Transcripts For CSPAN3 Senior Military Leader Misconduct 20180208

A House Committee held a hearing yesterday on how the pentagon investigates misconduct by Senior Officers and leaders in the military. The inspectors general of the army, navy, air force and marine corps testified. Colorado congressman mike coffman chaired the hearing. This subcommittee hearing is called to order. I want to welcome everyone to this mornings military personnel subcommittee hearing. The purpose of todays hearing is to receive testimony from the department of defense in the services regarding efforts they have taken to investigate and hold Senior Leaders accountable for misconduct, and to understand what programs and policies are in place to prevent misconduct. Our military enjoys the highest confidence, rating by far of any institutions in american society. This welldeserved reputation has been earned through the service and sacrifice of millions of brave men and women. One byproduct of this reputation is that the military and its leaders are held to a much higher standard than almost any other institution. And i know that you wouldnt have it any other way. Consequently, the misconduct of a few can greatly impact the militarys hardearned reputation. When the misconduct involves flag or General Officers, the negative effects are even greater. These incidents of Senior Leader misconduct, even though relatively rare, not only hurt the victims involved, but can have a Lasting Impact on the readiness of the unit in which the Senior Leader has served. One incident of Senior Leader misconduct is too many, it is important to acknowledge that the vast majority of Senior Leaders serve with distinction. It is also important to acknowledge that some of the acts of mission conduct that the military investigates and punishes would not be investigated much less punished in the civilian world. Nonetheless, military leadership must continue to ensure that all Senior Leaders uphold the highest standards of ethical conduct and when Senior Leaders fall short, they must be held appropriately accountable. We will hear from two panels today. The first panel consists of the department of defense and Services Inspector inspectors general. They will discuss the reporting and investigation of Senior Leader misconduct in addition to the types of cases they investigate. For the second panel, we are honored to have the vice chiefs of the army, navy, and air force, along with the assistant commandant of the marine corps. They will discuss what happens to those i. G. Investigations if they are substantiated, how they hold individuals accountable, and they will provide an overview of their prevention programs. I look forward to hearing from our Witnesses Today about ethics and mentorship programs in place to prevent misconduct. Im also interested to hear how the services investigate misconduct allegations and hold wroc wrongdoers accountable. Additionally, id like to know what trends have developed with regard to the types of issues that are being reported and investigated. Finally, i look forward to hearing what additional actions can be taken to further reduce incidents of Senior Leader misconduct. I would like to make two other administrative points. First, it is important to note that the department of defenses common definition of Senior Leader of senior official includes an officer in the grade of 07 and above, including officers who have been selected for promotion to 07, or civilian member of the Senior Executive service. For the purposes of todays hearing, and consistent with the jurisdiction of this subcommittee, the witnesses have been asked to focus on misconduct by senior military officers in the rank of 07 select and above. I would also like to remind the members that the Witnesses Today may not be able to answer certain questions regarding specific cases if the answer would compromise an ongoing investigation. Or would give rise to an accusation that the military has prejudged the outcome of a pending investigation. Before i introduce our first panel, let me offer the Ranking Member, miss speier, an opportunity to make her opening remarks. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being here today, excuse me, and for your service to our country. You know, one of the core tenets of the Armed Services and of our country is no one is above the law. From the most recent recruit to the most senior officer, all Service Members are subject to the same ucmj laws and the same ucmj laws and same ethical code of conduct. But there is a phrase in the military that goes like this. Different spanks for different ranks. And as don christianson, the former general counsel for the air force said, and i quote, every day, troop is court marshaled for what a General Officer is given a slap on the wrist. So its with great sorrow and anger that i have read countless reports of misconduct among Senior Leaders including General Officers and admirals. This is borne out by the data on page 66 of an 85page d oorod Inspector General report on, quote, top dod management challenges, unquote, is a finding of a 13 increase in complaints alleging misconduct by senior officials, from fiscal year 2015 to fiscal year 2017, from 710 to 803. An increase in substantiated rate increase from 26 to 37 . The most common allegations involved personal misconduct including improper relationships, improper personnel actions, misuse of governmental resources, and travel violations. In my time on this committee, ive heard over and over the importance of the chain of command and how it leads to better justice outcomes, but many Senior Leaders who should be the essential core of the chain of command are not being held to the same standard as the rank and file. This corrupts fairness, justice, and morale. To illustrate the severity of this problem, i want to highlight five cases of Senior Leader misconduct from just the last few years. As you will see, these Senior Leaders committed serious crimes and rule violations, yet received only light, administrative, not judicial punishments. Most got no public scrutiny until journalists inquired about their cases. Army Major General john custer had an inappropriate relationship with a woman, had his staff buy her sexy clothes and lied to investigators about it. Lucky for him, general martin dempsey, then custers commander, removed im underscoring this removed the substantiated account of an inappropriate relationship from custers record. How do you do that . So the review board could only consider lesser charges. Custer retired at a rank and kept his pension. So he retired at rank and kept his pension. The public only knows about this incident because a whistleblower told usa today. Second, air force general arthur lichety was alleged to have coerced sex from a subordinate in 2007 and 2009. His victim believed she had to reciprocate the generals advances due to his rank and position. He was reprimanded and demoted to Major General, but not for command rape, but for a, quote, inappropriate sexual relationship. Army Major General ralph baker assaulted a woman at an offbase event. For this, he received a letter of reprimand and retired as a brigadier general. The public learned about this nine months after it happened following a foia request. Army Major General david hates exploits earned him the nickname, swinging general. He had an 11year affair and regularly swapped sexual partners which made him a foreign intelligence threat and target. As punishment haight was reprimanded and targeted as a colonel. Make no mistake, not all misconduct is sexual. At west point the man in charge of teaching ethics, general david pontoon jr. Made his staff work at private charity dinners, give free driving lessons and feed a friends cat. He received a reprimand and retired at rank. The i. G. Report was kept secret for more than a year and only released via foia as he neared retirement. Colleagues, these are just five stories out of an estimated 500 since 2013. They dont even include criminal misconduct of the types weve seen in the fat leonard case in which 330 Navy Personnel including 60 current and retired admirals are under investigation for accepting bribes and gifts. And these arent just ordinary bribes and gifts. Some of them included an 18,000 dinner or a 50,000 stay in a swank hotel. Sometimes these bribes and gifts were exchanged for revealing classified information. But i picked them because they are illustrative of a deep and systemic problem in the Armed Services. Leaders set the standard, and when that leadership is toxic, it drips down to all levels of the military. Based on the dod Inspector Generals own data, it is clear that the Current System of deterrence is not working. In todays hearing, i want to hear from all our panelists about what they are doing to exert sufficient oversight. In the case of the Inspector General, how are they working to increase accountability and transparency . In the case of the vice chiefs, what are they doing to combat criminal behavior and corruption . Thank you, mr. Chairman, and i look forward to hearing from our witnesses. I thank the Ranking Member. We will give each witness the opportunity to present his or her testimony and each member an opportunity to question the witnesses for five minutes. We would also respectfully remind the witnesses to summarize to the greatest extent possible the high points of your written testimony in five minutes or less. Your written comments and statements will be made part of the hearing record. Let me welcome our first panel, mr. Glenn a. Fine. Principal deputy Inspector General at the United States department of defense. Lieutenant general david e. Quantock, Inspector General of the United States army. Vice admiral herman shelanski, naval Inspector General. Lieutenant general stacye d. Harris. Inspector general of the air force. Regular general david a. Ottignon. Inspector general of the marine corps. With that, mr. Fine, youre recognized for your opening statement. Chairman coffman, Ranking Member speier, members of the subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me to testify about the work of the office of defense Inspector General regarding senior misconduct, prevention and accountability. In my written statement, i describe how the dodoji investigates allegations of senior official misconduct and oversees military investigations of these allegations. In addition, ive provided statistics and trends on the number of misconduct complaints, the types of misconduct, the number of investigations, the timeliness of investigations and substantiation rates for both the dodoig and the service i. G. Investigations. I also provide additional statistics for a particular type of misconduct, allegations of retaliation and reprisal by senior officials against whistleblowers. In my oral testimony i would like to highlight a few key points from that statement. First, i believe it is important to recognize that the vast majority of senior officials in the dod perform their challenging jobs with dedication and integrity. My experience, both as the i. G. Of the Justice Department overseeing the doj and the fbi for 11 years, and from my experience for over two years performing the duties of the dod Inspector General, is that only a very small percentage of these senior officials fail to uphold the high ideals and ethics required of their critical positions. However, some do commit misconduct. When they do, they need to be held accountable. The dodoig and service i. G. S therefore seek to investigate allegations of misconduct in a thorough, fair, professional, and timely way. Second, the data i present in my written statement show that there were a significant increase in the number of complaints alleging misconduct from senior dod officials from fy 2008 to fy 2012 and since then the number of these complaints has been steady. During the same period, the number of allegations warranting investigation by the dodoig or Service Component i. G. S has decreased. Overall, the number of senior cases with any findings of substantiation substantiated misconduct rose between fy 2008 and 2012 from 40 to 85, but has declined since then to 49 in fy 2017. However, i want to make clear our recognition that any misconduct by a senior official is unacceptable. Third, while the types of substantiated allegations against senior officials involve a broad range of misconduct, the allegations primarily fell within five main categories which i describe in my written statement. Within these categories, there are several areas of particular concern. For example, there are a number of substantiated allegations against senior officials engaged in an inappropriate relationships, and these cases have received substantial public attention. Fourth, the dodoig also has a criminal investigative arm, the defense criminal investigative service, dcis, to handle investigations of criminal allegations. Currently the biggest case dcis is handling involves leonard francis, widely known as the fat leonard case. Gdma provided Husbandry Services to the pacific such as refueling and resupply. Francis orchestrated a scheme for routinely overbilling for goods and services. He accomplished this conduct by systematically grooming and bribing active military with things of value, such as hotels, gifts, and the services of prostitutes. To date, francis and several former navy and dod officials including a rear admiral and ses member pled guilty to criminal conduct. In addition, in 2017, nine senior officials previously assigned to the navys seventh fleet were indicted for conspiracy, bribery and false statements. That case is ongoing. Finally, my written statement discusses measures the dodoig has implemented to further improve investigations of misconduct. For example, to standardize investigations across the dod and to speed the review process we are working to implement a standardized Case Management database among dod and i. G. Military service i. G. S. So secure compliance with laws and regulations and to assure best practices among the service igs, we have begun conducting Quality Assessment reviews of the service i. G. S similar to peer reviews. To promote fairness, the dodoig provides subjects an opportunity to comment on the accuracy of our substantiated findings through the tentative conclusions letter process prior to completion of our final report. To promote transparency, the dodoig considers proactive public release of our completed substantiated reports, particularly with those with findings of substantiated misconduct involving highlevel officials. To help address timeliness, we have also reallocated resources within the dodoig to increase the number of investigators working on misconduct and whistleblower cases. However, handling the increasing number of complexity of complaints requires resources not only for the dodoig but also the service and component i. G. S. It is critical to resource the dod, oig, and service and component i. G. S particularly when the dod continues