Head of California Air National Guard removed amid allegations of cover-up and retaliation

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The head of the California Air National Guard and one of its
five wing commanders have been removed from their positions amid
complaints of reprisals against whistleblowers and allegations
of a cover-up of misconduct that reached into the highest ranks
of the organization, officials announced Friday.

Maj. Gen. Clay L. Garrison, the top commander of the 4,700-
member air guard, was dismissed for being unable to “maintain a
positive command climate,?? said Lt. Col. Thomas Keegan,
spokesman for the California Military Department. Keegan said
the department had lost “faith, trust and confidence?? in
Garrison’s ability to lead.

In a report released after the ousters of Garrison and Col. Dan
Kelly, the commander of the 144th Fighter Wing in Fresno, the
Military Department inspector general cited findings of a Times
investigation two months ago that detailed the whistleblower
allegations. The complaints disclosed by The Times focused on
the leadership of the Fresno base and included an alleged cover-
up of an incident in which someone urinated in a female Guard
member’s boots.

“Based on this article, and in addition to other evidence
collected, it would appear that there is a culture of reprisal,
or at a minimum the perception of reprisal, that has a long
stemmed history within the 144th,?? the inspector general report
states.

Brig. Gen. Gregory F. Jones, who has served as an assistant
adjutant general in the Guard since December 2017, was appointed
to replace Garrison. Col. Jeremiah Cruz was named Kelly’s
interim replacement.

Jones was unavailable for comment, Keegan said. Garrison and
Kelly did not respond to interview requests.

Keegan said Garrison will retire in the coming weeks. Kelly’s
future in the Guard has yet to be determined, Keegan said.

Maj. Gen. David Baldwin, who oversees both the air and army
branches of the California Guard as adjutant general of the
Military Department, was unavailable for comment, Keegan said.

In interviews with The Times, several current and former members
of the Guard have described a climate of retaliation by high-
ranking officers and mistrust in the organization’s inspector
general system intended to hold them accountable. At least five
Guard members from the 144th wing, including a pilot who was
killed in October in a crash during a training mission in
Ukraine, filed formal complaints.

The urine incident and its aftermath fueled suspicions that high-
ranking officers, including Garrison, mishandled two
investigations to find the perpetrator and tried to bury the
episode to protect someone who may have been involved, according
to interviews and Guard records obtained by The Times. Some in
the wing refer to the scandal as “Pissgate.??

The saga dates to March 2015, when Staff Sgt. Jennifer Pineda, a
15-year veteran of the Guard, was about to change into her
uniform in a women’s bathroom at the 144th Fighter Wing when she
discovered her boots had been soiled. Reached by phone Friday,
Pineda said, “At this time, I don’t have a comment.??

Maj. Dan Woodside, a retired 144th fighter pilot who is a
witness in an inspector general’s Pineda investigation and has
complained about how she was treated, said Guard members were
afraid to approach Garrison with any reports of wrongdoing,
fearing they would be punished.

“Pissgate was just one example,?? Woodside said. “Gen. Garrison
did not act alone in this.... It all happened under his watchful
eye, but he was not alone in allowing this to happen.??

After The Times began asking questions about the Pineda episode,
the military department asked the U.S. Air Force Inspector
General’s Office to conduct an investigation — the third into
the Pineda incident. Keegan said Friday he did not know the
status of the probe. That inquiry is part of a broader
investigation into whether whistleblowers at the 144th suffered
reprisals for questioning the actions of their superiors on a
range of matters.

The California air guard is the second largest, after New
York’s, in the Air National Guard, which is a force of more than
100,000 pilots, other officers and enlisted people. Many of the
pilots are part-time reservists, signing up after careers in the
U.S. Air Force, and some fly in their civilian lives for
commercial airlines.

The guards function as state militias whose leaders report to
their respective governors. The 144th is the biggest wing in the
state, home to roughly 115 officers, including about two dozen
fighter pilots, and more than 1,000 enlistees in support units.

A spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom referred questions about
Friday’s shakeup back to the Guard.

Members of the 144th’s security forces, who police the base,
conducted two investigations into the Pineda incident, according
to internal investigative records obtained by The Times. Both
were inconclusive and the case was closed.

Pineda filed a whistleblower complaint, in which she wrote that
she feared she’d be forced out of the military because some had
speculated that she urinated in her own boots “for attention.??

A 144th pilot, Lt. Col. Rob Swertfager, also filed a complaint
alleging that commanders punished him — including by withholding
his pay on occasion — for going to bat for Pineda.

The following year, officers at the 144th destroyed the evidence
collected from the crime scene, saying it was old and no longer
needed. The evidence included Pineda’s boots and a vial of urine
collected from the bathroom floor that was never tested for DNA.

Col. Dave Johnston, a commander who signed off on the evidence
destruction, said in statements provided to The Times that he
had consulted with Garrison before doing so. Garrison ran the
base at the time of the incident.

Garrison’s only guidance, Johnston wrote, was that he first
confer with the 144th’s judge advocate general at the time. She
also signed off on the request to discard the evidence.

Dave Bakos, a retired general who served in the Guard for 32
years and was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, was among those
who said Garrison should have demanded a more thorough
investigation from the start.

“It’s unfortunate that the young people in the California Air
National Guard, our citizen soldiers, have to witness this type
of activity that’s occurring at the top,?? Bakos said Friday.
“They deserve better.??

He said the Guard now has “an opportunity to get a fresh start
with new leadership.??

Jones began his career as a jet engine mechanic in the Nevada
Air National Guard. In California, he held various positions at
the 146th Airlift Wing at Port Hueneme before heading the 129th
Rescue Wing in the Mountain View area.

In a statement Friday, Keegan said, “The Guard is committed to
providing a transparent, respectful and positive command
climate.… I am confident that Brig. Gen. Jones will be able to
lead the organization effectively and with the utmost
integrity.??

