Senate Plans Committee to Probe into Haditha Slayings by Marines

MARGARET WARNER: The incident began when Marine Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas was killed by an IED explosion. The military initially reported that several Iraqis died during a firefight that followed.

But in March, Time magazine published a very different account of the event, saying the Marines killed many civilians during a rampage through several houses and an attack on a taxi. Time released this graphic footage of the aftermath of the killings, obtained from an Iraqi human rights group.

Yesterday, Democratic Congressman John Murtha, a former Marine colonel, told ABC's "This Week" he had no doubt that the military had engaged in a cover-up.

REP. JOHN MURTHA (D), Pennsylvania: We don't know how far it goes. I mean, it goes right up the chain of command, right up to General Pace. When did he know about it? Did he order the cover-up? Who ordered the cover-up?

I'm sure he didn't, but who said, "We're not going to publicize this thing; we're not even going to investigate it"? Until March, there was no serious investigation. This investigation should have been over two or three weeks afterwards, and it should have been made public, and people should have been held responsible for it.

MARGARET WARNER: Asked to respond to Murtha's charges of cover-up, General Pace said that investigations were launched right after the Pentagon top brass learned of the incident around February 10th.

"We do not know yet why we did not know about the incident until then," he said. There are two military investigations under way: one, a criminal probe into what happened; the second into whether a cover-up occurred.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner yesterday cautioned against prejudging the outcome of the probes. But he did express concern over how the military brass had handled the situation.

SEN. JOHN WARNER (D), Virginia: There is this serious question, however, of what happened, and when it happened, and what was the immediate reaction of the senior officers in the Marine Corps when they began to gain knowledge of it. I mean senior by the captains, the majors, the lieutenant colonels, and on up the chain.

MARGARET WARNER: Warner said his committee will hold hearings into the events next month, after the investigations are completed.

For more on what happened that day in Haditha, we turn to Richard Oppel of the New York Times in Baghdad. He co-authored a piece in today's Times based on interviewers with survivors of the incident.

Richard Oppel, welcome. Tell us what the survivors of this incident told you all about how this began and how it unfolded that day.

RICHARD OPPEL, The New York Times: Hi, Margaret. Well, what they told us was that, on this morning, early in the morning of November 19th, basically that the Marines, that the American troops went to three homes in Haditha in succession, killing people in each of those homes, and also killing five people in a taxi near the same site.

In the first home, one of the survivors was a nine-year-old girl named Iman, who said she hid with her younger brother under the bed while all this was taking place.

In the second home, a 13-year-old girl who survived, Safa Younis Salim, told us that she survived by basically hiding under the body of one of her relatives who was bleeding on her.

In the third house, the widow of one of four brothers said that the four brothers were killed in that house while the women in the house had been taken outside. And they heard gunshots while they were outside coming from the house.

And then the details on the taxi are a little less clear, but basically what the survivors and neighbors in this area said was that a taxi with four college students and a taxi driver -- that all five of them were also shot in the same vicinity about the same time.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, all this, I gather, from what members of Congress have said to us and other accounts was triggered by the IED exploding under the Humvee of this one lance corporal. And then how much time elapsed -- is that correct, first of all? And then how much time elapsed between that and when the Marines started going in these different houses?

RICHARD OPPEL: That's right. At about 7:15 in the morning, a large roadside bomb exploded as a convoy was passing. It killed a Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas from El Paso.

And what unfolded -- it's a little unclear how long it took. Some military officials and people in Congress who have been briefed on the investigation have said that all of this unfolded over a couple of hours. It may have been three, four, even five hours, start to finish.

We don't have any way of being certain of that, of course. And I suppose the final report will discuss that, but that's what people who have been briefed on the investigation have said.

MARGARET WARNER: And I gather that there was -- at least one very old person was among those killed and some children?

RICHARD OPPEL: That's right. That's what we've heard, both stateside from military officials and congressional officials who have been briefed on the findings of the investigation to this point. And we also heard that from witnesses and neighbors in Haditha.