to grow. In conclude, the dodoig and service i. G. S have a challenging but critically Important Mission to investigate allegations of misconduct thoroughly, fairly, professionally and timely and we will continue to seek to fulfill that important responsibility. That concludes my statement and i will be glad to answer any questions. Thank you, mr. Final. Lieutenant general quantock . Thank you, sir. Chairman coffman, Ranking Member speier, thank you for the opportunity to testify on Senior Leader misconduct. On belaugh of the army, our chief of staff, thank you for your support of our soldiers, army civilians, families, and veterans. The army holds its Senior Leaders to the highest st eses s standards. The trust and confidence of the American People which is intrinsic to who we are as an army is rooted in our character and our credibility. We do acknowledge problems exist and we take senior misconduct very seriously. Over the past decade, substantiated allegations against only 3 of the General Officer population per year. While recent headlines and army senior misconduct give the appearance of widespread misbehavior, the truth is most transgressions are technical violations committed by a very small minority. The most common substantiated allegations involving General Officers are misuse of Government Resources, failure to follow regulations and failure to take action. Substantiated allegations for inappropriate relationships or Sexual Misconduct over the past decade involve less than 1 of General Officers. This small fraction of Senior Leaders does not represent the Honorable Service and character of the entire General Officer corps. Whistleblower reprisal remains the number one allegation. The substantiation rate for whistleblower reprisal cases is 4 . A significant factor in the low 4 substantiation rate is the misuse of the whistleblower reprisal process. This typically occurs when a soldier or civilian is held accountable by a senior official for misconduct or poor performance. Following a protected communication. The resulting claim of reprisal creates challenges for senior commanders who hold people accountable and are faced with an inspector whistleblower reprisal investigations. In the last three years, whistleblower reprisal has basically had a sixfold increase and is out of control, in my view. The vast majority of the 685 General Officers serving are doing the right thing every single day. The positive trend over the past five years has been a 51 reduction in the number of General Officer substantiated cases from 32 in 2013 to 15 last year. This includes a decrease in substantial allegations for official travel violations. Inappropriate political activities. Nonfederal entities involvement. Conflicts of interest and improper endorsements. In closing, the overwhelming majority of army General Officers abide by the letter and spirit of our laws and regulations and utilize sound judgment in the stewardship of taxpayer resources. Those who do not are held accountable. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for your continued support of our soldiers, our civilians, families and veterans. I look forward to your questions. Thank you, general quantock, for your testimony. Vice admiral shelanski, youre now recognized. General coffman, Ranking Member spier, military subcommittee members. Thank you very much for having us here to discuss Senior Leader misconduct and tint to opportun explain our Senior Leader investigator process. In the navy we take pride in living up to our core values of honor, courage, and commitment. We expect the highest ethical and moral behaviors of our Senior Leaders. Therefore, we take any allegations of misconduct very seriously and where appropriate, investigate, and when substantiated, hold our people accountable when they do not meet our High Standards. To be clear, there must be a violation of rule, regulation, or law. Theres a process in place with many offices that handle this range of violations. Our primary role as the i. G. Is to conduct administrative investigations, not criminal or ucmj cases. When we receive complaints on flag officers from our hotline, congress or referral from the dod, we will open an investigation on credible allegations of misconduct against one and twostar admirals. The investigation process is fair, deliberate, and thorough. Our investigators are highly trained and experienced professionals who rigidly adhere to the Inspector General on integrity and efficiency standards. We constantly strive through process improvements to produce ever more timely reports without sacrificing professional Due Diligence. Our investigators receive lots of oversight from our division directors, to legal review, to a dod review, and their ultimate approval. At the end of our investigation, all reports go to the cno and the secretary of the navy. If any allegation is substantiated, we submit a request to the offices of vcno that appropriate corrective action be taken through formal disciplinary action. Receive a copy of the documen d documented and provided by the dodig. This information will remain in the officers record for the entirety of their career. In the last five years we have seen a steady increase in the number of overall and also a decrease in the number of patients substantiated. The most common categories of substantiated offenses weve seen are misuse of government vehicles and drivers, for personal use. Improper gift acceptance. In conclusion, i believe that our investigative process is a necessary and effective tool to address questionable, ethical, behaviors, by Senior Leaders. Thank you for your continued support. I look forward to your questions. Thank you, vice admiral shelanski. Lieutenant general harris, youre now recognized. Zpr chairman coffman, Ranking Member speier, distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for your invitation to testify before you today. As the air force Inspector General, im responsible to independently and continuously inspect, assess, investigate, and report to the secretary of the air force on the readiness, economy, efficiency, and discipline of our force. And with the air force core values of integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do, i take special pride in helping ensure our air man live up to those values. Misconduct by air force Senior Officers erode the trust in our service, trust of our air man, and the trust of our country. Your air force is committed to the development of ethical air man leaders and we are equally determined to ensure accountability when standards are violated. And part of my responsibility includes resolution of complaints against air force General Officers, officers selected for promotion to bringing dar general, and retired officers. The top three categories of violations may be generally categorized asset iks, improper handling of mat ters, and unprofessional matters. Every complaint against an officer is diligently acted upon. Investigating officers, augmented by embedded attorneys, from the office of the air force judge general. Senior officer investigations are impartial, objective, and we are careful to meet all legal requirements. This important work of ensuring accountability in our most Senior Leaders promotes the discipline, efficiency, and economy of our force. Our process in conducting senior officer investigations includes multiple layers of internal review with every investigation receiving a separate and independent legal review signed by the director of Administrative Law for the air force. And upon complexion of the investigation, Inspector General provides an oversight review. Investigations with substantiated allegations are referred to the appropriate command authority to determine what disciplinary action is warranted. And finally my deputy and i use a variety of venues and products to promote education and awareness across our senior officer population. It is important to me that we not only investigate complaints but work to reduce the conduct by these high ranking leaders. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member speier, members of the subcommittee, i appreciate the committees continuing support of air force and prevent misconduct by Senior Officers. I look forward tour questions. Thank you, Lieutenant General harris. Bringing a dar general. You are now recognized. Thank you, mr. Chairman. How do you say it. Its pronounced ot a began. I was close. Thank you. Distinguished members of the committee on military personnel, thank you for the opportunity to testify about this important topic. My office provides secretary of the navy and common of the marine corps incredible means to investigate or inquire into allegations of senior official misconduct, in propriety or violation of law. I oversee a group of 25 dedicated professionals committed to upholding the laws that govern the service. In the past ten years h 15 marine corps generals were substantiated by a thorough investigation process led by an Inspector General, most were violations of processes and standard of conduct. None of them were criminal in nature. Ive complete confidence in the investigative process and Due Diligence taken with each and every allegation brought forward. Every General Officer investigation is reviewed for legal sufficiency and requires department of defense Inspector General oversight. The seriousness of which the marine corps approaches character, leadership is a parent in the demanding standards that we expect all our leaders to uphold. In the last year, my office has traveled around the globe conducting training with commanding generals across the core, and conducting thorough inspections to ensure that the application of our standards are consistent with our foundational core values of honor, courage, and commitment. On behalf of the secretary and navy and marine corps we thank congress and this subcommittee for opportunity to discuss such an important issue with you this morning and your continued sport for our United States marine corps and its families. I look forward to the opportunity to answer your questions. Thank you, for your testimony. Well limit for five minutes for the first panel. Some of you mentioned during your testimony that there is it a wide scope of misconduct that you investigate. Could you please give some additional examples of the types of cases you investigate . And if you see any misconduct trends emerging. Why dont we start with you, lieutenant joel quantock. Yells, sir, im looking at lt year, we had one particular General Officer that basically lied on his pt test, height and weight type stuff. One that inappropriately approved a fly over. So misuse of Government Resources. The dignity and respect, how they treated subordinates what they were substantiated for. Improperly using ig investigation at the junior levels was substantiated. So those are misuse of subordinate times. Weve made huge effort getting after cases where General Officers make technical type of mistakes with subordinates primarily. We all have staffs. And a lot of times our staffs try to do good things for us and try to make our life a little nicer. We beat the held out of that. We have exportable training package. We encourage them to sit down, 75 pages of slides, basically vignettes what has gotten General Officers in trouble. Use of travel. Rental cars, all those sorts of things sets folks up for trouble. Dignity and respect is publicly humiliating someone. But that package is leading reasons in 2013 we had out of 685 down to 15 that we have in this last year, a lot of the technical violations have been weeded out. So we continue to work this piece hard. Not to mention all of the efforts of the Senior Leadership to get out there and make their vision wellknown. Yes, sir. So for us over the last three years, a decrease trend wise in sub st substantiated cases. So 10 in 2013. Looks like 7 in 2017. In general, most of the cases are about gifts, acceptance and soluti solicitation. So these are the technical im going out to lunch and accepted a gift of lunch from a contractor that was more than the acceptable limit. Its also in terms of endorsing nonfederal entities. So there are certain charities that were not supposed to, unless federally recognized in our official capacity, we are not allowed to endorse them. So one of our flag officers was seen to endorse it inappropriately. But of course mistakenly. Did not know that at the time. Also, some page benefiying bene. So leave statements, so inappropriate documentation of leave. And so those are very technical violations in general. So nothing in the order of larger, in specific, no Sexual Harassment or any of those types of trends. Thank you. The greatest majority of our violations have been ethics violations, as has been mentioned by my peers, misuse of subordinates time, vehicle, gifts, employment, but whats important is how we proactively within the ig intenterprise go and educate them on the different pitfalls and opportunities to lead the right example and to let them know what to look out for. And there is complaints sometimes that people dont think that would be an issue giving out a challenge coin to a contractor would be a violation. But we continually educate our personnel on what the pitfalls or are and what she should do to correct that. Wherein the career track to do you do that . In the very beginning. Sir, in the last three years weve had four substantiations all of those administrative in nature, physical fitness violations, one was regards to training h training. So our trend lines are all administrative in nature. Coffman, if i could add, since we have oversight, we have accumulated all the da ta on th types of misconduct on page 10 of my testimony, five categories, such as improper accepting services from subordinate, sexual relationships with subordinates, required them to perform personal services for them, misusing official position. Second one is improper Personnel Matters which also includes improper contact. Third is misuse of Government Resources such as using vehicles to commute improperly or government aircraft. And the fourth is travel violations. Traveling for purely personal reasons. And the fifth is other such as contracts. Page 11 we discuss the trend lines. And trend lines are generally down but still significant in these categories. And in particular interest i think the committee is the inappropriately relationship category on page 12 we talk about how many across the service and there has been a steady number of them. There were 10 in 2013 substantiated findings. And in subsequent years im afraid im out of time. Ill have to, Ranking Member speier. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Id like to put a chart up, if we could, that shows each of the services, and this is for you to start, mr. Fine. So in the air force l the total closed cases were 54, 54 were dismissed. 0 were investigated in the air force. In the army, 101. 101 dismissed. 0 investigated. Defense agency, 111, 110, dismissed one was investigated. 