The Silent Truth - LaVena Johnson Documentary Released

Film was shown in special screening this month in St. Louis. No word on national distribution. Read more from the Huffington Post.

 

Trailer


More video about rape in the military. This is more common than the general public knows.

There have been numerous mysterious deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere) over the past few years. Too many to list...but one of the latest cases is Spc. Morganne M. McBeth. It is unclear what the exact cause of death was in her case...or what the circumstances were. Her case appears, on its face, to be similar to the Johnson case. McBeth's death was originally called an "accident". However, it is now being investigated as a homicide. You aren't going to hear much about these cases on the national news. But the cases reached epidemic levels over the past few years. The media silence is frustrating because the Johnson case dwarfs the Pat Tillman case, which received tons of coverage from the national media.... perhaps because of the way that war loving Republicans pumped him up so that they could use him as a political prop. That was indeed shameful. The "friendly fire" death in of itself was not actually a scandal.... it was the cover-up that followed. To me, the Tillman case was more about politics. There was never evidence of a serious crime (other than the Bush Administration sending U.S. troops to fight without enough backup or the equipment they needed in Afghanistan...and the fact that the mission was probably one that could never be achieved). The Johnson case, on the other hand, is a different story. Here you have signs of a cover-up to gloss over serious crimes - murder and possibly rape. But the national media has given Kim Kardashian, Mel Gibson, (pick a celebrity).... and other idiotic stories hours of valuable news coverage (it's no wonder that so many people in this Country are stupid). Yet the Johnson case has garnered almost nothing besides a couple of 1 minute blurbs in the past 5 years.

Related

Hear a discussion from Amy Goodman's Democracy Now about assaults against women in the military.

Don't Forget About The Silent Truth

Don't forget about Lavena Johnson and the wider epidemic of assaults and attacks in the military, particularly against women. The Silent Truth, is supposed to premiere sometime this year. You won't see this on Faux News or CNN.

Related Links

A Look at The Experiences of Women in the Military

Rape & Cover-up in Iraq

Lavena Johnson Story Now a Documentary

Documentary, The Silent Truth, coming in 2010.

Learn more here.

Warning: graphic images.

Army Rules Ciara Durkin Death a Suicide

Somehow I am not surprised by the CID's findings.

More Rape and Cover-Up in Iraq

Another woman has been raped in Iraq, and the U.S. has been covering up the brutal crime, which took place 2 years ago in the Green Zone. This seems to be part of a pattern of women in Iraq being intimidated, abused, raped, and even murdered, followed by government efforts to cover-up what happened.

We are still trying to find answers in the case of Lavena Lynn Johnson, a 19 year old soldier killed murdered in Iraq in July 2005. All indications point to foul play in her case. The national media has helped their friends in the Bush Administration with squashing the Johnson case simply by not covering the story. At least this victim and others, like Ciara Durkin, have received national media attention. Johnson, a Black woman, was not deemed by the national media as being important enough to cover. That being said, I hope that these other cases raise awareness about similar cases across the board.

The victim in the Green zone case was an employee of KBR, a company that was at one time a part of Halliburton - where Cheney was once CEO. She was apparently gangraped by her KBR co-workers. Why have there been no arrests of KBR managers and supervisors who took part in covering this up and intimidating the victim? Why was evidence allowed to disappear? Why were suspects allowed to walk away? This is why the Justice Department needs to be a truly independent agency, rather than another extension of the White House.

From ABC:

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.
"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

"It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."

Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.

After being gangraped, Jones was held captive... in The Green Zone, which is supposed to be this great bastion of freedom, Democracy and the rule of law in Iraq.

Army doctors eventually conducted an examination of Jones, but afterwards, they handed the evidence to KBR... that's right... they gave the evidence to the suspect. I have never heard of any crime, especially rape, that called for passing sensitive evidence to the suspect. Of course the evidence disappeared shortly thereafter. Why in the Hell is a government authority (The Army Medical Corps) passing evidence- in this case a rape kit- to a private entity in the first place?

I have never seen a government this corrupt. What we are witnessing easily tops the Nixon bunch. You have to look beyond the borders of the United States to find a situation where a government was as corrupt as Bush & Co.

