Just got off the phone with Former Sgt. Bleu Copas, the Arab linguist who got booted from the Army over allegations of homosexuality — from an anonymous informant.
He told an Associated Press reporter that an Army investigator asked him if he had ever participated in community theater. An Army public affairs chief today told me he doubted any such thing had happened.
Copas told me he sticks by his story. “It was part of their investigation. That was one of their questions,” he said. But the question didn’t come completely out of the blue.
“The informant, whoever he was, had a conversation with me on an internet chat room, and I mentioned involvement in community theater — I had rehearsal, or something,” Copas explained.
So did the investigator ask the question in order to identify you as the person with whom this anonymous informant had chatted? Or because community theater involvement was evidence of homosexual tendencies?
“I think a little of both,” said Copas, “but I would just be guessing.”
The Army had spent two years training Copas as an Arabic linguist, he said. His specialty was to be translating intercepted radio transmissions in combat areas. However, he was kicked out of the Army before he ever deployed.
During training, he said, he performed in three different local community theater productions: “Ragtime,” “Children of Eden,” and “Beauty and the Beast.”
According to government statistics compiled by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a non-profit legal advocacy group, Copas is at least the 55th Arabic linguist dismissed over homosexuality allegations.
Copas was discharged this January. He has moved back home, enrolled in graduate school — and joined a new community performance group, Theater Bristol, which picked him to play the male lead in its production of “Bye Bye Birdie,” he said. Performances start next weekend.