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-california-air-
national-guard-removed-20190405-story.html

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California National Guard plagued with scandals

A top general in the California National Guard violated
government rules by having subordinates ferry his mother on a
shopping trip.

A colonel who serves as a Guard finance officer and had been
recommended for promotion to general has been charged with
exposing himself to three women in a restaurant.

Those are among the latest embarrassing episodes to tarnish the
California National Guard, which has been beset in recent years
by allegations of cover-ups and retaliation against
whistleblowers, a Times investigation based on Guard documents
and interviews has found.

Current and former Guard members say there is a widespread
perception in the organization that high-ranking officers who
engage in misconduct are protected from significant discipline.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-23/new-scandals-
rock-california-national-guards-highest-ranks

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peg>

For Staff Sgt. Jennifer Pineda, a 15-year veteran of the
California Air National Guard, the military was a family
calling. She followed her older sister and brother-in-law into
the guard, where she now holds an administrative position at the
elite 144th Fighter Wing in Fresno.

On a March morning four years ago, Pineda was about to dress
into a uniform she had stored overnight in a stall in the
women’s bathroom when she made a foul discovery.

Someone had urinated in her boots.

The incident left Pineda humiliated and frightened and would
trigger a series of behind-the-scenes investigations whose scope
has come to extend beyond what happened that day at the Fresno
base.

The defiling of Pineda’s boots has led to allegations that high-
ranking officers tried to bury the incident, including by
destroying evidence that could have potentially identified a
suspect through DNA, and retaliated against a male pilot who
supported her efforts to find the perpetrator, according to
interviews and guard records obtained by The Times. Some in the
wing have begun calling the ongoing saga “Pissgate.”

After The Times began asking questions about the Pineda episode,
the California Military Department, which oversees the guard,
asked the U.S. Air Force Inspector General’s Office to conduct
an investigation.

In the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, guard leaders are
concerned about the degrading nature of the act aimed at a
woman, according to two sources close to the investigation, who
requested anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly
speak about the matter. Only about 20% of the officers and
enlisted members in the guard are women.

The inspector general’s inquiry is the third investigation into
the Pineda affair and part of a broader probe into whether
whistle-blowers at the 144th wing suffered reprisals for
questioning the actions or conduct of their superiors on a range
of matters. At least five guard members from the 144th wing,
including a pilot who was killed in October in a crash during a
training mission in Ukraine, filed formal complaints. The guard
recently suspended a 144th commander for reasons it said were
unrelated to the Pineda incident.

“This boils down to just unprofessional leadership and
cronyism,” said Maj. Dan Woodside, a retired 144th fighter pilot
who is a witness in the inspector general’s Pineda investigation
and has complained about how she was treated. “If anybody had
urinated in their boots, they would have done everything they
could to find the perpetrator, even if it involved calling the
FBI.”

Two of the guard’s top officers held key leadership positions at
the 144th at the time of the Pineda incident: Maj. Gen. Clay
Garrison, who has since become head of the air guard, and Col.
Sean Navin, now one of its five wing commanders. Neither
responded to requests for interviews.

Maj. Gen. David S. Baldwin, who heads the Military Department,
declined through a guard spokesman to be interviewed. Baldwin
said in a written statement to The Times that “in order to
protect the integrity of that ongoing investigation, we cannot
disclose additional details.”

The California air guard is the second largest, after New
York’s, in the Air National Guard, which is a force of more than
100,000 pilots, other officers and enlisted people. Many of the
pilots are part-time reservists, signing up after careers in the
U.S. Air Force, and some fly in their civilian lives for
commercial airlines.

The guards function as state militias whose leaders report to
the governor. They patrol state airspace and stand ready to
respond to natural disasters and large-scale terrorist attacks.

In California, the air guard helped fight recent wildfires,
flying drones over the blazes to feed intelligence to fire crews
on the ground. Its fighter pilots are regularly deployed to
assist the Air Force in combat and other operations overseas.

The 144th is the biggest wing in the state. It is home to
roughly 115 officers, including about two dozen fighter pilots,
and more than 1,000 enlistees in support units. For every
officer in the wing, there are about nine enlistees in roles
that are essential but carry much less clout.

Pineda, 34, is one of them.

After joining the guard in 2004, she spent several years in the
wing’s command post as a dispatcher before moving to the
operations group, according to interviews with guard colleagues.
Pineda declined to comment for this story.

Soon after she reported that someone had urinated on her boots,
members of the 144th’s security forces, who police the base,
arrived at the location, attempted to lift fingerprints and had
photos taken of the scene, according to an internal
investigative record obtained by The Times. The security airmen
collected the urine from the floor and reviewed hours of
security camera footage, the document states.

Investigative records describe the incident as “vandalism.” If
committed by someone with a rank of second lieutenant or higher,
legal experts said, the act could also be considered the more
serious crime of conduct unbecoming an officer. The perpetrator,
they said, could be prosecuted and jailed in a court martial,
forced to retire in an administrative proceeding at a reduced
rank and pension, or handed a lesser punishment such as a
reprimand.

The investigators asked Pineda, then a single mother of two, who
she thought could have had a motive to target her, according to
the report. Pineda named two women who “have had issues with”
her in the past, and her supervisor later suggested one more,
the report says. It states that all three women were questioned.

The results of the investigation were inconclusive, the report
says.

About two months after the investigation began, the commander of
the fighter squadron at the time, Navin, called Pineda and her
supervisor into his office to share the results, according to
May 2015 memos that Pineda and the supervisor wrote to document
the conversation.

Navin apologized that the investigation did not find the
perpetrator, according to the memos. In Pineda’s memo, she wrote
that Navin said killings go unsolved every day and these things
just happen.

“I started to ask him how I was supposed to come to work and
feel OK in a work environment where I have been violated like
this,” Pineda said in her memo.

Pineda said in the document that she had begun securing her
uniform in a locker, parks where she can see her car from her
work desk window and keeps the desk locked up each night.

