[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 116-96]
FORT HOOD 2020: THE FINDINGS AND
RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE
FORT HOOD INDEPENDENT
REVIEW COMMITTEE
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY PERSONNEL
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
DECEMBER 9, 2020
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
42-928 WASHINGTON : 2021
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY PERSONNEL
JACKIE SPEIER, California, Chairwoman
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California TRENT KELLY, Mississippi
RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana
GILBERT RAY CISNEROS, Jr., LIZ CHENEY, Wyoming
California, Vice Chair PAUL MITCHELL, Michigan
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas JACK BERGMAN, Michigan
DEBRA A. HAALAND, New Mexico MATT GAETZ, Florida
LORI TRAHAN, Massachusetts
ELAINE G. LURIA, Virginia
Hannah Kaufman, Professional Staff Member
Paul Golden, Professional Staff Member
Danielle Steitz, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Kelly, Hon. Trent, a Representative from Mississippi, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Military Personnel..................... 4
Speier, Hon. Jackie, a Representative from California,
Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Military Personnel................. 1
WITNESSES
Swecker, Chris, Chair, Fort Hood Independent Review Committee;
Jonathan Harmon, Carrie Ricci, Queta Rodriguez, and Jack White,
Members, Fort Hood Independent Review Committee................ 6
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Fort Hood Independent Review Committee....................... 50
Speier, Hon. Jackie.......................................... 47
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
FORT HOOD 2020: THE FINDINGS AND
RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE FORT HOOD INDEPENDENT REVIEW COMMITTEE
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Military Personnel,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, December 9, 2020.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:01 p.m., in
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jackie Speier
(chairwoman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JACKIE SPEIER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
CALIFORNIA, CHAIRWOMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY PERSONNEL
Ms. Speier. The Military Personnel Subcommittee of the
Armed Services Committee will come to order.
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Finally, I have designated a committee staff member to, if
necessary, mute unrecognized members' microphones to cancel any
inadvertent background noise that may disrupt the proceedings.
All right. This hearing will now discuss on a hybrid level
the report submitted by the committee entitled ``The Findings
and Recommendations of the Fort Hood Independent Review
Committee.''
At the outset, I want to say to the five members of this
committee how grateful we are for your service. You have done
an exhaustive study. It has been independent and fair. You have
tackled problems head-on, and you have completed this project
in 3 months. Your resumes reflect your intellect, your years of
experience, and your commitment to public service.
I also want to commend Secretary McCarthy for recognizing
that there was a serious problem at Fort Hood and for putting
in place this independent review commission--or committee, I
should say--to look at what is indeed a national tragedy.
Our focus today are the 9 findings and the 70--I will
repeat that--70 review committee recommendations after this
extensive investigation into whether the command climate and
culture at Fort Hood reflects the Army's values, including
respect, inclusiveness, a workplace free from sexual
harassment, and a commitment to diversity.
Despite red flags popping up for years, leaders ignored
them, carried on, and--I quote from the report--``business as
usual, causing female soldiers, particularly in the combat
brigades, to slip into survival mode, vulnerable and preyed
upon, but fearful to report and be ostracized and
revictimized,'' unquote--that, a statement from the committee's
report.
It has been a difficult year for everyone, with the raging
pandemic, deep divisions, and racial reckoning facing our
Nation. But it has been even more difficult as a year for the
soldiers and families of Fort Hood. Like the rest of us, they
face a deadly pandemic, civil unrest, and extreme inequality,
but, unlike us, they also must live and work on the most
dangerous military installation in the United States. Let me
repeat that: the most dangerous military installation in the
United States.
Twenty-eight service members have died at Fort Hood this
year. At least five of them--Specialist Vanessa Guillen,
Private First Class Gregory Wedel Morales, Private First Class
Brandon Scott Rosencrans, Sergeant Elder Fernandes, and
Specialist Freddy Beningo Delacruz--have died under suspicious
circumstances.
I might also add that we just got word that there was a
suicide at Fort Hood just over the weekend.
And it is not just violent crime that is plaguing Fort Hood
but unlivable housing conditions, rising instances of sexual
harassment, a failing SHARP [Sexual Harassment/Assault Response
and Prevention] program, increased rates of depression, and a
bottoming-out of morale.
The report of the Fort Hood Independent Review Committee
confirms what I saw with my own eyes: The base, once nicknamed,
quote, ``great place,'' unquote, because of the quality of life
it offered to its soldiers, has been transformed into, quote,
``the place where careers go to die,'' unquote.
In September, I led a congressional delegation to Fort
Hood. We met with soldiers and their families. We saw their
barracks with cracked foundations, moldy walls, dingy
furniture, and poorly lit hallways. Soldiers were living in
rat-infested tenements. Families were living in black-mold-
infected homes with asbestos tiling and cracking foundations.
In my 8 years on this committee visiting military
installations, I have never seen barracks and family housing in
such deplorable conditions.
We heard from teary-eyed mothers who begged for assistance
because their children--in fact, their infants--were sleeping
on moldy mattresses and developing asthma.
We heard from military spouses who were afraid for their
husbands and wives for their overwork, their exhaustion, their
misery, and depression, afraid they would come home to find
their loved one hanging in the shower or dead on the floor.
We met with junior enlisted women who described a culture
of sexual harassment, a culture of leaders watching as women
and men were harassed before their eyes but kept silent, squad
leaders and platoon leaders who seemed either unwilling or
unsure how to help them. So their harassment became just
another hazard of being a soldier, and no one was held
accountable, and not one leader stepped forward.
We visited the SHARP 360 facility that a few enterprising
NCOs [noncommissioned officers] and soldiers designed. Taking
furniture from their homes and spending their weekends
painting, the NCOs created an interactive training space for
soldiers to train in real-world scenarios.
We know that ``death by PowerPoint'' is not an effective
strategy for reshaping military culture to prevent sexual
harassment and assault, yet programs like these are
underfunded, understaffed, and underadvertised. We cannot rely
on a few soldiers at disparate installations to come up with
their own training methods without proper support.
But it turns out Fort Hood wasn't even training by
PowerPoint. In fact, they weren't training their soldiers at
all.
The report also provides an inside look at a military
installation where soldiers are suffering under leaders who
have lost their way, crushed by unsustainable training
calendars, deployment schedules, and careless leaders chasing
the next rank instead of caring for their soldiers.
This report is a damning indictment of Fort Hood and its
leadership--leaders who, for years, even as they paid lip
service to Congress and said all the right things, allowed a
culture of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and toxic
behaviors to fester.
The committee's survey of Fort Hood soldiers found that
1,339 soldiers observed a sexual assault in the last year--this
is the Fort Hood Independent Review Committee--and 2,625
observed sexual harassments, but very few actually made a
report. I am appalled, and I think the Army should be appalled
as well.
I am grateful for the time and effort the Independent
Review Committee put into this. The curtain has been pulled
back, and I hope the Army sees the same traumatic environment
and toxic culture that I do.
This report is the culmination of a long, difficult year--
really, a difficult 5 or 10 years for soldiers and families at
Fort Hood. But I am saddened that it took the deaths of five
soldiers before anyone really listened to the pleas from
southeastern Texas. I am concerned that their commanders, their
leaders, and the Army ignored them for so long.
But I promise that I am listening and I will keep listening
until every one of these recommendations is implemented. Our
soldiers and their families are too important to this Nation to
brush off.
My promise to the soldiers, families, and all those who
serve our country: I will keep listening. I believe this
committee will keep listening. We will hold the Army and its
leadership accountable. We won't stop asking questions until
Fort Hood once again is, quote, ``the great place,'' unquote,
it claims to be.
Before I introduce our panel, I would like to acknowledge
the incredible work of our committee members during this
Congress, especially those participating in their last Military
Personnel Subcommittee hearing today.
We are joined, to my right, by Congresswoman Susan Davis,
the former chair of this committee, who has served 20 years on
the Armed Services Committee and who will be retiring at the
end of this year.
Also, to Gil Cisneros, Ralph Abraham, and Paul Mitchell,
all of you have been great participants in this committee's
work.
Before I offer Ranking Member Kelly an opportunity to make
opening remarks, I would like to congratulate him on his
promotion to Major General in the National Guard Reserves.
Congratulations to you.
Ranking Member Kelly.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Speier can be found in the
Appendix on page 47.]
STATEMENT OF HON. TRENT KELLY, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MISSISSIPPI, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY PERSONNEL
Mr. Kelly. You made me blush, Chairwoman.
Thank you, Chairwoman Speier, for having this important
hearing today.
And thank each of you panelists. As we spoke briefly
before, thank you for seeking truth and justice and taking your
time and doing your duty to your Nation to dig deep to find the
truth. I am an old prosecutor, and truth and facts matter, but
it takes men and women of courage sometimes to dig out those
truths. So thank you for what you have done as our panelists,
and thank you for sharing your findings and recommendations
with us.
I look forward to a productive discussion today, because
the tragedies at Fort Hood over the past year and some of the
other issues raised in the press and from when I traveled to
Fort Hood, like crime rates in general, housing issues,
crushing OPTEMPO [operational tempo], the poor quality of life,
especially for the families, are very personal problems to me.
I will take a point of privilege now to say that Chairwoman
Speier and I, I believe, in the last 2 years' Congress, through
this subcommittee, have achieved more for military families
than any Congress I am aware of in a long, long time, and that
is a testament to how much we care about our military families.
These are very personal problems for me. I have been in the
Army for almost 34 years, and while I know that when we throw
up our hands and volunteer to serve, mission accomplishment is
and has to be the number one goal of every commander and
soldier, but we get there by making people--service members and
their families--our number one priority.
Retired Sergeant Major Gene Maske of the Mississippi
National Guard used to have huge billboards up in Mississippi
that said ``Mission First, People Always.'' There is no
statement more true. And it applied in the 1980s or 1990s, and
it applies today. Not the motor pool, not the training
calendar, not the training center rotations. When people are
prioritized and the right balance is put in place, those other
requirements become much easier to complete and they are
completed more effectively.
