yorker. At In the Dark, we believe that investigative reporting can lead to real change. That's why I'm asking you to become a New Yorker subscriber. The New Yorker brings you not just In the Dark, but amazing non-fiction stories from the best writers and journalists working today. People like Rachel Aviv, Patrick Radden Keith, and Ronan Farrow. The New Yorker relies on subscribers. You literally make our work possible. So please go to newyorker. Com/dark, and become a subscriber today. A subscription starts at just a dollar a week, and it gives you unlimited access to everything The New Yorker publishes. And of course, you get a tote bag. That's newyorker. Com/dark. I'm How are you? Hello. Come on in. I want to introduce you to an American who was at the base when Khalid and the other Iraqi men arrived.

His name is Dana Hyatt. Our producer, Natalie Jablansky, went to his house in Connecticut to talk to him. Nice to meet you. I'm Natalie. Dana Hyatt. Hyatt's now retired from the military. He'd served 28 years. I see some Marines logos here on some photos.

Got a little mini museum there. Oh, yeah. And then I taught school.

Hyatt had kept a scrapbook of photos of his tribe in Iraq, and he showed it to Natalie.

We can go through some of this stuff if you want.

Let's take a look. Flipping through its pages, it's like a highlight reel of all the stereotypes the American military applied to Iraq during the war. You have the smiling Iraqi kids.

Give up bubble gum, candy.

The palm trees.

This woman coming from the river area, palm fronds.

The Marines hobnobbing with tribal leaders.

Shakes, shakes, sheeks over there.

The livestock in the streets.

This guy is herding his sheep out here. Like biblical times. The houses, the way they look.

This is right- And then there are the photos of zip-tied detainees lying in the desert. Yeah.

So stuff happened.

In Haditha, Hyatt was what's called a Civil Affairs Officer. His job was to build relationships with the civilians in town, win them over to the Marine side, what the military calls hearts and minds.

The hearts and minds, helping to make Haditha better, helping to to, I don't know, improve their lives.

When the Marines did something that harmed civilians, Hyatt's job was basically to paper it over, like he'd hand out money to repair homes the Marines had damaged. Here you go.

Here's 20 bucks, here's $50, here's $10. Dollars, whatever.

Hyatt wasn't involved in the killings of Khaled's family, but he had seen some of their bodies. Hyatt had gone with other Marines to the hospital that night when the bodies were unloaded from Humvees and put in the makeshift morgue where Khaled would later find What were you thinking at that point, or what did you make of that?

I don't know. I was purposely not trying to think too much about it. I didn't want some of those visuals constantly being there later.

