Young Captain Is Left `Holding The Baggage' For Iraq Air Disaster - - He's Sole Officer Court-Martialed In Downing Of Two U.S. Helicopters

OKLAHOMA CITY - Outside, the cold prairie wind is driving the rain against the windows of the rented ranch house, and as the kids get ready for bed, Air Force Capt. Jim Wang is sitting on the living room couch contemplating his possible infamy.

He knows the court-martial charges say only "dereliction of duty." But he knows, too, what people will think: He's the one responsible for the catastrophe. The others have all been cleared, and he's the guy whose hands may be stained with the innocent blood of 26 people.

Wang, who turns 29 on March 26, is being court-martialed in connection with one of the nation's worst incidents of so-called "friendly fire": the April 14, 1994, downing of two U.S. helicopters by two U.S. jet fighters in the no-fly zone over northern Iraq.

He fears that years from now, when people recall the incident, it is the rangy, straight-arrow Taiwanese immigrant whose name alone will be linked to the deaths.

And Wang, a skilled air-traffic controller and Air Force Academy graduate who is accused of "gross inaction" in the first such court-martial since World War II, won't accept that.

"The facts and the truths are there," he says. "The fact is I didn't do anything wrong."

Originally, the Air Force had preferred charges against six officers and granted immunity to a seventh in the case. But after a series of hearings and recommendations in Europe and the United States, all but Wang were spared court-martial.

On March 4, a military judge granted a delay in Wang's trial - which was to have begun last Monday - after Wang hired a veteran civilian lawyer to join his team.

His trial is now scheduled to start May 31. The charges are three counts of dereliction of duty, technically "very minor," he said. At worst, he could be dismissed from the Air Force and be incarcerated for up to nine months.

Wang says he would like to make his case before the American people and Congress. But it is a story that is painful to hear and often hard to understand.

Extensive breakdowns found

On the morning of last April 14, two F-15s patrolling the postwar no-fly zone over Iraq made radar contact with unidentified aircraft.

With Wang and his crew aboard an AWACS airborne radar jet helping electronically, the fighters moved in and made a hasty visual pass, identifying the aircraft as two Russian-built Iraqi Hind helicopters.

The fighters maneuvered to attack with air-to-air missiles.

The lead fighter shot down the trailing chopper, while his wingman shot the first helicopter as it swerved frantically to escape. "Stick a fork in him," one of the pilots radioed after the second helicopter crashed in flames. "He's done."

But the helicopters were not Iraqi Hinds. Instead, they were two U.S. Black Hawks ferrying U.S. and allied officials among Kurdish villages being protected from Iraq. All 26 aboard the helicopters were killed.

The accident was "profoundly disturbing," Defense Secretary William Perry said, the result of an extensive breakdown in communications among the helicopters, the fighters and the AWACS jet.

An investigation concluded that, in addition to the fighters' visual error, the pilots had not been told that U.S. helicopters would be in the no-fly zone; the helicopters were using the wrong electronic identification mode; and, although the AWACS jet knew the helicopters had entered the zone, the fighter pilots were never told.

All the others escaped censure

On Sept. 8, the Air Force announced that it was preferring negligent-homicide and dereliction-of-duty charges against the second fighter pilot, Lt. Col. Randy W. May, and dereliction-of-duty charges against Wang and four others from the AWACS plane.

But some people already had avoided censure. The lead fighter pilot, Capt. Eric Wickson, was found to have made a "reasonable" identification error and was granted immunity to testify.

Over time, others also avoided punishment, and some high-ranking officers declined to testify at hearings.

On Dec. 20, the Air Force dismissed the charges against May, saying he had "followed proper procedures." The previous day it had dismissed charges against all the AWACS crew - except Wang.

Wang, an AWACS supervisor, knew the U.S. helicopters had entered the no-fly zone and failed a "basic and fundamental" duty to tell the fighters, a military judge had ruled in recommending his court-martial.

"He had a duty"

"As the AWACS leader of the air battle he had a duty . . . to notify the fighters that they were attacking a possibly friendly aircraft," the judge ruled. Wang seems, indeed, to have been derelict in his duty.

But to the young captain working that day in the dim, cramped AWACS plane, it was not so simple.

He spoke last week in his living room with his wife, Wendy; stepson, Steven, 10; and son, James Jr., 2.

Wang, born in Taiwan, said he came to the United States in 1968 with his father, Ching, a cabinetmaker, and his mother, Yan Mei.

The family settled outside Columbus, Ohio, and there, Wang lived a classic American childhood.

To the joy of his parents, he got into the Air Force Academy and graduated in 1988. But Wang's eyesight was not good enough for him to be a pilot. So he opted for AWACS, short for airborne warning and control systems, in which crews aboard a Boeing 707 act as military air controllers.

Last April 14, Wang was just starting his fourth deployment to help patrol the Iraqi no-fly zone.

He was aware that what he believed was one U.S. helicopter had entered the no-fly zone. But he said that Army helicopters operated independently from the Air Force - often performing missions in the zone, AWACS or not.

He indicated and investigators found that there was extensive confusion over whether AWACS planes were responsible for helicopters, and whether the AWACS were supposed to tell fighters when the helicopters were nearby.

Anyway, Wang said, helicopters frequently would appear and disappear from the radar scopes as they landed or flew behind mountains. In this case, he thought they had landed.

Despite investigators' findings that the Black Hawks may have reappeared on radar right before the accident, Wang contends they hadn't been on the scopes for 10 minutes.

"Everyone says, `Well, when (the fighters) started calling contacts, why didn't you draw the conclusion that it was the helicopters?' " Wang said. "In hindsight, it seems almost logical. But . . . we hadn't received any radar (on them) in over 10 minutes."

In his mind, he said, the Black Hawks were "30 miles away, where we last saw them."

"You have to look at our situational awareness," he said. "It's almost completely dependent on the F-15s. We, at no point, have a better picture than they do. . . . It's like seeing just a frame or two of a movie for us."

"I don't deny the fact that we were in a position where something could have happened and we could have prevented" the accident, he said. But it was not to be. Instead, the tragedy played out, and he finds himself unwillingly at center stage.

"Holding the baggage," he said.