Rodney Barker - Dancing with the Devil - Sex, Espionage and the U.S. Marines - The Clayton Lonetree Story

After the press conference, he and Arnold Bracy had exited the building at Quantico together. “Corporal Bracy,” Powell observed, falling into step beside his client, “this is the first time I’ve seen you outside the brig without handcuffs and manacles on.”

“Yes sir,” Bracy had replied. “And it feels really great.”

Regetting profoundly the grief the young man had gone through, Powell had smiled and patted him reassuringly on the back.

It never occurred to him that at that very instant a telephoto lens was trained on them, until he saw the clip on the evening news. And the same footage would be repeatedly shown, night after night, for weeks to come: Arnold Bracy, appearing to be slapped on the back by his gloating attorney, the two of them looking to all the world as though they were beating feet to the nearest pub to celebrate.

Shortly after eight on the morning of July 22, 1987, Sgt. Clayton Lonetree stepped out of the white panel van that had brought him from the brig to Lejeune Hall. He was dressed in a khaki uniform and a fore-and-aft cap, and wore handcuffs linked to a waist chain. Staring straight ahead and appearing not to notice the battery of television cameras trained on him, Lonetree was marched by five MPs, two of them holding his arms, down the sidewalk and up eight steps, disappearing into the two-story redbrick building where his fate was to be determined.

The stringent personal security surrounding Lonetree extended basewide. Armed military police patrolled the walkways around Lejeune Hall, stopping and questioning unescorted visitors. Entry into the administration building was through a metal detector tuned so finely it pinged on belt buckles and shrapnel in a leg. Even military personnel had to present special ID to get inside. The precise threat was never officially declared—some said it was to protect Lonetree from a misguided patriot who might attempt a Jack Ruby-type assassination. There was even talk of an Entebbe-like KGB rescue operation—but when the press was informed that it would be barred from attending the courtroom proceedings, reporters knew immediately what was going on. Even though Public Affairs explained it was because of limited seating capacity (twenty), and that to accommodate the press a media center had been set up a few hundred meters away in a building equipped with a closed-circuit TV system, desks, phones, heads, candy machines, and convenient parking, in the wake of the commandant’s criticism of the media for their excesses there was open skepticism and grumblings that this was payback time.

Immediate members of Lonetree’s family were permitted to witness the court proceedings, however, and declaring an uneasy truce, Lonetree’s parents put aside their differences and presented a united front on behalf of their son. Joining Sally Tsosie was Clayton’s aunt from Flagstaff, Arizona, Mae Washington, who carried a single eagle feather in her hand, and his maternal grandmother, Alice Benally, from Big Mountain, who wore a traditional black velvet dress and turquoise-and-silver jewelry.

Spencer was the sole representative of the Lonetree side of the family, but enlarging the Indian presence were two groups of Native Americans who showed up at the invitation of William Kunstler. On the parade grounds outside the courtroom, in nearly hundred-degree heat, Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman of South Dakota pounded a drum and chanted a traditional Sioux spiritual song before a dozen or so sweating believers, while beneath the Iwo Jima memorial at the entrance to the base, Vernon Bellecourt, a Chippewa activist associated with AIM, led a rally attended by almost twenty Indians from different tribes.

“The second man in that statue who is raising the flag was a man named Ira Hayes, who died in six inches of water,” Belle-court told reporters who decided to cover one of the sideshows, since the main event was being televised. “Clayton Lonetree and Ira Hayes represent the reality of Native American Indians who fight for their country and then are taken advantage of while their lands are stolen. If this trial lasts two months, there will be hundreds of us at the gates.”

By nine o’clock all the trial principals were assembled in the courtroom. At a long table on the right-hand side of the room, Lonetree sat stiffly between his military and civilian defense attorneys. On the other side of the room were the government attorneys, Maj. Dave Beck and Maj. Frank Short. Facing them all on a dais one step up were two rows of chairs that would seat court members (the military jury) when they were chosen. And perched in an elevated box, rather like a pulpit, was the presiding military judge, Navy Capt. Philip Roberts.

To no one’s surprise, upon the completion of the Article 32 hearing, the convening authority at Quantico, Lt. Gen. Frank Peterson, Jr., had ruled that there was sufficient evidence to proceed with a court-martial. The Marine Corps had dropped its most dramatic charges, dismissing as inadmissible hearsay those based on Arnold Bracy’s statement that Lonetree had allowed Soviet agents access to sensitive areas of the embassy, so in effect the case had reverted back to the original charges filed against Lonetree after his arrest in December. Peterson had also ordered that Lonetree’s prosecution be on a noncapital basis, meaning the death penalty would not be sought. If convicted on all counts, he was facing confinement for life.

In a military setting, defense counsel was allowed to ask for a motion of voir dire against the judge, and although Major Henderson saw no advantage unless they had knowledge of specific grounds for dismissal, which they did not, Mike Stuhff and William Kunstler wanted to establish an assertive tone at the start. After introducing themselves, they opened up with a series of questions that were intended to scrutinize Judge Roberts’s impartiality. They asked Roberts if he had been assigned to this case because of his reputation as a “heavy sentencer” and if he had any “preconceptions about Native Americans” because he grew up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a state with a large Indian population.

No judge was going to flunk questions like that, and Roberts fielded them easily. He said to the best of his knowledge he had been assigned this case because of his previous experience with national security cases, and he could only vaguely recall having known any Indians and had formed no lasting friendships with them. Although Roberts appeared unperturbed, and even slightly amused by the line of questioning, by the time it was over, while civilian counsel could claim they had successfully insinuated into the courtroom their belief that prejudice against Indians was a subtext to this trial, Major Henderson felt the only thing that had been accomplished was that when the defense needed a close-call answer to a question, they were going to be asking someone whose judicial integrity had been challenged.

Next on the morning agenda, Lonetree was given his choice of a court consisting of Marine officers (including enlisted members if he specifically requested them), or judge alone. In this area Major Henderson’s opinion prevailed. In prior discussions with civilian counsel, he had strongly recommended they opt for just officers. His reasoning was based on what he had seen in previous courts-martial. When enlisteds were selected to sit on a court, they tended to be tough people—master sergeants and gunnery sergeants—who were especially hard on other enlisteds, particularly those who had had an opportunity to go on elite duty and screwed up. No one in the Marines was going to be particularly sympathetic to Lonetree, but with officers at least you could play the leadership card: Had this young Marine been given the proper supervision — had you been his leader — this would not have happened.