Soon after the first investigation was shelved, a second was
opened when “new information” revealed that pilots had been
drinking in a nearby break room the evening before the discovery
and “may have information regarding the incident or may have
possibly been involved in the incident,” according to a guard
report and interviews. Navin, the commander who had shared the
results of the first investigation with Pineda, had been in the
break room as well that evening, the report says.

Investigators questioned 18 people, including Navin, Woodside
and four other guard members who said they had been in the break
room, called “The Merge.”

The two investigators told at least some of the pilots that they
might be asked to undergo polygraph tests and that the urine
collected from the scene would be tested for DNA, Woodside said.
Some were also questioned about how much Navin had to drink, he
added.

In a second interview with investigators, Pineda said a couple
of pilots told her they suspected Navin of urinating on her
boots, the report says. She said she felt that Navin “doesn’t
trust her work abilities,” according to the report.

Navin denied being involved, guard records show. He told
investigators that he had no conflicts with Pineda and was never
inside the women’s bathroom where she left her boots and
clothing.

The investigator who authored the report wrote that the
interviews “did not lead to any new conclusions” or identify any
suspects.

In August 2015, Pineda filed a whistle-blower complaint. She
wrote that the main investigator told her that the evidence
showed that a woman could not have urinated in the boots, but
that she heard that officers speculated that she urinated in
them “for attention.” In the complaint, Pineda said that “makes
me want this investigation to be complete and legit to prove
that I did not do this to myself.” She added that she feared she
could be forced to leave the guard.

The guard declined to comment about the status of Pineda's
complaint.

Last year, Lt. Col. Rob Swertfager, a 144th pilot, filed a
complaint alleging that commanders punished him — including by
withholding his pay on occasion — for going to bat for Pineda by
telling a superior that the first investigation might have been
mishandled. His complaint is part of the inspector general’s
investigation. He declined to comment for this story.

Woodside said the head of base security, then-Lt. Col. Dave
Johnston, told him that 144th ”leadership” ordered him to shut
down the investigation and destroy all the evidence after
investigators zeroed in on Navin. The evidence included Pineda’s
boots and a vial of urine that was never tested.

Woodside said he believes “there was a cover-up.”

Johnston, since promoted to colonel, did not say who gave him
the order, Woodside said. He said Johnston informed him about
the destruction of the evidence during a 32-minute telephone
conversation on Dec. 7, 2017. He produced phone records that
showed such a call to Johnston’s number.

In interviews with The Times, four current and former guard
members confirmed that Woodside told them about his phone
conversation with Johnston shortly after it occurred.

Johnston declined to be interviewed. He said in two statements
provided to The Times that no one ordered him to dispose of the
evidence. Johnston said he had consulted with Garrison, who ran
the base at the time of the incident, about destroying the
evidence. Garrison’s only guidance, Johnston wrote, was that he
first confer with the 144th’s judge advocate general at the
time, who did not respond to interview requests.

Johnston said he authorized the destruction because the second
investigation had been closed for several months and the
evidence was no longer needed. He declined to discuss why a DNA
test was never conducted.

The lead investigator, Daniel Mosqueda, offered no explanation
for not testing the urine.

“The way the investigation went, it didn’t happen,” he told The
Times.

Woodside said he confronted Garrison about the investigation at
a colonel’s retirement party in March 2017, after the evidence
had been destroyed. He said Garrison told him that there was “no
actual crime here” and that it would have been inappropriate to
spend “thousands of dollars” on a urine test that wouldn’t
produce usable information.

Depending on the condition of the specimen, a DNA analysis of
the urine could have determined the perpetrator’s sex and
perhaps identified him or her definitively through a comparison
test, forensic experts told The Times. Typically, it would cost
about $1,000 to $1,300, they said.

Experts on military and criminal law questioned the decision to
destroy evidence without conducting a DNA analysis. Southwestern
Law School Professor Rachel E. VanLandingham, who served as a
prosecutor and criminal defense attorney during a U.S. Air Force
career, said if evidence was destroyed to impede an
investigation or protect someone, a case could be made for
obstruction of justice.

“That needs to be looked into,” she said.

About a year after the incident, Navin was promoted to colonel
and is now commander of the 163rd Attack Wing in Riverside
County, overseeing more than 900 people and the deployment of
the MQ-9A Reaper military drone.

A guard spokesman declined to say what prompted the recent
suspension of the 144th commander, Col. Victor Sikora. Shortly
after the suspension, Sikora called a meeting of pilots and
support personnel at the Fresno base. He told the gathering that
he had been informed he was suspended “due to the amount of
investigations” the guard leadership was dealing with, according
to a recording of the meeting The Times reviewed. He did not
elaborate.

Sikora did not respond to requests for comment about the
suspension.

Among the other complaints under investigation by the inspector
general is one filed by Lt. Col. Seth Nehring shortly before he
was killed in October in a crash during a training mission in
Ukraine. No details of his complaint were available. The
investigator leading the inspector general’s probe, Lt. Col.
Shawna Pavey, did not respond to interview requests.

Dave Bakos, a retired general who served in the guard for 32
years and was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, said Garrison
should have demanded a more thorough investigation from the
start. Morale at the 144th has suffered, Bakos said.

“There are a lot of people unhappy up there,” he said. “They
need a change at the top.”

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-california-air-
national-guard-urination-20190210-story.html

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A top general in the California National Guard violated
government rules by having subordinates ferry his mother on a
shopping trip, perform other personal errands for him and
complete a part of his cybersecurity training.

A second general allegedly made antisemitic and homophobic
remarks, including that Jews are unrepentant sinners and that
gay marriage is a reason terrorists attack the United States.

And a colonel who serves as a Guard finance officer and had been
recommended for promotion to general has been charged with
exposing himself to three women in a restaurant.