I think there have been some obvious breakdowns not only at
Fort Hood but likely across the services as requirements
compound and OPTEMPO becomes all-consuming. And it only takes a
little loss of focus by leaders for their problems to spiral
out of control for units, soldiers, and their families.
There will be some accountability resulting from the
various investigations and reviews completed at Fort Hood, and
accountability and responsibility is important. But what I am
most interested in is looking forward, making sure change is
institutionalized where change is needed, and using what we
have learned at Fort Hood as a case study for all leaders,
starting with the Secretary of Defense down to the squad and
team leader level, so that systems are in place for ensuring
service members and their families are given the priority they
earned and deserve.
Trust is paramount for any military unit or organization.
If soldiers and families feel like leaders don't care about
their well-being, keeping them safe from sexual assault and
harassment or crime in general, or making sure that all are
treated with dignity and respect, then trust is gone and combat
effectiveness is depleted. We simply cannot tolerate a culture
that does not recognize people as its number one priority.
Your testimony today is very much appreciated. Thank you
again to our panelists and again to Chairwoman Speier for
calling this hearing.
And, with that, Madam Chair, I yield back.
Ms. Speier. All right.
I would like to ask unanimous consent that Congressmembers
Sylvia Garcia and Steve Lynch be allowed to join us at this
committee hearing.
Mr. Kelly. Without opposition.
Ms. Speier. So be it.
All right. Each witness will provide a brief introduction
and their focus on the committee. Then Mr. Swecker will present
a joint statement on behalf of the Fort Hood Independent Review
Committee. And each member will have an opportunity to question
the witnesses for 5 minutes.
We respectfully ask the witnesses to summarize their
testimony in 5 minutes. Your written comments and statements
will be made part of the hearing record.
Let us begin now with Mr. Chris Swecker, chair of the Fort
Hood Independent Review Committee.
STATEMENT OF CHRIS SWECKER, CHAIR, FORT HOOD INDEPENDENT REVIEW
COMMITTEE; JONATHAN HARMON, CARRIE RICCI, QUETA RODRIGUEZ, AND
JACK WHITE, MEMBERS, FORT HOOD INDEPENDENT REVIEW COMMITTEE
Mr. Swecker. Chairwoman Speier, Ranking Member Kelly, and
distinguished members of the subcommittee, we want to thank you
for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the
findings and recommendations of the Fort Hood Independent
Review Committee.
The Secretary of the Army----
Ms. Speier. Sir, your microphone may not be on.
Mr. Swecker. The Secretary of the Army appointed five
members, who join me today--Jonathan Harmon, Carrie Ricci,
Queta Rodriguez, Jack White, and myself as chairman of the
committee--in July of this year.
Jonathan Harmon is the chairman of McGuireWoods, LLP. He is
a nationally recognized lawyer who previously served in the
Army at Fort Hood in the 1st Cavalry Division after graduating
from West Point.
Carrie Ricci is a retired JAG [Judge Advocate General]
officer who served 3 years at Fort Hood, including as a trial
counsel, and now serves as associate general counsel for the
U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Queta Rodriguez is a retired Marine Corps officer who
served 20 years on Active Duty. She currently serves as
regional director for FourBlock, a veteran-serving nonprofit.
Jack White is a partner at FH+H, LLC, where his practice
focuses on government investigations and civil rights claims.
He served as a law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court after
graduating from West Point and serving as an armor officer in
the Active Army and the U.S. Army Reserve.
The committee has broad expertise with organizational
dynamics, law and government investigations, and a combined 75
years of experience as Active Duty military and law enforcement
personnel.
The committee was directed by the Secretary of the Army to
conduct a comprehensive assessment of the Fort Hood command
climate and culture and its impact, if any, on the safety,
welfare, and readiness of our soldiers and units.
In addressing this mandate, the committee determined that,
during the time period covered by the review, the command
climate relative to sexual harassment/assault response and
prevention at Fort Hood was ineffective, to the extent that
there was a permissive environment for sexual assault and
sexual harassment.
The committee's report set forth specific findings which
demonstrate that the implementation of the SHARP program was
ineffective. During the review period, no commanding general or
subordinate echelon commander chose to intervene proactively
and mitigate known risks of high crime, sexual assault, and
sexual harassment. The result was a pervasive lack of
confidence in the SHARP program and an unacceptable lack of
knowledge of core SHARP components regarding reporting and
certain victim services.
Under the III Corps SHARP program, the Sexual Assault
Review Board process was primarily utilized to address
administrative and not the actual substance of the program.
While a powerful tool by design, the Sexual Assault Review
Board process became a missed opportunity to develop and
implement proactive strategies to create a respectful culture
and prevent and reduce incidents of sexual assault and sexual
harassment.
From the III Corps level and below, the SHARP program was
chronically underresourced due to understaffing, lack of
training, lack of credentialed SHARP professionals, and a lack
of funding. Most of all, it lacked command emphasis where it
was needed the most: in the junior enlisted ranks.
A resonant symptom of the SHARP program's ineffective
implementation was significant underreporting of sexual
harassment and sexual assault. Without intervention from the
noncommissioned officers and officers entrusted with their
health and safety, victims feared the inevitable consequences
of reporting: ostracism, shunning and shaming, harsh treatment,
and damage to their career. Many have left the Army or plan to
do so at the earliest opportunity.
As part of the command climate, the issues of crime and the
Criminal Investigative Division [CID] operations were examined.
The committee determined that serious issues on and off Fort
Hood were neither identified nor addressed.
There was an absence of an effective risk management
approach to crime incident reduction and soldier victimization.
Despite having the capability, very few tools were employed at
Fort Hood to do so. Both the Directorate of Emergency Services
and the CID have a mandate and a role to play in crime
reduction. Each contributed very little analysis, feedback, and
general situational awareness to the command toward
facilitating and enabling such action. This was another missed
opportunity.
The deficient climate also extended into missing-soldier
scenarios where no one recognized the slippage in
accountability procedures and unwillingness or lack of ability
of the noncommissioned officers to keep track of their
subordinates. The absence of any protocols for soldiers who
failed to report resulted in an ad hoc approach by units and
the MPs to effectively address instances of missing soldiers
during the critical first 24 hours.
Consistent with the chart, the report sets forth 9 findings
and 70 recommendations. These findings include the ineffective
implementation of the SHARP program; evidence that incidents of
sexual assault and sexual harassment are underreported;
structural flaws in the program; inefficiencies of the CID that
adversely impacted their mission; the mechanics of the Army's
adjudication process involving sexual assault and sexual
harassment; deficiencies of the Fort Hood public relations and
incident management; the lack of established protocols for
missing soldiers; the fact that the criminal environment within
surrounding areas and counties is pretty much the same or lower
than similar-size areas; however, there are unaddressed crime
problems at Fort Hood which put them in a reactive posture.
There are other parts to our opening statement, but, in the
interest of time, I want to point out one last thing to the
subcommittee here as far as methodology. We conducted 647
individual interviews, of which 500 were female soldiers. We
did 80 group interviews that encompassed close to over 1,800
soldiers. We had 31,000 responses to a survey, which was
basically a 100 percent response, which is unheard of. We
commissioned 49 formal research projects, which informed us and
helped us use the Army's own data to help us form our
conclusions. We did over 140 specialized interviews inside and
outside Fort Hood. And we looked at thousands of documents.
Soldiers assaulting and harassing other soldiers is both
corrosive to esprit de corps and contrary to good order and
discipline; worse, it is contrary to Army values. The findings
and recommendations contained in the report are offered in the
spirit of constructive improvements, not to provide a basis for
punitive actions.
That concludes my statement--our statement. And as the
chair of the Fort Hood Independent Review Committee, we welcome
the opportunity to field any questions. And with your
permission, I will direct them to the appropriate committee
members as necessary, since we each focused on different parts
of the report, with your permission.
[The prepared statement of the Fort Hood Independent Review
Committee can be found in the Appendix on page 50.]
Ms. Speier. Thank you very much, Mr. Swecker.
Do any of the other committee members want to make some
opening comments?
All right. Very good.
Ms. Garcia. Madam Chair, can I ask a point of
clarification?
Ms. Speier. Yes.
Ms. Garcia. I see three witnesses at the table. Are the
other two people behind them the other two witnesses?
Ms. Speier. Yes, because of the need to----
Ms. Garcia. Could we just at least introduce them? Because
they don't have nameplates.
Ms. Speier. All right.
Mr. Swecker, would you like to introduce them----
Mr. Swecker. Yes.
Ms. Speier [continuing]. And have them stand?
Ms. Garcia. And, if you would, sir, could you tell us what
area of expertise or which part of the puzzle they worked so
that it will be easier for us when we address questions?
Mr. Swecker. To my left----
Ms. Garcia. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Swecker. Sorry.
To my left is Queta Rodriguez. She worked on several
aspects of the report and--I mean, we are all very conversant
with the report. But she worked on the underreporting finding
and, I believe, the public relations finding; also the lack-of-
confidence-in-the-SHARP-program finding.
To my back right is Jonathan Harmon. Jonathan worked very
hard on the methodology and finding number 9, which was the
overall conclusion that relied on the first eight findings,
which was--the overall conclusion was it was a permissive
environment.
Carrie Ricci, as a former JAG officer, worked on the
finding that deals with the JAG process or the military justice
process, as well as the public relations finding, I believe.
Jack White took on various aspects of the report,
especially finding number 3, which deals with the structural
aspects of the SHARP program; also on the executive summary as
well as other parts of it.
But, as I said, we are all very conversant in all aspects
of the program, and we welcome your questions.
Ms. Speier. Thank you again.
Mr. Swecker, let me begin by asking you a question. You
were in the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] for 24 years
and completed your career as the assistant director for the
[FBI] Criminal Investigative Division.
