How Did Specialist Ciara Durkin Die?

[UpInArms]

Source: CBS/Associated Press

(CBS/AP) Exactly how Ciara Durkin, from Massachusetts, died remains a mystery. The Army National Guard soldier was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in Afghanistan last week, and now her family demanding answers from the military.

Initially the Pentagon reported that Durkin, part of a finance unit deployed to Afghanistan in November 2006, had been killed in action, but then revised its statement to read she had died of injuries "suffered from a non-combat related incident" at Bagram Airfield. The statement had no specifics and said the circumstances are under investigation.

Durkin had a desk job doing payroll in an office about three miles inside the secure Bagram Air Base. About 90 minutes after she left work last Friday, her family says she was found dead near a chapel on the base with a single gunshot wound to the head.

The 30-year-old soldier, who was born in Ireland and came to the U.S. as a little girl, felt safer deployed in Afghanistan over Iraq, her family told CBS News correspondent Kelly Wallace. Yet she was found dead within a highly secure base, with few answers.

"The family has been informed that she was in the compound, and she was shot in the head," Durkin's sister, Fiona Canavan, told the Boston Globe. "She was in a secure area of the compound, which, even though the investigation is not complete, leads the family to believe it was what is called friendly fire," she said.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/04/world/main3328739.shtml

[Ilsa]

1. Glad to see more MSM picking this up. The problem is, CBS gets

halfway through the article before mentioning that she had told family members that she was concerned for her safety because she had uncovered some financial discrepancies in the Afghanistan operation.

Yesterday, there was a thread, but the article was from a Massachusetts newspaper, IIRC. It needs to be on all the MSM, and people need to be pressing for an investigation.

Maybe Ted Kennedy and a few other great Massachusettians (sp?) can get the ball rolling on this. This family deserves answers, as do the American people.

On edit: I see that the AP has this story now also, so it isn't just a CBS article. And that Sen. Kerry et al are already on it.

[BrklynLib at work]

3. AHA!!!! How many peole have to die under mysterious circumstance just after they say they fear for

their safety....having discovered something strange about BushCO and the war...before thisis taken seriously and something is actually done about this?

[SlingBlade]

57. Obvious Hit Job

This so called “War on Terror” has become a multibillion dollar swamp of corruption and deceit.
Hopefully someone who knows then inside story will step forward.:web: :radio: :tv: :weekly: :daily:

[MinM]

65. The Lockheed Martin - Cheney Connection

Cannonfire - Deaths and drugs and "dancing Indians"

As noted in an earlier post,Ciara Durkin was a financial officer doing payroll at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Not long ago, she died mysteriously. Before her apparent murder, she had told her sister: "I discovered some things I don’t like and I made some enemies because of it."

In 2004, Spc. Juan Torres died in an unnervingly similar fashion on the same base. The Army says that Torres died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. (The Army originally told Durkin's family that she had been killed in action.)

Veronica Santiago told the World that, at the funeral, July 20 in Houston, the captain, who was one of her brother’s superiors at Bagram, “hugged me and said, ‘I’m really sorry. Don’t believe what the Army’s telling you.’”

A month later Santiago received a call from the captain. She told Santiago she had important Criminal Investigation Division (CID) documents, and that “it was going to be ‘a big deal.’” Santiago said, “She kept saying that” over and over. The captain told John’s mother she was going to write a long letter about the case, but to date the family has not heard anything more from her.

Another soldier told the family that drugs were rampant at Bagram, and that she herself had used drugs there. According to Santiago, the soldier said she had seen drug sales taking place in a room at the base, with large amounts of cash on a table. The soldier said she believed Spc. Torres must have seen something he didn’t approve of, and paid with his life. Santiago said her brother was a person who spoke out if he saw something he didn’t approve of. “Knowing him, he would have told somebody, he would have made it known.”

As Kos diarist MichiganGirl reminds us, Seymour Hersh did a major expose of the drug trade at Bagram.