36 in the navy, 36 dismissed. 0 investigated. Are you basically saying that none of these cases even deserved to be investigated . So that chart represents from our semi annual report. One half of a year. Half of a year in 2017. What we have is in my testimony is a chart describing the number of cases involving senior official misconduct over all for the last ten years. And there is it a substantial number investigated. The chart that was up there has to do with i think three star and four stars which are the highest levels ones. So this chart has to do with senior official cases including two stars, one stars, 07 promotables, ses employees, et cetera. We do look at all these cases seriously. We do intake. We determine whether it warrants an investigation. And these are the ones that did warrant investigation against the high level officials who was investigating against. But as you can see from my chart on page 8 there is significant number of ones that are investigated and are substantiated. So im totally confused then. It says 0 of these out of 312 cases, 311 of them were dismissed. Only one w are you basically telling us all of these cases were bogus . No. And what this chart also is probably confusing chart. The top part is the dod receiving those cases. Many of them are referred down to the service or agency and investigated and closed by them. So if there is 54, for example, that we get, these are the numbers we investigate. And we refer them down to the air force, the army, marine corps and the navy and they investigate them and have investigated many of them. Well, its still not making any sense to me. So there is 54 that you receive from the air force. Why do you use the term dismissed if you were forwarding them to the air force ig . So we receive far more than those and we refer many of them, 12 of them to the air force for example. And of the others we do not we do intake and determine they dont require an investigation. But there are a number of them that do require investigation, as indicated by the chart below, the numbers below. Well, the numbers below are the ones investigated by the service igs. Right. It looks like you are not investigating any by this chart. I dont want to take a lot of time on this. I think this chart needs to be reviewed and id like for you to come to my office, i dont know if mr. Coffman would be inclined to hear more about this, but this is deeply troubling to me. All right. In one of the cases that i mentioned, there was a recommendation by the ig of Holding Someone accountable for substantiated claims. And then it went to, in this case, general dempsey, who just struck one of the substantiated claims. How often does that happen . We have a chart on page 14 that it happens sometimes. Of the allegations of 427 allegations of substantiated misconduct over i think fiveyear period, 29 declined to take action and about 80 of them are still pending. So in a small percentage of allegations, they are the Services Decline to take action. So you are saying i didnt did you not present your document to us until yesterday, is that what this situation is, so i still dont have a copy. Could you go over that for me . Certainly. On page 12, we discussed corrective actions by rank of senior official. And this is over from fy 2013 to 2017. And we describe the corrective action taken, from letter of counseling to suspension to remove from assignment. Of those the top line is declined to take action, 29, in 29 of 427 substantiated Allegations Service declined to take action. All right. Would you please provide to me, for me, in those 29 cases where they decline to take action, the specifics. Because i find it unjustified to have Inspector Generals go through the process of determining through investigation conduct that is inappropriate, have that be presented to the chiefs, and then have them just strike it as if it doesnt exist as it happened in the custer case. I mean, thats fraudulent, as far as im concerned. With that, mr. Chairman, ill yield back. You are now recognized. Thank you for all being here today. I want to take a couple questions for service represe s represents. I find most commanders try their best to do the right job on this thing, but there are some bad decisions jush as some judges and District Attorneys have. We strive to be the very best we can and try to get as close to per effect as we can. So question ill come back to you on if we take commanders out of the process, what would be the impact on the mission or the impact on morale from your opinion . Secondly, how would you address the Ranking Members point different spanks for different ranks . Mr. Fine, my data shows we have leaders. Roughly, if you could give an average, how many allegations are made a year against those 2327 Senior Leaders . About 800. In our testimony, we discuss how many have been made over the last ten years. In 2008, 395. So 395 out of 2,000 . And now 803. That seems like a lot for 2,000 leaders. Those are the allegations, correct. Out of those allegations how many substantiated . 83. So 83. And what would that come out as a percentage . I guess 33 i think you had of the allegations substantiated . Well, of the cases that we actually investigate, 30 of them. 30 are substantiated. And they range from overdue reports to the more serious . Correct. So many of these would be things no where criminal in the private sector. Most of these, very few are very, very small percentage are criminal. If you give me your thoughts, how many would you say Senior Leaders have done something criminal, Sexual Assault for example out of last year data, one or two, three or four . Very few have done criminal misconduct except ill mention the gdma case, francis case, which is whole another thing. Criminal. Which is criminal. So talking less than a handful out of this 2300 plus Senior Officers have done something criminal . Yes. Thank you very much. One other thing. One of the things that concerns me is the length of time to investigate. When you have people under investigation for two years and then exonerated and the career is over, seems to me that we have to do Something Better there. A person, ive never been investigated, thank youing the all mi a almighty, but some have been investigated for years. Can we do better . Yes, we understand that. Your promotion is held up and difficult to be under the microscope. And most of them are clear to the end. So we do strive for timeliness. With the number of investigations we want to be thorough. So its a balance. Some we handle quickly and some take longer. Having said that, all of the igs are moving to try and increase our time limits without sacrificing quality, accuracy and thoroughness. Thank you. Now go to our service represents and first question. If we take commanders out of the process, what do you think the impact is on your service . Absolutely devastating. Company all the way up to 2 star commander. Absolutely devastating. We are not walmart. We send soldiers to do very dangerous things. I lost 13 soldiers, over 200 purple hearts, escort convoys, put their lives on the lines. So some folks may have problem with some of the orders we give. But we have to give them. So it would be devastating. So to be able to have control over the carrot and the stick for another word that you could use, you have to have a lot of carrots but also have the stick to hold people accountable and uphold the high values we have in the army that are not really applicable to uniform code of military justice. It would be absolutely devastating. And we are right now the greatest service the world has ever seen. And we would become a thirld world country army if we were to remove commanders from the justice. Thank you. Ill come back at different ranks. Admiral shelanski. Yes, sir. Ill agree with general kwan k tok. And the morale of the crew, because they expect also fairness and justice throughout their command. And they hold each other accountable. And one of their ship mates is not doing the right thing, they want them to be held accountable, and thats got to be done quickly and efficiently. I saw that in the air force commander downgraded Court Martial and held accountable with that. With that, chairman, ill come back with my second round to finish these questions with the service represents. So ill come back to you later on my second round with that. Thank you. Now recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I think we would all agree that the military is a rightly honored institution. We would not be the country we are without it. But as we have heard and so tr e true, so as we engage in the oversight of this process, and im grateful for this hearing, i think we have to be reassured that the process is not biased in favor of those Senior Leaders being investigated. So i have to say at the outset, it really concerns me that in each service it is a General Officer who functions as an Inspector General. It just seems to me that there is an inherent conflict there and possibly an inherent tilt in the process in favor of the General Officer. I dont necessarily want you all to comment on it, but i think its something that we all have to take into account. But given that that is the fact, im curious who provides oversight of all your work and makes sure that there is no inherent bias. That it is being performed correctly to be sure that we are truly identifying misconduct and holding General Officers responsible. So id like to start with you, mr. Fine. So we as the dod do provide over site over the service. We review the reports to make sure they are complete and have done all that they should do to investigate and to interview the appropriate people. So we do that level of oversight. We also have gun doing what we call Quality Assurance reviews similar to peer review look at processes and procedures systematic way to make sure they are following the results and regulations and add hearing to quality standards and doing the right thing. So we provide that oversight. One of the questions often asks is who oversees us . We are over seen by other ig rs, they have a peer review pros stes and also regular over seen by others. So we provide over us and u over them. And thats a good thing. Do you have the ability to refer a case back if you think he it hasnt been appropriately investigated . Yes, we do. And we do that. How often have you done that . I dont have the exact numbers. We review the report and there are times that is not supported by the efrd vidence, rerefer ba for additional work. I dont know how you would comment how you do your job in a way that you feel is fair minded given that you represent and come out of the service you are overseeing . Yes, congressman, i would say a couple of things. My last man, i was commander so when i left the job i have three friends. After this friend i have no friends. So the fact this is not a highly sought after job because we make hard calls with the dod oversight, it is very fair process. Just about the investigators do majority of my cases are civilians. So many of them have extensive years of experience. One of my investigators has 18 years. Another has ten years of these kinds of cases. So it is very well. Not only that we have many levels of legal review of these cases to ensure we are doing due process, both with the complaint and subject. Once an investigation is done, legal review. After that, it goes to my lawyer. He does the legal review. After that, it goes to the office of general counsel for their legal review. After ive had three legal reviews and ive read the case and understand and sign the case. Are the findings con include stiff or can you reject the findings . I have never rejected findings that have been brought to me. So after all of this scrutiny that goes on with these things, i can almost exclusively say i have overturned one case that has been brought to me. I sign it, it goes to dodig for their oversight review. So it is a very fair and thorough process. So only somebody higher up in the chain that could reject the findings . Or would likely reject it . After we get done with a case, it gets adjudicated for cases, thats what happens. We are calling balls and strikes. Did they violate yes or no. If the answer is yes, substantiation holds even for small technical violations. Then it goeses after the review, it goes over to the lawyers side of the army, t jag. They basically put the case together and brings it to the adjudicateor vice chief of staff in the army, and the vice chief of staff under advice of counsel holds the person accountable according to due pros stes and the facts in the case. I appreciate. We dont have time to hear from everybody. But i do feel its deeply concerning you are generals in the service you are overseeing, and i do think its civilian oversight perhaps would at least eliminate the appearance. We have a lot of oversight. The army is made up of soldiers. Mass majority of our army is soldiers. And i believe having been commander an um inform times i can also look at the case and also understand. Because again we are representing the army. I am the army Inspector General. And i think from our soldiers perspective t at least vast majority who are soldiers, and know the fact that the person calling the shots that the ig has been a former commander themselves from captain up to my last position, i think its important that that person is a soldier, a seller and air man ma rin. We can agree to disagree. Thank you my time is up. Thank you. Doctor abraham you are now recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Just a statement first. As a congressman and surely as general public, we want to know that the process is intact. And what im hearing from the panel is process is good. And that it is accountable and more importantly its responsible for the actions that are found. Certainly as a physician, i am judged by my peers on the physician side. So i youve got to have peer review. And i certainly dont think there is any conflict from being reviewed by your peers. When ive asked for private conversations with several of the vice chiefs behind you ive gotten them and they have been very forthcoming answers to questions. So i appreciate the openness that you afforded me. So again just a statement that i like the process. I think the process is good. And what im hearing is that the process is working because we are seeing a decrease, not only in severity of the accusations but in the total number too. And im going to yield the rest of my time back to general bacon so he can continue his dialogue. Thank you. What would be the impact of taking the commanders out of this discipline process, joe harris, what would be your perspective from the air force . Sir, i agree with my peers it would be absolutely devastating. Annie rode the good discipline in order in our force. And as far as disparity and punishments, our data that i reviewed doesnt support that we hold our officers actually to higher standard of accountability. And