This book is based on the following sources:
More than two hundred hours of interviews were conducted between 2009 and 2015 with the men of Dog Company and other soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan during the Wardak deployment.
Some senior Army sources agreed to provide information for this book with the agreement that no information be attributed to them because they feared Army reprisal.
LTC Anthony DeMartino declined to be interviewed. LTC Dixon Gunther, who headed the investigation at Airborne, agreed to be interviewed, then stopped answering follow-up requests and was not interviewed.
The authors attempted to contact MAJ Robert Smith (by then a lieutenant colonel) at his U.S. duty station, both directly and through the post public affairs officer, but were unable to reach him.
The portion of the book that covers the investigation at FOB Airborne and the events surrounding the Article 32 hearing at FOB Salerno is based on government documents, including but not limited to the following: sworn statements from MAJ Smith’s 15-6 investigation; sworn statements from LTC Gunther’s investigation at Airborne; Criminal Investigation Division (CID) reports and sworn statements; charge sheets; case-related emails, letters, and memos; forensic reports; Offers to Plead; LTC Byrd’s Article 32 report; and summary and verbatim transcripts of the Article 32 hearing. Vincent also conducted numerous interviews with defense attorney Neal Puckett, defense attorney Heather Masten, and LTC Robert Byrd, the Article 32 investigating officer.
The narrative of the Battle of Wanat, in which LT Jonathan Brostrom and the men of Chosen Company heroically repelled an overwhelming Taliban attack, was based on the Vanity Fair article “Echoes from a Distant Battlefield,” by Mark Bowden; a Washington Post photo essay on the battle (available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/world/battle-of-wanat/); military historian Douglas Cubbison’s original report on the battle, written for the Army Combat Studies Institute; and interviews with Mr. Cubbison.
The Article 32 transcripts excerpted in this book were compiled from two sources: a “summary” transcript prepared by Army court reporters during the Article 32 hearing, and verbatim transcripts prepared by a private transcriptionist from audio recordings of the hearing. In the summary transcript, only the witnesses’ answers and not the attorneys’ questions were recorded by the court reporter. The audio recordings included the voices of all hearing participants, but because there was only a single microphone in the hearing room at FOB Salerno, audio quality was poor. The authors hired audio specialists to enhance the recordings in order to make possible a verbatim transcription.
Because the Army’s summary transcript conveyed the sense of what a witness said and not his actual words, the authors used the verbatim transcripts whenever possible. Where the recording of witnesses’ answers was inaudible, the authors included the answers recorded in the Army’s summary transcripts. While the volume of hearing transcripts prevented including them all, the authors made every attempt to use a range of excerpts that fairly represented both the prosecution and the defense. Ellipses in the transcripts (…) indicate that text was omitted for brevity when it did not change the impact or meaning of a witness’s testimony. The authors did not omit testimony where doing so would have favored either side of the case.
The authors enlisted the support of numerous military subject-matter experts to ensure the accuracy of a range of details, including equipment nomenclature, military protocols, tactics, and procedures. Wherever possible, though, military jargon was reduced or eliminated to make the story easier to read.
In the interest of national security, the authors submitted the manuscript to Army counterintelligence, to two attorneys who were prior military intelligence officers, and to the defense department Office of Security Review prior to publication.