The drug lords traditionally processed only hashish inside the Afghan borders, and shipped poppies to heroin-production plants in northern Pakistan and elsewhere. A senior U.N. narcotics official told me that in the past two years “most of the heroin has been processed in Afghanistan, as part of a plan to keep profits in-country.” Only a fraction of what is produced in Afghanistan is used there, the officer said. Nonetheless, a U.S. government-relief official told me, the “biggest worry” is that the growth in local production will increase the risk of addiction among G.I.s. A former C.I.A. officer who served in Afghanistan also said that the agency’s narcotics officials have been independently investigating military drug use.

CIVILIAN Geraldine Marquez, 31, from Victorville, CA died at Bagram Air Base when a bomb exploded at the front gate the day that Vice President Dick Cheney visited. She lived in Ontario for several years before moving to Victorville. She was a civilian contractor for Lockheed Martin and had previously served in the US Air Force. Her birthday was the day before her death. She was escorting several Afghan truck drivers inside the gate when a suicide bomber approached and blew himself up killing many people. She had been in Afghanistan since October 2006. Her main job was handling incoming shipments of supplies for the base and mostly doing the paperwork for those supplies. Geraldine was born in Nogales, Mexico then moved to several places including Glendora, Ontario and Victorville. She had been home-schooled and wanted a life filled with travel and learning. She joined the Air Force and got out after eight years in June 2003.

Larisa Alexandrovna: Lizzie Cheney - The Pride of Lockheed Martin - Speaketh - Politics on The Huffington Post

[BrklynLib at work]

2. Another soldier"suicided"?? Wonder what she knew, and who she was going to tell...

I know..I know...:tinfoilhat:

[Ilsa]

4. Yeah, they'll cllaim a "woman" in a pale blue total covering

got on base and did it. They'll blame it on the Taliban, I bet.

[Kagemusha]

7. Actually, if you're gonna make such speculation, this is a good case for it.

Non-combat, shot to the head, finance unit...? That's genuinely suspicious...

[Marrah_G]

5. Kennedy and Kerry are going to push on this one I think

[RamboLiberal]

11. They are - see this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3015998

[Ian David]

6. She was Tilmanned. n/t

[emsimon33]

51. Sure looks that way.

[fed-up]

8. since when is (I believe) cold-blooded murder "friendly fire"??? shot to front or back of head? nt

[bluescribbler]

9. Off to the Greatest Page

Let's see the RePugs try to sweep this one under the rug.

K&R

[anachro1]

10. And they will

do just that, and most likely get away with it.

[Breeze54]

17. Not necessarily.

That's why the family is demanding an investigation.

Welcome to DU! :hi:

[cyberpj]

12. See here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1970020

[yardwork]

41. She told her family that she had found some things and made enemies!

She told her family to investigate if she died! This is incredible.

[Roland99]

13. Yeah, cuz LOTS of "combat deaths" have occurred next to a chapel in a secure area.

:eyes:

[BridgeTheGap]

14. Why did they initially report it as a combat death?

After what happened with Pat Tillman, you'd think they'd be a little careful about this kind of stuff. I would go back to the person responsible for this initial report and ask "why did you report it this way?"

[zippy890]

15. Yes. We want to know - How did Ciara Durkin die?

Friendly fire.

:nuke:

[minnesota_liberal]

16. Friendly Fire?

"Friendly fire" is a term used to designate a combat-related death caused by fire originating from one's own comrades or their allies.

There is nothing about this death to indicate that it was combat-related.

[KansDem]

20. This sentence also jumps out at the reader...

Yet she was found dead within a highly secure base

I hope the family and the investigators get to the bottom of this...

[superconnected]

18. Putting on my tin foil hat for this -

"Adding to the mystery is something the Army Specialist told her family: if something happened to her in Afghanistan, they should look into it. She was concerned about things she was seeing over there, one of her eight brothers and sisters said in an interview.