actually two other articles of the uniform code of justice 133 which is oncoming and 134 which holds us accountable. Thank you. I agree with my peers as well. I think removing the commander from the process would have grave implications to the good order in the organization, fighting organization. And i agree also that the data doesnt show that. I this i we hold othink we hold leaders more accountable in the marine corps. And going back to the different spanks and different ranks. Any feedback on that . Yes, congressman. I would tell you if i had to look at all the cases i looked at as my last job and now as the ig, its about six and a half years, i would tell you its hugely swayed on the part of a General Officer being crushed, okay, for substantiation. And how is that . What is the egregious kinds of offenses we have . Inappropriate relationships. Now i have adjudicated junior soldiers for inappropriate relationships. Letter of reprimand. However, on the General Officer side they are done. In the first class isnt going to get promoted either but he wont go backwards. That General Office is done. Sometimes hell retire at grade less. So being find for that. So we can discount that soldier has been in combat multiple times, thats what wed like to do sometimes by saying well we should take his retirement away. But what we have done is separated him from his family mult tal times, sometimes years at a time, and then we say the person doesnt deserve anything . Again, a lot of times we forget about that none of us at this table came in the army as generals. I spent 27 years coming up the chain just like everybody else and ive been 11 years as General Officer. I can tell you we crush General Officers. And should they be crushed for these kind of offenses . Absolutely. They know since the time they were Second Lieutenant what is right and wrong. And when they do it they expect the consequences and we should hold them accountable. I felt that way as General Officer in the air force. Thank you. Admiral shelanski. I agree. And one particular case that we would have that i could give you as an example flag officer viewing pornography on government laptop on ship. That happened with enlisted sail lower, that probably reduced, held six months then taken their rights away to utilize the computer. Once the six months is up, back in their job as a sailor. Flag officer removed from his position and retired as 06. Much harsher and much more deeply pressing for his career. One question ill leave for anybody if they want to answer the question. Does anyone here thinking it would be better to bring a judge from outside to adjudicate these or District Attorney outside of the military would do this better . Only if you want to make the system much longer and hold people in suspended animation forever. Thats the problem when you go to simply jurist prudence system. We all have advice. But i get advice as commander from many different individuals. So i think that would be a huge mistake. Also ive been trying to find the perfect profession. So as i look around, all of the professions out there, i havent found one. We are not either. We try real hard to be that. And we hold people accountable even for minor discretions or violations of army regulations. Thank you very much. And i thank dr. Abraham for yielding to me. Back to the chairman. Dr. Wenstrup, you are now recognized for five minutes. Thank you. Thanks for approach a difficult topic for everyone involved. Ill say, and especially with what you just said, general, they say to whom much is given much is expected, although i wouldnt say rank is given. It is often earned. But expectation is much greater. And i think thats a fair assessment. You do expect more from your officers. And especially your General Officers as you go up in ranks. So i appreciate that feedback. Mr. Fine, you mentioned earlier about the gathering data from the igs. What do you see down the road with this . Is it going to set a tone for what type of punishment is appropriate or what legal actions we need to take . What do you expect to gain from that as that comes together . Well, we regularly gather that data and i think its important to report that to see what is going on even by service and by rank and by offense. So we will continue to do that. Provide transparency on the process which is a good thing. Ill mention one thing is to look at this issue about disparities. And we are going to open a review and evaluation to see if there are disparities that jump out. Sometimes the disparities are because the cases are different. But i think its important to look at the over all statistics, numbers, and see if there are anomalies that jump out, either by rank, by service, by gender,dy race, by all sorts of stratifications, and we intend to do that, i think thats a useful exercise. So really looking for best practices, if you will, when it comes to setting guidelines . I mean every case is different. And so you dont want to say this is the mandatory sentence for this, because you want to take the case in its entirety. Are you exexperimepe expecting guidelines . Its important to evaluate that. In terms of guidelines, there should be standard ages for how we conduct the investigations and make sure that its relatively standard throughout the dod so if you are subject to an investigation in the air force, you are not going to be treated differently than if you are in the navy. I think thats important so they are standardized timely investigations. And we intend to look at that as well. So are you far enough where you would be making suggestions . In terms of the standardization . Yes why. There are suggestions. One is database so we use it and track it and share information in a similar way. I think we ought to consider format of reports to be standardized that will speed things up as well. Also consider there may be some disagreement here, but sort of a tentative process to show reports whether its accurate or not. That does lengthen the time line because it gives them time and you are required to do more work. And that is trade off. That is a fair process and gives them fairness and due pros stes and ultimately will make the decision whats the ultimate finding. Those are the kinds of things useful to standardize. And ive had discussions with the service igs as well on that. We will continue to pursue that. Thank you very much. And i want to thank you all for engaging with us on this difficult and important issue. Thank you. I yield back. Mr. Kelly, you are recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman and Ranking Member. This is an important hearing. I want to go back kind of on the line that general bacon had or congressman bacon. Members of the service, especially senior level leaders, would you agree that they are more hard on people for disgracing their uniform and their rank and their awards than a civilian would be . Because many times do you think civilians are in aof twe of the things you do and give you a pass because of your service and sitting other general who has done the same service is less likely to be in awe of your career and things youve done . Would you agree with that . Well, sir, i would just say that i dont know if awe is the word. I think respected. My father was a vietnam vet. Ill tell you the way treated back in those days was incredibly poor. But ill tell you there is a lot of respect among us. But yes of course people who understand the culture. Culture is big deal in military. And its evolved over time. Ive seen how long changes for the good from 1980 to the present day. And we continue to change that culture for the good. But to make a complete statement, civilians. Not necessarily in awe, but they tend to give you the benefit of the doubt or peer would not want that. I would agree. The professional or noncommissioned officer core is secretary to none. And i have said t on many promon boards and they let me rephrase. Would you as a General Officer cut someone a break because tle are a General Officer or would you be harder on them because they disgraced the rank that you worked so hard to earn . I agree, harder, absolutely. And i want to go back just a second, general quantock. I think we actually have been in the same places a couple of times. I looked at your bio. And i was at tiag 09 and 10, and we had a facility there. I want to ask you Lieutenant General cardin reported that the army is doing pilot itnitiative. And can you explain that . I can tell you as a study they have much more on this than i do, but really study on basically health of our General Officer core. Particularly with the last 15, 16 years, we have run this General Officer core into the ground. Not to mention our soldiers. Our sailors and air man and marines. We have run this force into the ground. Many of us have been away from home years at a time. But we never take a day off. When im on leave, im attached to my blackberry and on my phone. My wife and i have these discussions all the time. I am never disconnected from the army. We put it over weekends. We dont take any leave. So with the health of the force, really requires us to give those General Officers a little bit of reprieve. So making them take their leave. Let me move on to the next question. I want a little more answers on things. In my experience in the military, people Going Forward for go boards or General Officers or senior level leaders in the office its been my personal experience that ive seen far more people punished and prevented ig complaint to hold up a guy who the Promotion Board goes past mrd so he never makes General Officer or doesnt make 0 six or 0 seven or 08. Has your experience been that far more Senior Leaders are punished for negative transactions from an ig complaint that is not substantiated a substantiated as to those who get away with something . Yes, sir, and thats the elephant in the number. Whistle reprisal has sky rocketed. It is off the charts. Ive been investigated twice for whistleblower. Let me real quick. And you guys understand, junior members know or junior members of the military know they have a commander they dont like for some reason, that if they file an ig complaint at the right time, it can end his career, even though they have done nothing wrong and nothing to substantiate it. Is that correct . That is correct. So we can see a rise in complaints right around the time that the list comes out. Mr. Chairman, i yield back. Miss rosen, you are now recognized for five minutes. Mr. Russell you are now recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And thank all of you for being here. I guess mr. Chairman i dont understand why members of Congress Want to trash the uniformed code of military justice. It is the one glue that holds our military together. We can critique it. We can oversee it. We can hold it accountable. But god forbid if people in the political environment ever trash the uniformed code of military justice and get rid of it. You think we have screwed up the military good now . Put it in the hands of with no ucmg and put it out there where we have people with no understanding of the institution that create decisions commanders would have to make. That would all be gone. We would point fingers saying what went wrong as honorable people sit here before us and holding this holding them to account. And yes, mr. Chairman, i am on my high horse. How many of these offenses, general quantock were discovered outside of the military . Sir, i can think of one where actually it was an individual that decided to go to press. Only one. Only one. Tle were all discovered by the institutions. Yes, sir. Where i come from thats the hallmark of professionalism. You dont see that at icb and god knows we dont see that here in congress. So i guess the question would be why do we think its a broken system . Yes, we have problems. We see oversight congress has to be responsible of and that is the Great Republic we all serve. But its somewhat offensive to say the institution is unprofessional or somehow broken because it discovers its own problems. In the Business Community people would love to have those problems. Congress would love to our own accountability before the public does. In terms of generals overseeing the military, wow, gosh, thats kind of like members of congress overseeing government. How could that be . Military has a better rate of accountability than society as a whole. Certainly better than congress. And perhaps even better than hollywood when it comes to offenses and things like this that we see. So i guess my question would be, what would be the damage that we see as we continue to inflate the problem, not saying ignore the problem . We have to take these things seriously and take them to account. But when it becomes inflated and was mentioned by my colleague from mississippi, ig complaints come up, and then here come the investigations. And ive known many great warriors who were held from senior level command, later exonerated after twoyear period. They would have been able to keep men and women alive in battle and do Great Service to our public. But they never got the opportunity because, because, because. Could you speak to some of the other problems in your capacity as Inspector General that when someone is exonerated, do they ever get their life back . Are they over restored . Or does the ship pass them by . Sir, both happens. Sometimes the ship, its based on timing. But sometimes the ship seals. Because investigations take long. Ill tell you, just the other day, a couple months ago i had a Division Commander just came back from afghanistan. And i wont talk about his name. But he comes in my office and says sir im getting ready to resign. Ive had it. Disgruntled employee. A week before change in his demand throws an allegation out there. Now what happens is of course we speed up the investigation. He is flagged. No award at the end of a command. Despite sacrifices to him self and family. The commander coming down there to pin an award on that guy, but thats off, but he still was to pin an award on the spouse. The spouse told her husband, said, i dont want the dam award. Okay. So the families also impacted on this because they also sacrificed. So one day well wake up, if we keep this one wake up one day and realize who the heck wants to serve. Because we put people through hell. We put families through hell. Put soldiers through hell. Deploy them into combat. Heres the thing, cloud over this head, possibly lost your reputation. And eventually he will get exonerated, because ive looked at the case, will is nothing the there is nothing there. But this is the whistleblower reprisal. Ive been an excusccused twice. Well, downgraded award. I had awards board. I had no idea by protective. Another four months chlgt we do this to the entire army all the time. Reason the numbers are so high is rising complaints is misrepresentation of reprisal. Law is good. Talks about intent to kill or cause serious Bodily Injury to members of the aermd forces. Talks about grievous things. Not downgrading an award. Thats the problem. We have hijacked the system and dark cloud over the officer core, because right now we are getting hammered. I thank the chairman. And only parting comment ill say is people are dragged into the ig to serve ig capacity so they pick them from some of the best performing folks that are out there. Go kicking and screaming. Dont want the assignments and so still have to go. So my hats are off all those that serve within our miltd. