Twenty years ago, Michael Epstein made a film about a Marine Reserve unit out of Columbus, Ohio. That film put him inside the Haditha case, and he never left it. The staff sergeant charged with 18 counts of murder, told his lawyers he couldn’t remember what happened. That’s a bad defense friends. Epstein took him back into House 2, the room where the government said he killed a family. The camera was rolling, to see if his memory would come back. He was behind the camera and asking the questions with no lawyers in the room.
What Epstein found going deeper wasn’t just one man’s memory. It was a government that charged an innocent Marine as the fall guy, gave immunity to Marines they knew were guilty. What was worse, they put witnesses on the stand they’d been told were lying, and withheld eyewitness testimony from its own investigators.
He took the finished film to Tribeca. Nobody would distribute it. He got angry at what he calls the gatekeepers, the people who told him nobody out there cared about this story. Didn’t believe that, and he didn’t let it go. He says there are millions of people, thousands of people, who care about stories like this one, they just needed someone to put it in front of them.
Twenty Years Later:
Twenty years later, Fault Line: Haditha is a 13-episode podcast with a companion documentary film for every episode, the raw footage he couldn’t get anyone to release now going straight to YouTube, no editing, no gatekeeper. Last year, working with the BBC, Epstein brought two decades of forensic evidence and testimony back to Safa, the sole surviving witness of House 2, and gave her the truth the government had withheld from her for decades. Her new testimony is the final piece of the puzzle, and it’s in his podcast.
Michael Epstein joins Sean for the Rockin’ 8: the last Michigan football game he saw live, his favorite restaurant in Brooklyn. Also what teaching screenwriting at SVA has taught him about his students, and the album he’ll defend to anyone who calls it overlooked. He talks about his mentor Bill Moyers, his daughter’s own reporting career, and the promise he made himself the day this whole thing started. One he says he’s kept, because he’s still here talking about it.
Just another Beyond the Mic Short Cut with Sean Dillon.
Fault Line: Haditha is out now, wherever you find podcasts, with companion films on YouTube.
Listen to other Beyond the Mic conversations with directors here.
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