08/22/08 – Ed Fremer – The Scott Horton Show

Joining us on the phone is Ed Fremmer from, I believe, New York.
Is that you, Ed?
Yes, Staten Island, New York.
Hello.
Staten Island, New York.
Well, welcome to the show, sir.
Thank you.
And now your family is the subject of this piece in the Village Voice.
A teen private in training is crushed to death and his father fights for answers.
And this is about your son, Michael, who joined the U.S.
Army earlier this year.
Is that right?
He joined the Army in April of 07, against my wishes.
Against your wishes.
And I really did not want him to pick that as a career, you know.
Yeah, I think it says in the article that you tried to talk him out of it, but it was no good, huh?
Yeah, he was like focused that this is what he wanted to do.
So reluctantly, you know, I agreed to it.
Yeah, it's just a shame.
You know, we have there's so many casualties from the war in Iraq.
And I guess I don't know what to say.
These things happen, that kind of thing.
But your son died before he even got out of the country.
He was on a routine training mission.
It was a ridiculous training accident.
And unfortunately, more of these happened than we're aware of.
It's something the Army keeps quiet.
Yeah, that is true that we don't really hear too much about these training accidents.
First of all, I guess tell us about the fight that you had with the Army about even trying to find out what happened and then what you found out.
Oh, sure.
Okay, but you know, my son died in February of 13, this year, February 13, 2008.
He was buried.
You know, his funeral was February 22, 2008.
After my son died, I wanted to know what was the cause of the accident.
I could not get a straight story from the Army.
They gave me four different variations of a similar story.
One, the brake line broke.
One, the toe strap broke.
You know, they just gave me several stories.
So I was getting very disgusted.
And I was making phone calls, sending faxes, sending emails.
I wanted answers.
My child is dead.
I wanted to know how this accident occurred.
I finally got the story straight on May 16.
You know, it took him three months after he died for them to, you know, tell me why.
It sounds, Ed, like in the original stories that you were getting, that it was mechanical failure.
A toe strap or a brake line or something like that had happened.
Correct.
Nobody's fault.
Yeah.
First thing, well, the first story was it happened while they were washing vehicles.
It just slipped.
Then they told me the brake line broke.
Then they told me a toe strap broke.
And then finally, in May, when I got the accident report, that's not what happened.
It was human error.
They had seven trucks parked on an incline.
They supposed to use what's a chalk block, which is simply a piece of wood you put behind a fire so it doesn't roll back.
They failed to do that.
It was a female soldier in the truck that was in front of my son's vehicle.
He, by accident, the emergency brake, she did not know how to re-engage the brake.
As a result, the vehicle rolled back.
It's my understanding my son had about four or five seconds to get out of the way.
He did not get out of the way in time.
And, you know, he got crushed between two vehicles.
Army vehicles are not like an SUV.
They're very big.
Yeah.
We're talking about massive army trucks here.
Correct.
Yes, exactly.
And he died that same day?
Yeah, he died like an hour later.
Like an hour later.
Yeah.
There's a court case here, a precedent set.
I'm trying to find the name on it.
That says it.
I can explain it to you.
Okay, go ahead.
Okay, what happened was in 1950, 1947, I think the guy's name was Rudolph Fares, if I'm not mistaken.
Right.
He was in upstate New York.
He got burned to death in a fire.
You know, this was not a military conflict.
He was in upstate New York, sleeping in his barracks.
The place caught on fire.
He burned to death.
So his widow tried suing the army, you know, for damages.
This happens in private life.
If, you know, you was a family member because of, you know, in an accident, there's liability there.
When she tried to sue the army, it set a precedent that the army was not liable, even though they, you know, he died.
And because of this, there's been countless cases in the last 57 years.
People, those accidents like my son, people being disabled for accidents, people being exposed to chemicals and no one can sue the army.
So your family, your widows, the soldiers, you have soldiers that are now disabled because of negligence on the army's part.
And the army does not take responsibility for anything.
So, yes, this Ferris doctrine, they decided that the death of this guy was incident to service.
