By
now, Daniel had been in Afghanistan two months. It was July 2012, his
third tour of duty and his first with Oogie, his military working dog.
They were leading their platoon on yet another patrol, clearing a
no-name village with maybe 15 houses and one mosque, when they began
taking fire.
“The first thing that went though my mind,” he says, “was, ‘S- -t. My dog’s gonna get shot.’ ”
It
was a perfect L-shaped ambush, bullets coming from the front and the
right, the platoon pinned down in a flat, open landscape. Along the road
were shallow trenches, no more than 14 inches deep. Daniel grabbed
Oogie, squeezed him in a hole, then threw himself over his dog.
Daniel with his dog, Oogie
It
went against all his Army training. “They tell us it’s better for a dog
to step on a bomb than a US soldier,” he says. The truth is Daniel,
like just about every other dog handler in the armed forces, would
rather take the hit himself.
Five
weeks into their training, Daniel and Oogie were inseparable. They
showered together. They went to the bathroom together. When Daniel ran
on the treadmill, Oogie was on the one right next to him, running along.
That week, Daniel got Oogie’s paw print tattooed on his chest.
“The
few times you safeguard your dog are slim compared to what he does
every time you go outside the wire,” Daniel says. “That’s your dog. The
dog saves you and saves your team. You’re walking behind this dog in
known IED hot spots. In a firefight, the dog doesn’t understand.”
Bullets
were coming closer now; the enemy had long ago picked up on how
important the dogs were to the Americans, how successful they were at
sniffing out bombs. “I know there were three separate incidents where
they shot at Oogie,” Daniel says. And as he lay on top of his dog, he
stroked him and whispered and kept him calm.
After
five minutes, Daniel’s platoon pushed the enemy back and away, and the
first thing Daniel did was get Oogie to shade. “He’s a black Lab, and it
was very hot out,” he says. He strapped two big bags of saline to
Oogie’s shoulders and hydrated him intravenously, then the two went back
out to clear more villages.
“Oogie’s always ready to go,” Daniel says. “He’d hurt himself if I didn’t stop him — he has that much prey drive.”
In September 2012, Daniel and about 18 other soldiers boarded a flight back to North Carolina; their deployment was over.
Waiting
on the tarmac were employees from a North Carolina-based company, K2
Solutions, which had the government contract for the dogs. Within
moments of deplaning, the handlers got to pat their dogs on the head,
say their goodbyes, then watch as the dogs — and all their equipment,
down to their shredded leashes — were boarded on a truck and driven
away.
“It’s
a bunch of infantry guys, and no one wants to be the first to start
crying,” Daniel says. “But it didn’t take long. There wasn’t a dry eye.”
Daniel got Oogie’s paw print tattooed on his chest
The
only solace these soldiers had was the knowledge that they could apply
to adopt their dogs, and that the passage of Robby’s Law in November
2000 would protect that right.
More than three years later, Daniel still doesn’t have Oogie. The dog has vanished.
Daniel,
who doesn’t want to use his real name because he’s on active duty, is
one of at least 200 military handlers whose dogs were secretly dumped
out to civilians by K2 Solutions in February 2014, a Post investigation
has found.
At least three government workers were also involved and may have taken dogs for themselves.
It’s
a scandal that continues to this day, with hundreds of handlers still
searching for their dogs — and the Army, the Pentagon and K2 Solutions
covering up what happened, and what may still be happening.
Dumping dogs
On
Feb. 10, 2014, one of many adoption events was held on the grounds of
K2 Solutions in Southern Pines, NC. The Army had recently ended its TEDD
(Tactical Explosive Detection Dogs) program, and word quietly got out
that “bomb dogs” would be available to civilians.
Kim
Scarborough, 52, a project manager at East Carolina University, was one
of them. “I called my husband and said, ‘K2’s dumping dogs. Do you mind
if I go?’ ”
In
quiet, well-manicured Southern Pines, K2 is a glamorous company. They
own huge tracts of land where they covertly train dogs for combat,
counterterrorism and catastrophes that will probably never occur in
North Carolina. K2’s owner, Lane Kjellsen, is a cryptic figure who
claims to be ex-special forces.
The
company is privately held. Their Web site advertises dogs for sale, but
it’s unclear whether they’re former military working dogs. K2 has
trained dogs for both the TEDD program and the Marine Corps’ IDD
(Improvised Explosive Device Detector Dog) program, and each canine has
about $75,000 to $100,000 worth of training.
Multiple
handlers told The Post that they have called and e-mailed K2
repeatedly about their dogs, submitting adoption paperwork as they were
instructed to do. Yet they have been given little to no information, and
at times deliberate misdirection, they say. Finding military dogs isn’t
hard: They all have microchips, and the TEDD dogs have serial numbers
tattooed on their ears.
