A Thorn in Bush’s Side

The crash occurred just after VanGoethem had dropped off Ilse Wentworth, a fellow embassy employee, at home, after the two spent the evening barhopping together. VanGoethem, who was married with two children, told State Department officials who questioned him after the incident that they went to get pizza after the bars, but Wentworth testified that they went to his home, had sex and fell asleep.

After the verdict, VanGoethem received a letter of reprimand that threatened the renewal of his contract, but he dodged much harsher penalties; he could have received up to 10 years of confinement, loss of rank down to E-1 and forfeiture of all pay and allowances. VanGoethem, who could not be reached for comment, left the Marines on July 9, 2007.

Critics of the outcome point to a list of legal flaws in VanGoethem's trial. They complain that the taxi driver should have been called as a witness at the trial (U.S. officials insist they were unable to compel him to attend the trial against his wishes). And they fault VanGoethem's blood-alcohol test, which did not find him to be legally intoxicated but was administered "a few hours after the event," according to an official at the Marine Corps legal division. The official added that problems with the test's reliability prevented prosecutors from introducing it at trial.

"He was never charged [with drunk driving] because there was just no evidence," said the Marine Corps legal official, who had tracked the case and agreed to speak about it on the condition that he not be quoted by name. "But [he was found not guilty of negligent homicide because] the Virginia state trooper who went over and did the investigation indicated that he'd have to be Superman to react in time--whether he was drunk or not--because the stop sign was blocked," the official said.

With the criminal trial now long over, the issue has boiled down to the sticky subject of money. The Romanian government joined the Peter family in hiring noted D.C. law firm Arent Fox to represent them and filed suit July 20, 2006, under the Foreign Claims Act, which allows foreigners to request compensation for losses due to noncombatant actions of U.S. military personnel. But the Romanians have heard little to their liking in the year and a half since then. According to Gurley, military authorities made an initial offer of $11,500 in October 2005, before the formal request had been filed; the family responded with a letter saying they had spent $5,000 on funeral expenses alone. The offer was then upped to $16,500 in January 2006, a number also roundly rejected--and mocked in the Romanian press (one local headline translated as: "The Americans Take Us for Stupid.") The family asked for more than $1 million in the suit filed that summer.

"One of the reasons this has taken too long, in our minds, is that it was the very first case [of this type of claim] in Romania, so through no fault of the U.S. government, they were looking at Romania for the first time," said Gurley. "That being said, we have presented them with hundreds of pages of documentation, much of which was submitted almost a year ago, and [despite] the reams of information we have provided to them, the Army has not moved speedily to dispose of this issue, nor to ask us any additional questions. We do not think there is a legitimate reason to delay this case any longer."