Michael Hastings rolled out his latest story on a general officer in Afghanistan last week to great fanfare but its clear he and his editors really blew it this time.  By taking the word of a single officer, then only loosely verifying pieces of the story from others, he has instead shown his own ignorance of Army doctrine, the nature of the Afghan training mission headquarters and a fundamental lack of understanding of military protocols. 

As an amateur writer I have been chewing on my own expose of the many failings in the tale of Lieutenant Colonel Michael Holmes and his righteous battle against the forces of evil all weekend.  Then today I came across an incredibly well researched post from fellow retired Lieutenant Colonel and blogger Bruce McQuain who lays out in great detail the fallacies in Hastings story and the real story of the charges leveled against LTC Holmes that led to his ouster from theater with a General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand. 

The facts are pretty clear even now when you look at Holmes' business Facebook page (here: https://www.facebook.com/notes/syzygylogos-llc-a-strategic-communications-firm/syzygy-the-alignment-of-experience-and-inspiration/110437152314114) that he and his subordinate conceived of and launched a business while in theater and then portrayed their duties in country as part of their business venture.  They violated, and are still in violation, of numerous articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as the Joint Ethics Regulations dictating relationships between superiors and subordinates and using your official positions for personal gain.

This is a poorly sourced, completely false story with incorrect accusations and the absolute smartest thing Rolling Stone should do is retract the story in total and issue an apology.  I can't imagine a scenario where that will occur though.  They will stick to their guns and roll out their defenders claiming the Army is trying to hide a secret from the public instead.  I can honestly say from having served in the Iraq sister organization of NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan that there is no credibility to these accusations against LTG Caldwell.

As a professional communicator I was suspicious of Hastings and Rolling Stone's goals from the beginning of this tempest.  The fact that the article used the same "branding" as the one with McChrystal sent my BS radar to maximum.  Titled "Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators" its obvious that they were trying to capture the magic of the last take down that generated the biggest circulation numbers for the magazine in decades along with an award for Hastings.  The editors and Hastings saw dollar signs again so with only a weeks worth of research they took a story that had been turned down by the Tampa Tribune and ran with it.  Now the facts are slowly trickling out and it just doesn't look good for them this go around.

It is to be noted that the Army has the option to recall LTC Holmes and his side-kick MAJ Laurel Levine back to active duty to face criminal charges if the investigation currently being conducted at the direction of General Petraeus finds they violated the UCMJ.  I haven't read it in a while but I am pretty sure slander and libel against a superior officer are in there somewhere.

I will leave it to Bruce McQuain to lay things out much better than I possibly can.  Click on the link to go to the Hot Air site for the rest of his post.  If you have time going, over to 'This ain't Hell's take on it is a lot of fun too: http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=22416

Hot Air: Rolling Stone’s shot at General Caldwell misfires

Apparently, after the article he wrote about Gen. Stanley McChrystal was instrumental in seeing McChrystal relieved of command in Afghanistan, Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone believed he had carved out a niche for himself. Going after the brass in war zones.

However his latest attempt, in which he accuses LTG William Caldwell, the general in charge of the NATO training mission in Afghanistan, of an effort to use “PsyOps” (Psychological Operations) against visiting US Senators misfired badly. For anyone who read the piece and has spent any time at all in the services the picture that formed immediately in the mind, given Hasting’s source, was “disgruntled officer”. And, as it turns out, that’s pretty much on the mark.

Hastings apparently took the word of LTC Michael Holmes as the premise and theme of his article. In fact he sets it up with a quote from Holmes:

“My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave,” says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. “I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line.”

Except LTC Holmes job wasn’t “in psy-ops” (Psychological Operations) nor is LTC Holmes trained in PsyOps. That is a very specific Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) that requires school training. The place in which PsyOps is taught is the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Ft. Bragg, NC. According to Special Operations Command, the Special Warfare School has never heard of LTC Michael Holmes.

Hastings also implies that Holmes received an official reprimand for “bucking orders” associated with the claim he was to use “psy-ops” on Senators. In fact he was instead cited for numerous violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) that included ignoring orders not to go off post in civilian clothes, surrendering his weapon to civilians in civilian restaurants, conflict of interest and telling falsehoods to superiors, among others. The reprimand Holmes received had little if anything to do with the reason implied by Hastings.

When asked by his immediate supervisor, a Colonel, whether LTC Holmes had permission to leave post in civilian clothes, Holmes told his his boss that the former Chief of Staff of the US’s Afghan Training Mission had given he and MAJ Laural Levine permission to wear civilian clothes off post. However, when contacted by the officer who conducted the Command’s AR 15-6 investigation into the matter, the former Chief of Staff, in a sworn statement, denied ever giving anyone blanket permission to wear civilian clothes or dine off post. For one thing, he didn’t have the authority to do such a thing. The former Chief of Staff stated that any such permission would have to be given by a general officer as required by the two different command policies. In this case that permission would have had to come from LTG Caldwell. No such permission was ever given. By claiming that the Chief of Staff had given them permission when that wasn’t the case, Holmes and Levine were in violation of Article 107 of the UCMJ – making a false official statement.

Another officer who was invited to go out with LTC Holmes and his subordinate, MAJ Levine, gave a sworn statement that Holmes said that he and Levine routinely went off post to restaurants in civilian clothes for social purposes not official business, that they surrendered their weapons at the Afghan civilian establishments and that they drank alcohol. All of those activities are in direct contravention of standing orders and policies in Afghanistan. The officer who gave the sworn statement declined the invitation to go with them.

The conflict of interest charge came about when Holmes and Levine decided they could use their experience in strategic communications to start a civilian business. On its face, there’s nothing wrong with that if you wait until you’re in a civilian capacity to do so. But when you use duty time and DoD assets to promote your business, or misrepresent your duty as something other than it is, that raises definite ethical problems. Holmes and Levine did both of these things. And as such were in violation of numerous parts of the Joint Ethics Regulations.

For instance, they used their DoD positions for their own personal gain, namely to pass off their work in training Afghans from the Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Defense as work done on behalf of their company SyzygyLogos LLC. On the company’s Facebook page, in an entery dated April 8th, 2010, you’ll see pictures of Holmes, in civilian dress, under a post title which says, “SyzygyLogos LLC, A Strategic Communications Firm – Images from our training sessions with the Afghan Government.”

That was clearly done with the intent to generate business for their private company. Additionally they listed either the US Government or the Afghan MoI and MoD as their “current clients”. All of this activity violated UCMJ article 92 (Failure to obey an order or regulation – i.e. the ethics regulation). Both the article 92 and 107 violations also lead to a third UCMJ charge for LTC Holmes, violation of article 133 (conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman).

Read the rest of this post: http://hotair.com/archives/2011/02/28/rolling-stones-shot-at-general-caldwell-misfires/?print=1