I was mentally and physically exhausted from worrying about what Colonel Haas was cooking up. I knew from Joe's connections in the Pentagon that big trouble was brewing. I needed a break, and I needed to see Joe. I was supposed to meet him in Charleston, South Carolina, for Memorial Day weekend.
But before I could drive to see Joe, I was notified that General Williams had convened an investigation, and that the investigating officer wanted to meet with me. I was not provided any other information, so I assumed the investigation was about the complaints from my request mast. So I was thinking that this would be my chance to lay everything out with the investigating officer. Once again, the pendulum of hope versus fear had swung back to hope—surely, once I explained my side of the story and provided my documentation, the investigating officer would understand what was happening.
I walked in with all of my counseling statements, all of the documentation about people's performance, and the previous year's command-climate survey—which had similar results to mine but with comments that pointed to the main issues of discipline and accountability in the battalion. My paperwork rose five inches high. He said, “I need for you to write a statement about how you perceive your command climate to be. Make sure you explain the purpose behind your meeting with Papa Company Marines as well.”
I must have stared at him for several seconds.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “I thought you here because of my request mast?”
“No,” he said. “I don't know anything about that.”
“Oh. Wow,” I thought. “This is not going to be good.”
He didn't ask me any questions or allow me the opportunity to defend myself. Instead, he told me to send him my statement via email. I had essentially no idea what the allegations were against me, other than that they were related to my meeting with Papa Company.
In other words, I had no idea what General Williams directed the investigating officer to look into for the scope of the investigation. As a legal officer and someone who had not only done command investigations but also had reviewed hundreds of them for accuracy and sufficiency, I thought it was extremely odd that the investigating officer didn't specifically lay out what I was being accused of. How could I defend myself without knowing what I had allegedly done?
I didn't know that the company commander had emailed Haas after our all-hands meeting and said she was afraid of reprisal. She had decided I wasn't going to give her an end-of-tour award, and so she claimed I was retaliating against her.
That wasn't even on my mind. I expected her to do better—I knew she was capable—so, throughout her tour, I had hoped I could influence her and that she would grow as a leader. Despite her lack of leadership, she had accomplished some good work, and I had already approved her end-of-tour award weeks before. Colonel Haas could have easily figured that out.
So, here I stood, being investigated for retaliation because one of my company commanders feared I wasn't going to approve an award I had already approved. (But I only learned that later.)
In any case, I left the stack of documentation for the investigating officer to review and consider, and I wrote a nine-page statement. I laid out what was going on at Fourth Battalion before I got there. I talked about the problems I was having with particular members of my staff. I wrote about the remedial actions I took to fix the problems. I wrote about the progress we had made.
I sent the investigating officer my statement by email, as he had asked; but he never called me in for an interview. I interpreted the silence as a good sign—clearly, he saw that my statement made sense. Now I know that I made a stupid assumption, thinking that my statement would be used to shed light on what I was trying to do to maintain good order and discipline in the battalion and how that had made some people who weren't performing up to standards unhappy.
The first week of June, when I was home for the weekend with Joe for the first time in two months, I got a call from Sergeant Major, telling me that the regimental XO was walking around the battalion with a female colonel. We had no idea what they were doing, but a day later I received a call from the female colonel, explaining that she had been appointed by General Lukeman, the two-star general in charge of Training and Education Command, and General Williams's boss, to conduct an equal-opportunity investigation into my request-mast complaint to Brigadier General Williams of gender bias and a hostile work environment. When I returned to Parris Island, we met, and I gave the female colonel an extensive statement, as well as a copy of the statement I gave to the other investigating officer who had been assigned by Brigadier General Williams to evaluate my leadership. She also talked to a few of my Marines, but that was all I knew.
As the investigation into my leadership was wrapping up, the female investigating officer completed her interviews and returned to Quantico during the third week of June, to brief General Lukeman on the results of the equal-opportunity investigation. I found out later that this represented the first of many mistakes by the Marine Corps to follow proper equal-opportunity investigation regulations. Not only did they fail to send out an official message to Headquarters Marine Corps, as required, when I made my complaints of gender bias, but they failed to ensure I was provided a copy of the investigation and given a chance to provide a rebuttal to it.
And then, out of the blue, the investigating officer for the inquiry into my leadership called and asked if I had any medical conditions.
This seemed to be a violation of my privacy, but