In the report, the committee found that the [Army] Criminal
Investigative Division detachment workforce was unstable,
underexperienced, overassigned and underresourced, leading to
inefficiencies that had an adverse impact on investigations,
especially cases involving sex crimes and soldier deaths.
During the Guillen investigation, the CID detachment
received almost no support from their battalion leadership,
resulting in an undermanned, inexperienced team investigating a
high-profile disappearance. The lack of experience of those
agents resulted in brief, choppy interviews of key individuals
in the Guillen case. The interviews appeared to be rote and,
indeed, checklist-driven. That is a very powerful, depressing
statement about the Army's CID.
Could you expand on that?
One of my concerns has been that the CID, when they came
and testified here, when we met with them at Fort Hood, had
really a very happy-face presentation, and yet what you have
disclosed here would suggest deeply troubling problems.
And, if I am not mistaken, the chief investigator in the
middle of the investigation of Vanessa Guillen's disappearance
was transferred. Is that correct?
Mr. Swecker. That is correct.
Ms. Speier. So please enlighten us.
Mr. Swecker. Madam Chairwoman, with the experience that we
have, we also had four other retired FBI special agents working
with us to assist.
In our estimation, the Fort Hood CID was basically being
used as a training ground. They had 45 special agents assigned;
I think maybe 35 or so were actually working cases, or the
spaces just weren't filled. Of those 35, there might have been
3 or 4 with more than 3 years of work experience.
About 93 percent of the enlisted special agents were
apprentice agents during the relevant time period. That would
be like staffing the New York Field Office of the FBI with new
agents right out of Quantico. This is one of the busiest
military installations in the country, maybe around the globe,
and yet there were very few experienced agents.
There was fairly chronic understaffing. I think, during
most of the review period that we looked at, they were right at
about 65 percent. They hadn't reallocated their agent
complement for 5 years, so they were static over 5 years in
terms of how many agents they were actually allowed. That
doesn't mean they had the people in the seats.
So what we saw was chronic inexperience that translated, we
felt like, into they had a difficult time. And it is not their
fault. These are brand-new agents, right out of Fort Leonard
Wood, with very few mentors. I mean, the supervisors and the
head of the office, the special agent in charge, very competent
and very experienced, but just not enough journeyman-level
special agents to mentor the younger agents. There was not
enough continuity.
We found that they didn't have some of the specialized
tools readily available, like cell-phone tracking, like
extraction of data from cell phones and mobile devices, the
ability to go to a magistrate, draft and develop probable cause
to get a warrant, and that sort of thing.
So we saw that carry over into death investigations, which
are complex. We saw that carry over into sexual assault
investigations, which were complex. We wanted to know more
about the suicides--why, the cause, the lifestyle factors,
anything that might be relevant. We didn't see deep-enough
investigation into the 50 suicide files that I reviewed, nor
the death investigations.
And, again, it is not the fault of the CID agents on the
ground. It just was being used as a training ground.
Ms. Speier. So one of the shocking things to me was the
fact that it wasn't until after Vanessa Guillen's body was
located that CID actually went back to the arms room and did a
thorough investigation. Does that surprise you?
Mr. Swecker. It did, as an experienced investigator.
The first 24 hours--the first hours in any investigation of
a missing person are absolutely critical. And what played into
this somewhat was the lack of missing-soldier protocols, the
critical first 24 hours. The noncommissioned officers, who
would be the first to notice someone missing, really didn't
have any guidelines to go by in terms of how to determine what
was suspicious, what are the criteria.
The CID investigators, despite the fact that they had all
of Vanessa Guillen's personal belongings left behind at a place
where she was supposed to come back to within 10 minutes or so,
got themselves diverted because of two other witnesses that
threw their timeline off. We believe that experienced
investigators would not have been thrown off by, you know, sort
of, the red-herring aspect of those other witnesses.
Ms. Speier. Let me just ask you one more question. You
found that the command climate surveys were being collected,
that the data was very negative, and no one appeared to be
reviewing them. How do we make commanders at Fort Hood and
other installations take these command climate surveys
seriously?
Mr. Swecker. We felt like that was a very, very valuable
source of information for us, was the command climate surveys.
And they did indeed show some pretty dismal results,
particularly with the larger units on the base--the 1st Cavalry
Division and 3d Cavalry Regiment.
And what we determined was that these climate surveys were
not being used the way they should have been used. They are not
to be used for punitive action, but they should be used for
corrective action. And they should have been taken to heart,
and it should have stimulated something like going out and
talking to your troops, like the CODEL [congressional
delegation] did and like we did and like the Secretary of the
Army did. Because, as soon as you got face-to-face with the
troops, they had no trouble speaking out about some of the
problems.
So we felt like the climate surveys--the Army takes the
time and expense to do them; they ought to be taken to heart,
and they ought to be used effectively. And we address that in
our recommendations.
Ms. Speier. Thank you.
Ranking Member Kelly.
Mr. Kelly. I first want to commend and thank Secretary
McCarthy, General McConville, and Sergeant Major of the Army
Grinston for having the courage to step outside what may be the
norm and to get you guys to look at this. And I just want to
say, I think that is an outstanding step. And that means that
at the highest levels of leadership they want to effect change.
With that being said, I want to ask you, what specific
recommendations of the 70 findings have you--since your study,
your findings, what have you discussed with the Sergeant Major
of the Army, what have you discussed with the Chief of Staff of
the Army, and what have you discussed with Secretary McCarthy
or other folks about what are they planning to do to implement
these recommendations?
Mr. Swecker. So I would like to take part of that question,
and, if you don't mind, I am going to pass another part of it
off to Jack White.
We have had extensive discussions with the Secretary. We
believe that his and his staff's desire--the Under Secretary,
the Chief of Staff--are very sincere in getting out ahead of
this. And they have spent the last 3 weeks, between the time we
gave them the report and yesterday, setting up the People First
Task Force, getting their troops in touch with their soldiers,
which is one of the most important aspects of this, is getting
the NCOs in touch with the soldiers that they have under their
command.
So we believe that they are well out ahead of this right
now, but I also want to give Jack White a chance to respond to
that question as well, since he worked on that part of the
recommendations.
Mr. White. Ranking Member Kelly, we spoke directly with the
Chief of Staff----
Ms. Speier. Could turn your microphone on?
Mr. Swecker. It is on.
Ms. Speier. It is on?
Mr. White. It is on.
Ms. Speier. Okay. Maybe if you could move your----
Mr. White. Sure.
Ms. Speier [continuing]. Microphone a little bit closer,
that would be helpful.
Mr. White. We spoke directly with the Secretary, the Under
Secretary, the Chief of Staff, the Vice Chief, and the Sergeant
Major. We were very heartened by how seriously they took our
recommendations. Immediately after performing a thorough
review, rather than dismiss any of our findings, they adopted
all of our findings.
Now, as to the recommendations, they have had us speak with
them at length about the substance. And our recommendations
break out into categories regarding SHARP structure,
implementation of the program, legal components of the program,
adjudication, USACIDC [United States Army Criminal
Investigation Command] issues, missing-soldier protocols,
command climate issues. In each of these areas, the Army has
humbly demonstrated an openness to accepting what we have seen
and implementing specific protocols.
Moreover, before we even finished, the Army put together an
organization called the People First Task Force. That is led by
a three-star and other senior Army leaders whose sole purpose
is to look at the problems that we have identified and figure
out----
Mr. Kelly. I am going to cut you off now. Thank you. And I
hope these discussions will continue, because I--we are limited
on time, and I have other questions.
One of the things I want to make sure--and I read, and I
can't remember. I want to make sure that we are using these
SHARP positions or the SHARP coordinators or all these things--
I want to make sure that we are getting the best the Army has
to offer in these positions, not someone who is about to retire
or not a secondary duty.
It should be one of those things like the IG [inspector
general]; it should be considered a key position. And when you
leave there, the expectation for doing that job should be to be
promoted, not to retire, to be promoted to battalion command or
brigade command or first sergeant, whatever that is.
So I hope that, if you haven't----
And then, finally, the final question that I will have time
for: Why Fort Hood-specific? It is hard for me to imagine, with
the dynamic leaders that I know in the Army and with the
transitional nature of our forces, so leaders come in from
other places to be brigade/division sergeant majors, commanding
officers--so why Fort Hood? And why didn't these leaders coming
from other bases--why did they not send up red flags? That is
the difference between being a leader and a boss, is they
should have recognized that.
Did your findings address or have any reason to say, why
didn't the guy coming from NTC [National Training Center] or
1st Infantry Division--why did they not notice that this was so
out of whack at Fort Hood?
Mr. Swecker. Well, to your point, we said in the report,
this was a known risk. And if you talk about basic risk
management concepts, it was more than a known risk. I mean,
they had the highest rate in the Army of sexual assault at Fort
Hood. There were studies after studies after studies that
ranked Fort Hood the highest risk.
We also know that, you know, if you take 4,000 in a combat
brigade--and I use that loosely because there are different
MOSes [military occupational specialties] inside the combat
brigade. But if you take 4,000 alpha males and salt them in
with 300 or 400 female soldiers, common sense alone would tell
you you should keep an eye on it. So, known risk in so many
different ways.
We looked at other installations, but we really--for
purposes of comparison, and we found that other installations
were doing better in some cases, at least anecdotally.
But, you know, we found that Fort Hood was an outlier in so
many areas: suicides, AWOL [absent without leave], sexual
assaults, on and on and on. That is what our research projects
told us. And we were told that they had very seldom seen one
place be such an outlier in this type of study. But we just
simply didn't have the resources and the mandate to go outside
of Fort Hood and do a deep dive.
Mr. Kelly. Thank you, Chairwoman Speier. And I yield back,
but thank you for yielding me a little extra time.
Ms. Speier. Of course.
Mr. Swecker, in my fantasy world, you are all going to be
hired to go to each installation and base to do this, because I
am not convinced that this is just a Fort Hood problem.