Those are among the latest embarrassing episodes to tarnish the
Guard, a branch of the California Military Department that has
been beset in recent years by allegations of cover-ups and
retaliation against whistleblowers, a Times investigation based
on Guard documents and interviews has found.

Current and former Guard members say there is a widespread
perception in the organization that high-ranking officers who
engage in misconduct are protected from significant discipline.

One of the generals found by an internal inquiry to have
committed acts of wrongdoing was issued a letter of
admonishment, and the other received a letter of reprimand,
according to the Guard. After The Times began inquiring about
their cases in recent weeks, the Guard said one general resigned
and the other faces new discipline that has yet to be
determined. There are 13 generals in the California Military
Department, and four have been caught up in controversies since
2019.

“When these things happen, the higher-ups cover for each other.
And without public exposure of these things, there would be
absolutely no real punishment,” said Dan Woodside, a retired
Guard major and fighter pilot who has publicly criticized the
organization’s leadership. “We need an overhaul of the entire
system.”

Interviews and Guard records reviewed by The Times show that
other allegations of misconduct include:

– A captain allegedly referred to a Latino sergeant as a “lazy
Mexican” and harassed an African American soldier because he was
a “Black Lives Matter guy.” Another captain has been accused of
asking a Jewish soldier if cigar ashes were his “relatives.”
Both captains allegedly falsified physical fitness
certifications for Guard members.

– A wing commander for the air side of the Guard faces
complaints that she used a military credit card to buy cleaning
supplies for her dog and had underlings walk the pet at work.

– The vice wing commander at the same air station was grounded
because of a drunk driving arrest.

In response to Times queries, the Guard said all of the
allegations and incidents are or were the subject of internal
investigations. Maj. Gen. David Baldwin, who has headed the
Guard throughout the years of scandal and turmoil, declined to
be interviewed. In an emailed statement, he said that “when we
do have allegations of misconduct, we take them seriously and
address them in accordance with applicable law and regulation,
safeguarding due process rights of all concerned.”

Baldwin reports to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who declined to comment, a
spokesperson said.

The 20,000-member Guard serves a dual state-and-federal mission
that includes responding to emergencies in California, such as
earthquakes, wildfires and civil disturbances, and assisting
U.S. armed forces in military operations overseas. Baldwin has
been adjutant general of the Guard since 2011, when he was
appointed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown.

In 2019, Baldwin removed the commander of the Air National
Guard, Maj. Gen. Clay Garrison, amid complaints of reprisals
against whistleblowers and allegations of a cover-up of
misconduct that reached into the highest ranks of the
organization. The complaints, which were disclosed by The Times,
focused on the leadership of the Fresno air base and included an
alleged cover-up of an incident in which someone urinated in a
female Guard member’s boots. The commander of the 144th Fighter
Wing there was also removed.

In 2020, in response to another Times report, Newsom’s office
denounced the Guard’s decision to send a military spy plane to
suburban El Dorado Hills, where Baldwin lived, to help civilian
authorities monitor demonstrations over the police killing of
George Floyd. Baldwin said the fact that he resided in El Dorado
Hills, where the protests were small and peaceful, had no
bearing on the deployment of the RC-26B reconnaissance plane.

Last year, Baldwin fired Garrison’s successor, Maj. Gen. Gregory
Jones, and suspended Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Magram with pay as
director of the air staff and reassigned him to human resources
and humanitarian duties. Those actions followed a Times report
that Guard members were concerned that their leaders had readied
an F-15C fighter jet in 2020 for a possible mission in which the
aircraft would fly low over civilian protesters to frighten and
disperse them. Baldwin denied that the jet had been prepared for
such a deployment and said the moves against Jones and Magram
had nothing to do with the report.

Magram, who has been a member of Baldwin’s inner circle as an
assistant adjutant general, is the focus of one of the Guard’s
latest upheavals.

According to interviews and a confidential report obtained by
The Times, the U.S. Air Force inspector general conducted an
investigation into conduct by Magram over a period of seven
years ending in 2020. The investigation was completed last year
but has never been made public.

A heavily redacted inspector general’s report reviewed by The
Times states that the inquiry grew out of complaints by a woman
in the Guard that, among other allegations, Magram stopped
consulting her on inquiries into misconduct, which was part of
her duties, and abused his authority. The woman’s name is
redacted in the report.

Magram denied the allegations in written statements to the
inspector general, the report says. The investigation determined
that he did not inappropriately limit the woman’s role in
investigations, according to the report. He was also accused of
requiring subordinates to pick up documents he placed on the
floor for shredding, and the report states that he was counseled
about the practice and stopped it.

The investigation found that Magram had on-duty Guard members
drive him up to 120 miles round-trip to personal dental and
medical appointments at Travis Air Force Base, according to the
report. The document quoted one unnamed Guard member as saying
he did not want to drive Magram because “my job is to take care
of the airmen in the state of California and not be a chauffeur
for a general.”

A Guard member who took Magram’s mother shopping was quoted in
the report as saying that “she was particular. When I say
particular, it had to be at Whole Foods. … It just took her a
long time to decide what she wanted, a lot of comparison
shopping amongst products.”

The report says the Guard member feared her career would suffer
if she declined Magram’s request to “cart around” his mother:
“If you were not on his good side, then, um, yeah, he would kind
of discard or try to make sure that you were kind of put to the
side,” the member is quoted as saying. She said Magram also had
her drive him to his credit union to get money for someone’s
birthday card, according to the report.

Magram generally confirmed the members’ accounts of running
errands for him, according to the report. He said he believed
subordinates giving him rides to medical appointments was
consistent with the Air Force’s “wingman concept,” in which
Guard members look out for one another. “I want to reiterate
that had I ever heard of any ethics issues like this from
subordinates, peers or commanders, or perceptions of such, I
would have corrected or addressed it on the spot,” Magram said
in a statement to the inspector general.

However, Magram had been counseled in 2017 that tasking Guard
members for rides to personal appointments was inappropriate,
the report states, adding that his wingman argument “rings
hollow.” The investigation similarly faulted him for using an
underling to work on his travel awards accounts, including for
personal trips.