See Full Story from ABC

More from the Carpet Bagger Report.

NPR and Other National Media Outlets Continue To Ignore The Lavena Johnson Case

An Open Letter To NPR: A Tale Of Two Soldiers

The following is a letter that I sent to NPR last week, regarding the disparity in the news coverage received by Ciara Durkin & Lavena Johnson. While Durkin received a considerable amount of national and international media coverage (almost immediately), Lavena Johnson has received no national media coverage....and her case has been dragging on for 2 years.

What makes Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, or Ciara Durkin more important stories to cover? Why do they garner so much media coverage when stories equally as worthy (if not more so) are ignored?

The purpose of the letter was not to downplay the loss of Durkin or any other soldier... On the contrary, I simply wanted to encourage equal coverage for Johnson's case. I directed the note to NPR's All Things Considered program.

The response that I received from NPR's Ombudsman about 5 days later was less than impressive.

NPR's Response:

Something to the effect... we received your letter and thank you for contacting us. However, we don't have any plans to use this (I assume Lavena) as a story topic. We don't guarantee that we will use story ideas sent in by the public.

It almost appeared to be a generic form letter response... probably not written by staff at all. But that was their response nonetheless.

The letter

To the hosts and executive producers of NPR’s All Things Considered

I am writing to you about your coverage of Ciara Durkin, The Army National Guard soldier who was recently killed in Afghanistan. It is great that NPR and other national media outlets are covering this story. It’s especially important to be vigilant on cases like this one.

However, I have noticed a glaring disparity between the way the media is covering the Durkin case and the way that other similar cases have been covered. The Durkin case immediately hit national news…from ABC, CBS, NPR, etc. In fact, I first learned about this case from an ABC report.

However, the national media, including NPR, never covered the case of Army Pvt. Lavena Johnson. Ciara Durkin had not even been buried yet when the National media jumped all over her story. But Lavena Johnson was brutally killed in Iraq in the Summer of 2005 under very similar circumstances, yet her case has received no national media interest at all. Bloggers have been raising the issue of Lavena Johnson for 2 years. Where was NPR? The Durkin family is calling for answers about Ciara, and rightfully so. And my heart goes out to them. But what about the Johnson family? After 2 years, they are still waiting for the truth about how their daughter was killed and who is responsible for her death.

Why the disparity in the coverage? Yes…the NPR program News and Notes only recently (within the past month or so) mentioned Lavena Johnson and it was a very brief mention during a roundtable discussion… News and Notes is not exactly a top national program on NPR. The fact is, there has been no segment dedicated to her via NPR or any other national news organization. Why haven’t any of the top NPR programs like All Things Considered done any serious reporting on the Lavena Johnson case? It has been one of the biggest stories out of Iraq that has never been covered. Not really the Elephant in the room…but more like the Blue Whale in the room. The ramifications of the Johnson case dwarfs Tillman, Richard Davis, and Jessica Lynch (and a bunch of other stories) all put together.

I would hate to think that race is a contributing factor here. But the major media does have a track record of ignoring the plight of African American women. Durkin gets immediate national news coverage even before she is buried and the family has paid its last respects. Yet Lavena Johnson (no less of an American hero and no less a Patriot) gets zero national news coverage after 2 years? Something is wrong here.

I am not asking NPR to curtail coverage of the Durkin case. These stories need to be brought into the national spotlight. However, I am asking that the producers & hosts of All Things Considered provide the same coverage for the Lavena Johnson story. Lavena and her family deserve the same care, concern and attention as any other soldier or military family. And Mr. & Mrs. Johnson deserve to know the truth about how their daughter died.

Because of the Army’s recent history of cover-ups and of mishandling cases, I am not very confident that it can police itself (via Army Criminal Investigators). In my opinion, the FBI should be the agency handling these types of cases.

Related Posting

The Death of Ciara Durkin

To learn more about the Lavena Johnson case, you can visit the following links:

PREVIOUS POSTS ON LAVENA JOHNSON

Who Murdered Pvt. Lavena Johnson?

