Widows of slain National Guard officers frustrated over Army's stance

NEW YORK—The widows of two National Guard officers allegedly killed in Iraq by a disgruntled American soldier are angry that the Army has turned down their request to watch the soldier's hearing in Iraq via satellite television. So they have made another request to the military: Fly them to Iraq so they can attend the hearing themselves. The pair is awaiting a response. "I want to look at the man's face," Siobhan Esposito, who lives in Suffern, said Friday. "I need to be there every step of the way for my husband." Capt. Phillip Esposito, 30, a Wall St. broker, was killed along with 1st Lt. Louis Allen, 34, a high school science teacher from Campbell Hall, in a June explosion at their base in Tikrit. Both were officers of the 42nd Infantry Division of the New York National Guard. Alberto Martinez, 37, of Troy, a supply specialist in the New York guard, is charged with two counts of premeditated murder in the slayings of his superiors. He allegedly rigged the blast to look like an enemy mortar attack. The Army rejected the widows' request to watch the four-day pre-trial hearing by setting up a live video link between Tikrit and New York. Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, said the Army has tried to accommodate the women by setting up a secure audio feed over a telephone line, which they can listen to at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, near their homes. He said a video feed was not feasible. "It is not technically possible to have an uninterrupted secure satellite broadcast from Iraq," Boyce said. The Army is considering the widows' most recent request to go to Iraq to attend the proceedings, he said. "We sympathize with the widows but we have to look seriously at taking two survival parents into a war zone especially when there is a safer more predictable alternative available," Boyce said. The widows acknowledge that traveling to Iraq would be risky and a hardship. Siobhan Esposito has a 2-year-old daughter, and Allen's widow, Barbara, has four boys, ages 1 to 6. "I don't think this is a lot to ask of the Army," Esposito said. "It is unimaginable what we have been through. They just don't understand."