Armed Forces: The Hero & the Hush-Up

One Medal of Honor winner was conspicuously absent from the White House ceremony: he was former Marine Captain Arthur J. Jackson, 38, who in September 1944 charged into withering enemy fire on Peleliu, destroyed twelve pillboxes and killed 50 Japanese soldiers. Now Jackson has been forced out of the Marine Corps, accused of killing a Cuban at Guantanamo in 1961.

Last week the Pentagon was silent about Jackson, would barely acknowledge that he had ever existed. Jackson, now a $90-a-week mail carrier in San Jose, Calif., also refused to answer questions from newsmen. What talking there was came from another ousted Marine officer, ex-Lieut. William A. Szili, 31, a Norristown, Pa., insurance salesman. And Szili, who wants to return to the Marine Corps, told a weird story.

Over the Cliff. On the night of the Guantanamo killing, said Szili, he had been drinking with Jackson, his company commander, at a base officers' club. Ruben Lopez, a Cuban employed as a base bus driver, was also there. "Other Cuban employees at Gitmo," Szili recalled, "had told us that he was one of Castro's boys, a spy." Jackson talked to Lopez, told him to stay away from restricted areas. The two American officers stayed at the bar. Szili said he had "perhaps six martinis." Then the two left and separated.

Szili went to bed. But he was awakened by a military policeman, who told him that Jackson had found Lopez snooping around an ammunition storage area, arrested the Cuban, and now wanted help. Szili joined Jackson, and the two took Lopez to a long-unused rear gate to kick him off the base. But they found the lock rusted tight, and Szili went away to get a sledge hammer.

When Szili returned, the gate was open and neither Jackson nor Lopez was in sight. Szili began running in search of them; he met Jackson, who had managed to open the gate by himself, running back to find him. According to Szili, Jackson said he had been walking Lopez outside the base "toward a path that went back to civilization"; Lopez "jumped" Jackson, who fired his .45 in self-defense. Lopez tumbled over a cliff.

Jackson and Szili decided to cover up the killing because, by Szili's account, they feared "international repercussions." They recruited help from other officers and some enlisted men, brought Lopez's body back inside the base, buried it in a shallow grave lined with quicklime. But word of the shooting later leaked out at a cocktail party, and the body was dug up.

Some Second Thoughts. At that point, the U.S. Government, apparently in an attempt to avoid handing Castro a propaganda weapon, continued the hush-up begun by Jackson and Szili. Jackson was denied a court-martial; its findings would have been public. Instead, Jackson, with only 18 months to go before completing 20 years of service and becoming eligible for a pension of $260 a month, was forced to resign from the Corps. So were Szili and two other officers who had helped bury Lopez. Jackson, said Szili, has made no public complaint because "he is a very patriotic man and I think probably he doesn't want to do anything that might hurt his country."