A Bay Area journalist and another writer were spared Monday from having to testify at a court-martial when an Army officer who had defied an order to go to Iraq agreed that the reporters had quoted him accurately in his criticism of the war and President Bush.

In return, the Army dropped two charges of conduct unbecoming an officer against 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, the first U.S. officer to refuse deployment to Iraq, reducing his potential sentence by two years. Watada still faces up to four years in prison if convicted of two remaining charges of conduct unbecoming an officer and a charge of missing a troop movement. His trial is scheduled to begin Monday at Fort Lewis, Wash., where he is based.

Sarah Olson, who wrote about an officer who refused to deploy to Iraq, had been subpoenaed. Chronicle photo by Michael Maloney

The Army had sent subpoenas to journalists Sara Olson and Gregg Kakesako, demanding that they verify their quotations from Watada. On Monday, Watada acknowledged that he was quoted properly by Olson and Kakesako, and also in statements at a news conference and in a speech to veterans, the basis of the additional conduct-unbecoming charges.

"We've been trying our best to avoid the necessity for reporters to testify,'' said Watada's lawyer, Eric Seitz, who had been negotiating with the Army on the charges for several weeks.

Joseph Piek, a spokesman for the Army base, said, "This has always been, and still continues to be, a case about a soldier who refused orders to deploy.''

Olson, an Oakland freelance journalist and video producer, had expressed reluctance to testify, saying she did not want to aid in the prosecution of a news source, particularly in a case involving free speech. She declined to say Monday whether she would have testified or risked imprisonment for contempt of court, but said she's glad the issue has been resolved.

"It's important to preserve the press as a platform for all perspectives and important that people not feel they will be prosecuted for speaking to journalists,'' she said.

Kakesako, military affairs reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, likewise has not said publicly whether he was willing to testify, and declined comment Monday.

Watada, 28, who had enlisted in the Army in 2003, refused to accompany his armored infantry unit to Iraq last June and offered to go to Afghanistan or resign his commission but was turned down. In a series of interviews and public appearances, he said he had come to conclude that the Iraq war was immoral and illegal and that he had a duty to not participate.

"As I read about the level of deception the Bush administration used to initiate and process this war, I was shocked,'' he said in an interview with Olson that was the basis of one of the now-dropped charges against him. The interview was conducted last May and posted in June on truthout.org.

Watada sought dismissal of all four charges of conduct unbecoming an officer, arguing that he had a constitutional right to criticize U.S. policy as long as he was off duty and out of uniform and was not urging other soldiers to disobey orders.

But the Army judge who will preside over his court-martial ruled Jan. 16 that the court-martial jury should decide whether Watada's comments endangered troop "loyalty, discipline, mission or morale.'' The judge, Lt. Col. John Head, also refused to allow Watada to present evidence on whether the war violated international law, saying his motives for refusing to deploy were irrelevant.

©2007 San Francisco Chronicle

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