Why is Tillman getting all the attention? (And why is the Tillman case always brought up and compared with these other cases of women being murdered? Tillman wasn't murdered.... Tillman's case was friendly fire, which happens all the time, although there was a cover-up effort afterwards. Beyond that, there are few similarities).

More on Tillman

The Experience of Women in the Military

America's Forgotten Soldier

Dr. John Johnson Speaks About His Daughter

Recalling Lavena Johnson

Another Bloggers post on Lavena

Lavena's Body exhumed for new autopsy

New Developments in the Lavena Johnson case

LavenaJohnson.com for News and Petition

See Youtube Video Page

Another Mysterious Death of a Soldier Overseas

This time it is Ciara Durkin, who was stationed at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. See video from ABC.

Report from CBS.

I can't help but notice at least one major difference between how the media is handling this case and how it handled the murder of Lavena Johnson. In this case, the story goes directly to national news right away....while in the case of Lavena Johnson, it took about 2 years before the national media paid any attention, and even then, Lavena's story was treated as a 20 second blurb. I won't speculate about why there is this obvious difference in coverage, but we all should know by now that the national media covers people differently based on their backgrounds, etc.

The national media continues to ignore the Lavena Johnson story and it frustrates me to no end.

But I won't let that distract from the bigger picture. Perhaps the Durkin case will help shine light on the murder of Lavena Johnson.
The circumstances seem eerily similar. How did Ciara Durkin get shot in the head on a secure military facility? (Ms. Johnson died the same way).

In the ABC video regarding the Durkin story, it was mentioned that the Pentagon was working around the clock on an investigation. But I would venture to say that the Pentagon is working around the clock on a cover-up plan, just like they did with Pat Tillman, and just like they did with the brutal murder of Lavena Johnson. I can already tell you what they are probably planning to say regarding Durkin.... she shot herself in the head. (but I bet they won't allow a private autopsy or a second pathologist to look at the case). Based on what is known about the Johnson case, I suspect that the Army will stall as long as possible, hide evidence from the family, destroy evidence, plant their own "evidence" and simply ignore evidence. I'm afraid that the family of Ms. Durkin may never know what really happened to their daughter. The criminal(s) will likely never face justice in this case, or the Johnson case.

Additional Blog Post on this Case


PREVIOUS POSTS ON LEVANA JOHNSON

Who Murdered Pvt. Lavena Johnson?

Why is Tillman getting all the attention? (And why is the Tillman case always brought up and compared with these other cases of women being murdered? Tillman wasn't murdered.... Tillman's case was friendly fire, which happens all the time, although there was a cover-up effort afterwards. Beyond that, there are few similarities).

More on Tillman

The Experience of Women in the Military

America's Forgotten Soldier

Dr. John Johnson Speaks About His Daughter

Recalling Lavena Johnson

Another Bloggers post on Lavena

Lavena's Body exhumed for new autopsy

New Developments in the Lavena Johnson case

Dr. John Johnson Speaks At Veterans For Peace Event

Dr. John Johnson, father of Army Pvt. Lavena Johnson, spoke about his daughters case at the Veterans For Peace National Convention which was held in St. Louis last week. Dr. Johnson is fighting for Justice for his daughter Lavena, who died while serving in Iraq in 2005. The Army attempted to cover up the circumstances of her death, calling it a suicide. However, evidence indicates that Lavena Johnson was brutally murdered.

See a posting with Video of Dr. Johnson from the Lavena Petition Blog.

I have been following this case since 2005, and have been mentioning the situation here for about a year now.

Related Report



NPR has finally decided to cover the case of Lavena Johnson. Where has NPR been all this time? This would be the first time, to my knowledge, that NPR has even mentioned this case. The case was not mentioned in any formal NPR report, but instead was briefly discussed as part of the Black Bloggers Roundtable, on the NPR program News and Notes. (But I am happy to finally see any coverage). Listen to the Show Here. Hopefully this will lead to more coverage from NPR programs All Things Considered, Morning Edition, or an even larger media source.

THANK YOU FARAI CHIDEYA & CREW!!!