And the inquiry determined that Magram failed to complete his
annual cybersecurity training and thus had subordinates each day
request that headquarters temporarily restore his computer
access. This went on for about two weeks, until he had the
training finished by a subordinate. Magram said in his statement
that he was late in completing the training because of “a
tremendously busy operational tempo.”

Magram did not respond to interview requests. In a statement to
The Times, Lt. Col. Brandon Hill, a Guard spokesperson, said the
Air Force issued a letter of admonishment to Magram as a result
of the inspector general investigation. Such a letter is a
lesser form of punishment than a letter of reprimand. In
Magram’s case, Hill said, the letter is not “career-ending.”

After further Times queries, however, the Guard said a second
investigation of Magram by a state inspector general
substantiated similar allegations against him, and he awaits
another round of discipline.

Meanwhile, according to confidential Guard records reviewed by
The Times and interviews with four people familiar with the
incidents, a chief warrant officer alleged that Brig. Gen. David
Hawkins, in an apparent state of irritation, charged toward her
at Guard headquarters, causing her to fall backward and into a
wall.

Hill said in an email to The Times that an in-house
investigation by two other generals “did not substantiate this
allegation,” a conclusion reached in January.

Hill would not provide details on how the inquiry determined the
accusation could not be substantiated. Hawkins told The Times
the incident “did not happen.” The chief warrant officer, Lori
Sandes, declined to be interviewed.

An internal inquiry substantiated the allegations that Hawkins
made the slurs about Jews and gay people, and he received a
letter of reprimand as a result, Hill said.

Responding to a subsequent Times query, Hill confirmed that
Hawkins had resigned.

Hawkins told The Times that “those allegations are largely
untrue,” and he specifically denied making the statement about
terrorist attacks. He said he believed the allegations were
lodged by someone who overheard and misconstrued a conversation
he had with a chaplain.

“At no time was there any characterization of any kind that was
meant to defame,” Hawkins said. Asked if he was forced to
resign, he replied, “I would not comment on that. It’s just time
for me to move on.”

The Guard’s troubles extended well beyond the California state
line. Col. Jonathan Cartwright was arrested in March on
suspicion of exposing himself to three women at a restaurant in
Arlington County, Va. Police booked Cartwright on a misdemeanor
charge, and he was released from jail on his promise to appear
in court. A hearing is scheduled for July.

Hill said Cartwright had been recommended for promotion to
general. The colonel, he said, remains on active duty but has
been barred from Guard properties until his criminal case is
resolved. Hill referred other questions about Cartwright to the
National Guard Bureau in Washington, D.C., because he is part of
its chain of command. A bureau spokesperson declined to comment,
and it was unclear how the criminal case might affect his
proposed promotion. Cartwright did not respond to interview
requests.

Closer to home, an internal complaint accused Capt. Brandon
Hamilton of telling members of the State Guard, a branch of the
California Military Department made up of volunteers, that a
Latino sergeant was a “lazy Mexican” in part because he resisted
a directive to return to field duty after being hospitalized and
then isolated with COVID-19, two sources told The Times.
Hamilton allegedly targeted a Black sergeant for harassment and
retaliation after labeling him a “Black Lives Matter guy,”
according to these sources, who requested anonymity because they
feared they would be punished for speaking out.

The alleged mistreatment of the Black sergeant included unfairly
critiquing his work and preventing him from completing a search-
and-rescue course and then disciplining him for it, the sources
said.

The officer accused of uttering the slur about ashes to a Jewish
soldier is Capt. Marc Gates, according to the sources and
internal records examined by The Times. Gates and Hamilton also
are alleged to have falsified physical fitness certifications
for Guard members by recording run times for them for runs that
never occurred, the interviews and records show.

The Guard declined to release information on the allegations
against Hamilton and Gates because they are still under
investigation, officials said. Hamilton and Gates did not
respond to interview requests. Neither did the Latino and Black
sergeants — Jeremy Hernandez and Prezell Harris, respectively —
nor the Jewish soldier, Jesse Poller.

The commander of the Guard’s 146th Airlift Wing at Channel
Islands, Col. Lisa Nemeth, has been accused of having
subordinates tend to her dog and buy a carpet scrubber and
cleaning solution for the pet with a government purchase card.
The Guard said the allegations are under investigation and
officials declined to comment further. Nemeth declined to
comment.

The vice commander of the 146th wing was charged with drunk
driving in March 2021. Col. Bill Green was grounded the day
after the incident and underwent a required evaluation for
longer-term alcohol or drug abuse, according to records and
interviews. He received a letter of reprimand, but a commander
allowed him to eventually resume flying missions. Baldwin
ordered him grounded again, and had an investigation launched
into whether Green had received preferential treatment. The
results of that inquiry have not been disclosed.

Green, who retired from the Guard in February, told The Times
that he was fully accountable for his conduct. “I believe I met
my responsibilities that came with that,” he said. “I had a
series of penalties to pay as a result of my actions. I’m
grateful for the time I served. I know of no preferential or
unfair treatment in my case.”

In his statement to The Times, Baldwin said, “If, after a
federal and/or state investigation, allegations are
substantiated, then this command and/or the relevant federal
entity takes appropriate action. The bottom line is we have an
effective system in place that deals with allegations of
inappropriate behavior.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-23/new-scandals-
rock-california-national-guards-highest-ranks

[Kamala Harris standards of conduct]

Only believe CNN!

Allegations of retaliation against whistleblowers in the
California National Guard are more widespread than the
complaints made at a Fresno air base that led to a dramatic
leadership shakeup of the organization earlier this month, The
Times has found.

Interviews with current and former Guard members and an
examination of internal documents show that complaints go well
beyond Fresno and extend to the army side as well. The
allegations have come from fighter pilots, a top military
prosecutor, Special Forces officers and a colonel who hoped to
head the organization.

