Talk:Arthur J. Jackson

Jackson's "drinking bout"?

According to his XO, Jackson killed Sabariego on Cuban soil, and then tried to dispose of his corpse by throwing it over this 10 metre cliff. The next day, after he sobered up, Jackson lead a team of cronies who re-entered Cuban territory to recover the corpse from the rocky beach, and bury it in a shallow grave on the US side of the fence.

In this edit @Kendall-K1: excised a passage with the edit summary "not what the source says; also WP:SYNTH". They excised the enboldened part of the following sentence: "On September 30, 1961, while serving at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, after a drinking bout where he consumed at least 8 martinis, Jackson fatally shot Rubén López Sabariego, a Cuban worker at Guantanamo, and unsuccessfully attempted to hide his body in a shallow grave."

I request Kendall-K1 return here and explain their concerns in greater detail. In particular, what part of that passage do they think was SYNTH? Are they challenging the number of martinis Jackson drank, prior to the killing? I think if Kendall-K1 had a concern over the specific phrase "drinking bout" he or she should have suggested a different term, rather than excising the whole passage.

How many martinis did Jackson drink that night? GITMO authorities eventually learned of the killing, but no proper inquiry was held. Presumably the bartender(s) that night would have been asked how many he consumed. In the Royal Navy, where officers are allowed to drink in the wardroom, the CO monitors their alcohol consumption. But Jackson's XO, and accomplice, wrote that he and Jackson consumed six martinis each, before he had had enough, and went to bed. He left Jackson at the bar, still drinking.

His XO would describe, later, how a Provost Marshall woke him, and drove him to assist Jackson, who had kept drinking.

The XO gave a long and detailed account, in 1963, as he sought help from his Congressman to be court-martialled for his junior and peripheral role in the killing. He thought it was unfair that Jackson was protected, because he was a former Medal of Honor awardee -- even though the killing was entirely Jackson's fault, while he received a less than honorable discharge, that denied him veteran's benefits, and impaired his ability to find a job.

The XO's account differs markedly from that offered in Idaho Statesman, and I personally found it a lot more credible. In particular the XO describes Jackson confessing to killing Sabariego after he dragged him to the Cuban side of the fence. Jackson had no authority to give Sabariego orders, on Cuban soil; he had no authority to carry a weapon, on Cuban soil; he didn't even have any authority to be on Cuban soil.

Note, the article had correctly said 6 martinis -- the number recorded in the Lipman reference, until five days before Kendall-K1 excised the passage, claiming it was inaccurate. Geo Swan (talk) 09:18, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I missed the fact that "8" was vandalism. But "perhaps 6" is not the same as "at least 6." And Lipman seems to be saying the two men shared 6 drinks, not that Jackson had 6 drinks. The synth is mentioning the drinking and the killing in the same sentence, implying that the drinking led to the killing. The term "drinking bout" is a problem. It also seems wrong to single out the drinking as the only other fact mentioned in this paragraph. For example, there is no mention of Szili, making it sound like Jackson alone hid the body.

Ideally I'd like to see a paragraph later in the article giving a bit more detail about the killing, then a sentence or two in the lead summarizing this content. The way it is, that paragraph seems out of place. Kendall-K1 (talk) 11:37, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• Why should the article say Jackson had "at least 6"? Because Jackson and his XO went drink for drink with one another, when his XO decided he had had enough, at 6 drinks, and went home to his barracks. If Jackson had been willing to stop at 6 drinks they would have returned to their barracks at the same time. He wasn't ready to quit drinking, so he stayed, and had more drinks.

• As for the interpretation that when Lipman said they "shared" drinks, it meant they each drank half of 6 drinks, for a total of 3 drinks -- in those old movies, the high school sweethearts buy a single milk shake, and get two straws, and gaze into one another's eyes with puppy love. But this is not the way adults drink alcoholic beverages. I believe that what Lipman meant, when she wrote they "shared" drinks is that they kept pace with one another, drank their drinks in rounds, where your drinking partner is expected to finish their drink at the same pace as you, so you can turn to the bartender, and say "Another round bar-keep. Put this round on my tab."

