From: THE AMERICAN FREEDOM DIGEST
A FREE service of www.FreedomCenterUSA.com

October 14, 2002

'I PRAY TO GOD WE DIDN'T TRAIN HIM' -- by Doug Thompson

www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_728.shtml

I met him about two years ago when he took an important first step towards changing his life by standing up in front of us and saying 'I’m an alcoholic.'

Like many I meet at Washington area Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings, he is retired military, someone trying to come to grips with the demons that come with a lifetime of serving his country.

He never talked much about his military past, except to say he was a Marine for 31 years. Occasionally, we met for coffee after the meetings and swapped jarhead jokes. His dark eyes hinted at a past he wanted to discuss but chose not to.

Until last week.

We met at one of the many coffee shops that have cropped up in my neighborhood. At our AA meeting, the topic most discussed -- after drinking -- was the sniper terrorizing Washington.

He stared at his coffee, turning it with his hands.

'I pray to God,' he said, 'that we didn’t train him.'

'Train him?'

'As a Scout.'

'You mean a Scout/Sniper?'

'Yeah.'

'That your specialty in the Corps?'

'Yeah.'

He stared at his coffee through dark eyes, wrinkled from years of staring through rifle scopes, focusing on a target that could be hundreds, sometimes thousands, of yards away.

In Vietnam, Scout/Snipers were legends. Tom Leonard had 74 confirmed kills. Carlos Hathrock 93. Eric England 98. Charles Mawhinney 103. Scout/Snipers worked Desert Storm, Somalia, Panama and a lot of places the Pentagon won’t discuss.

The Washington-area sniper had just taken out his tenth victim, a kill shot taken just 50 yards from a Virginia State Trooper working a traffic accident near Fredricksburg, Virginia. The shot said over the troopers head, killing a 53-year-old father of six gassing his car at an Exxon station.

'Up until now, I thought this was a thrill seeking kid,' he said. 'But this shot was the work of a pro. Well planned, scoped out. I’m starting to think this guy was trained by one of the services.'

Although other branches train snipers, Marine Scout/Snipers are considered the best, masters of the long shot. The Corps and Pentagon won’t confirm it, but Scout/Snipers have been deployed in Columbia to take out drug lords and in places most Americans haven’t heard of to take out people who were considered a threat to the United States.

He finished his coffee and got up to leave.

'If we did train him, I can guarantee one thing,' he said. 'He won’t get caught. He will have to quit on his own or turn himself in. I’m gonna make some calls. God, I hope he’s not one of ours.'

Over the weekend, the FBI has asked the Pentagon to check military records for military-trained snipers recently discharged from service.