All right. Congresswoman Susan Davis, you are recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And thank you very much for your being here, for the
exceptional job that you did. And I think we always hate for
tragedies to trigger, you know, something that we study but we
don't do anything about, and that is my concern as well. So I
greatly appreciate the fact that this is something that we need
to continue to work on very hard.
I was also interested in--I think the chairwoman just
mentioned as well--how you feel that we can take this as a
prototype, perhaps, in your explanations, the way you went
about it, and be able to apply it as we look at other bases and
other programs that are out there.
Because we have done a lot of work in that regard. I know
we have had charts demonstrating where more problems are than
others. But I am just hoping that out of this and your
recommendations--and I haven't had a chance to study them
specifically--but how do we use that information to apply--how
is it different than what we have done before? Because a lot of
things have been tried.
I wanted to go quickly to this issue of the command survey
and the fact that they weren't really using it.
One of the issues that we have talked about in the past is
being certain that a command survey plays a role in advancement
of men and women who will continue to serve at a higher level.
I get the feeling from your comments that you didn't see that
that was even in the realm of what people were looking at.
I would like to ask Ms. Ricci, could you respond? And you
had, I think, wanted to respond a moment ago as well.
Ms. Ricci. Yeah. I just wanted to say that SHARP was a
check-the-block program. So, to Ranking Member Kelly's
question, when you are being judged on how ready your unit is--
and these units are training, deploying, training, deploying--
being able to check the block on SHARP, you almost can't blame
commanders when they are being actually rated on all the other
things.
So the doctrine was there, and it was correct, but the
implementation resulted in just checking the block. And that is
where the problems came forward.
So I think that is really the main reason why--why Fort
Hood? The constant OPTEMPO. It could be happening at other
bases; we did not look directly at them. But the check-the-
block nature of the program.
Mrs. Davis. So how would you change that?
Ms. Ricci. And for that, I definitely want to have Mr.
White speak to the structure of SHARP, because that was a major
problem as well.
Mrs. Davis. Okay.
Mr. White.
Mr. White. A number of the challenges are cultural.
To make it not a check-the-box, one of the recommendations
that we have creates a sort of pool of SHARP professionals who
do not report--now, let me be careful how I say this. The
command has an extraordinarily important role in the
implementation of the SHARP program. However, what one of our
recommendations is is that these SHARP professionals report to
a SHARP program manager on the installation, not to their
direct unit commanders.
Now, those SHARP professionals also speak directly to the
commander about SHARP training, and they assess the training
status of the units.
Mrs. Davis. Uh-huh.
Mr. White. And what all of these recommendations are
getting at is changing the culture. The words that resonate
throughout our report are ``culture.'' There is a certain
culture in which, you know, no female soldier is more afraid of
what happens to her inside the wire than she is outside the
wire. So there is an entire section of our report that is
dedicated to that.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. I appreciate that, Mr. White.
Is there a way, then--because we have had this discussion
about commanding officers and the chain of command and morale
and discipline and all those issues. So can you put that in a
context of what you have just shared, that there is something
important, I think I was hearing, about the role of the
commander, but that it is not necessarily a JAG officer or a
prosecutor that you need; it sounded like you need somebody
else in there. And that is, maybe, confusing to people.
Mr. White. Well----
Mrs. Davis. And I think my time is up, Madam Chair.
Ms. Speier. No, that is all right. I think it is an
important question.
And I do believe you asked that they take these positions
out of the chain of command. Is that not correct?
Mr. White. That they are not rated by their commanders,
that the SHARP professionals are not rated by the commanders.
So that is true.
Ms. Speier. Yeah.
Mr. Swecker. If I might add----
Ms. Speier. Yeah.
Mr. Swecker [continuing]. The SARCs [Sexual Assault
Response Coordinators] are sort of the intake people. And they
are full-time at the brigade level, and they are collateral at
the battalion level. We recommended that the SARCs--they do
away with collateral, because they are not trusted inside the
units at that level, and make the SARCs full-time at the
brigade level, which they already are, but civilianize the
SARCs. Because they are the traffic people. They intake the
complaint, and they funnel it where it needs to go. They are
theoretically the first person that a victim will go to.
Victims' advocates are the ones that service the victim.
We talk about taking all of the collateral positions and
consolidating enough of them at the corps level so that you
don't have to necessarily go to the brigade. You can go up to
corps at a very--what we call a very strong program office,
civilianized program office. When I say ``civilianized,'' I
mean it could be led by a civilian or someone at a high
military level, someone who can go toe-to-toe with the corps
commander if need be.
And that gives a victim an option. You can go to the
brigade; it is civilian. Or you can go all the way up to corps
if you want to see somebody in a green suit or you want to get
completely out of your brigade and get somewhere where you feel
comfortable reporting.
We also talk about keeping longer hours so they don't have
to excuse themselves from their units and ask their boss to go
somewhere to do a complaint at brigade level because everybody
knows what they are doing.
Ms. Speier. Thank you.
Mr. Bergman, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Bergman. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Two quick but kind of complicated questions.
When you do the command climate surveys, do you, as an
entity, do any comparing/contrasting of the command climate
surveys as it relates to different commands to look for trends?
Mr. Swecker. We looked at all the different commands on
Fort Hood----
Mr. Bergman. I am talking about exter--you take what you
have at Fort Hood. You have the geographical confines of a
base. What you see there, are there any--is there any analysis
done that could compare and contrast what you are finding at
Fort Hood as a whole as it might compare and contrast to other
major installations--Fort Bragg, Fort Carson, Fort Drum,
whatever?
Mr. Swecker. The short answer is, it can be done; we didn't
do that.
Mr. Bergman. Okay. Next question. Is there any data that
suggests that the type of warfighting unit that is based at
Fort Hood, whether it is infantry, artillery, aviation,
whatever it happens to be--is there any data that suggests
trends within a type of warfighting unit? Again, in the
simplest terms, you know, infantry battalion versus aviation
squadron, something like that.
Mr. White. There is not data, but there are ways to look at
the various units and extrapolate that----
Mr. Bergman. Okay. So the point is, to date, you haven't
done a compare and contrast. That is okay. It is not good or
bad. It is just, I wanted to know if you had, you know, done
that. You were a little busy here trying to get the data and
relative perspective at Fort Hood.
Mr. Swecker. We compared to other installations--for
instance, Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, where there are heavy
Special Forces. There were some differences.
Mr. Bergman. Okay.
Mr. Swecker. We did 49 research projects. I couldn't--you
know, there is no time to go into all of them, but we saw
differences between the Special Forces bases and----
Mr. Bergman. Yeah. I would be interested, you know, at some
future point, if there is data available. It doesn't have to be
in a hearing form, but, you know, written, what you have, we
will digest that.
And, with that, Madam Chair, I would like to yield the rest
of my time to Mr. Kelly.
Mr. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Bergman--General Bergman.
I want to go back just a little bit about the lip service.
And having served for almost 35 years this month, that is
exactly what is happening. You hit the nail on the head. And so
we have got to address that so that we are not checking a box
but we are actually putting command emphasis and we are
actually accomplishing things. Because the OPTEMPO is part of
the issue. Because all you are worried about is taking soldiers
downrange and bringing them back alive, not understanding that
sometimes checking the block prevents you from doing exactly
that.
I want to talk just a little bit about the SARCs coming in
and being civilians. And I don't care if they are civilians. I
think you can also make a separate branch--i.e., the IG branch
or the adjutant general's branch--where people are in that and
they are not necessarily answerable to the chain of command,
like an IG is not. When an IG comes in, that commander cannot
tell him or her what to look at and what not to. They have
their own IG chain of command which takes care of that.
So these SARCs, whether it is a branch or whether--I think
there is a lot of water that can be carried in that pail. So if
you can articulate whether it is okay to be civilians or
whether it would be good to have a branch where people--it is a
branch to be a sexual assault or sexual--would that be helpful?
Mr. White. Representative Kelly, a good analogy is SQIs
[special qualification identifiers]. Drill sergeants have a
special qualifi--not only drill sergeants; EO [equal
opportunity] representatives, IGs. The Army knows how to treat
a program as important and grow people up through the ranks
through that. So, if you look at an NCO and he has a recruiting
patch, you know that he is DA [Department of the Army] selected
and he has a special qualifications identifier.
In addition to that, the Trial Defense Service and the U.S.
Army Combat Readiness Center, or the safety program, they are
good analogs, because they are paths that are parallel to the
command that support the command. Not necessarily a separate
branch, but they are a department within the Army that supports
the chain of command.
Ms. Speier. Mr. Swecker, did you have a following comment
to make?
Mr. Swecker. Yeah. Our recommendations center on creating a
very strong SHARP program office at the corps level, a program
office that has some actual teeth to it.
And if we were to say that--we looked very hard at the SARC
position, because it is a very critical position. And we would
have gone against our own findings if we had said, let's keep
this green-suit. The reason for that was, we had enough
information about fear of retaliation, lack of confidence, lack
of confidentiality, and reprisals and that sort of thing--and
this had been going on, you know, since 2014--that we felt like
we had to civilianize the SARC position but also offer at the
corps level a green-suit alternative for victims that wanted to
go that route.
So we were looking for something that was practical and
doable, not something that was sort of theoretical and
esoteric.
Ms. Speier. All right. Thank you.
Ms. Escobar, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Escobar. Thank you, Madam Chair, for this very
important hearing.
And, Mr. Swecker and to the entire team, thank you for the
incredible work that you have done and for the report that you
have provided us. These events at Fort Hood have been
incredibly tragic, and there are many families who are still
grieving and, obviously, whose lives have been devastated as a
result of the absolute breakdown of what needed to happen at
Fort Hood. So thank you for the roadmap that you have given us.
Mr. Swecker, I want to talk a little bit about missing
persons. You mentioned that those first 24 hours after someone
goes missing are critical, and if there is not a recognition of
the critical nature of it, then, you know, you lose precious
time, and, obviously, the consequences can be--the tragedy can
be compounded.
In my district, El Paso, Fort Bliss, we are still searching
for Private Richard Halliday. And he was initially listed as
AWOL. His family wasn't even informed for 36 days that he had
gone missing. He has still yet to be found.