Instead, Hyatt'san American journalist at Time magazine named Tim McGurk, who wrote a story about it, alleging that 24 civilians had been killed by US Marines. And the story blew up. Some are comparing the Haditha killings to the Vietnam Massacre at Me-Live.They actually went into the houses and killed women and children.And they members of Congress, vowed to look into what had happened. We will hold hearings and hold reviews, and there will be thorough oversight. Even President George W Bush waved in. The Haditha incident is under investigation.Obviously, the allegations Investigations are very troubling for me and equally troubling for our military, especially the Marine Corps.The US military ordered its own investigation into what happened in Haditha, and that first investigation would lead to more investigations, three of them in all. It would become one of the largest war crimes investigations in US history. Seemingly every day, the case file would grow. There would be statements taken, forensic evidence gathered, cases built against the Marines responsible. Eventually, four Marines were charged with murder. They faced the possibility of life in prison. Khaled Salman received thought he might finally get the justice he fought so long and so hard for. But that's not at all what happened. I first got interested in the Haditha case a few years ago when I was doing some research on war crimes committed by the US military. As a reporter, I spent a lot of time in civilian courtrooms. I've watched hearings, read files, talked to lawyers and defendants. But war crimes are prosecuted in a different system in the United States, the military justice system. This bizarre, opaque, acronym-laden world that exists mostly outside of public view. In other words, exactly the world that interests me as an investigative reporter. The Haditha case in particular stood out to me because of a mystery at the center of it.Despite the fact that four Marines had been charged with murder. And in such a high-profile case, truly one of the biggest stories out of the entire Iraq war, not a single one of those Marines ended up serving a day in prison. Over the years, every single one of the cases against the Marines collapsed. There was not a single criminal conviction for the killings. How did that happen? As I kept reading about Haditha, I got even more interested because I realized that what actually happened that day was also a mystery. The most basic facts of the day, who killed who and why and how, were unclear. Depending on whose story you believed, the killings were a war crime, a murder, or they were legitimate combat action and the victims were collateral damage, or the killings were a tragic mistake, unintentional, sad, but not criminal. Basically, the only thing that everyone could agree on was that 24 people had died, and it was Marines who'd killed them. The Iraq war has been over for almost 13 years. Some people might say that what happened over there is old news. It's time to move on. But how can you move on from something that you never understood to begin with?Khaled Salman-Rasief in particular, was asking me not to move on, pleading with me, really. And so on this season of In the Dark, we are not moving on. We're going back to 2005 to figure out what really happened to Khaled's family that day, to investigate the Marines and what they did, and to find out why the military justice system never punished a single one of them for the killings. Coming up on this season of In the Dark, I remember I opened a Humvee, and I just see bodies stacked up, and I open another one, the same thing.I'm like, Shit.You and you and you.You and you. And you. They pointed at each one to go inside the house.To me, they were an enemy combatants. Were they 100% enemy combatants? I don't know.No.No. No. No. Actually, you were very surprised.She said it's insane. This is not what happened. I'm not interested in talking about that.I tried to move past all that, so no thank you on all that. Okay, guys, I have never had bigger news for you.I am freaking out this morning at 9:19 AM Central Time.So I said, Holy shit, this is amazing. Could you zoom in?Yeah. Especially to the position of them.No trespassing violator Survivors will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.You feel comfortable going in?Yeah.The sleeping cells, the militias, and the ICS, the IEDs, the motors or rockets.Can you Keep us safe of all this? Of course.What did I think? I assumed it meant that he had fucking shot someone.So he saw the Americans, and then he just disappeared. We don't know what happened to him.I don't know what's to be gained by this investigative journalism.Episode 2 of In the Dark is out now. Listen wherever you get your podcast. Podcasts, or you can listen ad-free at newyorker. Com. In the Dark is reported and produced by me, Madelyne Baron, managing producer, Samara Freemark, producers Natalie Jablonsky and Raymond Tungakar, and reporter, Parker Jesco. In the Dark is edited by Katherine Winter and Willing Davidson. Interpreting in a Rock by Aya Muthena. Additional interpreting and translation by Aya Al-Shikarchi. This episode was fact-checked by Lucy Croning and Lynéa Feldman-Emerson. Original music by Allison Leighton-Brown. Sound design and mix by John Delour. Our theme is by Gary Meister. Our art is by Emiliano Ponzi. Art Direction by Nicholas Conrad and Aviva Michaelov. Foyal legal representation from the Foyal team at Lovie & Lowy. Legal review by Fabio Bertoni. In the Dark was created by American Public Media and is produced by The New Yorker. Our managing editor is Julia Rothschild. The head of global audio for CondeNast is Chris Banon. The editor of The New Yorker is David Remnick. If you have comments or story tips, you can send them to us at inthedark@newyorker. Com. And make sure to follow In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts.Did you kill Marlene Johnson? I think you're one of the first people to have actually asked.From WBUR and ZSP Media, this is Beyond All Repair, a podcast about an unsolved murder that will leave you questioning everything.Wow, it just gets more interesting.Beyond All Repair. All episodes are out now. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.From PRX.

an American journalist at Time magazine named Tim McGurk, who wrote a story about it, alleging that 24 civilians had been killed by US Marines. And the story blew up. Some are comparing the Haditha killings to the Vietnam Massacre at Me-Live.

They actually went into the houses and killed women and children.

And they members of Congress, vowed to look into what had happened. We will hold hearings and hold reviews, and there will be thorough oversight. Even President George W Bush waved in. The Haditha incident is under investigation.

Obviously, the allegations Investigations are very troubling for me and equally troubling for our military, especially the Marine Corps.

