Kissoon had more DIs relieved for cause for abuse than any of us did, combined, in my time as a commander at Parris Island. None of my DIs were relieved for abusing recruits. If I caught even a whiff of abuse, I did a thorough investigation, which was just as much to protect the DIs from false allegations as it was to protect the recruits. We could be aggressive and demand better performance, and we should have been able to do that without abusing recruits and losing our jobs.
But Kissoon? Nobody ever raised an eyebrow about his “abrasiveness.”
He's a guy. There's a perception that boot camp is supposed to be hard. There are people at the senior-leadership level who went through boot camp in the 1970s and 1980s, and none of what they were hearing about Third Battalion sounded different from what they went through. But boot camp has evolved since the days of disco, and for good reason.
There's no evidence to prove that beating up Marines makes them better. It doesn't make them better warriors; it doesn't make them better in battle.
Yet nothing happened to change the behavior or the culture of Third Battalion. Instead, Colonel Haas thought I was a bad commander who abused my Marines.
After I was relieved of command, Haas's replacement, Colonel Paul Cucinotta, told investigators that he had directed Kissoon to bench three DIs who were under investigation for abuse until the end of the investigation.6 Instead, without telling Colonel Cucinotta, Kissoon assigned one of the DIs to a senior DI position with a new platoon, according to Marine Corps Times.
After the death of the Muslim recruit Raheel Siddiqui, Kissoon later justified this action by saying that he had been short DIs.
While the Marine Corps maintains that Siddiqui's death was a suicide, his family wonders if the fall was the direct result of the mental and physical abuse he suffered at the hands of his drill instructors. Witnesses claimed that Siddiqui was sick, and that his senior DI allegedly had him run sprints in the barracks, according to witness statements from the Marine Corps investigation. The recruit fell as he ran, witnesses said. According to the witnesses, the senior DI allegedly slapped Siddiqui, who appeared to be passed out. According to Marine Corps Times, soon after, Siddiqui ran through the squad bay, ran outside, and then jumped from the stairwell of the third floor to his death.7
As the scandal grew, reports of Third Battalion DIs choking and slapping recruits came out. But this wasn't news to anyone under Colonel Haas's command.
After Kissoon and Cucinotta—Cucinotta for not properly supervising Kissoon—as well as their sergeants major were relieved of their commands, the Washington Post reported that another recruit had needed skin grafts after being forced to exercise on a floor covered in bleach and having to wear his wet pants for hours, which resulted in second- and third-degree burns.8 When he finally reported his injuries to another DI, he was told he would not be able to graduate with his class if he sought medical attention.
The same DI who administered the bleach punishment was taken off duty for three days after he grabbed a recruit around the neck, according to the Washington Post, and he was convicted of recruit abuse at a court-martial in 2014.9
While I was being investigated for being “too abrasive,” Kissoon's battalion was knocking recruits around.
I'm not saying, “But look what they did.”
I'm saying that the Marine Corps fired a female battalion commander for being “too abrasive” when she tried to end abuse and hazing within her battalion while enforcing high standards and expectations to ensure her female recruits and Marines reached their full potential. I'm saying that this was done concurrently with the Corps lifting up a male battalion commander who allowed blatant abuse within his units.
It's a head-scratcher.
No, it's more than that.
It's wrong.
My Marines continued to make improvements, and I was so proud of them. I knew they could do it—I knew the recruits could do it, and I knew my Marines could get them there. People started asking the kinds of questions that I was more than happy to answer: “How are you guys achieving success?” and “How did you improve scores on the rifle range?”
But I also worried. After I fired November Company's commanding officer in December, and Colonel Haas made it clear that he was keeping a list of my “transgressions,” I feared that all of the progress we had made would disappear. Would any of the gains we made endure if I were fired? We made such great progress, but if no one acknowledged that things needed to be fixed in the first place, it didn't seem likely the forward momentum would continue. The improvements would all be driven by personality rather than a recognized need for change, which meant when I left the battalion, it would soon return to the status quo.
At this point, everything my Marines and I had talked about seemed so obvious. We set high expectations. We clearly communicated them to the recruits. We instilled confidence. And you know what? The young women rose to the challenge. Tell the recruits they can succeed, and they will. We had made a significant difference in just one recruit cycle because we essentially started from scratch. The recruits didn't know any better. They were clean slates. They had never been subjected to the old mind-set of low expectations for women in the Marine Corps, so we didn't need to change their attitudes. We had to change our own attitudes.
But if there's no one at the top saying, “Hey, this is a good idea. We need to keep doing this,” then it's as if you're operating in a dark corner. Organizational