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Ill yield back. Now recognize your five minutes, miss speier. I feel compelled to speak. We have to do oversight. When over 400 Service Members are immr. Kated, we, implicated, we have obligation to look at the process. So i take great um brag, frankly, that it is suggested somehow we dont have a role here. The uniform code of justice is not on trial. We live by the code in the military. Elements of it that im not particularly excited about. But for the most part it is a, frankly, a victimcentered code. We have made some changes over the years. But what we are really looking at is a couple of things, from my perspective. Why is congress often sometimes the last to know . We have oversight responsibilities. You should come to us when you have an issue with senior officer and let us know so we are not reading about it in the newspaper. When you have a scandal like the fat leonard case in the navy, its income baumbent on us to l that case and see why is it no bystander felt that they could come forward . And to Lieutenant General quantock whistleblower protection, i would argue, is not enough protection, and thats why people dont come forward, because they fear that there will be reprisals. Too many people that were engaged in conduct unbecoming officers, in that case, and no one called them out. Now, let me now ask a question. Id like from each of you to know what your back log is, quickly, if you could. We have a significant number of open investigations. And we report them. Do you have a number . I can get you the exact number. All right. I want to get numbers at this point to see whether or not we have staffing issues. We do have staffing issues. The complexity, the number of cases that have risen, the number of cases that we have to do, and we take them seriously. We take each of them seriously. And you can only do more with less for so long. And it does effect the timeliness of the investigations and how long people are hung up. So i do believe that its important to adequately resource igs, both us and the service igs. They are the not people they think of when they are growing the military. I have limited amount of time. How many additional staff do you think you need . We could use 100 more additional staff. We have 1600 employees, thats not that much. I think we can use a significant number more. I could give you more statistics and sort of bases but we need significant resources as do they. All right. Lieutenant general. Yes, congresswomen, we have right now 50 open senior official cases going on right now. I have 20 investigators. I could easily double that. The average case is about over 400 days. Whistleblower reprisal, separate division, another 20 people doing that. I have 345 open cases. Average length of a case is 391 days. Okay. Thank you. Advice admiral. Yes, maam. We have over 200 cases that are open at this time. And we are just now finishing up and getting up to our 2016 cases. So there is some lag time because of the number of investigators. But i would have to give you a specific number later if thats okay. All right. Thank you. Lieutenant general . Congresswomen, we welcome to the opportunity to partner with you on assessing our needs for plussing up our forces. Id like to take that quell for the record and understand that our average investigation takes 18 seven days. So yours take about half the time as the army, is that right . Sounds like that. Sounds like it. I think we should probably look at it. Why is that one service can do it . One service is much bigger than the other service. But we should take a look at the numbers. Yes, i think we should look at the numbers. Yes . I have 11 open cases on General Officers. I have 26 whistleblower reprisal cases open. I have just over 300 cases open. I average 23 three days for senior official investigation. And remaining investigations are upwards of 300 days. Okay. I think we need to be sensitive to the time it takes for these cases. We need to up i think service to the person who is charged. And to those who are actually providing the work among those who are employed. And another point in time id like to know in terms of your investigators, how many of your investigators are civilian, so ill take that for the record if each can provide that to me, as compared to those in the military. Thank you. Mr. Abraham, you are recognized for five minutes. Just to follow up, again, the process is good, in my opinion. Its working. Simply because of the results that you all have had to this point. Moving forward, general harris, you mentioned it a little bit in one of your answers. Since this is an open hearing, lets let the general public know, what are the services doing proactively from that Second Lieutenant up to that four star to help prevent this from occurring over and over again . Thank you, congressman for the opportunity to respond to this. So proactively, two areas, prevention and training. So first training. So from the youngest air man, whether you are an officer or enlisted through every course of leadership that you go through, you have an ethics training, whether it be quad ran Officer School or air man leadership school, all the way up to the Senior Leader officer course which General Officers attend. Proactively, in the inspector genesis tem, of course we have our inspection process. So not only assessing readiness of our force but culture of that force also and providing that feedback to the commander. Reactively, of course the ig investigates fair and accurately and fairly any investigations, any complaints that we have to ensure that we are offering due process and upholding the standards of our service. Other members . Just briefly, sir, i would suggest that it begins at the beginning of boot camp and officer training school. Its reinforced where Service School continuing in a career both for officers. Becomes much more acute annual requirements that we meet each year as well as my office providing additional training each year in the field. So its often and more focused on the ethics piece throughout that year. Admiral . Yes, sir. Like the general just said, from the beginning, whether at the Naval Academy or officer candidate school, get their first taste of ethical training, goes up all through the career. Mandatory when they reach 05 command that they go up to the navy work college and go through the leadership and ethics class. And onward from there flag officer when they first become a flag ethics training. I personally go to many of these classes. Virtually in person. To talk about cases and where fellow commanders and flag them before they have crossed the line. Quantock . Yes, sir. Similar across all the services. Additional thing is we put a lot of focus on the General Officer education. Many Different Levels every time you make i would also say that we have to also really get after it at the battalion and brigade level. Lieutenant colonel and colonel level. And our precommand course. Weve extended it to two weeks. They get sjas and they get me for an hour and a half. Because and i have not missed one in my three and a half years as the ig and six and a half years when you talk about my cid time because prevention is really the key. If we can prevent people from walking into mistakes, that is the key. And 99. 66 of our soldiers out there want to do the right thing, but sometimes they walk into it. So our goal is to prevent that from happening. Thank you. I yield back, mr. Chairman. I recognize myself. So one of the concerns is the length of time that it takes to go through this process. One element of that is certainly the resources in terms of the number of personnel were throwing at it. But is there anything we can do procedurally to change the process to hasten it, to get you know, its just unfair to a lot of parties to just tie this thing up for so long. Mr. Fine, do you have any recommendations . I do think a uniform process could help speed things up, standardized databases, standardized formats so that we know what were doing and we can do that more quickly. I do think there ought to be sort of assessment at the front end in the intake level, whether there is sufficient and additional credibility that it warrants investigation and then if there is indication as the investigation is going along that there is a fundamental deficiency in the allegation, that its not substantiated, we can close it in a reasonably timely way. So i think those are things that can be done. And i do think resources, as i mentioned, is significant. Any other comments on this . Yes, sir. The point that i would make, and if i havent mentioned reprisal, id like to mention reprisal again. 40 of my senior official cases are caught up in reprisal because they basically have held somebody accountable. So some better guidance to d. O. D. On how they basically interpret reprisal law so that just the significant ones fall under that and not everything. Downgrade an award. You know, hold somebody accountable because they beat somebody up and pulled a weapon on them. Somebody, you know, had a doc who was on cocaine. Reprisal. I mean, it goes on and on, the amount of cases, because all they have to do is have a protected communication followed by any kind of unfavorable personnel action. We are off to the races on a whistle blower reprisal case and the average time is 391 days. Its a good law. Its there for a very good reason. But we could get some help in that particular area, that would help on the resource piece as well. Okay. Yes, sir. Weve initiated a couple prototypes about intake analysis, and its been very profitable in terms of time saving. So we continue to look at process improvement. But part of the issue, besides that, is i. T. , and i think, you know, as we continue to have to scan documents and manually input things into computer system, its a huge waste of time. The effort by d. O. D. To make one type of system that we all can manage electronically eventually will save us a large amount of time and effort that right now is taken up with just antiquated systems that just eat up a lot of time. Our timeliness factors are really based on the complexity of the allegation that were investigating, the volume of complaints, and then the availability of witnesses. It takes great time. But last year, we ran a process improvement event, which got us down to the 187 days, and of course were still looking to get it down even further. Sir, i would say that the marine corps is very supportive of that law. That statute. We have great confidence in it. Any changes that weve made over the previous years absolutely has a trickledown effect to us. Through the department and procedure and policy. The statute of limitations would be a perfect example of a review of how one years worth of time, as the general has alluded to in examples, thats a pretty wide aperture that can provide us the complexity of a case that makes that timing go out for several hundred days to complete. Well, certainly what we want to have is a system that we apparently we do not have right now, where we can more expeditiously discipline officers with substantiated cases but not hurt their careers and not hurt the military as a whole on cases that are not substantiated but drag out forever. So theres really a need, i think, to figure out how we can move this system along faster. Mr. Mcsally, you are recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I really appreciate it. I do want to follow up on that. While we do need a process to hold people accountable when theyve had wrongdoing and we need to make sure theres no dirtbags in Senior Leadership positions, i know way too many examples of very good people who are caught up in this process, whose names are maligned, who dont have a chance to defend themselves until the investigations nearly complete. They dont even know what charges are brought against them. In the court of Public Opinion, theyre already guilty. Theyre not exonerated publicly at all, so they end up, them and their families, are held in shame for long periods of time. Only to kind of disappear at the end of a long, distinguished career. This process, i mean, i hear and i know of way too many examples of this. And so when were talking about this these processes of sorting out the frivolous complaints, commanders have to make tough decisions. Sometimes they have to clean up organizations. People dont like that. Sometimes people have to be held accountable below them and weve got to protect legitimate whistle blowers while also protecting due process for the accused, and again, i have way too many examples that bring concern to me about this process. Both at the Service Level and at the d. O. D. Ig level. Couple of quick questions. We have a culture, by the way, that if any of them ask for a lawyer, they must be guilty but then we have investigators that are acting like prosecutors and not given the legal advice they need in order to not be trapped. So i think thats a cultural issue, not necessarily a process issue. So, how long if an investigation goes on and somebodys exonerated, how long does that investigation stay on file, and are they kept on file in order to confirm whether that person is confirmable to a higher rank or a new job . Can anybody answer that . I can answer to the extent that we accumulate the derogatory information, including substantiated findings and are required to provide that to both the department and the senate when someones up for promotion. We do it if theres a substantiated case. If its not substantiated, thats not derogatory information. So unsubstantiated cases are kept on file for how long . We keep the files. I mean, we dont get rid of the files. But it doesnt go into their personnel file. Are we saying there is no process by which were checking confirmability of any General Officers with unsubstantiated cases . When were we have a records check process, and we do that records check, and if its not substantiated, it does not come up as a positive on that records check. So it basically says nothing . Right. We provide you know, negative information to the department. What about the process of an individual whos accused not knowing, necessarily, what theyre accused of until the investigation in great detail, again, weve heard from, recently, this happening, until the investigations wrapped up and then they have to defend themselves after a whole package of stuff has been put together and now theyre having to go down these rabbit holes to figure