And so I guess that language means any kind of death that happens, maybe other than actual murder or something like that.
But any sort of criminal negligence, as long as it's on an army base, can never be accounted for.
Correct.
I went on the Internet and I did some research.
These cases of women, female soldiers being raped and they can't hold the rapist accountable.
They can't sue for damages.
These people, their family members cannot sue the criminal for damages.
It's just it's a ridiculous law that has no place in our society.
If somebody's risking their life to become a soldier, this is unacceptable.
Well, now, in this case, it does sound like pretty clear negligence in that the trucks were not chalked in that the female army soldier who accidentally undid the brake had not been trained on the truck and did not know how to reengage the brake.
Whoever put her in that position sounds like she's responsible.
And that other person above her is responsible, too.
Oh, let me expand on that.
What happened was every soldier I was told, because I did a lot of research, I broke walls all over the military.
Every soldier is supposed to be taught to drive a truck the same way they are taught to shoot a rifle.
What happened was she admitted in her statement when she was supposed to take the training class to operate the vehicle.
She was doing something else like she was in the mail room or something like that.
I have her written statement at home.
I have this monstrous accident report.
You know, it's 80 pages long.
Plus, I have other tons of documents.
So when she was again, when she was supposed to take the class on operating the vehicles, she was doing mail duty.
Well, now let me ask you this, because it does seem in the retelling there in the story in the Village Voice that you have in any other circumstance, you could make a case for criminal negligence or whatever, some kind of negligence and hold some people accountable for this.
But on the other hand, I got to at least try to play devil's advocate for a year, even though I'm always for accountability in government as long as we have one.
But, you know, your son, he joined up the army.
And it's a dangerous business.
And this Farah's doctrine existed before he joined up.
And, you know, you're taking a big risk when you sign on that dotted line, aren't you?
Oh, yeah, I'll answer it two parts.
I agree with you.
You are taking a risk.
He would have been in the Middle East doing a mission and, you know, would have died under enemy gunfire.
I could have had a better understanding than this ridiculous accident.
I mean, he was in front of his vehicle removing the toe straps because the person in front of him did not know how to engage a brake.
You know, she released the brake by accident.
She did not know how to do the simple task of reengaging the brake.
He's dead.
And then the second part is this, which is bigger than my son or me.
You can point to countless accidents like this in the army where people are disabled.
Remember this training exercise.
This was not in the Middle East doing a mission.
This was a freaking training exercise in Fort Polk, Louisiana.
Forget the part about liability.
You have to wonder about their training methods.
Hmm.
Well, I think that's probably off the record.
It's kids training kids.
That's why accidents like this happen.
Yeah.
Well, and it's because there's no accountability is why it continues to happen.
Yeah, it's like it's like the older like the people that are at what's the right word?
It's 18 year olds training 18 year olds, you know, so that's why things are overlooked.
And there's a lot of deaths.
I'm sure if you could look on the Internet, I'm sure from your own website in Iraq is about 4,000 something deaths only 32 or 3,300 of them.
It's conflict.
What happened to the other 700 people or so?
Yeah, car wrecks murders all kinds of you know, who knows what but nobody knows for sure.
I just you know, I just think when accidents like this occur the army should be liable.
That's the bottom line and it's bigger than my son.
It's for all the soldiers that are, you know, risk their necks out there.
Yeah, and now, you know, I'm not sure if we can categorize too broadly the attitude of the officers toward people like your son, but it seems they're, you know, based on this case, but it sure seems to me like they really don't care that much that there's a lesson here in that if you're one of the enlisted guys and they just assume three overboard.
They don't really care about you.
I guess they do feel a lot of these kids are expendable.
I guess that's just you know, they're just manpower.
It's they don't really appreciate the risk.
These young people are taking.
Yeah, sure doesn't seem like it.
Well, and now to your credit.
You said you tried to talk him out of it says in this article that you could probably be persuaded that maybe there's some kind of mission in Afghanistan, but that the Iraq war itself was illegitimate and you shared this opinion with your son before he joined up and tried to talk him out of it.
