Maj. Jason Brezler of the United States Marine Corps Reserves, is not a household name. But perhaps he should be.
Brezler's military career is ruined thanks to one fleeting email transgression, and that committed as a split-second decision to save the lives of American servicemen in imminent danger. The Daily Beast's Michael Daly has his story today in his August 14 piece, "Hero Marine Nailed for Secret Email: What Did He Do That Hillary Didn’t?"
In his story, Daly also explains that Brezler made sure to report himself for his violation and explain his actions to superiors, which is obviously quite different than former Secretary Clinton's spin and obfuscation regarding her handling of official State Department correspondence -- including sensitive, classified materials -- on a private email.
Here's an excerpt (emphases mine):
Clinton could still become president after her email scandal, but a decorated Marine is being forced out over one classified report he sent to avert a disaster.
No matter how much classified material is found in her personal email server, Hillary Clinton will no doubt continue campaigning to become our next president.
Meanwhile, a decorated Marine officer who has deployed four times faces being discharged from the corps he loves because he used his personal email to send a single classified report as an urgent warning when lives were at stake.
The stateside message from Marine Reserves Maj. Jason Brezler to Forward Operating Base Delhi in Now Zad, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, went unheeded. Three young Marines were shot to death as they worked out in a gym by an Afghan teen brought on the base by the same corrupt and double dealing pedophile police chief whom Brezler had declared to be an immediate threat.
Yet the only person to be investigated in connection with the killings is Brezler, the Marine who sought to prevent them.
[...]
“IMPORTANT: SARWAR JAN IS BACK!!!” the subject line read.
Jan had been a district police chief of the very worst sort. Brezler and Terrell had determined that Jan was involved in narcotics and arms trafficking, as well as facilitating attacks by the Taliban, even selling Afghan police uniforms to the enemy.
Jan also was alleged to be what Brezler’s lawyer would later call “a systematic child rapist” who allegedly ran a child kidnapping ring and acquired “chai boys” with the help of U.S. taxpayer job development money.
As the protégé of an accused drug lord with connections to the then Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, Jan might have imagined himself untouchable. But Brezler and Terrell kept pushing and were finally able to pressure the provincial governor into removing Jan from his post, a rare and notable bright spot in the bloodiest province in the bloodiest year of the war.
Now here was that name in the subject line.
“My reaction was visceral, and just seeing his name brought me great concern,” Brezler later testified.
The accompanying message from Terrell read, “Jason, I just got an email from one of my friends in Afghanistan; he just met Sarwar Jan. He is looking for anything we have on him. Do you still have that paper Larissa wrote on this guy in Now Zad? It could be very helpful. Anything you can think of would be useful. Thanks brother, Andrew.”
Larissa Mihalisko was a Marine intelligence officer who had prepared a report on Jan with information provided by Brezler and Terrell. Brezler had kept a copy along with other necessary operation reports on the personal laptop he used in the war zone, the Marines not having provided him one.
Now, in the moments after he received the urgent message from Terrell, Brezler decided it was great luck that he had downloaded the hard drive from that laptop onto his new one.
“I immediately typed ‘search’ and ‘Sarwar Jan’ and uploaded the document,” he would recall in court papers.
In the next instant, he sent the report to the email address that Terrell had provided for another Marine in Afghanistan. He gave no thought to the document’s classification.
“I just reacted the same way that I would in a gunfight; the same way I would at a fire,” he said in the court papers. “I just immediately reacted.”
Brezler asked the Marine in Afghanistan to confirm that he received the message.
Brezler got no response and emailed him again. The Marine responded, saying Brezler had sent him a classified document via a private civilian account on an unsecured server.
“I had it on a hard drive from Now Zad and it was the only way to get it to you,” Brezler emailed back. “Andy said you need it.”
Brezler knew the document had been classified, but he figured that had likely changed with the passage of time. And he was only passing on to a fellow Marine what he and Terrell had reported in the first place.
But he could tell that the other Marine was taking it as a breach of security.
Brezler had still been in class during all this. He continued to live by the Naval Academy honor code, and he used the lunch break to call a Marine higher-up to report himself.
“I got his voice mail and went back to class,” Brezler later testified. “The next break, I reached out to him again.”
The higher-up answered and a series of notifications followed. Brezler made no excuses.
Two weeks later, Brezler got another message, this from the intelligence officer who had helped prepare the report, Mihalisko.
“Sarwar Jan strikes again,” this subject line read.
The message reported: “Tragic story for you. Sarwar Jan…brought 9—yes count it NINE—chai boys (excuse me personal servants) with him. One of them decided to go nuts and killed a bunch of Marines yesterday.”
Brezler spoke again to the higher-up.
“My own worst fears have come to fruition,” Brezler said, according to court papers.
“I guess you were right,” the higher-up replied.
To read the whole story, click here.