out how to defend themselves instead of being right up front. And this is an example from the air force. General harris . We defend our process, which i believe is fair and accurate and thorough, and so we take the time to get the information from our witnesses and the complainants in order to gather all that together and then at the end, then, we do, absolutely, interview the subject so they do have their time to speak. Do you see a concern that maybe an accused needs to know up front what theyre accused of, so they can in parallel be preparing themselves to defend themselves . Because sometimes these rabbit holes go deep and then you have to unwind it if youre handed this package at the end of the whole thing. Maam, i would just say that you have to be very careful. If you start making allegations, you just can set this individual up for reprisal. We do a lot of i mean, d. O. D. Ig does it, we do it. We do a credibility assessment. Theres a lot of heavy investigative load on the front end as we try see if this allegation is, in fact, credible. Credible determination is a big piece. Again, we work with our d. O. D. Ig brethren up here to make sure we agree. Then we will launch an investigation. We want to get some facts together because we also dont want to set this General Officer up, youre under investigation for this. If that person happens to be under command, and it may be unsubstantiated, then any time he deals with the person whos making the complaint could set this person up for reprisal. So were very careful in that respect. I hear you. But do you understand the concern that im conveying . That you guys may go through a very lengthy process and then somebodys just handed the results. Once we determine theres credible a credible allegation, that person is basically, hey, heres what youre being accused of, and we read him his rights. And thats the same with us. We have a script that once its determined to be credible and we are going to investigate, theres a script that we read, and you are the complaint is as follows, the following rule and regulation has been violated. We tell them to not interview or talk to anybody so theres a whole script to make sure they understand exactly what. I hear what youre saying. The vast majority of these cases are unsubstantiated and frivolous allegations, so im talking about the individual who served their country well, whos now being held up for retirement, whos now being moved with their family, has already been tried in the court of Public Opinion and in the end, its unsubstantiated, but them holding on, wondering what their fate is for a long period of time, not getting an ability to defend themselves until its all over. It may make you feel better that theyre unsubstantiated at the end, but the process they went through is not a positive one. And thats one, i think, that really we need to shine a Greater Light on in order to protect those that are accused who, in the end, are innocent. Is there any sort of way they can be publicly exonerated . I know i missed the first round. Okay. All right. Thank you. Ill wind up and come back again. If you dont mind. I wont be long. But is there a way for them to be publicly exonerated for something that they didnt commit when this is all over, to at least clear peoples names . One thing we do is we consider our reports for proactive release, if theyre substantiated and they involve a highlevel official, we do not wait for a foia request later but at the same time, if its already received public attention, if somebody is out there as having been accused of something, well consider that a proactive release as well just so the result of that investigation can be theres a difference between being in the media and having an entire unit and everybody whos ever served with somebody hearing all the rumors and innuendos. Whats going on as far as the investigation goes. Is there not a way when somebody is cleared that you can, regardless of whether its been in the public eye, say this person is exonerated or if they request that . Maybe some people dont, you know, dont want that. Well, i think you i mean, as long as the person agrees, they can go to the Public Affairs officer and say, hey, it was not substantiated. But a lot of folks, people dont realize whats going on unless its been substantiated. Heres, at least in my view, ive seen this for six and a half years. How these things get in the press, im not big into public release and public shaming, thats not what im into. However, what i believe in is that every six months, we have two folks that say, give me all the substantiations for all the General Officers. And we do. We give them a spreadsheet. And they pick the salacious ones and that makes the next headline, the next newspaper. Thats how this works. They all get out there. All the salacious ones get out there. Im talking about the unsubstantiated ones. I know what youre talking about but most people, if theyre not substantiated, dont want it out there. Because theyre under investigation because most people dont know. I hear you. Can you talk about the process of what investigations are done by the services and what investigations are done by the d. O. D. Ig really briefly . I see in your testimony it says, normally, three and four stars are at d. O. D. Ig level or something thats of such a high level of attention. But is there other determinations on that, and if the services actually close an investigation and unsubstantiate it, do we have cases where the d. O. D. Ig decides to open it up again . We do the three star, four star, s. E. S. Employees, president ial appointees, intelligence type investigations and if theres a conflict for some reason why the service ig cant or shouldnt do it, well do those as well. Otherwise, they do the investigation, when it is completed, they provide it to us for oversight. If we think its thorough and done all the investigative work that needs to be done, we approve it. If we dont, we can send it back to them for additional work. So there ever cases where you, then, take on an investigation yourself after theyve closed it. Theres been occasion, yeah. How often does that happen . Very rarely. For Additional Information or for some specific reason. But its happened. Okay. Thanks. I yield back. Ms. Speier. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I just want to make something really clear from my perspective. I think we do have a problem with different spanks for different ranks. If i understand it, there have been 70,000 courtmartials in the air force, for instance, and not one General Officer has ever been courtmartialed. When some of my colleagues were talking about the ucmj and how, you know, what the ucmj does is provide for accountability where there wouldnt be, there are cases that have just been brought to my attention for instance, Lieutenant General ron lewis, who misused Government Credit cards at two strip clubs falsely claimed his credit cards had been stolen, fraudulently stole over 1,000 from credit card companies, violated an order by going to restricted area and having inappropriate relationship. He didnt get prosecuted under the ucmj. He didnt have a courtmartial. A junior enlisted would get prosecuted for that. General kip ward, misuse of Government Resources for his personal gain and his family, was ordered to pay back 82,000. Thats theft. And under normal circumstances, that would be subject to a courtmartial. So as we look at this issue, i think one of the things that i would like to do, mr. Chairman, is that we take the time to make sure that everyone is being treated fairly in the military. I really appreciate having each of the services, the number of courtmartial, how many for enlisted, how many for officers, so we can just, you know, take a look at that as well. And let me also point out to you that yesterday, we passed a very strong Sexual Harassment bill in the house. There have been a number of members who have resigned or are retiring as a result of Sexual Harassment, not Sexual Assault here. And i think that as we look at the military, were going to expect the same level of responsibility for conduct that we are now expecting of members of congress. I yield back. Thank you. Well now take a brief recess in order to set the witness table for the second panel. Well take a fiveminute recess. I would like to welcome our second panel. We would like to respectfully remind the second panel to summarize to the greatest extent possible the high points of your written testimony in five minutes or less. Your written comments and statements will be made part of the record. Our second panel consists of general james c. Mcconville vice chief of staff of the army, admiral bill moren, vice chief of naval operations, general steven w. Wilson, vice chief of staff of the air force, general glen m. Walters, assistant commandant of the marine corps. With that, general mckonville, you may make your opening statement. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. The United States military is one of the most trusted institutions in the country. We value that bond of trust. We recognize every single day we need to wake up and earn that trust. While senior misconduct is down 51 , we know that one act of misconduct breaks the trust to the American People. Senior misconduct in the United States army has no place. Our Senior Officers are developed through decades of formal and informal training on ethics, army values, leadership and character. We provide additional training for those leaders when they are selected to serve as General Officers. The vast majority of our Senior Officers uphold our demanding moral and ethical standards just as we, their soldiers and the American People expect them to. We are not a perfect institution. We strive to be one. Senior officers who fail to meet the Army Standards are held accountable. I, along with the other army leaders are committed to upholding the standards of our profession and ensuring all Senior Officers do the same. I appreciate your time this morning and look forward to your questions. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member speier, thank you for the opportunity to be here to speak to the subcommittee members and the American Public but most importantly this morning to talk to our sailors. The foundation of our joint forces, and this is going to sound like a broken record, just demonstrates how much we believe in the values of our institution. The foundation of the joint force is trust. When Senior Leaders fail, trust at the Institution Level is put at risk. This can have a profound impact on every aspect of developing and employing this force. We all take this topic extremely seriously. While we all seem to be trending in the right direction, as jim just articulated, every single one of these matters. At the end of the day, we are an institution comprised of human beings who are indeed fallible. To get after this we have taken deliberate steps to train and develop our enlisted and officer corps throughout their careers, to preclude moral and ethical failures. When they do fail, we address them in ways to preserve the larger trust in the institution. Being transparent and accountable is part of this effort. Our goal is by the time Senior Leaders are produced, they have a Solid Foundation formed through years of experience with the principles of ethical behavior and moral Decision Making and professional conduct is not only taught but reinforced and tested. As you have heard from our Inspector General, we not only routinely track the data, we look for trends. When we see evidence, we explore and derive Lessons Learned to be better leaders. While we have ethical guidelines and even rules to limit the consequences of poor Decision Making, the rules alone are not what you and the American Public expect from us. You expect us to live up to Higher Standards of professional behavior. Transparency along these lines is central to our efforts to strengthen trust within our ranks, within the institution, with the American Public. I believe it strengthens our relationship to congress. So thank you for the opportunity to be transparent today, to speak candidly and directly about this critical topic. It is the foundation of our profession. Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me to testify before you today. On behalf of our secretary of the air force and chief of staff and 670,000 total force airmen around the globe, its an honor to be here. Late last summer, on the eve of our 70th birthday of our service, i had the privilege to stand on the ballpark with 46 of our sons and daughters in front of me, the backdrop of the capitol behind them. They were about to enter the United States air force. In that moment, i thought about what we owe those patriotic volunteers in return for their Selfless Service and their selflessness. The word that came to mind was trust. All of us view maintaining trust and confidence with the American People and with our force as the essential element of our past and future mission success. It is for that reason that we employ a deliberate and career long continuum of learning in operations and leadership, and in law and ethical standards for all airmen and certainly for our Senior Officers. Despite those efforts, at times, Senior Officers do break bonds of trust by faltering in judgment and or character. In those instances, we leverage robust systems of investigation and accountability. Complaints are investigated by independent teams of professionals. This is done with objectivity steeped in process and law. I know i can speak for my fellow chiefs here. Even one case of senior officer misconduct is too many. Our goal is for all airmen to do whats right at all times, regardless of the circumstances and no matter their rank or position. If they fall short, we will hold them accountable for their actions. Thank you for your continued leadership and partnership as we seek to achieve that goal and by extension, maintain the trust of all airmen and the American People. I look forward to your questions. Chairman coffman, Ranking Member speier and distinguished member of the house Armed Services subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to report to you on this important issue, of moral and ethical conduct of our marine General Officers. We know our nations citizens expect the very best from their marines. They expect operational excellence, they trust that their marines are men and women of the highest character both on the battlefield and in every aspect of their lives. We expect the same for ourselves and readily accept this responsibility. All marines are custodians of these core values. Our Senior Leaders set the example for every marine to emulate. They understand this responsibility and they spend their lives upholding these values. They understand when your nations battle requires a foundation of character with every marine and it starts with them. Marines learn these sacred values early and often. We believe that through our continuum of training, provided by our inspection programs, we build ethical decisionmakers. At every level of officer training and education, we continually and consistently emphasize Ethical Leadership as the foundation of leading marines. Over the last ten years, the marines have averaged 1. 