Senator wants Marines to explain why wounded troops weren't told the truth

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Elena Zurheide was relaxing at her home in Camp Pendleton, Calif., due to deliver her first child. It was April 12, 2004. On the other side of the world, her husband, Rob, lay dying.

A U.S. Marine mortar had sailed through the sky and dropped nearly on top of him, inside a dusty courtyard of a school in Fallujah, Iraq, where he and other members of his Marine unit were hunkered down, fighting insurgents.

But when a Marine officer came and knocked on Elena's door, he didn't say her husband and two others had been killed that day by a horrible mistake. He told her Rob was killed by enemy fire.

The Marines finally acknowledged it was friendly fire three years later, under pressure from Congress, but Elena still has questions.

"All of this is a big fat lie," she says. "Why did they keep it secret to begin with?"

Earlier this year, NPR's podcast Taking Cover tried to get to the truth. It revealed that the son of a prominent politician was involved in the mistake - and the whole thing had been covered up.

Now, Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is asking the Marine Corps for answers.

"Robert Zurheide's widow, Elena, is one of my constituents," Kelly told NPR, sitting at his office on Capitol Hill. "His son, Robert, who wasn't even born when he was killed is there in Tucson with his mom."

"They deserve answers. It's important that they get them," Kelly said. "Not only them, but the folks who were wounded. Why were they not informed? You know, why did that take this long? They should be informed immediately. The Marine Corps has regulations, and they need to follow them."

Kelly is himself a combat veteran, who flew A-6 fighter jets during the first Gulf War, and later became an astronaut. He sits behind a desk that used to belong to another Navy pilot, John McCain, and said he knows the importance of keeping faith with military families.

Kelly said he met recently with the number two Marine officer, Gen. Christopher Mahoney, and asked him about the friendly fire that killed Rob Zurheide, Brad Shuder, and an Iraqi interpreter. Nearly a dozen others were wounded, some serious enough to receive a medical retirement.