There have been changes made. Obviously, I am wondering, is
that enough? Are there more things that Congress needs to do,
more things that the Army needs to do, when it comes to
addressing the issue of missing persons?
Mr. Swecker. We actually think that the protocols that the
Army has rolled out are good ones. They start in hour one. That
was missing when we went through our review. That was something
that we were surprised at, because the Army has protocols and
procedures for everything. What they didn't have was, what do
you do when someone fails to report? How does the first-line
NCO identify whether that is suspicious? Do they have the
judgment and the skill and the training to understand that
there is something different about this failure to report?
So there were no protocols. And, again, I don't think this
is something you can legislate. I think the Army can take care
of this, and they have.
The other part of it is getting the NCOs to know their
soldiers. And that was a piece that we felt like is an
intangible that is hard to measure, but we saw it--we felt it,
we saw it, we heard it anecdotally. The NCOs need to know where
to go. What is going on in their lives? Where do they live off-
barracks? Who are their family members? Who are their friends?
And we did not see enough of that, the NCOs being in close
touch and knowing their charges well enough to understand where
to find them when they went missing.
Ms. Escobar. I appreciate that. Thank you.
I want to talk also about the fear of reporting sexual
offenses. On this committee, we have heard that over and over
again. In my district, I have heard that over and over again.
In conversations with other military members, have heard that
over and over again. And so you are absolutely right; this idea
that there needs to be a culture change is so critical. And
that is why I was so glad to see that the extensive interviews
were a part of your methodology.
Now, if Congress were to focus--and, you know, I know, as
you mentioned, a lot of this can't be legislated; it has to
come from within the organization. But if Congress were to
focus on one key reform to begin changing the culture, in terms
of reporting sexual offenses, sexual assault, sexual
harassment, et cetera, what would that be?
Mr. Swecker. So, with your permission, can I pass that
question off to Ms. Queta Rodriguez?
Ms. Escobar. Ms. Rodriguez.
Ms. Rodriguez. Thank you, Congresswoman Escobar.
As Mr. Swecker mentioned, we really believe that this
cultural change has to start from the top. As you see in the
report, we have mentioned that, while people at the corps level
may have the best intentions, the culture of ensuring that
every single soldier exhibits the Army's core values is
completed down to the most junior levels, where it is needed
the most and where most of the victims of sexual assault and
sexual harassment take place, it is not happening.
I don't know that there is something that Congress can do
legislatively to change that, but I think that the Army
leadership has received that message and has really shown a
commitment to ensuring that they are doing that.
During the time that we were there, there was a stand-down
on Fort Hood, where they were going to set aside time--as you
know, the operations tempo has been a very, very significant
piece of why we believe that soldiers aren't getting to know--
or NCOs aren't getting to know their soldiers as we would
expect and as maybe we have seen in the past. So time set aside
for them to do that is critical, despite operation tempo.
Because, at the end of the day, you know, you are not ready,
the force is not ready, if your people are not taken care of.
And I think that the Army has gotten that message, and I
believe that they are taking necessary actions to address that.
Mr. Swecker. And might I add, Congresswoman Davis brought
up, I think, a really good point a minute ago about the climate
surveys. They are a great indicator of what is going on at the
troop level, at the company level, at the squad level. And if
they were actually used, they could be valuable tools to make
changes, because they are a great way to test the temperature.
Ms. Escobar. Thank you so much.
Madam Chair, I yield back.
Ms. Speier. Thank you.
Could we just drill down on that for 1 minute? These
climate surveys, what did you--what were you able to pull out
of these climate surveys that alarmed you? Can you just give us
one example or two?
Mr. Swecker. Well, I think probably one of the most stark
examples was the situation involving SHARP knowledge of
reporting and fear of retaliation and that sort of thing.
There was a section devoted exclusively to SHARP
indicators, and one of them was knowledge. And it wasn't just a
question, do you have knowledge of the SHARP program; it was a
five-question quiz on the difference between restricted and
unrestricted reports, about victim counsel. Five very easy
questions were asked and answered.
And in some of the units, the passing rate was about 45
percent. It was red. It was flashing red. In most cases, it was
yellow. We recommended they actually raise the bar. Passing
ought to be, you know, right around 65 percent, not 50 percent.
So, in the most important units, the largest units on the base,
the passing rates on the little mini quiz were depressing. I
mean, they were somewhere, anywhere between 45 and 60 percent
passing.
Now, the number that answered the question--in one
particular large unit, the number that answered all five
questions correctly was 20 percent.
The other one was fear of retaliation. We saw pretty stark
red and yellow blocks, for the 1st Cavalry Division and the 3d
Cavalry Regiment, that were, again, red and yellow, especially
in the enlisted ranks and especially among women. Because you
can break it down, and it does break it down in a lot of
different ways. It is incredibly rich information that just
wasn't used.
Ms. Speier. Thank you.
Mr. Gaetz, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Gaetz. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And I just wanted to start by offering some gratitude and
appreciation for your efforts. The last thing I did before
joining the subcommittee hearing was review the list of
northwest Floridians that I will be nominating to service
academies, and I was heartened to see how many women are on
that list. And I know that, should they go on to military
service, their time will be better thanks to your efforts and
your diligent focus on this.
And I would want to ask a question to Ms. Ricci, from the
JAG perspective, on the recommendations that directly reflect
on the code and how the code might change and how the Congress
might have to be involved in the NDAA [National Defense
Authorization Act] in those changes. I wanted to give you the
opportunity to speak to that.
Ms. Ricci. There is one thing that concerns me. I know in
the 2019 NDAA there was a provision--I don't remember the exact
language, but it basically requires disclosure to the victim of
a sexual assault so that that victim will know the final
resolution. The issue that I found in reviewing this is that,
when the final resolution is an administrative action, that is
considered a personnel action. So that is not public record,
and the assailant has privacy rights in his or her personnel
record.
So, when the determination is made of what can be relayed
to the victim, ALD [Administrative Law Division] legal offices
are not seeing that as taking precedent over the FOIA [Freedom
of Information Act]. And, under FOIA, the privacy rights of the
assailant may take priority, depending on how you conduct your
legal analysis.
So my concern there is that, although there is that
provision, if FOIA is a higher precedent, then perhaps victims
won't always--they still will not always know. They may be
informed that there was some consideration of administrative
action, but they may not get the final decision. And it is very
difficult for a victim to go through the process and to have
hope, only to be told, ``We can't tell you what happened in the
end.''
That is one area that I would want to make the Congress
aware of.
Mr. Gaetz. Thank you.
And, Mr. Swecker, when we debate these issues during the
NDAA, we are always having to balance the need for buy-in from
the chain of command against a lot of the information you have
been providing us today regarding concerns about retaliation
and utilization of the chain of command for reporting. And, you
know, I tend to lean on the experience of folks like the
ranking member and General Bergman, who are very familiar with
the positives that come with reinforcing that chain of command
to solve problems.
And so I wanted to ask you, you know, is the essence of
your testimony today that, in the absence of breaking the chain
of command, we haven't seen the cultural buy-in to solve these
problems, based on your survey results? Is that a fair read on
your testimony?
Mr. Swecker. Yeah. We know that the command jealously
guards its responsibility for the well-being of its troops and
adjudication especially. So we drew a distinction between
reporting and adjudication. Reporting, we think, can go heavily
civilian. But adjudication, we think, still needs to reside
with the command.
We recommend in sexual harassment cases that the
investigation go to another brigade outside the brigade, but we
tend to leave the adjudication piece with the command itself,
because that is their responsibility.
But we think that the reporting part--we want to get the
reports in. We want to have uninhibited reporting without fear
of reprisal. And that is why we took it up to the corps level
and brigade level and we basically recommend taking it out of
the battalion, company, et cetera.
But we also need to have someone monitoring the
adjudications and the timing of the adjudications, because they
are slow. The investigation is slow. There are a lot of delays
in the process. The opine of probable cause, from when the
handoff goes from CID to the military justice advisor sometimes
lasts--well, there is a gap of 120 days. There is a 14-day MOU
[memorandum of understanding] that ought to probably be
legislated within the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice]
to make sure that that opinion is rendered--of probable cause
is rendered within 14 days and there is no delay. You know, 120
days is a long time to wait for the case to move forward.
But nobody is tracking, start to finish, how long it takes
and where the off-ramps are taken to go administrative instead
of court martial and that sort of thing. So somebody needs to
be watching over that, and nobody is.
Mr. Gaetz. Yeah. I would just suggest that hard and fast
times in the adjudication process always have to be balanced
against due process. You know, in the recommendations I have
seen, it seems you hold due process up as a very high standard,
and as we legislate around these very complex issues, it is my
hope that the Congress will, in fact, recognize that we have to
give the accused rights as well so that we don't have the
system overburdened by claims that are retaliatory claims at
their outset rather than true instances that we need to be able
to address.
I thank the chair's indulgence, and I yield back.
Ms. Speier. I thank you.
Mrs. Trahan, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Trahan. Madam Chair, thank you for holding this
hearing and for your longstanding commitment to combating
sexual assault. [Inaudible] that nearly 30 years after
[inaudible] we still don't have sufficient safeguards and
cultural norms to prevent these abhorrent acts. And, you know,
it is unconscionable that a young man or a young woman with the
courage to serve our Nation in uniform could be subject to such
dehumanizing behavior.
First, to our witnesses, I want to thank you all at the
outset for your commitment to this thorough review. I know you
all had to put aside your personal lives and day jobs for
months to undertake this critical task. I believe it is a push
in the right direction for real change within the U.S. Army and
the rest of the force at large.
You know, year after year, Congress receives a budget
request from the Pentagon for hundreds of billions of dollars
to secure our Nation. But they fail to make the connection
between the health and safety of our troops and the National
Defense Strategy. And if we are going to continue making this
investment, there must be an understanding that our military
leaders will take care of our heroes under their command.
