Clearing the Fog of War

Lackland witnesses missing from House hearing

A House Armed Services Committee hearing today will focus on the growing sex scandal at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, but none of the 59 victims identified by the base so far will testify.

Two top Air Force leaders and two victims from incidents not related to the Lackland investigation will be heard. The two sexual assault victims were recommended by advocacy groups.

Committee spokesman Claude Chafin said there would be testimony about Air Force investigations into Lackland, actions taken to stem the misconduct and possible policy prescriptions.

“Remember, a hearing is intended to help members craft legislative solutions to these problems,” Chafin said, cautioning that the hearing is not the panel's first oversight action, and not the last. “It does not mean that at the same time, either here or in some other venue, the members of the committee and the committee staff may seek to interview and hear from victims from Lackland.”

The hearing from the 62-member committee comes more than a year after the Air Force revealed that Staff Sgt. Luis A. Walker had been charged with the rape and sexual assault of 10 women in basic training. He was given 20 years in prison last summer.

It is the first time Lackland has fallen under the congressional microscope in decades. A House subcommittee investigated the base in 1951 after massive overcrowding prompted rumors of pneumonia deaths.

While 68,731 recruits were there on Jan. 17, 1951, and training was nonexistent, no deaths were reported.

The Air Force said Tuesday that 32 basic training instructors have been under investigation, prompting several Air Force probes.

One report concluded in mid-November that a fractured command culture and “leadership gap” helped fuel the scandal.

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House panel sets hearings on Lackland scandal

The House Armed Services Committee will hold hearings later this month on a widening sex scandal among Air Force basic instructors and recruits at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland.

One source familiar with the process said Monday that the House Armed Services Committee chairman, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, would call hearings on Jan. 23. A spokesman for McKeon, R-Calif., wouldn't confirm the report but did not deny it, noting the committee announces its hearings the week before they occur.

Advocates for military sexual trauma victims and 78 lawmakers on Capitol Hill have demanded hearings on Lackland since the scandal mushroomed last summer amid several Air Force investigations.

So far, 30 instructors at the base, home to Air Force basic training, have fallen under investigation for improper relationships with 56 victims. Last week, Staff Sgt. Christopher Jackson, 29, became the sixth basic training instructor to be convicted of sexual misconduct since April. He was given 100 days in jail, 30 days' hard labor and busted to airman first class. A judge allowed him to remain in the Air Force.

Ten others are headed to court, including Master Sgt. Jamey Crawford, who waived an evidentiary hearing that was to start today, said Brent Boller, a spokesman for Joint Base San Antonio. He could get 22 years in prison and a dishonorable discharge on allegations that include sodomy, giving a false official statement and adultery.

In another case, a hearing begins today for Air Force Tech Sgt. Jaime Rodriguez, a Lake Jackson recruiter facing life on charges of rape and pursing illicit relationships with 18 women.

McKeon's spokesman, Claude Chafin, said details for the congressional hearing were still being ironed out, including how long it might run. He wouldn't say if any of the Lackland victims would testify, only saying, “The witness list is still being looked at.”

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Lawmaker's secret Lackland visit upsets advocates

Advocates on Monday criticized a secretive weekend visit to Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, who left the installation saying he was convinced that the Air Force has adequately responded to a burgeoning sex scandal.

The California Republican, who faces increasing calls for a congressional investigation into the matter, spent three hours at the base Sunday talking to officers, enlisted airmen and about 30 recruits. He said top officials had sufficiently assured him they are making every effort to prevent a repeat of the scandal. So far, 17 basic training instructors at Lackland have been or are being investigated on suspicion of pursuing illicit relationships with 43 female trainees.

“Just because a few people go beyond the bounds of propriety and misuse the authority they've been given — a very important authority — that does not mean they can't clean up the problem,” McKeon told the Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress, after his visit. “They're working on it, and I'm convinced going to do a great job of it.”

McKeon's characterization of the scandal as limited to “a few people” offended advocates, who saw it as an attempt to minimize the cases, which they view as a systemic problem within the Air Force and in the armed services overall.

“It's disheartening that the chair of the House Armed Services Committee is stating that there are only a few people responsible,” said Nancy Parrish, president of Protect Our Defenders, which launched a petition and a Twitter campaign to pressure McKeon to open an investigation and hold public hearings on Lackland. “We're glad he went there and he's showing interest, but it doesn't eliminate the need for hearings into the scandal.”

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Two more Lackland instructors charged in scandal

Two more instructors at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland were charged Tuesday in a growing scandal involving the training staff and female recruits. In all, 12 boot camp instructors are being investigated for having illicit relationships, a number that equals that of the scandal at the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in the mid-1990s.

The Air Force said prosecutors are reviewing a dozen cases at Lackland, all involving noncommissioned officers. Six of them face courts-martial so far.

A congressman asked for an immediate briefing with Gen. Edward Rice Jr., the head of the Air Education and Training Command, after learning of the scope of the misconduct.

“The nature of their position grants (instructors) a great deal of authority over young and impressionable recruits,” said Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, in a written statement.

“During this process, recruits should be learning the leadership values requisite to build the finest Air Force in the world,” he said. “Instead, it appears that a systemic breakdown led to the creation of an environment that harbored the basest level of criminal activity at an unimaginable scale.”

The latest development in the scandal came amid an investigation Rice ordered into potential systemic problems in AETC units that might have played a role in instructor misconduct.

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U.S. rep calls for Lackland hearings

A San Francisco Bay Area congresswoman was expected to send a letter today to the House Armed Services Committee, asking for hearings on a growing sex scandal involving Air Force instructors and trainees in San Antonio.

Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., cited instances of instructor misconduct at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland that have triggered charges against four staff sergeants on the installation, home of Air Force basic training.

“What is happening at Lackland is systemic and warrants this committee's immediate attention,” a draft of the letter states. “In light of the alarming trend of sexual assault cases documented in the military as a whole, it is imperative that Congress hold the military accountable and truly implement a zero-tolerance policy in response to this problem.”

The Air Force has said more instructors are being investigated and revealed in a federal Freedom of Information Act request that 35 Lackland trainers have been yanked from their jobs for various reasons in the past 11 months. The number of those removed because of sexual conduct allegations isn't known; Air Force lawyers only have said it is fewer than half.

One former Lackland basic training instructor, Airman Peter Vega-Maldonado, told a recent evidentiary hearing that as a staff sergeant he had illicit contact with 10 women — not just one, as he pleaded guilty to in a deal that spared him from a bad-conduct discharge. The Air Force hasn't said what Maldonado did with the trainees or if they were in the all-female unit he led until commanders reassigned him three weeks into its training cycle.

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