News

Posted : Tuesday Jan 22, 2008 6:19:37 EST

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — The first Marine Special Operations company sent into Afghanistan was viewed as a “bit of a nuisance” by the special operations command there, the company’s current commander said Monday.

“From all I could gather, it was a fairly amicable relationship,” said Capt. Robert Olson, who was Fox Company’s executive officer and intelligence chief when the company’s advance party met with members of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force Afghanistan last year.

“I just had a sense that we were sort of a distraction near the end of their deployment,” he said.

Olson took the stand here Monday during the 10th day of testimony in a rare military court of inquiry looking into the March 4 suicide vehicle attack on a Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command platoon in Nangarhar province. A court of inquiry is sometimes used to replace an Article 32 investigation. It’s been more than a half-century since the Corps convened such a panel, the last one used to investigate the deaths of six Marine recruits at Parris Island, S.C., during the infamous Ribbon Creek Incident in 1956.

Marines in the convoy have testified they came under small-arms attack immediately after the blast on heavily traveled Highway 1, the main link between Kandahar and Pakistan. Some reports claim the subsequent shootout resulted in the deaths of 19 Afghan civilians.

Army Maj. Thomas Gukeisen, who was operations officer for 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, at the time, said he was initially impressed with MSOC-F.

“They were very professional,” he said. “They were very eager. I was very impressed with their organization.”

But the company’s size alarmed him, he said, because “such a large force could be detrimental to the counterinsurgency mission.”

The inquiry is focusing on Maj. Fred Galvin, 38, the former company commander, and Capt. Vincent Noble, 29, the platoon commander.

Neither Galvin nor Noble has been charged with a crime, but the court will consider whether they should be charged with conspiracy to make a false official statement, making a false official statement, failure to obey a lawful order and dereliction of duty.

The pair, along with six others in the company, were sent back to Camp Lejeune shortly after the entire 120-man company was pulled from Afghanistan following the attack and firefight.

The court’s panel of three senior officers — two colonels and a lieutenant colonel — will turn over their findings to Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, commander of Marine Corps Forces Central Command, for review.