You know, just yesterday, the House voted overwhelmingly to
pass the NDAA for fiscal 2021. With it comes a mandate to
implement additional protections for our brave service members
because of this subcommittee's persistent efforts. That
includes a ``safe to report'' policy across the services,
enabling victims to report sexual assault without fear of
punishment, and confidential reporting of sexual harassment
outside of the chain of command. But what your report makes
clear is that we have so much more work to do.
So, Mr. Swecker, you know, I guess I will start with, you
know, the deaths of Specialist Vanessa Guillen, Sergeant Elder
Fernandes most recently, and so many others, we know that they
were preventable. No service member should have to choose
between protecting their life or their career and reporting the
person who assaulted them because they believe the system will
fail them.
I am curious, Mr. Swecker or the entire panel, to what
extent you extended your investigation to examine the case of
Sergeant Elder Fernandes. And he was a soldier from
Massachusetts who was found dead near Fort Hood after seeking
in-patient psychiatric treatment and reporting to his superiors
that he was a victim of sexual harassment.
Mr. Swecker. I personally reviewed his investigative file,
of Elder Fernandes, and we were briefed by CID on the case
itself.
You know, we had some deep concerns, and I go back to the
inexperience, in some cases, of CID. In this case, his alleged
harasser was exonerated basically on a polygraph. And that
wasn't--I just don't have a whole--I personally don't have a
lot of faith in the polygraph. We felt like that should not be
the sole criteria in exonerating somebody on sexual harassment.
But, again, we sort of go back to the conundrum of CID in
terms of rapid investigation, experienced investigators, and
that sort of thing. We want to see every suicide investigated
to the nth degree so we can understand what happened.
And that happened off-base, so they relied on the Killeen
Police Department to do the investigation, and they monitored
the investigation. We think that they ought to be doing more
joint investigations, true joint investigations. But you can't
do that if you don't have experienced agents. You don't put a
brand-new agent alongside a 20-year detective because they
just--I was told that they just don't feel confident enough to
do that.
Mrs. Trahan. And I didn't mean to put you on the spot with
one particular case, but, you know, one thing we learned after
the horrendous disappearance and death of Sergeant Elder
Fernandes was that Fort Hood lacked consistent and speedy
processes to report missing individuals and to share critical
information in real time with family members. You know, many of
the questions remain unanswered to this day.
And so I am wondering if you have recommendations that
increase transparency and information-sharing with families of
those who are literally fighting to get information on the
whereabouts of their loved ones or other information on a case
like this.
Mr. Swecker. You know, I think Queta handled--I view that
as a public relations situation, and let me pass that one off
to Queta.
Or, actually, was it Carrie?
Ms. Ricci. We did not make recommendations specific to
that, specific to--but what we did talk about was the absence
of a human touch.
With dealing with that type of situation, we used the
Guillen family as sort of our model to look at what happened
there and to say that there needs to be that human touch in
dealing with families. And that was not evident at Fort Hood.
It was very clinical, and the manner in which families are--the
communication flow was not done very well.
Ms. Speier. All right.
Mrs. Trahan. One----
Ms. Speier. Do you have a quick additional question?
Mrs. Trahan. You know, I just had a quick question, because
the issues around this case are a little different. And I was
just wondering if, as a part of your investigation into the
SHARP program, if you discovered deficiencies in the mental
health resources that were offered on- and off-base to soldiers
and their families.
I mean, I am just hoping that you could talk a little bit
about your findings, if your findings revealed proactive mental
health exams throughout the Army. This was clearly the case
with Sergeant Fernandes.
Mr. Swecker. It was definitely a factor in Sergeant
Fernandes and many other cases, including Specialist Robinson.
So let me pass this to Carrie Ricci for just a quick
response.
Ms. Ricci. I did look into behavioral health. And the good
news is that there are a myriad of avenues where soldiers can
get quality mental health. The bad news is that soldiers don't
always have confidence that they can go to seek mental health.
And so there is an educational piece that needs to be had
there.
We also noted that, with the embedded behavioral health
specialist, there is such a connection to the command that the
language that was actually used when talking to us was, ``Our
command, our first priority is to return the soldier to duty,''
which seemed to be--really, the first priority should be to
make the soldier whole. I think that is really what they
intended, but it came out as ``to return the soldier to duty.''
So there are at least four different avenues that soldiers
at Fort Hood can take to get quality mental health. It is
available. But whether they are taking it because they don't
have the confidence that it is going to be--that it might hurt
their career--some even thought it might hurt them later in
civilian life, which is not accurate. But there were
inaccuracies there. Or whether they were not able to get to
appointments because they were told, ``You have to deploy.''
So, you know, although it is there, it is not fully
implemented.
And the last thing that I think is very important, when we
talked about the suicide, there wasn't always a crosswalk
between behavioral health specialist and the suicide files. And
there is so much to be learned there. And in reading Chris's
write-up on that, there is so much to be learned in reviewing
those files. And that also needs to be done.
Mr. Swecker. Of the 50 suicide files that I reviewed, there
were obvious mental health issues in many of them, and I think
there were only a handful that actually had seen or been to a
mental health professional.
Ms. Speier. We are going to ask you to explore that
further.
Mrs. Trahan, let me just point out to you that Secretary of
the Army McCarthy has stated, unless there is a preponderance
of evidence that a soldier's absence is voluntary, they will
not be classifying them as AWOL. Instead, they will be the
classified as ``duty status--whereabouts unknown.'' And the
soldier's family will be assigned a liaison officer
immediately.
All right. Let's move forward.
Mr. Cisneros, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Cisneros. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
And thanks to the review committee for all your hard work,
going out there to Fort Hood in order to, you know, do this
service that is so important not only for the Army but our
entire country and our service members.
Mr. Swecker, I want to start with a question. When we went
to a CODEL to go down to Fort Hood and visit and we talked to
some junior sailors, you know, I asked them about
fraternization. And a lot of them, these E-1s to E-3s, were
talking about there was a lot of it going on, where there were,
you know, E-5s to E-7s that were hanging out with the E-1s, the
E-3s, you know, kind of making inappropriate comments at the
time and kind of using the excuse as, well, we are just kind of
hanging out.
Did you find fraternization as a factor in a lot of the
sexual assaults or sexual harassment? And what recommendations
do you have that can be put in place in order to stop this?
Mr. Swecker. Let me pass that question to Jon Harmon, who
is a former military officer and can address that effectively,
I think.
Mr. Harmon. Representative Cisneros, we did--oh, let me
turn this on. Thank you.
Representative Cisneros, we did, both in the group
interviews that we did, about 1,800 people, and in many of the
individual interviews, come across many, many of our soldiers
who had been either sexually assaulted or sexually harassed by
NCOs within their chain of command or people who were under
their supervision.
Primarily from what our data shows is that most of the
sexual assaults occurred between people who were close to the
same rank, and it was within the lower ranks. That is where
most of them were occurring. But we did come across many
different incidents where the chain of command was being used;
they were being predators, in other words, of the more junior
soldiers.
And so you will see in the report that, you know--and this
came up, I think, from Ranking Member Kelly--one of the big
issues that was cultural that is a huge issue that is--it can't
happen in the Army--is that the leaders not only didn't know
their soldiers, some of the NCOs, but because of the operation
tempo, because of all the other things that were going on,
there was a general sense across the board--we looked at, you
know, over 1,000 of the enlisted folks, and they would say
their leadership didn't care.
And so part of, you know, addressing this issue of
fraternization, in my view and in the view of the committee, is
changing the culture so that the frontline leaders know and
care about all of the soldiers under their command.
I will just tell a quick story that I think illustrates
what we want to have happen. This was an outlier, but there was
a young soldier in one of the brigades, and she was so positive
about her chain of command, because when she came in her leader
told her, ``All the people around, this is your squad-mate.
Nothing under my command will happen to her, no matter where we
go.'' And she told stories about being in the field and being
concerned that the other--you know, she was in a support unit;
she came with others. And the people in that squad, because of
leadership, they would literally at night sleep around her
because of that particular leader.
Those stories were far and few between, but you will see in
the findings that one of the things that has to change in order
to make that not happen is a cultural change with many of the
things that are in findings 1 and 2.
Mr. Cisneros. All right. I agree. And, you know, we need to
make sure that the senior leaders, whether they be enlisted or
officers, they need to know who the--you know, whether or not
they are soldiers or sailors or Marines; it doesn't matter what
service it is--whether they had children, their spouses' names,
about them. That is more important than, kind of, hanging out
and having a drink with them.
Mr. Swecker, one other question. You know, you already
highlighted the problems with CID on the base, how there is a
lot of junior people there, it is being used as a training
ground.
But I am curious, in your investigative experience and that
of the committee--you know, the CID is--they are uniformed
personnel. They are part of the chain of command. You know,
they are all in the Army. Do you think they would be better
served if it was an independent Federal law agency that was
overseeing these investigations for the Army rather than
military personnel?
Mr. Swecker. So they are not uniformed. They are
plainclothes special agents. But they are----
Mr. Cisneros. Right. But they are----
Mr. Swecker. They are enlisted, and they are warrant
officers.
Mr. Cisneros. Right. They are enlisted, and they are
members of the----
Mr. Swecker. And therein lies the conundrum, because they
are subject to transfer, they are subject to deployment, they
are subject to being pulled away for training, for field
training, and that sort of thing.
So, yeah, you are hitting on a very strong point here. From
an investigative standpoint, there needs to be continuity, and
there needs to be a stable force of experienced agents. And in
my--I think all of us discussed this. We think there need to be
more 1811 civilian investigators within CID so that you can
balance out. In fact, a preponderance of investigators should
be 1811s.
They don't move around. They have experience. They pretty
much stay on that post. And they can mentor. If you want to
have younger agents moving through and less experienced agents
moving through, they can be the stable force that mentors them
and creates institutional experience and skill.