These
handlers also say K2 trainers who were with them in Iraq and
Afghanistan told them they should contact K2, or K2 would contact them,
once their dogs were available for adoption.
“When
I contacted K2, they were like, ‘She’s gone and adopted out,’ ” says
Brian Kornse, who did three tours of duty and has PTSD. “I got in
contact with them in February of 2014” — the same month K2 was holding
multiple adoption events.
Kornse
believes his dog, a black Lab named Fistik, was given to a former
Pentagon employee, Leo Gonnering, who may still have been working for
the government in 2014. A man who left a voicemail for The Post from
“Leo’s phone” said Gonnering “adopted the dog from the Army two years
ago. He and his family have no intention of giving the dog up to his
prior handler.” He named Kornse as the likely handler and has renamed
the dog Mystic.
“I
guess I had PTSD before, but I never really noticed till I gave Fistik
up,” Kornse says. “I started having nightmares. I never experienced that
before. She made everything better for me — that’s the best way I can
describe it.”
Other
handlers say K2 would tell them information about their dogs was
“privileged” and instruct them to call Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.
Staff at Lackland, they say, would send them right back to K2.
‘I guess I had PTSD before, but I never really noticed till I gave Fistik up…She made everything better for me — that’s the best way I can describe it’- Brian Kornse said about giving up his dog
“I
called K2 in March 2014,” says a handler who asked to remain anonymous.
“I said, ‘Can you please help me find my dog?’ They said, ‘No. Call
Lackland.’ ”
This
handler sent The Post an e-mail exchange he had with Lackland. He asked
for help, and a Sgt. Tia Jordan replied, “I’m sorry, but we don’t have
any control over TEDD dog adoptions.” Under her signature is her office:
the Military Working Dogs Adoptions and Dispositions Center.
“We got blown up together,” he says of his dog. “Before I was even done with training, I knew I’d try to adopt him.”
After
months of obfuscation, many handlers give up, and they believe that’s
what K2, and some in the Army, want. “I have PTSD and traumatic brain
injury,” says Ryan Henderson, who has been searching for his dog, Satan,
since 2014. “There are mornings I wake up with anxiety attacks. Dealing
with normal life is more than I can handle anyway.”
Henderson
says K2 told him Satan had been adopted by his second handler “and they
could not give me his information due to privacy laws.”
He believes there’s a thriving black market for the dogs.
“Ninety
dogs adopted out, at the same time, under suspicious circumstances?” he
says. “Subcontractors are literally another layer of insulation to
cover the BS.”
K2’s
Web site offers a standard reply to service members looking for their
dogs: “All of the dogs in the TEDD program belonged to the Army,” they
state. K2 directs handlers to the Army’s Office of the Provost Marshal
General.
At
least one staffer from the OPMG, Robert Squires, was at K2’s adoption
event on Feb. 10. Sources who were there tell The Post that Squires was
overseeing it all. He also signed reams of paperwork, telling adopters
that copies would be mailed to them.
Ryan Henderson with his dog, Satan
That
paperwork was never sent. According to e-mails obtained by The Post,
both Squires and another OPMG staffer, Richard Vargus, jointly play
dumb.
“Everyone was under the impression that they tried to locate the handlers,” Scarborough says.
Meanwhile,
civilians in small North Carolina towns were electrified by the idea of
owning a war dog — the ultimate status symbol — and several deputized
themselves as prime “bomb dog” movers.
“On
Feb. 7, I got a call from my dear friend . . . who asked me to help her
with a favor,” Kinston, NC, resident Jean Culbreth wrote on Facebook on
Feb. 19, 2014. “The favor was to place 72 retired bomb-sniffing dogs in
new homes. Well, it’s 10 days later
and I am BEYOND thrilled to say that 92 dogs have been adopted! And
with the 11 Ralph and I took for the Lenoir Co. SPCA, I had a part in
103 adoptions in 10 days. Man, I wish we could do this every week. To all involved: GREAT JOB.”
When reached for comment, Culbreth hung up.
‘A clusterf@#&’
When
Scarborough arrived at K2’s adoption event, she was stunned. “I called
my husband and said, ‘This is the biggest clusterf–k I’ve ever seen.’ We
were a bunch of strangers who responded to Jean’s Facebook post.”
They had been told 140 dogs would be available, but just 30 were left. It was only 11 a.m. There were people claiming to be law enforcement who were not in uniform — and law enforcement was given first pick.
Some
said they planned to contract out the dogs. One of the few officers in
tiny Taylortown, population 1,012, took six dogs. Two men from Virginia,
Dean Henderson and Jamie Solis, rolled up with a box truck and took 13.
“All of these dogs have PTSD,” Scarborough says. “Squires said that to me.”
None
of the people who sought to adopt was vetted. None was asked what they
planned to do with the dogs, or if they were capable of dealing with a
dog with war wounds. None was asked whether they had small children.
