In short, the Navy had absolute freedom to falsify, alter, delete and misrepresent the facts and law at every step of the summary dismissal. And it is inconceivable that anybody in the chain of command who graduated from the Academy with access to the documentation did not understand that they were covering up a crime with all of the documentation done in secret.

Summary

In short, the Navy had absolute freedom to falsify, alter, delete and misrepresent the facts and law at every step of the summary dismissal.  It is inconceivable that anybody in the chain of command who graduated from the Academy with access to the documentation did not understand that they were covering up a crime with all of the documentation done in secret and in flagrant violation of established rules and regulations.  I was denied access to any of the documents except for the blank check resignation I was forced to sign. I was not permitted to keep a copy of the resignation document.  It was later destroyed because there was no relationship to it and subsequent documents. There were no signatures of mine on any documents produced.

It took Supt Kauffman 7 weeks to bypass the normal procedures and to orchestrate a cover-up out of fear that as a former chairman of the honor committee I could not be trusted to approve falsification of events if knowledge of the agreement between the Navy Brats became public during an honor committee hearing. Everything was done in secret during the original summary dismissal.

There were a 1,000 plus pages of testimony collected from dozens of FOIAs.  This is only the tip of the ice berg in terms of documents falsified.

I was the third of three brothers to enlist, several months after my brother Donald was killed in the Air Force while evacuating an air base in Turkey in the midst of a coup in 1961.  He received the highest peace time award for that year as an E3, signed by the Secretary of the Air Force.  And I roomed with Larry Chmiel in NAPS who was reportedly killed  as a Marine on his first mission in Vietnam.  I don’t think I have to tell you how infuriating it is to think of how these men gave their lives so the politicians can corrupt our military justice system for political gain. 

I remain committed to cleaning up the politics despite the risk and immense time,cost and effort of taking on a government committed to covering up a crime. I am also conflicted on how to accomplish the goal without dirtying the names of the many good men who came out of the Academy.