So I hate to make comparisons to other military branches,
but NCS [Naval Criminal Investigative Service] is almost all
1811s. And, you know, I don't want to go much further than
that. We are not saying that is what needs to be done. But you
need a stable, very experienced workforce and not a
preponderance of brand-spanking-new agents moving through.
Mr. Cisneros. Thank you very much. And thank you all for
your hard work.
I yield back.
Ms. Speier. Thank you, Mr. Cisneros.
We will now have Ms. Garcia for 5 minutes. You are
recognized.
Ms. Garcia. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And, first, I want to thank you for the opportunity to
participate today and your unwavering commitment in helping me
and the Guillen family to get justice for my constituent,
Vanessa Guillen. I am committed to working together with you
and all the stakeholders to make sure we can make real,
permanent change to keep all our service members safe.
First, I want to thank the review panel. I truly appreciate
the work here. That was a lot of pages to try to read. I got
the report yesterday. I didn't quite finish, but I will
eventually. But from what I have read, I think this is a really
great first step. I think the proof will be in the pudding. We
have to make sure that we keep our eye on the ball and we keep
our oversight function here in this committee and in the
Congress to ensure that all those recommendations are fully
implemented.
Frankly, I think this report validates a lot of the things
that the Guillen family said and many of us here in Congress
have been talking about. So there were no real big surprises.
But I do want to start with just a simple question about--
and I want to build on what Representative Trahan was talking
about, in terms of working with the families. That is how I got
involved. The family came to me as their Member of Congress.
First of all, no member should have to go to a Member of
Congress to try to get answers. That should happen from day
one. I am heartened that there is the new policy now on missing
persons and that there is the suggestion that the status be
changed and that the next of kin will be notified within 8
hours.
I think that what is missing, though--and I was hopeful
that you all would have a recommendation, and I wondered why
there wasn't. Just as you noted about the missing-person
situation, that unless there was a guide and a protocol, that
it might be haphazard and that things would not happen, I feel
the same way about notification. Because just saying, you know,
let the next of kin know--and then the checklist says: Have
next of kin been contacted? Which commander is designated? What
is the engagement? Again, we are going to a checklist.
We need more than human contact. We need real transparency.
We need to make sure that the families know almost immediately.
Eight hours is probably soon enough. I would love it to be
better. But what type of communication?
In the Vanessa Guillen case, the Army has said, ``Yes, we
talked to them. We sent a text.'' Never should a text be a way
of communicating--never, ever.
So why did you all not include a recommendation to have a
policy that actually tells them what they should be doing,
similar to what you did in the missing-person policy?
Mr. White. May I?
Mr. Swecker. Go ahead. Yes.
Mr. White. Representative Garcia, I, too, spent hours with
the Guillen family. Along with Ms. Ricci, we----
Ms. Garcia. I am sure probably not as much as I have.
Mr. White. Oh, no, no. But the purpose was, you know, you,
as their--as one of your constituents, your focus was surely
different from ours. Ours was to look through the lens of the
command climate and how the interaction between the Army and
the Guillen family was reflective of the command climate.
Our conclusion was--and we have said this in very clear
terms to the Army--that there needs to be a greater human
touch.
Ms. Garcia. But what does that mean?
Mr. White. Because--well----
Ms. Garcia. Unless you tell them, then they will go back to
checking the box.
Mr. White. No.
Mr. Garcia. Yes, sir, they will.
Mr. White. Oh. What it means is----
Ms. Garcia. That is my concern. That is my observation
after getting calls from 40 different families around the
country after they saw the ``20/20'' report. You know, we have
gotten calls from all over the country. You know, you have got
women who have posted on Facebook, women who have posted on
Twitter.
This is a serious, serious issue. And I just feel like
there should be a policy that specifically addresses it,
because, if not, then it will continue to be haphazard.
Mr. White. What I mean is and what the report indicates is
that there were instances where what was really going on was
not what the family's perception was. And it was a little bit
difficult, interacting with the family, to hear what their
perception was and to know what was actually going on in the
investigation at the same time. And it was not our role to
bridge that gap. But the lack of human touch impeded the
ability to communicate exactly what the Army was doing and the
level of concern that actually existed.
Now, I am not defending the Army, but we have spoken with
the Army. And the last 5 of the recommendations, out of the 70,
speak to that. They speak to----
Ms. Garcia. But can I just ask a quick followup, Madam
Chair?
Because I think, with the Guillen family--and I had the
question from Ms. Rodriguez, but they are now in--it says up
there you are Ms. Rodriguez.
Do you think the Army is really not only prepared to talk
to families but also to be able to talk with families in a
culturally and linguistic appropriate manner? Because I think
that was a huge problem in this case too, and, quite frankly,
with some of the other cases, because, regrettably, a lot of
the cases, particularly the deaths, do have Spanish surnames
and they are Spanish-speaking people. But when they saw us
again on ``20/20,'' that is why they called us, because they
knew we spoke Spanish.
Mr. White. That was part of the problem. Part of the
problem was cultural. There were specific events that
transpired where the Army thought that it was doing something
charitable.
For example, the Army--the unit, Specialist Guillen's unit,
tried to give to the family a care package that was put
together by the unit's family-readiness organization. Now, that
was not well-received, because it felt to the family a lot like
charity.
Ms. Garcia. Sure.
Mr. White. And why did they want charity when their
daughter was missing? Mrs. Guillen said to me, ``I didn't want
charity. I wanted my daughter.'' That was indelicate.
When they were funeralizing their daughter, Mrs. Guillen
wanted to visit the arms room and pray where her daughter had
been killed. And the unit didn't get how important that was to
that mommy, to say goodbye to her daughter and to pray in the
spot where her daughter was killed. That was worse than
indelicate.
Ms. Garcia. Oh, I am well aware of that, and that is why I
am asking the questions. The Army must build back better.
Mr. White. Must do it better.
Ms. Garcia. Thank you.
Ms. Speier. All right. Your time has expired.
Mr. Lynch, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Madam Chair, and to the ranking
member.
Madam Chair, I want to especially thank you for the
relentless loyalty that you have shown to our sons and
daughters in uniform and the work that you have done over many
years. And I appreciate you allowing me to participate in your
CODEL down to Fort Hood. I have been down there a few times,
but with you was an honor, and I think it was very productive.
I want to thank the Independent Review Committee for your
work. I chair the Subcommittee on National Security over in
Oversight, so I have done a lot of investigations myself,
mostly Iraq and Afghanistan. But I know how difficult it is to
do 647 interviews. Over 500 women interviewed. The surveys,
31,000 surveys--that data will be extremely valuable in moving
forward, because the work continues.
Now, I happen to represent the city of Brockton,
Massachusetts, and it is the proud home of Sergeant Elder
Fernandes and his family. His loss to that family and to that
community was devastating, and it continues to be.
And I hope in some way that your work and our work, the
chairman's work, in some way is keeping faith with these young
men and women who decided to put on the uniform of our country,
right? When you think about the spirit in which they put on
that uniform to serve this country, we owe them. We owe them.
We owe them the truth and the honesty. We owe them the
responsibility to take corrective action, to make sure that
when a family supports their son's or daughter's decision to
serve, that they are not going into a bad place. And for some
time, Fort Hood was a bad place. And I think we are making
progress here, but the work continues.
One thing that my colleague, Mrs. Trahan, also of
Massachusetts, brought up, and it was brought up during our
CODEL in Texas by Katherine Clark and myself, is the use of
polygraphs. And, you know, I have been around long enough to
know that George H.W. Bush banned those in military trials back
in, I think, 1998 or something like that. And yet, when we met
with CID down in Texas, they said that they--and I notice you
have called them out, because there were a number of
inexperienced special agents who, as you put it, failed to
pursue all logical investigative leads. So they told us that
they had been using these polygraphs hundreds of times in their
own instance and probably thousands of times across the
service.
So, you know, I know that under the Army regulations, 196-
6, it does allow polygraphs, but findings may not be based
solely on polygraph results. I think it is especially poignant
that Rule 707 of the courts-martial manual reads that ``the
results of a polygraph examination, the polygraph examiner's
opinion, or any reference to an offer to take, failure to take,
or taking of a polygraph examination is not admissible'' in
those proceedings.
In this case--in this case--they came back very quickly. So
Sergeant Fernandes had made a claim of sexual harassment, and
CID came back very quickly. I originally was on the way down to
help in the search. By the time I got there, they had already
made a decision that the claim was not valid, the claim of
harassment was not valid, based in large part on this
polygraph. They did it so quickly.
So I just think that I would have liked to see a finding or
a recommendation regarding the use of polygraphs by the
military, especially in cases where the results of that
polygraph is having such a heavy influence on a sexual
harassment claim or a sexual assault claim.
And I just would like to get your thoughts on that.
Mr. Swecker. Well, Congressman, we could have had 200
recommendations if we wanted to get so deep into the weeds on
things like that.
What we were trying to get at with CID was--and I agree
with you; no disposition of any case should be based on a
polygraph. It is an investigative tool. It is not a way to
dispose of a case in any fashion, and it is imperfect in so
many different ways. That is why it is not admissible in a
court of law.
So what we were trying to say was, any experienced agent,
5-, 10-year agent, would know that you don't dispose of a case
strictly on a polygraph. You get a lot of he-said/she-said
cases, and I think there is a tendency to get a little bit--to
think that, ``well, we will just use a polygraph and that will
decide it for us.'' It is just not--that is not the way it is
supposed to be used.
So I agree with you, it is a problem. It shouldn't be used
that way. We know that it was used that way in the Fernandes
case, and it shouldn't have. We just didn't get that deep in
the weeds on it, to be honest with you, with our
recommendations. We felt like experienced agents would just
know that, and the point being: We need more experienced agents
within CID.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
Ms. Speier. I thank the gentleman.
Ms. Haaland, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Haaland. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you
for convening this panel today.
This issue affects not only Fort Hood but, overall, our
national security. We are weaker as a Nation if we cannot
protect the women who serve our country. The service members
who participated in a culture of sexual harassment at Fort Hood
will not just stay at Fort Hood but they will continue to be
stationed at bases across our country and around the world and
take that culture with them.