They allege a pattern of both retaliation against whistleblowers
and others who accuse their superiors of misconduct and a
failure of the Guard’s justice system to protect them.

“When a person blows the whistle on wrongdoing, they face almost
a guarantee of retaliation,” said Dwight Stirling, a reserve
judge advocate who heads the Center for Law and Military Policy
and alleges he was targeted for investigation after he reported
possible misconduct five years ago. “It’s meant, as in all cases
of retaliation, to send a message that if you hold the managers
to account, if you bring to light their misconduct, that they’re
going to make you pay for it.”

After a Times investigation detailed whistleblower complaints
and other misconduct allegations at the 144th Fighter Wing in
Fresno, an inspector general for the California Military
Department, which oversees the air and army branches of the
Guard, found that a culture of reprisal afflicted the wing.

The problems led to the recent ouster of the air Guard’s top
commander and two high-ranking officers at the Fresno base. The
department also directed the air Guard’s new commander to put
together “climate assessments” of the wing leadership.

In the wake of The Times’ reporting, state Sen. Tom Umberg (D-
Santa Ana) has proposed stronger protections for whistleblowers
in the Guard, something he had tried to do more than a decade
ago — without success — while in the state Assembly.

A bill Umberg introduced in February would require the Military
Department’s inspector general to report to the governor instead
of the adjutant general who leads the organization, his office
said. Umberg, a retired U.S. Army colonel, is also pushing to
include a provision that would allow whistleblowers to sue for
economic damages.

“I’m certainly troubled by the acts that I’ve read about,”
Umberg said. “As a career military officer, it’s antithetical to
the culture of the military, which demands respect for all
military members.”

A hearing on the bill is scheduled for Tuesday.

Someone urinated in a female sergeant’s boots. Now the
California Air National Guard faces coverup allegations »

The Military Department could not provide complete numbers on
alleged reprisals in California, so it’s difficult to quantify
the scope of the problem, including whether it has been growing.
The department declined to comment on the multiple reprisal
accusations.

In all but one of the last five years, the number of complaints
reported to the National Guard Assn. of California, a nonprofit
veterans group which is backing Umberg’s bill, has increased or
stayed the same, averaging more than a half-dozen annually in
recent years, said its legislative director, retired Col. John
Haramalis.

His review of them shows the allegations routinely are given a
cursory investigation, if any, then swept under the rug, he said.

Haramalis, who said he once interviewed with then Gov. Jerry
Brown to lead the Military Department, had his own experience
with making a reprisal complaint.

He alleges that the head of the Military Department, Maj. Gen.
David S. Baldwin, improperly blocked him from transferring to
another state to prevent him from promoting. When Haramalis
complained, he said, Baldwin questioned senior officers at the
National Guard Bureau for negative information to use against
him.

Inspectors general for the Department of Defense and each
military service are responsible for investigating misconduct
and whistleblower complaints.

“You either get no investigation or a sham investigation,” said
Haramalis, who spent more than three decades in the Guard. “The
end results are identical — case closed with no further action.
By shielding Guard senior leadership from any consequences of
their actions, the IG has become the enabler of the very
misconduct they were supposed to address. The system has
completely collapsed.”

Michael Wise says that’s what happened in his case. Wise, a
state deputy attorney general, retired from the Guard’s Special
Forces last year as a colonel and decorated combat veteran. He
said he faced retaliation for supporting a major in his command
who reported that soldiers were short-changed because of
persistent problems in the Guard’s payroll system.

Wise and the major, John Trent, said the Guard accused them of
improperly recommending denial of a soldier’s request for a
transfer to another state, which would allow him to avoid a
combat deployment overseas. Wise and Trent filed inspector
general complaints alleging reprisals.

“They dismissed my IG complaint without interviewing my
witnesses,” Wise said. “The IG system as a whole has been
absolutely worthless. … Whistleblowers are not tolerated in the
Guard, that’s the bottom line.”

Trent said he is still pursuing his case. He said the decision
to challenge his superiors ended his chances of promotion to
lieutenant colonel, even though he’s the most-senior major in
the Guard’s Special Forces. The last time he applied, Trent
said, a lesser qualified candidate got the position.

“They have a good ol’ boy system in place, and anything that
attacks that system, they’re going to defend against with all
their might,” he said.

“Once they were called on the carpet for that pay issue, they
just retaliated against me and attempted to end my career.”

At the 144th Wing, at least five Guard members, including a
pilot who was killed in October in a crash during a training
mission in Ukraine, have filed retaliation complaints, The Times
found. Two of the complaints stemmed from a March 2015 incident
in which Staff Sgt. Jennifer Pineda found that someone at the
Fresno base had urinated in the boots she had left in a bathroom
overnight.

The incident and its aftermath fueled suspicions that high-
ranking officers mishandled two investigations to find the
perpetrator and tried to bury the episode to protect someone who
may have been involved, according to interviews and Guard
records obtained by The Times.

Pineda and Lt. Col. Rob Swertfager, a pilot who spoke up for
her, filed complaints.

The Times investigation led to the removal earlier this month of
Maj. Gen. Clay Garrison, the top commander of the air Guard. He
was pushed out because the Military Department had lost “faith,
trust and confidence” in his ability to lead, a spokesman said.
Two 144th commanders — Col. Dan Kelly and Col. Victor Sikora —
were also ousted.

A report by the Military Department’s inspector general said
there’s at least “the perception of reprisal” at the 144th. The
new commander of the air Guard, Brig. Gen. Greg Jones, was
instructed to work to “restore the confidence and trust in the
IG system” at the Fresno base.

Stirling said he wrestled with a similar lack of confidence and
trust.

“I’d say the vast majority of people who know about wrongdoing
don’t dare to say a word,” Stirling said. “They are faced with a
conflict of, do they do what’s right and blow the whistle? Or do
they look out for their career and their livelihood?”