Canavan told the Quincy, Mass. Patriot Ledger on Wednesday that when her sister was home three weeks ago, she told her about something she had come across that raised some concern with her: "She was in the finance unit and she said, 'I discovered some things I don’t like and I made some enemies because of it.'"

Canavan revealed that Durkin said if anything happened to her, to make sure it was investigated.
"

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

19. I don't think you need a tinfoil hat for this...

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that something rotten is at work here.

[Kaleko]

44. Let's not repeat right-wing talking points such as "conspiracy theorists"...

Those are just smears, used to nip investigations into shady political activities in the bud with ridicule and contempt.

We need to re-frame all the words they've stolen from us: "Patriot", "liberal", "leftist"... the list is long.

Be a constant pain in THEIR asses, folks. Correct them every time, and refrain from using their buzzwords to undermine ourselves. We're engaged in an information war.

[Orsino]

63. A term invented by the nutjob coincidence theorists. n/t

[BonnieJW]

21. Wouldn't you think that

if she felt threatened, she would have written something and sent it to her family just in case?

[intheflow]

48. Maybe she didn't have time.

She may have had suspicions, which is why she told her family in passing, but vague suspicion may have turned into confirmation only upon her death.

[natrat]

22. one thing i am learning about corruption-it knows no bounds

[DU9598]

23. Death Inquiry for Lesbian Soldier

This could get even more interesting: <http://www.sldn.org/templates/press/record.html?record=4380§ion=2>

WASHINGTON, DC - Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) demanded today that Pentagon officials conduct a full and thorough investigation into the death of Specialist Ciara Durkin, a lesbian service member with the Massachusetts Army National Guard who was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head on September 27. Durkin was serving in Afghanistan at the time. SLDN joined Durkin’s family, Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and John Kerry (D-MA) and Congressman William Delahunt (D-MA) in calling for the investigation.

In my opinion, it would be nice to recognize her service as a lesbian especially considering the constant fear and hatred she faced due to the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.

RIP Ciara

[blackspade]

42. Great, I can see it now....

I don't think her people preferences are even relevant to her death.
And it would have been better to not have interjected it into the 'story'.
Mark my words, her being a lesbian will become the MSM and RW pundits reason for her death.
It will be a white wash to cover up bushista corruption.

[intheflow]

49. Spot on! n/t

[hisownpetard]

54. Saying "a lesbian service member' is like saying, "Jane Doe, a female who enjoyed

having sex with men and was a service member..."

How inappropriate, when describing someone who was killed while in service to their country.

[Recursion]

59. *shrug*

"Jackie Robinson, a baseball player for the Dodgers" does leave some important things out, I think. Any time somebody breaks barriers (which, sadly, LGBT soldiers still are), it's not often a good idea to ignore that. Particularly in a murder investigation. I don't know the state of the military's conscience now, but when I was still in (up to 2004) there were still beatings, threats, etc. against gays. And I don't just mean abusive language (hell, we all get plenty of that for whatever features we may have, and learning to brush that off is part of the training), I mean "I'll kill you you dirty little f**" and meaning it (somehow I ended up as my unit's harrassment NCO... problem is, it's difficult to report anti-gay harrassment through official channels because it sparks a DADT investigation, so we had to deal with it through office hours and NJP). But, then again, a few years of counterinsurgency does wonders for bringing troops together...

I know a lot of this board has written that angle off, but I think it's way too soon to write off anything.

[daleo]

24. A Canadian died in similar mysterious circumstances in Afghanistan recently

Friendly fire, or the bases are not a secure as claimed?

On edit:

Here's the CBC story. They are now calling it suicide.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/08/30/soldier-shot.html

His picture is on this page. He was a 42 year old veteran. I guess all kinds of people commit suicide, but it could be a cover story, too.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/afghanistan/casualties/total.html

[tom_paine]

25. Murdered by Loyal Bushies, 90% certainty

Like aksing "How did that Jewish Editor who wrote anti-Nazi articles die?"

