Thousands of pages of once-secret court documents show how federal officials and a Virginia court helped an American Marine adopt an Afghan war orphan, in defiance of the U.S. government’s official policy to unite the child with her family. The Associated Press fought for three years for access to the documents, which reveal how the country’s fractured bureaucracy enabled Marine Joshua Mast and his wife, Stephanie, to adopt the child who was halfway around the globe, being raised by a couple the Afghan government decided were her family. The records show the Virginia judge who granted the adoption skipped critical legal safeguards and that some federal employees helped Mast take the child, even as others in their own agencies were trying to keep him away from her.