5 cases per year of substantiated General Officer conduct. Many have been administrative in nature. We take pride in the oral conduct of our generals and acknowledge there is always room to improve. Like every organization, we remain proactive to evolving our education, training, and programs to ensure disciplined moral conduct of every marine, specially our General Officers. On behalf of our commandant, we thank the congress and the subcommittee for the opportunity to discuss this important issue. We appreciate your continued support to ensure the joint force remains the very best military our nation requires and expects. I look forward to your questions. Let me ask this question and appreciate an answer from the army, navy, air force, and then the marine corps. Many of us are familiar with the consequences of a courtmartial conviction but less familiar with some of the other administrative and nonjudicial actions that can be taken against Service Members. Could you explain the options available when disposing of Senior Leader misconduct cases and the consequences thereof . Yes, sir, i could. Whats at our disposal if we goe dont go to courtmartial, we can do a memorandum of concern, a reprimand. What really hurts an office is a General Officer memorandum of reprimand we put in the official file. It basically ends their career as they go forward. As they go to retire, that is seen by the board that adjudicates what rank they will retire at. You could lose one, two, three stars, depending on what rank you retire at, which is hundreds of thousands of dollars for some type of misconduct at that level. Yes, sir. I was going to mention that retirement grade determination process that all of us go through for any flag officer, Senior Leader, who has had a substantiated allegation that what we term becomes adverse information to their record. We must do a board and we all do that. We carry out that process. A retirement grid determination for one and two stars is signed off by Senior Leaders in the navy and all of our services at the secretary level and for a three or fourstar retirement grid, determination must be approved by the secretary of defense. Let me fully understand this. So you give some sort of a letter of admonition thats there. It is a career killer. So that person is not going to get promoted. They may be able to finish out their tour of duty or at some level i suppose be able to finish their career. So then they go to retirement and then they are reviewed by a board to determine whether or not they are going to be reduced in rank in retirement. Am i clear on that . If it is adverse information, yes, sir. I would add, and i wont speak for the rest of the services but for the navy, if a senior officer is found with substantiated allegations that are serious, they will not stay for the rest of their tour. They are often relieved of their command, relieved of their duties and asked to retire. Then, we go through the retirement grade determination. So somebody that you were going to allow to finish it was a letter of admonition, thats a career killer but you are going to let them finish their tour of duty . Not necessarily. If it is serious enough for a letter of admonition, they are not going to continue. General wilson . We have the same process, a letter of reprimand or article 15 type of instance and the same things would apply. We determine whether or not they should still serve in that job. In most cases, if they have an article 15 or a letter of reprimand, they will be removed from that job immediately and go through an officer grade determination to follow. So effectively if somebody got a letter of admonition, forced to retire, reduced in rank in that retirement, it is literally the equivalent of a fine of hundreds of thousands of dollars . Is that correct . Thats correct. General walters . We follow the same process. The one example i could give you, albeit ten years old, we had a selected twostar. He had a substantiated finding and he was retired as an 06. He didnt get his second star. He retired as an 06 and i did the calculation last night and if you compare his 06 retirement to an 08 retirement, what he really lost in compensation was 1. 9 million. Miss speier . Thank you all for your presentations and conversations yesterday. I guess this question could be asked of you as well. Could you inform us by letter of how many courtmartials there have been of General Officers. The chairman talked about the potential of loss of rank and loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars over ones lifetime in retirement, although they still keep their retirement. I am more interested in the value of a security clearance. Thats worth a lot of money, a whole lot more than 200,000. In some cases, these cases that have come before us where they have lied and done things that would question their moral turpitude, drunkenness, under normal circumstances, someone could, in fact, lose their security clearance. I wonder how many do lose their security clearance. Does anyone have any thoughts, if you dont, if you could provide that to us for the record. Of these cases we have seen so much prominence and we can provide them to you if you dont know them off the top of your head, i would be curious to know how many lose their security clearance. That is more valuable, i think, than many other things. Admiral, you talked about transparency in your opening remarks and i think that is really important from the congressional oversight perspective. The d. O. D. Ig does disclose substantiated cases. To my knowledge, there isnt any means by which each of your services would disclose to congress, for instance, substantiated cases. Could each of you inform us as to whether or not you would be supportive of that . As far as the army, if the committee wants those cases, absolutely. Thank you. Yes, maam. Yes, maam. No problem, maam. Admiral, the fat leonard case has come up a number of times. It is probably the most egregious case certainly in the history of the navy, if not the military in general. Because so many people were involved and so many were corrupted by this individual, im stunned that there werent any bystanders that spoke up. First question, there were a number of cases that were investigated by ncis, because there was bid rigging or overcharging for fuel or the like that he was engaged in but many of those cases were just missed. Have you done kind of a postmortem on that to look at where the holes were within the chain of command in terms of identifying the issues and addressing them . Maam, i hope you will respect this comment. It is an ongoing federal investigation by the department of justice and u. S. Attorney. I am very uncomfortable answering questions that could prejudice the case in any way. Answering some of that, what you just asked, could potentially cause us problems. When it is done, and we are hopefully getting to the very end of this, when it is done and all the files are turned over to us, we will do that. There is a process in place to make sure that we evaluate every single case that comes to the navy, whether they are handled by the department of justice or not, they come to us for final resolution. We can not talk publicly about that until the department of justice is complete with their investigation. I appreciate that. I am not asking you to do that. From a policy standpoint, are there any new policies that you recognize would be helpful in preventing cases like this from exploding into scandals of proportions that it is hard to comprehend. Most of the issues revolve around contracting for services in overseas ports. We have taken a strong turn on the process by which we do that. We put layers of oversight into how those contracts are issued and who is issuing them. That sort of training in our supply corps and in our general support corps has been very strong over the last five years. We think that largely has helped us drive down the number of misconduct cases that have resulted outside the scope of the gema case. One last question, do you think bystanders have a duty to report . That question for each of you. Absolutely. In every single case. We talk a lot about this in Sexual Harassment training and Sexual Assault. It is all behaviors that are destructive in nature, often times, it can be quelled by a bystander. We try to teach that value to everyone. Completely agree. Yes, maam, we teach, see something, say something. Thank you. Mr. Bacon, you are recognized for five minutes. Thank you very much. I appreciate all of you being here and your leadership. I would like to go back to a question i asked of the Previous Panel about the different spanks for different ranks. Do you think we are Holding People equally accountable whether it is a midlevel nco or senior officer . I was commander general in the 101st airborne for three years. I handled a lot at the lower level and now as the vice chief of staff for the army for the last 7 1 2 months, i believe we hold everyone appropriately accountable. When we look at Senior Officers, we expect a higher standard. When they dont meet them, we hold them accountable. Thank you. Admiral moran. Both jim and i served as prior ones, which are personnel commands and in every disciplinary case, every single one that reaches the level of where we are trying to determine if someone should be retired early or retired without pay or so on and so forth or released from active duty, we see every one of those. As vice chiefs, we see them again. So i think we get to see across the board a pretty balanced view of senior and junior cases. I think we all also believe that if we do not do this in a fair way, we are going to be held accountable by our sailors, soldiers, airmen and marines. I think we are very conscious of doing this in a correct way. Thank you, admiral. General . I completely agree with my counterparts here, that we hold all of our airmen to one standard and i would add that we hold our Senior Officers to an exceptionally High Standard. We know we will be judged by that. In my time as the vice chief, i have seen that we are not going to walk by any problem. We are going to hold any senior officer accountable, investigate and hold them accountable. Thank you. I agree with all my counterparts here. I will just add one thing. Remember our Senior Officers, one shot and youre adjudicated. One shot and youre down. On some of the junior ranks, we try to give them a second chance, not a zero defect mentality. I would say it is almost a zero defect mentality the higher up you go. I appreciated Second Chances when i was 18 and 19. Yes, sir, me too. I want to pose a rough hypothetical and whoever wants to speak up. If you have someone who has served honorably for 30 years, one or two stars, and your 31 or 32, three star, involved in an unprofessional relationship and you have to determine at retirement, do you go back to the two star or one star, if someone at the eightyear point does something similar, how hard is that to determine . Is going back ranked to the 30year point or should it be more serious depending on the crime or action taken . How hard is that when you are making these determinations . Sometimes you go back to the last rank honorably served. If its junior enlisted, maybe they suffer a careerending decision. I would be curious of your insights. Perhaps i can illuminate. The great determination is a process that is in place for all of us. The reminder is, i dont care if it is a junior or senior marine, if the action is criminal, there is no rank involved. I can name that we have had one in the last five years. It was a senior officer, an 06. He is zero. He retires with no rank . He gets no retirement. He is in jail and he is zero. He has no rank at all. Any other comments . I would follow along with the comments. I agree. We have had two courtmartials. One i wont talk about right now, but they have been adjudicated over the last ten years and both officers were of criminal type nature. We will courtmartial them if they warrant that. We weigh every single case on its merits, looking at what the soldier or the officer has done over the many years and weigh it and put it together and try to do the right thing when it comes to making a decision on their future. Chairman, i yield back. Mr. Mcsally, you are now recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. How long are unsubstantiated reports kept . In each of your services . Do you know . I will start. Are we talking just Senior Officers, maam . Yes. Yes. So we have other terms when we talk about investigations where there are subject stastantiatiod unsubstantiated but reportable. Reportable means it wasnt adverse but it is still required by the senate for confirmation. It is a little bit different. Whats an example of something thats unsubstantiated but reportable . Lets say someone was accused of something. So many of these are fresh in my mind from a topic i am not at liberty to talk about. If it was you were out alleged to have gone to a dinner with a contractor and accepted that dinner and it was unsubstantiated that it was accepted by you but it was alleged that you did attend a dinner with a contractor, that can be reportable but not so people going through an entire investigative process, they are cleared but in a nomination, even though they are cleared, it is reportable to the senate . The senate is entitled to any information on an officer being considered for promotion to the rank of 07 and above. That was kind of my line of questioning in the last session. It seemed like all the panelists said that unsubstantiated claims are never taken into account for jobs or rank. Now, i am hearing they are. Unsubstantiated claims are . They have to be accounted for but that doesnt prevent them from being promoted. Within the services, is there anywhere formally or informally in your process of considering someone for a new job or rank where you actually look at unsubstantiated investigations as part of that process . One of the things we look at is titling. We look at vetting an officer. We look at all the databases that come up to see. Ill give you an example. This did not hold up the officer. The officer was titled because his dog got loose in the neighborhood. The mps came by and titled him for having a loose dog in the neighborhood. He was substantiated for having the dog loose in the neighborhood. I am talking about where people are cleared. Are they somehow in any formal or informal process, are people looking at the files of their cleared allegations and cleared investigation as to whether they are going to offer them a new job or promotion . Do you see what im trying to get to . If you are innocent we dont do that. General