[Robbien]

26. Soldier In Finance Unit At Bagram Air Base Said To Have "Discovered Things" Is Found Dead

Source: CBS/AP

Exactly how Ciara Durkin died remains a mystery. The Army National Guard soldier from Massachusetts was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in Afghanistan last week, and now her family is demanding answers from the military.

Initially the Pentagon reported that Durkin, part of a finance unit deployed to Afghanistan in November 2006, had been killed in action, but then revised its statement to read she had died of injuries "suffered from a non-combat related incident" at Bagram Airfield. The statement had no specifics and said the circumstances are under investigation.

. . .

"The family has been informed that she was in the compound, and she was shot in the head," Durkin's sister, Fiona Canavan, told the Boston Globe. "She was in a secure area of the compound, which, even though the investigation is not complete, leads the family to believe it was what is called friendly fire," she said.

Adding to the mystery is something the Army Specialist told her family: if something happened to her in Afghanistan, they should look into it. She was concerned about things she was seeing over there, one of her eight brothers and sisters said in an interview.

Canavan told the Quincy, Mass. Patriot Ledger on Wednesday that when her sister was home three weeks ago, she told her about something she had come across that raised some concern with her: "She was in the finance unit and she said, 'I discovered some things I don’t like and I made some enemies because of it.'"

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/04/world/main3328739.shtml?source=mostpop_story

[aquart]

27. Not "friendly fire." Murder.

[babylonsister]

28. Shades of Pat Tillman; are they going down that road again? nt

[tekisui]

34. But, without any combat or *insurgent* near.

[saigon68]

40. The more things change the more they remain the same

[DU9598]

29. On Front Page

This is on the front page ... some late breaking news, however, is that Ciara was an openly lesbian soldier. I pray that she was not killed due to her sexual orientation. That would surely have a chilling effect on all closeted, but patriotic service members.

[truthisfreedom]

31. I don't think that's what she meant when she contacted her family.

The article is pretty clear.

[tekisui]

32. It wasn't about her sexual orientation.

She was clear to her family that she had seen something that someone(s) didn't want to be seen.

Most in the military these days don't care about another's sexual orientation. And, from what I understand a lot of soldiers sexual orientation is an *open secret*, and the don't ask/don't tell is used when they want to remove someone for other reasons. They don't have to put a bullet in their head to get rid of them.

[Ganja Ninja]

30. You just know these guys are right in the thick of the ...

heroin/opium trade. Something that evil would draw them like a magnet.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

33. Bingo.

Hashish, too. But the heroin and opium trade is the big money maker, and hell, we ARE talking a certain level of involvement by the BFEE in Afghanistan, are we not?

[Ganja Ninja]

36. Not only that but there's the evil factor.

Hash is too benign for their taste. It's just not addictive enough. These guys want their customers to get hooked.

[Robbien]

35. One might also be reasonable to think that all the missing billions

in the Defense budget may be some of what she found when working on the Defense finance statements.

[Gonnuts]

37. "Friendly" fire?

With friends like these we don't need enemies.

Look, nothing will come of this. We can't even get these corrupt sob's to do the mildest of accountabilities. Pat Tillman was "somebody" and he was murdered in cold blood and what happened? A few people got slapped on the wrist, but you can bet your ass that behind the scenes they got rewarded for their treason. Sibel Edmonds has direct evidence of treason of people in high government office and she might as well be in solitary confinement with the gag order they have her under. Probably the only reason she hasn't been eliminated is that she's got copies stashed that would be made public if she was "friendly fired" upon.

This country and system is so corrupt now it has to fall before it can be fixed. One can only hope there will be someone around to fix it after the fall.

[DRoseDARs]

45. Friendly fire only occurs in combat situations; this ws either accidental discharge or it ws murder.

"Friendly fire" only occurs when weapons are discharged intentionally, either during actual combat or during live-fire exercises. As she was not involved in either scenario at the time of the shooting and was in fact in a secure area, this CANNOT be a "friendly fire" incident by definition. This was either someone's gun being triggered by accident or negligence, suicide, or it was intentional murder.

