Taking Cover

April 7, 2023·51 min·4 clips

Carlos Gomez Perez told his 14-year-old son he wished he had died in Iraq rather than come back — not because he doesn't love him, but because the dying would have ended there.

1. Taking Cover, a series from NPR presented through the No Compromise podcast feed, investigates a friendly fire incident and alleged cover-up involving Marines of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Division in Fallujah, Iraq in April 2004. 2. The investigation is led by Tom Bowman, who has covered the US military from the Pentagon for NPR for 25 years, and Graham Smith, an NPR journalist who has embedded with Marines in both Iraq and Afghanistan. 3. The episode's core allegation, sourced at a DC whiskey bar, is that the Marine Corps suppressed the truth about the friendly fire deaths of two men because a powerful politician's son was involved in the incident. 4. The episode opens at Horno Ridge at Camp Pendleton, where Chaplain Scott Radetzky began a tradition in 2003 of carrying crosses up a steep rocky trail — a field of hundreds of memorials has grown over 20 years, and three of the seven men who carried the first cross are now memorialized there. 5. Bowman and Smith's investigation began with a Google search of the April 2004 Fallujah casualty list: 27 Americans killed that month, none officially listed as friendly fire. 6. A break came from memorial webpages where entries for Robert Zurheide and Brad Shooter — both killed April 12, 2004, both from Echo 2-1 — described their deaths as friendly fire, contradicting the military press releases. 7. A comment from Corporal Gomez Perez on a memorial page — 'April 12th is always on my mind and every time I think about it I just get mad, man, it's bullshit what happened' — led Smith to track down Carlos Gomez Perez, who confirmed he was with the unit. 8. A records request to the Marine Corps for any investigation of the incident came back after just two weeks: 'a thorough search was made, no records on file' — a result Bowman calls inexplicable given that the military documents everything, including lost gear. 9. Carlos Gomez Perez grew up in Mexico City, crossed the border illegally at age nine, and joined the Marines the day he became a US resident at 18, saying he wanted to try 'the hardest branch in the military.' 10. Carlos received the Silver Star — two steps below the Medal of Honor — for conspicuous gallantry in battle that April; he had to Google it to find out what it meant. 11. Carlos describes how PTSD has structured his life around April: every year his mindset involuntarily shifts and his body reacts differently, and his 14-year-old son has absorbed the same cycle without being told about it. 12. Carlos told his son directly that he wished he had died in Iraq rather than come back — not because he didn't love him, but because 'if I would have died, it would end right there' — a line he delivers to the reporter while describing his ongoing PTSD treatment. 13. Navy corpsman Ben Leota, reached while traveling in South America, was with Echo Company on April 12 and says he went 'back in the zone for a week' just by agreeing to the interview call. 14. Retired Sergeant Major Bill Skiles, Echo Company commander Zembeck's right-hand man, describes being poured a whiskey in his marine room in Virginia and walking through the unit's arrival in Fallujah in March 2004 — arriving expecting 'hugging and kissing' under General Mattis's 'velvet glove' approach. 15. Skiles contrasts his first and second tours: on the first, locals smiled and gave thumbs up; on the second, 'you could see hate in the people's eyes' — a kid flipped him off for being given a deflated soccer ball. 16. He argues that the 82nd Airborne Division's drive-through tactics — 'we just shoot when we're shot at without even knowing what we're shooting at' — gave the insurgency its best recruiting pitch. 17. The April 1 offensive began after the Blackwater contractors were ambushed, dismembered, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah — their charred remains broadcast worldwide — forcing the White House to order the Marines to clear the city. 18. Captain Zembeck's pre-battle speech from a truck hood — 'This is our Okinawa, this is our Saipan... May the dogs of Fallujah eat hearty off our dead enemies' — is reconstructed from multiple accounts as the moment the unit shifted to search-and-destroy. 19. The episode ends on a cliffhanger: Ben Leota describes being two steps away from Brad Shooter when a flash hit the corner of his eye, blacking out, waking on the floor with ringing ears, and then hearing 'the worst screaming you ever heard in your life' as the first episode ends. 20. The series is described as investigating why families and even the wounded men themselves still do not know the truth about what happened to them on the worst day of their lives.

As heard by us

A tense investigative story that turns a fatal mistake into a wider question of accountability.

Taking Cover follows a fatal mistake and the cover-up that came after, using reporting around Echo Company to keep the focus on what happened and who knew it.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a Marine story about a fatal mistake, a cover-up, and where the truth leads next.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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