While I am glad that Secretary McCarthy appointed you all
to the Independent Review Commission, I am disappointed it took
Vanessa Guillen's death to move this action.
So my first question. I heard the news that 14 officers and
enlisted service members who contributed to the problems at
Fort Hood were fired, and I believe that action was
appropriate.
But, in your opinion, are these firings sufficient to fix
the issues at the base that have long preceded this summer? Are
we to believe that these 14 individuals alone created and
maintained such a dangerous atmosphere at the base and now that
it is safe to say that people are safe after this action?
Mr. Harmon. Representative Haaland, I will take that
question.
The answer is, no, that the Army's decision in the wake of
our report to fire or suspend the 14 people is going to change
the culture and to solve the problem at Fort Hood. It is going
to take a lot more work, a lot more oversight. I think as
everybody recognizes, changing culture is hard, and it doesn't
come from just firing 14 people.
And our report, I think, was very clear that the problems
at Fort Hood were not the result of one commander, they were
not the result of one administration, but it was really the
result of years of benign neglect in the area of sexual
harassment and sexual assault and a lack of focus, a lack of
accountability, a lack of commitment and engagement that caused
these issues.
In part, you know, I think, as has been mentioned, they
divorced the SHARP program from caring about soldiers. So, as
you have heard from Ms. Ricci and Ms. Rodriguez, it became
check the box. And so, rather than view protecting soldiers,
making sure there wasn't sexual harassment and sexual assault
as part of esprit de corps, as part of unit readiness, it
became something else to do.
And so that is going to take time to change, because it has
been baked into the culture----
Ms. Haaland. Thank you.
Mr. Harmon [continuing]. But I think I speak for the
committee that we are encouraged of the actions the Army has
taken, and we believe they are committed to change.
Ms. Haaland. Thank you.
Mr. Swecker. May I make one quick important point,
Congresswoman?
Ms. Haaland. Yes.
Mr. Swecker. This morning, we were asked by the Secretary
of the Army to present to all the four-stars and three-stars in
the Army, all 300, on this very issue, and I can tell you that
the action on the 14 got their attention. It actually surprised
us. We didn't expect to see that. We specifically put in our
report that this was across a series of commands and it would
be very hard to fix responsibility on one commander.
However, I thought the action was--we thought the action
was decisive, and it certainly got people's attention. And the
fact that, you know, we presented every aspect of our report
this morning to the three-stars and the four-stars, and we feel
like they are listening.
Ms. Haaland. Thank you. Thank you.
I want to ask just a quick yes-or-no question, or just a
number. How many of the women who shared their stories of
sexual harassment at Fort Hood on Twitter or Facebook or any
social media site were interviewed? If anyone could answer
that.
Mr. Swecker. Just very quickly, we interviewed every female
soldier in the 3d Cavalry Regiment. So we felt like we were
very comprehensive. We interviewed about 100 within the 1st
Cavalry Division. And then we caught, we think, most of the
females in the survey and in the hotline, as well as the group
interviews.
So, if we had gone out on social media, we would still be
there talking to people. We wanted to get the people who had
firsthand facts.
Ms. Haaland. Thank you.
Madam Chair, the clock is very small, so I can't read it. I
am not sure how much time I have left.
Ms. Speier. You have 5 more seconds.
Ms. Haaland. Okay. I yield back. Thank you very much.
Ms. Speier. We are going to do a second round of questions,
so you can stay if you would like.
I want to ask some specific questions.
You referenced, Mr. Swecker, that Specialist Robinson had
mental health issues. Could you expound on that, please?
Mr. Swecker. I can to a limited degree. There is an ongoing
investigation. I hate to use the old ``ongoing investigation''
response to you. But we did--as I reviewed the Guillen file and
in briefings from CID, we did get information that he had some
mental health issues, pretty serious ones, some ideations that
dealt with suicide and homicide.
And that is the extent of my knowledge of that, but I do
know that there were some issues. It may have come up in his
background investigation to be an armorer, because you have to
have a background investigation to be an armorer in the Army.
But we really didn't get to the core of that, because some of
that information just wasn't in the file.
Ms. Speier. So wouldn't that disqualify him as an armorer,
if he had suicidal ideations?
Mr. Swecker. That may be--it would. It would, or it should.
Again, because of the ongoing 15-6 investigation----
Ms. Speier. I understand.
Mr. Swecker [continuing]. We didn't want to step on that.
Ms. Speier. Okay. Thank you.
Do you think it would be appropriate to create an article
in the UCMJ on sexual harassment?
Mr. Swecker. That is a question maybe we should put to all
five panel members. But I think it was in the report itself
that we recommended that sexual harassment be an actual
violation.
Ms. Speier. Thank you.
Mr. Harmon.
Mr. Harmon. I do.
Ms. Speier. Ms. Ricci.
Ms. Ricci. I do.
Ms. Rodriguez. I do.
Mr. White. Yes.
Ms. Speier. Okay.
In the Morales case, my conversation with the mother
suggested to me that there was basically a sense that he was a
bad actor, so therefore he was AWOL, and they really didn't
pursue the investigation.
And, at one point--this happened in the summer. At one
point late in the fall, she was basically told by CID, ``Don't
call us anymore.''
Now, I don't know what you gleaned from your review of the
Morales case, but if you have anything in particular, I would
be interested in hearing it.
Mr. Swecker. Well, that was another file that was reviewed
by one of the retired agents that we brought on, a very
experienced one. I got a summary of it, and I have some
personal--you know, I have some knowledge of that case.
There were some complexities to the Morales case. We felt
like there were some leads that were not followed up on that
should have been followed up on, that experienced investigators
would have followed up on.
But, again, this was one of those, what they call a
collateral that was being investigated outside by a civilian
law enforcement agency. And we felt like that was a particular
weakness with CID's experience level, because they could not
embed with the local police detectives and the State and local
law enforcement because they weren't experienced--the SAC, the
special agent in charge, did not feel like she had experienced-
enough agents to do that.
But, in that file, there were some very, very, we thought,
important leads that should have been followed up on that were
not.
Ms. Speier. Could you specify?
Mr. Swecker. I would rather not, because it gets into
something that is still going on.
Ms. Speier. I understand. Okay.
We actually visited the location of where Mr. Morales's
body was found, and it was a very short distance from where the
vehicle was left abandoned. And it was never clear to me
whether they even tested the vehicle for fingerprints or
anything, dusted it.
I don't know if you know anything about that.
Mr. Swecker. Yeah, the crime scene was imperfect. It was
not done soon enough. There were some other things that
concerned us about that.
Ms. Speier. All right.
So the FORSCOM [United States Army Forces Command]
inspector general actually produced a report in August. And he
told us that the SHARP program was being followed, soldiers and
leaders knew what to do, soldiers felt they could report and
did report sexual harassment and sexual assault. Yet your
report is a stunning indictment of the leadership of Fort Hood.
I know you have had a chance to review the FORSCOM IG
report. Why did you come up to such a different and startling
set of conclusions?
Mr. Swecker. So I will address that, and then I will pass
it to Jack White.
We strongly disagree with their opinion and their
conclusion on that. But I will say that they only talked--their
survey only covered 300 people. They didn't talk to anybody
individually. Out of the survey, there were only 60 women that
responded to the survey.
We felt like it was a--it was not an abnormal look from an
IG perspective standpoint. That is what they do. They do very
limited--they don't do a deep dive.
We were particularly disturbed by, sort of, the passing
grade that they gave whenever any response to their survey was
over, you know, 50 percent. In particular, fear of retaliation
was around 65--you know, 65 percent said they did not fear
retaliation. We felt like that was a failing grade, not a
passing grade.
So we recommended that the IG up the standards to a much
higher level instead, of anything over 50 percent. You saw in
that report they used things like ``most respondents,'' ``the
majority of respondents.'' We feel like there ought to be a
passing level of, you know, somewhere around 65 percent or
higher, as opposed to the low bar that they set.
So, Jack, do you have anything?
Mr. White. So we do take issue with that IG report. But the
issue that we take is substantive. The nature of our report was
comprehensive. As Mr. Swecker said at the outset, thousands of
people we talked to and looked in the eye. The FORSCOM IG
didn't have the time or the resources to do that.
Ms. Speier. All right. My time has expired. Thank you.
Ranking Member Kelly, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Kelly. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And I just--this is more of a comment, but I hope that you
will modify your recommendations. You say, do it at corps
level. Well, that is great at Fort Hood, where there is a
corps. But if you go to Fort Campbell or Fort Belvoir or other
places where there is not a corps-level headquarters, or Fort
Campbell, Kentucky, where the 101st is there but their corps
headquarters is somewhere else, I would say maybe installation
or the highest-level unit, not necessarily corps, but whether
that be division or some other level, that there is one of
those at each base, not only at corps level, a green-suiter.
And I will let you all do it. I just wanted to say that
because I think that is important.
Here is one of the things I want to know. Throughout my
military career, I have seen the difference between Guard and
Reserve units and the ownership of units and individuals within
that unit because of the long standing. A guy can go to a
National Guard brigade and stay there his entire career or her
whole career.
Many years ago, the Army went away from a regimental-type
system where folks went to Fort Hood and they had the
opportunity to go from E-1 to E-8 in that same regiment and
never leave, which meant ownership of the people in that
regiment, ownership of that regiment, ownership of the
community, and maybe that was close to home.
Do you think that is--now, I understand you still want to
have broadening positions, other places, and maybe--but do you
think maybe we need to relook whether or not it is always up
and out and a current rotation of our service members over a
20-year career to be at 10 bases?
Mr. Harmon. Ranking Member Kelly, that is a very
interesting question. I can't say that we really thought about
that in terms of--if I understand you, you are saying to stay
at Fort Hood from your E-1 all the way to your E-8.
Mr. Kelly. If you want to. I think you should have
opportunities to go other places----
Mr. Harmon. