Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
September 19, 2007 By Jim Dwyer
In the space of three months last year, three Army officers who had been part of a logistics group in Kuwait committed suicide. Two of them — a colonel and a major — had power over contract awards and had been accused of taking bribes just before they killed themselves.
The third was Sgt. Denise A. Lannaman of Queens. In a war that has cost the lives of more than 3,700 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis, the death of one woman by her own hand has attracted little attention beyond the circle of shattered family and friends.
Yet those who know her say that questions about Sergeant Lannaman’s death remain unsettled, and go well beyond psychic agonies that she struggled with her entire life. “From the day she was born, she was different,” Barbara Lannaman, her mother, said. “Life was just not satisfactory to her.”
Gifted as a mechanic, fastidious as an administrator, brave in a combat zone, Sergeant Lannaman at the end of her life had landed in a spot where, investigators say, officers were able to scoop up millions of dollars in bribes from merchants who wanted the contracts the Army awarded for everything from water to laundry.
Far as it was from the bombs that she drove past in Iraq, the logistics operation in Kuwait would lead to its own peculiar casualties.
That Sergeant Lannaman was in the Army at all — whether in Iraq or behind a desk — could be seen as a testament to her own shrewdness, or to the Army’s hunger for recruits in a grindingly long war.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, she spent nine years in the Navy, then bounced from job to job. By the time she was 42, in the spring of 2003, Denise Lannaman had been a firefighter, a sailor, a filmmaker, a scuba diver, a paramedic and an auto mechanic.
She also had been a frequent psychiatric patient, her family says, an iron-willed perfectionist who had dealt with life’s ragged edges by making four suicide attempts.
“I knew she was different all along,” her sister, Michelle Forgenie, said. “On top of that, she was also lesbian. They’re very homophobic in Kingston. And we didn’t understand it, either, at a time when she needed us to understand it.”
After she left the Naval Reserves in 1992, she passed the examination for New York City corrections officer, but could not get past the psychological screening, Ms. Forgenie said. She moved frequently, living in Virginia, as well as abroad in Jamaica, France and England.
She settled in Queens with family after the Sept.11 attacks, determined to join the Army, which offered her higher rank than the Navy.
“She missed one of the enlistment interviews because she was in a psychiatric bed,” Ms. Forgenie said. “She had to get a note that she was in the hospital. That time, she tried to kill herself with pills and liquor, sitting out in the driveway.”
HER doctor refused to clear her for duty. “She found another one, I guess, who took her blood pressure, vital signs, signed the note,” Ms. Lannaman said.
Somehow, she passed the military’s psychiatric review. On May 23, 2003, she enlisted in the New York Army National Guard, and in January 2005, deployed to Iraq as a sergeant, based in Tikrit. She often drove to Baghdad at night. She thrived, say family and friends.
“I never put that child to sleep from my arms — she always wanted to climb into the bed, and that was it: ‘Leave me alone,’ ” Ms. Lannaman said.
“The time that she was in the Army was the closest we were in her whole life. She used to e-mail me every morning, or call.”
On a convoy, a truck blew up in front of her, killing soldiers. She shook it off. She waived the limit on her service and signed up for another three years.
Then she took on what, for her, was a more dangerous assignment: a desk job at a procurement office in Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. In December 2005, Sergeant Lannaman was assigned to work with a logistics group that purchased millions of dollars in supplies.
“Superb performance,” Maj. Steven N. Carozza wrote in a recommendation for a commendation.
“Her assertiveness and dedication ensured government spending was monitored on all purchases,” he wrote. “Her oversight eliminated misuse of funds by 36 percent.”
Others, it seems, may have been intent on misusing the money. Sergeant Lannaman originally had been scheduled to leave her Kuwait assignment on Aug. 27, 2006. But 10 days earlier, the top logistics officer, Lt. Col. Marshall Gutierrez, was arrested outside a restaurant in Kuwait. He was accused of shaking down a laundry contractor for a $3,400 bribe.
After his arrest, Colonel Gutierrez was released to his quarters. He was found dead on Sept. 4, next to an empty bottle of prescription sleeping pills and an open container of what appeared to be antifreeze, according to military records.
“She was going to come home to help Mommy, who was having hip surgery, but all the leaves, everything, got shaken up by his death,” Ms. Forgenie said. “I remember Denise saying, ‘He got himself arrested.’ She became very guarded in her communications.”
On Oct. 1, she had a private meeting with a superior officer, said George Roach, a retired Army sergeant first class who served as the military liaison with the family. A military investigator later told the family that at this meeting, Sergeant Lannaman was told that she would be sent home in disgrace, Ms. Forgenie said. “We were not given a reason,” she said.
A few hours later, she was found dead in a jeep from a gunshot wound. She had just turned 46.
“Were they trying to scare her, had she stepped on toes of people who were profiteering, did someone threaten to expose her homosexuality?” Ms. Forgenie asked.
In December, Gloria D. Davis, a major who had served in the Kuwait logistics operation, committed suicide after admitting that she took $225,000 in bribes, according to military records.
An Army spokesman, Lt. Col. William Wiggins, said yesterday that Sergeant Lannaman had not been the subject of any contract investigations, and that he could not say whether she had been threatened with dismissal from the service.
Last week, Barbara Lannaman received a letter from the Army. It contained the honorable discharge of Sergeant Denise A. Lannaman.