“That
was something that really bothered us,” says an ex-K2 employee who was
there that day. He asked not to be identified. “The dog I have, it took
me more than a year to calm her down. She was a TEDD. I wouldn’t let her
be around children.”
He
believes no civilian should ever be allowed to adopt a military working
dog. “Civilians don’t understand what these dogs have been through in
war,” he says.
‘That was something that really bothered us…Civilians don’t understand what these dogs have been through in war’- an ex-K2 employee
This
employee says that during the event, he was “getting dogs out of the
kennel and displaying them to people.” He knew it was wrong. “Too many
civilians were getting dogs that should have gone to handlers. It wasn’t
right.”
He
says handlers were calling him constantly, complaining that the Army
and K2 “keep losing my s- -t.” He also says K2 was in collusion with
Army officials. “Squires was there and signing paperwork. He adopted two
TEDD dogs. One was Fistik” — Kornse’s dog. Vargus, he says, “was the
head of the program. He knew what was going on.” Vargus is also believed
to have taken at least two dogs.
This
employee says he kept Squires from taking at least one dog. “I talked
to Squires and said, ‘I know this handler wants this dog.’ They let me
take him.”
The
Army confirmed to The Post that Vargus was in charge of policy of the
TEDD program, but refused to comment on any involvement he, Squires or
Gonnering had in these adoptions, or dogs they are alleged to have
taken.
“All
TEDD adoptions were performed in accordance with the law,” the Army
said in a statement. “The Army will continue to carry out standard
adoptions in accordance with the disposition procedures established by
the law and the Department of Defense.”
Scars of war
Once
Scarborough got her dog, Ben, she was directed to a room where an Army
veterinarian was waiting. The dogs were getting five-minute exams —
temperature, teeth checks — before being shunted off K2 grounds.
She was apparently the first civilian the doctor saw that day.
“They
got to me and it stops,” she says. “The veterinarian was clearly very
upset. She just stopped doing the exams.” The doctor left the room, but
Scarborough and others could overhear her. Scarborough believes the
veterinarian was on the phone with superiors.
“She was saying, ‘I don’t know what to do. This is not what we normally do.’ She was very disturbed, very distraught.”
After
several hours, the veterinarian returned. The dogs remained muzzled the
entire time. “She said she was told, ‘Let it go — proceed,’ ”
Scarborough says. That doctor, Capt. Sarah T. Watkins, Branch OIC at
Fort Bragg, signed Ben’s medical records.
Scarborough
was given those along with her dog’s deployment records — something
every handler who spoke with The Post had no idea existed. A copy
obtained by The Post shows that next to each dog’s name and serial
number is the name of their handler, refuting claims by the Army and K2
that tracking down a dog’s handler is too difficult.
Scarborough encountered similar stonewalling when she requested Ben’s military papers.
“There
is no ‘official’ Army record since he was technically a contract dog,”
Squires told Scarborough in an e-mail dated July 25, 2014, “but by
regulation he is classified as a Military Working Dog.”
Scarborough realized she had no business adopting Ben.
“It
wasn’t till I got home that I said, ‘Oh, my God. I’ve got a bomb dog
that couldn’t make it as a patrol dog and has PTSD.” She says that on
the way home from the K2 adoption event, Ben freaked out when he heard
sirens.
‘I’ve offered $5,000 cash, plus a new German shepherd of their choosing, for his return. I have heard nothing’- Army veteran Ryan Henderson
When
he hears thunder, or gunfire — Scarborough and her husband live on a
farm where they allow hunting — Ben races through the house and hides
under her husband’s desk, or jumps into bed with her “shaking like a
leaf.”
Scarborough
says she and Ben’s handler got in touch a few days ago with help from
online group Justice for TEDD Handlers, run by Betsy Hampton, a
civilian.
Scarborough says the handler is overwhelmed to have found Ben.
“He
said to me, ‘That’s my Ben. That dog saved my life. I owe him.’ I mean,
ladies from the Daughters of the American Revolution have these dogs,”
she says. “If the handler wants Ben, it belongs to him. Period, the
end.”
Handlers
don’t typically get that response. Many who have found their dogs over
social media are rebuffed. More than one has been told their dog ran
away, or was hit by a car.
Army veteran Ryan Henderson has tracked his dog, Satan, to a family in Chocowinity, NC.
“I’ve
offered $5,000 cash, plus a new German shepherd of their choosing, for
his return,” Henderson says. “I have heard nothing. They refuse to
contact me.”
Ryan Henderson with his dog, Satan, whom he has been trying to get back since 2014.
Every
handler The Post spoke with stressed this point: The dogs are not just
dogs, or “equipment,” as the Army designates them. They are
battle-scarred veterans who have saved lives.
