A Roosevelt High School graduate who had a key Special Forces role at the start of the Afghanistan war now says he faces Army retaliation for blowing the whistle to Congress about a "dysfunctional" U.S. hostage recovery process in the Middle East.
Lt. Col. Jason Amerine, who lived in Hawaii from the age of 13 to 18 and was based at Camp H.M. Smith from 2008 to 2010, was part of special operations success early in the Afghanistan war.
His detachment of 11 Green Berets with the 5th Special Forces Group represented the bulk of U.S. forces in the south of the country in 2001 when he linked up with future President Hamid Karzai, rallied Afghan fighters and directed Navy aircraft to repel a 100-vehicle enemy convoy near Tarin Kowt.
On Thursday, though, Amerine testified at a Senate hearing focused on retaliation against current and former federal agency whistleblowers.
He started by noting some of the hostages he sought to free while in a more recent Pentagon role: Warren Weinstein, now dead; Colin Rutherford; Joshua Boyle; Caitlin Coleman and her child born in captivity, who remain in Pakistan.
"I used every resource available but I failed them," Amerine said.
One of those resources was his constitutional right to speak to members of Congress, he said.
"But after I made protected disclosures to Congress, the Army suspended my clearance, removed me from my job and sought to court-martial me," Amerine said.
The government intrigue includes the Army, Pentagon, State Department, FBI and Congress, with the "protected disclosures" made to California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, who sat behind Amerine for part of his testimony before the Senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs.
Amerine worked in the Pentagon on hostage issues and solutions. He proposed what he believed was a viable trade of one Taliban prisoner for seven hostages in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The U.S. government went with something very different: five Taliban prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Amerine also raised the possibility that the U.S. government went against its own policy and tried to pay a ransom for Bergdahl, but the money was stolen.
"There was a good deal of evidence that it occurred, and a lot of questions as to how it occurred," Amerine said.
Amerine said in a May 15 Facebook post that "(f)or those wondering what this investigation is about: I have been under criminal investigation for the last four months for whistleblowing to Congress over our completely dysfunctional system for recovering hostages."
The FBI formally complained to the Army about Amerine reporting to Congress about the FBI’s "failed efforts to recover Warren Weinstein, Caitlin Coleman and the child she bore in captivity," he said.
Hunter said in an April 23 release that "Warren Weinstein did not have to die." The American was accidentally killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan in January.
"His death is further evidence of the failures in communication and coordination between government agencies tasked with recovering Americans in captivity," Hunter said.
The FBI was the "lead organization" in the recovery mission, "but as I have said repeatedly, the FBI is incapable of leading these efforts in hostile areas," Hunter said.
The incident reaffirmed the necessity to install an "interagency coordinator" — as Hunter proposed — to "ensure effective and constructive engagement at all levels," he said.
The only government organization that was seriously developing options to recover Weinstein and others in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region was the Pentagon — whose effort was led by Amerine, Hunter said.
"Due to infighting and disagreements among lead organizations, Amerine and his team struggled to get attention beyond the walls of the Pentagon and were ultimately sidelined," according to Hunter.
Amerine told the congressional panel that in early 2013 his office was asked to help get Bergdahl home. The U.S. soldier left his base in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held as a captive for five years.
An audit of the recovery effort revealed no synchronization of government effort, in effect creating "stovepipes" of information that don’t intersect, he said.
"We also realized there were civilian hostages in Pakistan that nobody was trying to free, so we added them to our mission," Amerine said.
His office worked up some options, including trading seven hostages — Bergdahl included — for Haji Bashir Noorzai, a warlord and ally of the Karzai regime who was in U.S. custody.
The United States reached out to Noorzai’s tribe, which felt it could release the hostages, and we "made a lot of progress on it," Amerine said. "I briefed it widely, but in the end, when the Taliban came to the table, the State Department basically said it must be" the five Taliban prisoners for Bergdahl," Amerine said.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, said he could see how members of the U.S. government — looking at the selection of a deal of one American for multiple Taliban prisoners over seven Western hos-tages for one Taliban prisoner — "probably would not want that too highly publicized."
Amerine said he went to Congress to repair a "dysfunctional bureaucracy" and to Hunter in particular because he is on the House Armed Services Committee.
"It started to work," and Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michael Lumpkin was appointed as hostage recovery coordinator for the Pentagon, he said.
Hunter set up a meeting between Amerine’s office and the FBI, and then "the FBI formally complained to the Army that information I was sharing with him was classified. It was not," Amerine told the congressional panel.
A "horrible irony" is that his security clearance was suspended Jan. 15, the day after Weinstein was killed, Amerine said.
The Army stopped Amerine’s planned June 1 retirement and launched an investigation.
Amerine said Hunter submitted a complaint to the Inspector General’s office Dec. 1 alleging an illegal or questionable ransom possibly being paid for Bergdahl.
"So part of what lit the fuse was the same folks in the FBI that were basically implicated in the (complaint) were the ones that later complained to the Army I was sharing sensitive information with Rep. Hunter," Amerine said.
Army headquarters could not be reached for comment Friday.
A White House "We the People" online petition has been started to provide Amerine whistleblower protection and end all investigations.
At least two bills have been introduced, meanwhile, calling for a hostage "czar" to centralize recovery efforts, and the White House is reviewing recovery effort organization.