September 19, 2007 By Jim Dwyer
In the space of three months last year, three Army officers who had been part of a logistics group in Kuwait committed suicide. Two of them — a colonel and a major — had power over contract awards and had been accused of taking bribes just before they killed themselves.
The third was Sgt. Denise A. Lannaman of Queens. In a war that has cost the lives of more than 3,700 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis, the death of one woman by her own hand has attracted little attention beyond the circle of shattered family and friends.
Yet those who know her say that questions about Sergeant Lannaman’s death remain unsettled, and go well beyond psychic agonies that she struggled with her entire life. “From the day she was born, she was different,” Barbara Lannaman, her mother, said. “Life was just not satisfactory to her.”
Gifted as a mechanic, fastidious as an administrator, brave in a combat zone, Sergeant Lannaman at the end of her life had landed in a spot where, investigators say, officers were able to scoop up millions of dollars in bribes from merchants who wanted the contracts the Army awarded for everything from water to laundry.
Far as it was from the bombs that she drove past in Iraq, the logistics operation in Kuwait would lead to its own peculiar casualties.
That Sergeant Lannaman was in the Army at all — whether in Iraq or behind a desk — could be seen as a testament to her own shrewdness, or to the Army’s hunger for recruits in a grindingly long war.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, she spent nine years in the Navy, then bounced from job to job. By the time she was 42, in the spring of 2003, Denise Lannaman had been a firefighter, a sailor, a filmmaker, a scuba diver, a paramedic and an auto mechanic.
She also had been a frequent psychiatric patient, her family says, an iron-willed perfectionist who had dealt with life’s ragged edges by making four suicide attempts.
“I knew she was different all along,” her sister, Michelle Forgenie, said. “On top of that, she was also lesbian. They’re very homophobic in Kingston. And we didn’t understand it, either, at a time when she needed us to understand it.”
After she left the Naval Reserves in 1992, she passed the examination for New York City corrections officer, but could not get past the psychological screening, Ms. Forgenie said. She moved frequently, living in Virginia, as well as abroad in Jamaica, France and England.
She settled in Queens with family after the Sept.11 attacks, determined to join the Army, which offered her higher rank than the Navy.
“She missed one of the enlistment interviews because she was in a psychiatric bed,” Ms. Forgenie said. “She had to get a note that she was in the hospital. That time, she tried to kill herself with pills and liquor, sitting out in the driveway.”
HER doctor refused to clear her for duty. “She found another one, I guess, who took her blood pressure, vital signs, signed the note,” Ms. Lannaman said.
Somehow, she passed the military’s psychiatric review. On May 23, 2003, she enlisted in the New York Army National Guard, and in January 2005, deployed to Iraq as a sergeant, based in Tikrit. She often drove to Baghdad at night. She thrived, say family and friends.
“I never put that child to sleep from my arms — she always wanted to climb into the bed, and that was it: ‘Leave me alone,’ ” Ms. Lannaman said.
“The time that she was in the Army was the closest we were in her whole life. She used to e-mail me every morning, or call.”
On a convoy, a truck blew up in front of her, killing soldiers. She shook it off. She waived the limit on her service and signed up for another three years.
Then she took on what, for her, was a more dangerous assignment: a desk job at a procurement office in Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. In December 2005, Sergeant Lannaman was assigned to work with a logistics group that purchased millions of dollars in supplies.
“Superb performance,” Maj. Steven N. Carozza wrote in a recommendation for a commendation.
“Her assertiveness and dedication ensured government spending was monitored on all purchases,” he wrote. “Her oversight eliminated misuse of funds by 36 percent.”
Others, it seems, may have been intent on misusing the money. Sergeant Lannaman originally had been scheduled to leave her Kuwait assignment on Aug. 27, 2006. But 10 days earlier, the top logistics officer, Lt. Col. Marshall Gutierrez, was arrested outside a restaurant in Kuwait. He was accused of shaking down a laundry contractor for a $3,400 bribe.
After his arrest, Colonel Gutierrez was released to his quarters. He was found dead on Sept. 4, next to an empty bottle of prescription sleeping pills and an open container of what appeared to be antifreeze, according to military records.
“She was going to come home to help Mommy, who was having hip surgery, but all the leaves, everything, got shaken up by his death,” Ms. Forgenie said. “I remember Denise saying, ‘He got himself arrested.’ She became very guarded in her communications.”
On Oct. 1, she had a private meeting with a superior officer, said George Roach, a retired Army sergeant first class who served as the military liaison with the family. A military investigator later told the family that at this meeting, Sergeant Lannaman was told that she would be sent home in disgrace, Ms. Forgenie said. “We were not given a reason,” she said.
A few hours later, she was found dead in a jeep from a gunshot wound. She had just turned 46.
“Were they trying to scare her, had she stepped on toes of people who were profiteering, did someone threaten to expose her homosexuality?” Ms. Forgenie asked.
In December, Gloria D. Davis, a major who had served in the Kuwait logistics operation, committed suicide after admitting that she took $225,000 in bribes, according to military records.
An Army spokesman, Lt. Col. William Wiggins, said yesterday that Sergeant Lannaman had not been the subject of any contract investigations, and that he could not say whether she had been threatened with dismissal from the service.
Last week, Barbara Lannaman received a letter from the Army. It contained the honorable discharge of Sergeant Denise A. Lannaman.