‘Destroy the dogs’
The
13 dogs Dean Henderson and Jamie Solis took from K2 were, in fact,
treated like outdated equipment. On the night of Feb. 10, 2014, the two
men drove up to Currituck Kennels at Mt. Hope in Va., the dogs sliding
around the back of their truck the whole way.
“Half
of the dogs were on human Prozac and Xanax,” kennel master Greg
Meredith tells The Post. “They were emaciated. They all had PTSD. One
had an injury to his tail from shrapnel.”
The
men told Meredith they were ex-Secret Service, had just bought the dogs
for $30,000 each, and had a contract to sell them to the Panamanian
government for twice that amount.
The
paperwork given out at K2 that day included a document stating the
adopter could not give a dog away, sell it, or profit from it. “If they
lied to K2 and were planning to sell, they’d be in serious amounts of
s- -t,” says the ex-K2 employee. “That’s illegal. And if K2 knew about
that, that’s even more illegal.”
Seventeen
months went by. Meredith had spent nearly $150,000 of his own money
caring for the dogs and was broke. He pressed Henderson for help.
“Destroy the dogs” was the reply.
Meredith called K2, who sent him to Vargus. He provided The Post with e-mails between himself, Vargus and Squires.
In
a phone call, “Vargus tells me they couldn’t determine who had
ownership at that point — the contractors or DoD,” Meredith says.
Vargus’ office is at the Pentagon, which houses the Department of
Defense.
“He
told me he was there when Dean and Jamie picked them up,” Meredith
says. “He knows them. They’re known to him. I said, ‘I’ve been told
these dogs can’t be re-purposed or resold, but Dean and Jamie told me
they paid $30K a piece for these dogs.’ I said, ‘There’s a coverup going
on here.’ ”
Henderson and Solis did not return calls for comment.
‘My best friend’
The
handlers, understandably, trust no one. Adam Wopat served for five
years and did two tours . He spent a year in combat with his dog, Heijn,
in Kandahar.
On
May 30, 2012, while sweeping a compound with the 4th Infantry Division,
an IED went off. One soldier lost a leg. Another was medevaced out.
Wopat was knocked back and unconscious, and Heijn was blown way behind
him.
Adam Wopat with his dog, Heijn
“Once
I got up and came to my senses, I realized, ‘Oh, I still have a dog,’
because he had already returned to me and was laying down next to me.”
Wopat is crying now. “After we hit our one-month mark of training — it’s like when a son calls you ‘Daddy,’ ” he says.
Last
year, Wopat was contacted by a man named John Moreno, who said he
founded an organization called Operation Releash in May 2015 to reunite
veterans with their dogs.
“He
told me US Capitol Police had him. He told me they were going to fly us
up on Veterans Day, and to wear a suit and tie,” Wopat recalls. Moreno
said they were going to retire Heijn and re-home him with Wopat.
“On Oct. 19th, the day he told me to call him on his new cellphone, he ceases contact with me,” Wopat says.
Moreno
is ex-K2. He most recently worked as executive director of the
Worcester County Humane Society in Maryland, a position he left after
six weeks. “He was not caring for the dogs,” a former colleague tells
The Post.
Moreno
confirms Wopat’s version of events. Asked why he disappeared, Moreno
told The Post: “A lot of stuff was going on at the time. I wanted to be
left alone.”
Former
Marine Nick Beckham says he knows where his IDD dog, Lucky, is: Living
with K2 CEO Lane Kjellsen in North Carolina. Beckham says he was tipped
off by a K2 employee.
“K2
told me I had the right to adopt if I was the first handler and the
dogs were retired,” Beckham says. “I called K2 and asked for paperwork. I
filled it out and mailed it in and I never heard back. I e-mailed again
— they never responded.”
Reached Wednesday,
Kjellsen admitted many adoption events had taken place at K2. “Hundreds
of dogs were adopted out,” he said. “Let me take that back. Not
hundreds, but more than 100.”
K2 CEO Lane Kjellsen (left) adopted former Marine Nick Beckham’s dog, Lucky
He went on to claim that “K2 had nothing to do with adopting those dogs.”
Asked if he had an IDD dog named Lucky, he said, “Lucky? Is that true? Um . . . I don’t know. I do have a dog named Lucky.”
He
then admitted he had sold Lucky to the Marine Corps, and once retired,
“the Marine Corps repeatedly reached out to the handler and had no luck.
I properly adopted Lucky through normal channels. K2 didn’t handle any
adoption paperwork.”
Kjellsen
then suggested the Army was to blame for all the war dogs who have been
wrongly and secretly re-homed, but he refused to give The Post
specifics.
“I
would say, ‘Get an official investigation and let me talk,’ ” Kjellsen
says. “I’d tell them what the Army did. I can’t [tell you]. I need to be
subpoenaed.”
Beckham is disconsolate to this day. “Lucky was my first and only dog,” he says. “He was my best friend.”
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