[xxqqqzme]

38. dupe

how did that happen????

[xxqqqzme]

39. Along w/ all the other very good questions &

observations on this thread, I am amazed that financial/payroll services have not been contracted to some campaign contributing crony. I would have guessed that 'service' would have been one of the first to go....when you consider all the other contacts.

[WHAT]

56. You'd think the opium trade...

would be privatized...

can you imagine if it was something along those lines? geeze the irony

[Recursion]

60. Like the DoD would let somebody else handle its money

Even Arthur Anderson couldn't "lose" $2.6 trillion like the Pentagon did.

[radhika]

43. Three anti-war NYT Op-Ed Soldiers now dead, too

Within a few weeks of publishing their report of conditions on the ground in Iraq, 3 of 7 soldiers are dead. This is a wild and scary percentage, isn't it? One mother has voiced suspicions....it gives me chills to think there might be an semi-official "Clean Up Dissent" team freelancing around the war fronts. Still, why should anything surprise me anymore

[mhatrw]

46. Could you link us up to this information? Thanks. n/t

[radhika]

52. Lots of links, so I selected one

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003638726

Many sites and blogs covered the original death of two of the soldiers - this one is from Editor and Publisher. Can also find on NYT, Dailykos and Americablog. Alex Jones site, Prisonplanet.com reported the concerns expressed by one of the soldier's mothers. As for the 3rd death, I couldn't find a print link, but recall hearing it go by in a story on Rachel Maddow's show on AirAmerica.

[xchrom]

47. recommend

[NancyBreen]

50. One word: Blackwater nt

[LiterateTarHeel]

53. don't worry

it's just one or two bad apples like Abu Ghraib ... (rolling eyes)

[AZ Criminal JD]

55. This must be investigated n/t

[Recursion]

58. A Bay Windows article on her leadership in the NE LGBT community...

Posting to keep it in one thread:

http://www.baywindows.com/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&AudID=0813BC739F2044E5A03DCF2DE3FDF7C9&tier=4&id=A72AEEC2C4784AD097A42FE7FADCF8C2

[Up2Late]

61. This is beginning to look like another Pentagon Cover-up! NPR just did a great report on this.

(I hate to say it, but the news of the death or crippling of another female solder just hits me a LOT harder than the death of the male solders.:cry:)

Guardswoman's Death in Afghanistan a Mystery

by Libby Lewis
Audio for this story will be available at approx. 7:00 p.m. ET


All Things Considered, October 5, 2007 · The military's first report was that Massachusetts National Guard Spc. Ciara Durkin was killed in action in Afghanistan. In fact, she died with a bullet in her head inside Bagram Air Base.

It was a ragged start to the investigation into Durkin's death.

(audio at link soon) <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15046409>

[Judi Lynn]

62. Army to Probe Bagram Soldier's Death

Army to Probe Bagram Soldier's Death
Stars and Stripes | October 06, 2007

Army investigators are probing the deepening circumstances surrounding the death of a Massachusetts National Guard Soldier who was found on Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, with a single gunshot wound to the head.

The family of Spc. Ciara M. Durkin, 30, has in recent days suggested that she was killed by someone on the base.

On Wednesday night, according to a family statement, they met with Army investigators for about four hours.

"The family is confident that the Army is conducting a thorough investigation of Ciara's death and intends to give the Army time to complete its inquiry," the statement read. The family has said that Durkin's body was found near a chapel on Bagram.

In interviews this week, they have wondered whether Durkin was killed for one of two reasons: she was gay, and she had allegedly told family members that she had stumbled across "strange" information in the course of her work.

Durkin, who was born in Ireland but moved to the U.S. when she was 9, was assigned to the 726th Finance Battalion.

More:
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,151777,00.htmlhttp://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,151777,00.html

[alfredo]

64. Everybody, add the OP subject line to your signature line in your

e-mail. That way every time you send an e-mail, that question will be sent. It's easy to do. You might have to read short instructions, but it isn't difficult.