The US military ordered its own investigation into what happened in Haditha, and that first investigation would lead to more investigations, three of them in all. It would become one of the largest war crimes investigations in US history. Seemingly every day, the case file would grow. There would be statements taken, forensic evidence gathered, cases built against the Marines responsible. Eventually, four Marines were charged with murder. They faced the possibility of life in prison. Khaled Salman received thought he might finally get the justice he fought so long and so hard for. But that's not at all what happened. I first got interested in the Haditha case a few years ago when I was doing some research on war crimes committed by the US military. As a reporter, I spent a lot of time in civilian courtrooms. I've watched hearings, read files, talked to lawyers and defendants. But war crimes are prosecuted in a different system in the United States, the military justice system. This bizarre, opaque, acronym-laden world that exists mostly outside of public view. In other words, exactly the world that interests me as an investigative reporter. The Haditha case in particular stood out to me because of a mystery at the center of it.

Despite the fact that four Marines had been charged with murder. And in such a high-profile case, truly one of the biggest stories out of the entire Iraq war, not a single one of those Marines ended up serving a day in prison. Over the years, every single one of the cases against the Marines collapsed. There was not a single criminal conviction for the killings. How did that happen? As I kept reading about Haditha, I got even more interested because I realized that what actually happened that day was also a mystery. The most basic facts of the day, who killed who and why and how, were unclear. Depending on whose story you believed, the killings were a war crime, a murder, or they were legitimate combat action and the victims were collateral damage, or the killings were a tragic mistake, unintentional, sad, but not criminal. Basically, the only thing that everyone could agree on was that 24 people had died, and it was Marines who'd killed them. The Iraq war has been over for almost 13 years. Some people might say that what happened over there is old news. It's time to move on. But how can you move on from something that you never understood to begin with?

Khaled Salman-Rasief in particular, was asking me not to move on, pleading with me, really. And so on this season of In the Dark, we are not moving on. We're going back to 2005 to figure out what really happened to Khaled's family that day, to investigate the Marines and what they did, and to find out why the military justice system never punished a single one of them for the killings. Coming up on this season of In the Dark, I remember I opened a Humvee, and I just see bodies stacked up, and I open another one, the same thing.

I'm like, Shit.

You and you and you.

You and you. And you. They pointed at each one to go inside the house.

To me, they were an enemy combatants. Were they 100% enemy combatants? I don't know.

No.

No. No. No. Actually, you were very surprised.

She said it's insane. This is not what happened. I'm not interested in talking about that.

I tried to move past all that, so no thank you on all that. Okay, guys, I have never had bigger news for you.

I am freaking out this morning at 9:19 AM Central Time.

So I said, Holy shit, this is amazing. Could you zoom in?

Yeah. Especially to the position of them.

No trespassing violator Survivors will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.

You feel comfortable going in?

Yeah.

The sleeping cells, the militias, and the ICS, the IEDs, the motors or rockets.

Can you Keep us safe of all this? Of course.

What did I think? I assumed it meant that he had fucking shot someone.

So he saw the Americans, and then he just disappeared. We don't know what happened to him.

I don't know what's to be gained by this investigative journalism.

Episode 2 of In the Dark is out now. Listen wherever you get your podcast. Podcasts, or you can listen ad-free at newyorker. Com. In the Dark is reported and produced by me, Madelyne Baron, managing producer, Samara Freemark, producers Natalie Jablonsky and Raymond Tungakar, and reporter, Parker Jesco. In the Dark is edited by Katherine Winter and Willing Davidson. Interpreting in a Rock by Aya Muthena. Additional interpreting and translation by Aya Al-Shikarchi. This episode was fact-checked by Lucy Croning and Lynéa Feldman-Emerson. Original music by Allison Leighton-Brown. Sound design and mix by John Delour. Our theme is by Gary Meister. Our art is by Emiliano Ponzi. Art Direction by Nicholas Conrad and Aviva Michaelov. Foyal legal representation from the Foyal team at Lovie & Lowy. Legal review by Fabio Bertoni. In the Dark was created by American Public Media and is produced by The New Yorker. Our managing editor is Julia Rothschild. The head of global audio for CondeNast is Chris Banon. The editor of The New Yorker is David Remnick. If you have comments or story tips, you can send them to us at inthedark@newyorker. Com. And make sure to follow In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts.

Did you kill Marlene Johnson? I think you're one of the first people to have actually asked.

From WBUR and ZSP Media, this is Beyond All Repair, a podcast about an unsolved murder that will leave you questioning everything.

Wow, it just gets more interesting.

Beyond All Repair. All episodes are out now. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

From PRX.