• As to the phrase improperly implying that there was an association between the drinking and the killing, did you really think excising all mention of their heavy drinking was the appropriate answer? Lipman said they had a "nightcap". Even a nightcap of the three martinis you speculated about would have left these officers too inebriated to drive, let alone determine if someone was a spy, or was in a "restricted area".

• What this article doesn't say, but what other references that quote Szili, cited over in the article on Sabariego say, is that Jackson was complaining to Szili about Sabariego, as they drank, because Sabariego was also drinking heavily in the officers club. Lipman implies that there may have been other occasions when Sabariego didn't go home with the other workers, stayed to drink, and had so much to drink the Navy cops had to escort him to the NE Gate. This surprises me. I would have thought that, if the base administration allowed the non-resident Cuban workers to drink on the base when their shift was over, they would have restricted them to the enlisted men's drinking establishment(s).

• As to whether Sabariego was a spy -- that strikes me as extremely unlikely. Over 3,000 Cuban workers worked on the base in 1959. Most of them were still working there in 1961. Naval intelligence believed some had sympathized with Castro, prior to his revolution's success. Somehow Jackson thought some NI guy had implied to him that Sabariego had been one of the Cuban workers who had sympathized with Castro, prior to the revolution.

• I see the Provost Marshal as being among those at fault here. First, he never should have left Sabariego in the custody of two drunken men, with guns. Second, he should have known that the last ferry had already run. He must have had some way to arrange for a crossing, after the last ferry ran, for medical emergencies, like acute ruptured appendix, or an accidental weapon's discharge. He should have taken Sabariego across to the NE Gate himself, in the speedboat set aside for navy cops to use in emergencies. Finally, he should have seized the keys to Jackson and Szili's jeep or jeeps, and made them walk back to their barracks, as they were in no condition to drive. Geo Swan (talk) 14:15, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

redux

The Guantanamo section currently reads

On the night of September 30, 1961, while serving at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Jackson discovered Rubén López Sabariego, a Cuban bus driver at Guantanamo and suspected communist spy, in a restricted area. On his own initiative, he and his executive officer, First Lieutenant William Szili, took López to a long-unused gate with the intention of removing him from the base. When they found the gate locked, Jackson sent Szili to find something to break the lock. When Szili returned, Jackson claimed that López attacked him and that he had to fatally shoot him with his .45 sidearm in self-defense. Jackson first threw the body over a cliff, then recovered it with Szili's assistance the next day and buried it in a shallow grave, but word leaked out. When his request for a court-martial to clear his name was denied, Jackson left the Corps in 1962.

1. This is highly misleading to leave out that Jackson was drunk.
2. Jackson killed Sabariego on the Cuban side of the border, so the "self-defense" claim is nonsense. He had no authority on Cuban soil. His mere presence there was an act of war. He had no authority to carry a weapon, on Cuban soil, let alone use it to kill someone.
3. Dumping someone out on the Cuban side of the fence was very dangerous.
   1. It gets cold, at night, in the desert, and that part of the base is a desert;
   2. Cuba is lightly populated. There were no nearby farm buildings that Sabariego could have tried to go to;
   3. The base was surrounded by minefields.
   4. If Sabriego had tried to proceed north, along the fenceline, he had about six miles before reaching Cainemera, but he would have to cross the Guantanamo River, and the mangrove swamps in its delta first. Crossing a mangrove swamp? Dangerous? An night, with no flashlight? Suicide.
   5. Cuban militia men were known to patrol the area around the base, they might have shot Sabariego, thinking he was an American Spy.
4. I don't believe that any evidence, beyond Jackson's gut instinct, established that Sabariego was a Cuban Spy.
5. The current account doesn't say that Sabariego's corpse wasn't officially discovered for several weeks -- at which point it was heavily decayed.
6. Cuban pathologists who examined the corpse easily noted how many broken bones there were. They interpreted the many wounds to the use of crude and violent torture, when, other than the bullet wounds, and perhaps a few bruises, all the wounds on the corpse were post-mortem. The not unreasonable interpretation that American interrogators tore Sabariego's body apart, during torture, fueled tensions between the two countries, for decades. Geo Swan (talk) 17:25, 27 December 2018 (UTC)