He enlisted in the Army Guard after the Sept. 11 attacks,
eventually becoming its head prosecutor.

Supervisors praised him in evaluations as having “limitless”
potential and being “more than a first-rate” judge advocate,
according to his evaluations.

He said that all changed in 2014, when he reported that a
handful of military lawyers in the Guard were not licensed to
practice law in the state. One had failed the bar exam in
California, Stirling said, but later passed it in South Dakota.
He was then hired as a judge advocate in the California Guard.

“That’s just blatantly against the rules,” Stirling said. He
took his complaint to to the state bar that year.

Within months, he said, he was put under a sham investigation.
Three years went by, he said, before he’d learned the details of
the inquiry, which barred him from promotions while it remained
open.

Stirling said he never was given an opportunity to challenge the
allegations, which focused on a court-martial where he and his
supervisors sought the immediate imprisonment of a soldier
convicted of sexual assault.

He said the judge who signed off on the incarceration later
launched an investigation into Stirling and accused him of
failing to disclose that case law prohibited the judge from
imprisoning the soldier without first getting approval from the
commander who convened the court martial.

Stirling said the judge himself should have known about the law,
but cleared himself of wrongdoing and blamed Stirling instead.
Stirling said he received a career-blunting letter of reprimand.

“I was on the way up. All my evaluations were outstanding,” he
said. “I report the use of attorneys who are unlicensed, and the
whole trajectory of my career starts to take a tailspin.”

He filed a whistleblower complaint, he said, but no one
investigated it.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-california-air-
national-guard-whistleblower-retaliation-20190423-story.html

[Kamala Harris standards of conduct]

Only believe CNN!

In early June, four National Guard spy planes took to the skies
over several cities to monitor street protests following the
killing of George Floyd, triggering concerns that the military
was improperly gathering intelligence on U.S. citizens.

Three of the reconnaissance planes kept watch on demonstrations
in Minneapolis, Phoenix and Washington, D.C., that drew hundreds
or thousands of protesters and were marred by violence.

But the target of the fourth plane was far more surprising: the
affluent Sacramento suburb of El Dorado Hills, the scene of much
smaller and entirely peaceful protests.

Local and state authorities have not explained in detail how and
why the normally sleepy neighborhood was chosen for the mission
when other cities that had recently experienced property
destruction and street clashes amid large protests — such as Los
Angeles, Oakland and Long Beach — were not.

El Dorado Hills happened to be the home of the head of the
California National Guard, Maj. Gen. David S. Baldwin, The Times
has learned. In addition to deploying the RC-26B reconnaissance
plane, the Guard sent a Lakota helicopter to hover over El
Dorado Hills, according to Guard officials and records. The
aircraft were requested by the El Dorado County Sheriff’s
Office, state records show.

In response to questions from The Times, a spokesman for Gov.
Gavin Newsom, who oversees the California National Guard, issued
a statement late Saturday criticizing the operation.

“The use of the RC-26 to meet the sheriff’s request for aerial
support to provide situational awareness for law enforcement is
concerning and should not have happened,” Nathan Click said. “It
was an operational decision made without the approval — let
alone awareness — of the governor. After the incident,
operational policies and protocols were reaffirmed and
strengthened to ensure RC-26 aircraft are not used for these
incidents again.”

Click did not elaborate or say whether the governor’s office is
examining Baldwin’s role in the matter.

In a telephone interview, Baldwin told The Times he didn’t
recall whether he had approved the mission. He said the fact
that he lived in El Dorado Hills had “nothing to do with” the
deployment of the RC-26B or the Lakota helicopter.

After questions from Congress members and others about the
flights, an Air Force inspector general’s report issued in
August concluded that the reconnaissance planes weren’t capable
of capturing “distinguishing personal features of individuals”
and did not violate rules barring the military from collecting
intelligence on U.S. citizens. The inspector general’s report
did not include a detailed examination of whether the mission to
El Dorado Hills was warranted given the uneventful nature of the
protests.

The report states that the mission grew out of a “high priority”
request by the state Office of Emergency Services, made on
behalf of the El Dorado sheriff’s office. According to the
report, the sheriff’s office said it needed the aircraft to
provide support for deputies on the ground who were tracking
demonstrations.

Baldwin, when asked why he couldn’t remember whether he
recommended or approved the unusual use of a reconnaissance
plane over his hometown, said “there was a lot going on” with
protests up and down the state at that time.

“We had 10,000 soldiers deployed,” he said. “We were doing
hundreds of mission taskings.”

Under California’s open records law, The Times obtained the
orders for the plane and helicopter, and they list Baldwin as
the officer authorizing the deployments to El Dorado County.
However, a Guard spokesman, Lt. Col. Jonathan Shiroma, said
Baldwin’s name routinely appears on such orders, but his
subordinates have the authority to assign the plane and
helicopters to missions.

Baldwin said he never discussed the mission with Newsom and did
not remember if he spoke about it with El Dorado County Sheriff
John D’Agostini or whether he recommended that the sheriff’s
office request the plane. Baldwin described his relationship
with D’Agostini as “collegial” and similar to those he has with
many sheriffs.

D’Agostini declined to be interviewed for this story. His
spokesman did not answer the question of whether Baldwin advised
the sheriff’s office to request the aircraft.

Five current and former Guard officers with knowledge of the
flights said in interviews that they knew of no justifiable
reason for the El Dorado Hills mission.

“El Dorado Hills was the most monitored place in California,”
said Dan Woodside, a recently retired Guard pilot who has flown
the RC-26B. “Why was that? What was the threat? They are
absolutely covering this up.”

A current Guard officer, who asked not to be named because he is
not authorized to speak about the mission, said, “We hear ‘El
Dorado,’ and it’s, ‘What? What the hell is happening in El
Dorado?’” He noted that officials did not request the plane for
other areas that witnessed much larger protests, including some
hit by vandalism and theft.