Oh, I didn't want him to join up just for the danger aspect.
I just felt it was too dangerous.
The it just you know, you're risking your life, you know, it's just too much of a danger.
I wanted him just go to go to school and you know, go to some kind of training school, be a car mechanic, be a plumber, you know, attrition, you know, something like that.
Well, I just terrified me the thought of him joining the army.
Yeah.
Well, it sounds like he was at least lucky.
He had a dad looking out for him.
A lot of kids don't even have that at all, but I couldn't talk him out of it.
Unfortunately, you know, yeah.
Well, listen, I got to tell you, I'm really sorry for your loss.
I wish I had some kind of idea about where you might apply some pressure or which lawyer you might hire or something to make a difference here, but I really don't know what to tell you.
I had there's nothing I can do unless the fair is docky, unless the fair is doctrine is overturned.
People like me have no recourse.
There's a couple doctors, a couple fairs doctrine petitions of mine.
It's easy to find.
If you do a Google Yahoo search, one of them has over 5,000 signatures.
So I'm sure there's a lot of people that feel the way I feel.
Yeah.
Well, are you attempting to take this to the federal courts and try to overturn the parents doctrine?
I contacted about 14 lawyers and all 14 lawyers, actually 13 out of 14 told me I have no chance whatsoever.
One lawyer told me that there's a case similar to this in the Supreme Court.
If that overturns the Supreme Court ruling, then I would have a very strong case.
Yeah.
Well, that definitely sounds true from reading this article.
Certainly.
Well, so do you know what the name of that case is?
The one that's currently in the Supreme Court about this?
I don't know the specifics.
It was a Minnesota based lawyer who told me that his name is Ryan Jones.
He explained to me, you know, that unless the Supreme Court overturns this law, it's hopeless.
I see my purpose is I don't expect to have a kick, get a penny in compensation.
I just want people to be aware of this.
You know, people think the only risk is going into the Middle East and fighting the enemy.
I mean, there's risk because they're not as careful as they should be in the United States when they're doing training exercises.
That's the whole point of accountability like this.
We can't bring your son back.
But if there is accountability, then that internalizes the consequences onto the people, not the very same people who will be in charge next time, the people in the position of those who will be in charge next time and force them just by their own incentives to make changes and make sure from now on these trucks get shocked.
From now on, you don't get in the cab of that truck unless you've been trained on it, period, etc.
Especially when it's just a training exercise.
I'm sure in real life conflict, I'm sure, you know, there's times you can't think of everything.
But just the training exercise, something like this should not happen.
You know, plus, again, if you do a little research on the Internet, it's scary how many people out there have stories similar to mine.
Right.
You know, it's sad.
Right.
Yeah, I think that may be, you know, don't take this wrong.
That may be the most notable thing about this case is that it's made the press at all, that anybody besides you cares about it.
Yeah, it seems like, yeah, it seems like a lot of people just look at this as another dead 18-year-old soldier.
You know, you read the cache piece every day.
They're all, you know, people in their teens or early 20s.
And it's like people don't realize that it's a loss of life, you know, it's not just a photograph, you know.
Yeah, that's right.
It is an individual in all those pictures.
I'm looking at the picture of your son right now, this Village Voice article, and he sure looks like an individual to me.
Yeah, so Sean did an excellent job in this story.
I was happy with what he put together.
Yeah, yeah, it is.
It is a very good one.
I recommend it to everybody.
It's called A Teen Private in Training is Crushed to Death and His Father Fights for Answers.
It's by Sean Gardner at the Village Voice, villagevoice.com.
All right, Ed.
Well, I'm terribly sorry for your loss and I wish you best of luck in the future.
If that Supreme Court case turns out and you have the opportunity to pursue this further, please let us know.
Oh, yeah, definitely.
If anything develops, I'll definitely shoot you an email or give you a phone call and let you know, you know, what's going on.
And I appreciate, you know, you giving me a call and letting me voice the story.
Yeah, sure.
My pleasure.
Thank you very much, everybody.
That's Ed Fremmer, father of Michael Fremmer.