wilson, sorry. General walters . No. We are required to report all the information to the senate. All information includes unsubstantiated claims . You have to report whether they were investigated in some cases. These are the rules that are set. We dont have a big stack in my office of all the unsubstantiated cases. I dont have any of those. Thats the legal review. They know what parameters the senate requires that goes in with the confirmation package. I sign off on those. It is usually a paragraph that says something along the lines of we looked at this and no substantiation and they will tell me more if they are interested. You will remember a nonpunitive letter between the commander and the individual, not for anyone else. A nonpunitive letter for a flag officer or nominee for a flag is required by the senate to be reported. Okay. Are you saying it is the current law im talking about i. G. Investigations that are closed and somebody has been exonerated that still, even though they are innocent, just because they were accused, that has to be reported to the senate . If something was issued to an officer thats up for promotion, to flag, unlike for the rest of the service, anyone else with a nonpunitive, that is no one elses business. Those are still required to be brought forth. Is there anywhere in the process within the services that unsubstantiated investigations are looked at formally or informally whether you are considering somebody for a new job or promotion . In the Promotion Board, if it is not adverse information, it is not examined during the Promotion Board. I am talking about as you all sit around talking about who is going to be put into this next job or considered for the next star. As we are looking at a slate, i guess is what you are talking about, is we do a slate continuing through the year, because things change and demand signals on people change. I cant remember anybody saying there is an unsubstantiated complaint. That never comes up. Im over my time. I dont know if you get what i am trying to get at. Accused doesnt mean guilty. I am trying to make sure that is being taken into consideration. Dr. Wenstrup, you are now recognized for five minutes. Thank you. I have a question, something i think im seeing a rise in. It is not at the level of some of the cases we have been talking about today. You have not General Officers but officers that have the responsibility of making sure that their troops are doing the things they are supposed to do. I have become aware of a couple cases where the lower ranking person, officer or enlisted, wants to resist that. All the leaders say listen, you got to be in line, get your job done. The person that is not doing their job, go and accuse some kind of bias, that this leader has some kind of bias. What im seeing is these leaders then are now the accused of something, just because they were trying to make sure someone did their job. They make this claim that there is some kind of bias. Now, that leader is tied up in knots, distracted from doing the job they are supposed to do every day, because they have to defend themselves. We are losing good people because they get to the point, i want out. I dont need this harassment when all i am trying to do is do whats right. You are all shaking your head like you are familiar with this type of antics taking place. I am not saying there cant be leaders out of line. Dont get me wrong. How do we defend the people that are getting tied up in knots and kept from doing their job in leadership because somebody who is not doing their job decides they are going to take that route . Are you seeing a rise in this . I can speak for us, sir. We are very concerned about that. We want commanders not to look over their shoulders when they are making decisions. On the other hand, we want to make sure our soldiers have access, if they see something wrong, they come forward. It is trying to find that sweet spot in between. We have to watch that as we go forward. You heard i. G. Talk about that, kind of concerned about how some people are taking advantage of that. We have to watch that. There are things we can do when we look at some of the cases. Some may be triage up front. We take a look at it. There is risk in that. The best thing to do is do a 400 to 500day investigation and make sure you do not have any issues at the end. On the other hand, you may hold up someone at retirement or Something Like that. Im not sure thats fair, either. We are trying to find the best way to make this fair for both involved. I would like to see some focus on speeding up that process. I am seeing some good people get dragged through the mud for absolutely no good reason whatsoever, just because you told someone they need to get their o. E. R. Done. That is a little bit ridiculous and they start saying, you are picking on me. Obviously, im speaking from a real experience. I would love to hear from more of you. Sir, i think we have a process. We want whistle blowers to have the option to come forward and tell us when wrong things are being done. That reprisal process right now is broad ranging. We have a thing called request mast. Administrative errors, any young marine can go all the way up the chain of command to get whatever he believes or she believes is an error corrected. I think we are seeing a trend. Instead of using that, they have to talk to the commander and the commanders commander, instead of doing that, they pick up the phone and make a complaint on a hotline for an administrative error. They didnt get the award they thought they should or that their fitness report wasnt accurate or they got declined on leave. These are administrative in nature. We have the request process to adjudicate those and accommodate those and it allows leaders to fix things when they are broken. As soon as they pick up the phone for those kind of issues, it goes to a different process, which, as you have pointed out, can take too long. By the way, it is not being involved with one, as an outside observer. Go ahead. We were a little bit of out of bounds on the whistle blower piece. About 96 of the cases are not substantiated. We are spending a lot of time but it is not in balance, to your point. That has a Chilling Effect not only on the commanders but on the force when they cant execute good discipline and you feel this cloud above you. We completely agree, if somebody is going to be investigated, it should be done in a timely manner. If they are found guilty, lets move on with that. If not, on the innocent side, they should remove that quickly. It is taking way too long. I agree. Timeliness is the issue here, sir, to your point. When we can get better at that, it will help resolve a lot of this. We are spending the same amount of time on very few cases that are ultimately substantiated. Thank you. Yield back. Mr. Russell, you are now recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman and thank each of you for being here today. A lot of the statistics that we see amalgamated together include military misconduct, what would be clearly viewed as potential misconduct but may not be translatable in the civilian world but it also includes a wide array of tools that are used to address that misconduct. All of that gets rolled up into this statistical analysis. I guess my question would be, what percent of the cases that we see and some of the statistics i have looked at, maybe 10 of the cases warrant further investigation. 90 thrown out of the 10 that are there. Roughly 30 of those end up being substantiated. Those are rough figures. There seems to be some consistency there. We are still talking small percentages. Even among that portion, not all of those are for the big headline cases that we see. A lot of them can be you moved a boat with your Household Goods when you shouldnt have or something. Would you speak to that . What percentage of the cases would never translate into offenses in civilian employment . Ill start, i guess. It is really hard to say since i graduated from high school, i have had a uniform on. I dont really know. I will try to get that answer for you and put it in writing. I wish i could tell you. All i know is the standards we have. We hold people very accountable. Just like the sailor swabbing the deck or soldier buffing the floor, they would never have anything entered in any record or file, there would never be any offense. I know it could also amrpply to General Officers on certain standards of conduct the military expects and demands certainly of our Senior Leaders, yet if they were in the corporate world, this would not be anything that would translate, yet thats still part of the statistical body. Thats what im trying to get at. Whoever would like to address that. We have had things from officer evaluation reports being late because the commander was waiting on a discipline issue before he wrote the o. E. R. So technically he was substantiated for late o. E. R. Because he was waiting for this thing to resolve. Didnt ruin his career but he did go through a process which delayed him and it runs all the way to an inappropriate relationship. Even on the civilian side, if you had an inappropriate relationship, inappropriate consensual relationship we hold people accountable for those things. If you went to a gentlemens club, we hold people very accountable for those type things. I think we should have a High Standard in the military. Over the last five years, we have had 77 cases, about 60 of them i am going to call an error in judgment and administrative procedures. About 25 involve Personnel Matters and those that involve some type of Sexual Harassment or inappropriate relationship was under 15 . Thank you. General walters . Sir, im looking over the last ten years, weve had 15. Most of them were admin. They wouldnt be taken, held accountable. I had one t. A. D. Where he got extra money on his t. D. Claim. I guess thats theft. That could be chargeable out in the civilian world. We took care of it. I think it was 10. We made him cut a check and we reprimanded him. I appreciate that. Mr. Chairman, thats part of what im trying to establish. A lot of the statistics are rolled in to where it looks like a greater problem of misconduct. My final question for admiral moran would be, we have heard mentioned today the fat leonard case. When a case comes up like that that has translated over to the Justice Department, is the military limited in how it can even comment or defend or maybe portray the other side of the story while its in the Justice Department and outside of department of defense . Yes, sir, we absolutely are. So i look forward to the day when i can come back to this committee and testify about what we have learned from that and the things we have put in place to address it. Thats where i was going with congresswoman mcsallys question. I am very focused on that right now. It is hard to talk about it. In some of those cases where they go through a justice review and end up in the navy review and are ultimately unsubstantiated after years of investigation are tough to account for. Congress now expects us, senate expects us to address that, even though they were un substantissd so they know we have looked thoroughly at it. That was my point. I think thats important to note, mr. Chairman. Many times what might be the appearances that they are trying to hide or harbor information, the reality is when it translates from department of defense over to the department of justice, they are prohibited from providing very illuminating or alternative views. Yet, they cant. I think thats very important to establish in the hearing today. Ranking member speier . In conversations with one of you, i guess it was over someone being reprimanded for endorsement, it came up that General Officers could have outside employment. Then, we checked the ucmj and found out there was no prohibition for General Officers to have outside employment, which i think is pretty stunning. Would you approve of us passing an amendment that would prohibit outside employment . I certainly would. I dont know what General Officer has time to have outside employment. I would like to know who the person was. I want his job. If he is in the army, i will get a new job for him. A new jo. Okay. Maam, well go back and look at the statutes, but i want to believe we are prohibited from outside employment. We are not prohibited from serving on certain organizations that are for the benefit of the military services, volunteer organizations as a board member are contributed to that. But generally speaking weve been prohibited for as long as i can remember. I agree with my colleagues. No, maam, i was invited to be a member of the board for heroes flight, and my council said you cant. So we didnt at the time, anyway. General wilson, im going to ask you to write me a memo on this. But to have 70,000 courtmartials in the air force and never once a courtmartial of an officer suggests that maybe theres something to that. So i would just like you to write me a memo to give me some of your thoughts on that. The ucmj also has a statute of limitations that in many cases is less than it would be in the civilian world. For instance, for bribery ucmj has a fiveyear statute of limitations. In general society it could be up to 7 to 10 years. Would you look at the statute of limitations for, you know, various forms of conduct in the military and give us your recommendations as to which ones should be increased . And then finally, general walters, this was in the paper today. In case you havent seen it. Is that usa today, maam . Yes, its marine corp brushed off sex charges. And whats so stunning about this particular case is that you have two women who have been sexually harassed by the same person and nothing happened. And when the one survivor of the Sexual Harassment went to her superior they said no one will believe you. And if youve heard anything from the members of congress over the last few months is we believe the women. So i hope that this becomes an anomaly as we continue to evolve in terms of the issue of Sexual Harassment. I think weave a huge problem. We have a huge problem in our academies, and i think we have a huge problem in our services. That isnt even getting to the issue of Sexual Assault. Thats the issue of Sexual Harassment. And i think weve got to do something dramatic to shift the culture. And with that, mr. Chairman, i yield back. Thank you. Were going to leave the last few minutes of this recorded program to take you live to a conversation with a group of authors and journalists who covered the watergate scandal. This event is being held at the Watergate Hotel in washington, d. C. History repeating itself may or may not happen depending which side. With that being said, i want to give you out tidbits about the history, the gossip and even the lore of the watergate complex. Its a complex of five buildings. Theres an office where that happens to be famous burglars that broke in, as well as retail, as well as office buildings, and as well as a xu