“Why aren’t we helping L.A., San Francisco, Oakland?” the
officer asked. “It’s just buffoonery.”

A second former officer said enlisting the military to surveil
demonstrators is a perennial “hot potato” among Guard leaders,
and it was “idiotic” to send the RC-26B to El Dorado Hills.
“It’s just bad optics,” said the ex-officer, who requested
anonymity to protect current Guard members who informed him
about the mission.

The Guard sent ground troops to El Dorado Hills and other
California communities at the request of local authorities. The
RC-26B, however, was used only over El Dorado Hills.

Witnesses told the inspector general’s office that the plane had
not been used in the past to monitor civil disturbances,
according to the report. The aircraft’s primary purpose is
gathering intelligence on drug trafficking and helping to patrol
U.S. borders. The plane is also summoned to chart the paths of
wildfires and floods, and it is flown on search and rescue
missions.

In June, the Army opened an investigation into complaints that
National Guard helicopters, including the Lakota, flew
dangerously low over crowds of protesters in Washington, D.C.,
allegedly in an attempt to intimidate the demonstrators. The
Defense Department’s inspector general is now reviewing the
findings of the inquiry, which have not been released, an Army
spokesman said.

There were no reports of the Lakota flying low over the El
Dorado Hills protesters.

The inquiry by the Air Force inspector general’s office into the
deployment of the RC-26B aircraft to protests around the country
concluded that its use skirted some Defense Department
procedures but did not breach U.S. policy that generally bars
the military from spying on U.S. citizens. The office’s report
said the missions collected information on the size and
movements of crowds and the destruction of property. The
aircraft, however, were not equipped with surveillance
technology that could identify individuals on the ground, the
report says.

The document provides a narrative of the events, though key
details — including names of officials who authorized the
missions, as well as those who were involved — are redacted.

As the nationwide protests over Floyd’s death grew, Newsom
declared a state of emergency on May 30 in Los Angeles County,
on the basis that local law enforcement agencies could not deal
with the threat posed by civil unrest. The declaration said
nothing about El Dorado County, roughly 400 miles away.

Two days later, Asst. Chief Ron Quigley of the Office of
Emergency Services submitted the request to the Guard for aerial
monitoring in El Dorado County. The request cited “information
of groups forming in the west end of El Dorado County,” the
inspector general’s report said.

The inspector general’s office interviewed two people from the
Guard’s 144th Fighter Wing at Fresno. One of them, a pilot at
the base, received a phone call from the Guard’s Joint Force
Headquarters in Sacramento with verbal orders to support the
mission.

The RC-26B took off from the Air National Guard Base in Fresno
shortly after 8 p.m. on June 3 for what was a roughly three-hour
mission, with a stop at Sacramento County’s Mather Airport to
pick up two law enforcement officers, according to the report.

Before the mission, the officers had received word that there
were “rioters and looters planning to march to the suburbs of El
Dorado County for violent purposes,” the inspector general’s
report says.

It states that an El Dorado sheriff’s officer on the aircraft
said the Hells Angels “may incite some violence around El Dorado
Hills.” As the plane circled over the area, the crew spotted
several police vehicles and foot patrols but no disturbances,
according to the report.

The sheriff’s officers then determined that continuing the
mission was unnecessary as “there did not appear to be any crowd
activity of interest,” the report says. It was unclear if any
protesters were on the streets at that time.

A Guard officer with knowledge of the flight told The Times that
the crew “didn’t see anything. … It was a waste of time.”

Quigley, the OES administrator cited in the inspector general’s
report, did not respond to an interview request The Times made
through the agency’s spokesman, Brian Ferguson. In a statement,
Ferguson said, “At the request of local leaders, in June, Cal
OES facilitated the deployment of National Guard equipment and
personnel to locations across the state to safeguard public
safety and protect the well-being of the community and
protestors alike.

“Use of the National Guard for law enforcement support is used
only in extreme cases, or after the local government mutual aid
system is fully committed.” The statement did not address
whether the OES or the Guard considered the situation in El
Dorado Hills to be an extreme case.

El Dorado County Supervisor John Hidahl, whose district includes
most of El Dorado Hills, told The Times he heard several
complaints that the sheriff’s and military response to a
perceived threat of unrest was overkill. Hidahl said he did not
have enough firsthand information to evaluate whether the show
of force was warranted.

“The question is always: How significant is the threat?” Hidahl
said. “I couldn’t say it was a high threat, but the sheriff
definitely felt it was.”

He said he did not know Baldwin and wasn’t aware he lived in the
area.

Caroline Cochrane, an activist from neighboring Folsom who
attended multiple protests in surrounding areas to support the
Black Lives Matter movement, called the National Guard’s
presence in El Dorado Hills an “exploitation of resources” and a
“response to fear-mongering.”

“It creates a very hostile environment, especially for African
American residents,” said Cochrane, 17.

Steven Taylor, who specializes in civil liberties as an
associate professor of government at American University in
Washington, said the El Dorado Hills mission was “an expensive
endeavor, and for what?”

“I don’t understand why they couldn’t just use black-and-whites
there,” he said, referring to sheriff’s patrol cars. He added
that the deployment of the aircraft “was just nonsensical unless
it was used to intimidate people.”

Gavin Newsom will suck your cock for money and drugs.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-18/spy-plane-
george-floyd-protests-el-dorado-hills-california-national-guard

[Kamala Harris standards of conduct]

Only believe CNN!

Since early 2019, The Times has investigated a wide range of
alleged misconduct by high-ranking officials of the California
National Guard. The paper’s inquiries began with reports that
someone urinated in a female Guard member’s boots, an incident
that led to allegations of a cover-up and retaliation against
whistleblowers. Among the other disclosures by The Times were
the Guard’s use of a spy plane to monitor civilian protesters
and fears in the ranks that it planned to deploy a fighter jet
to frighten demonstrators.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-22/inside-the-
scandals-at-the-california-national-guard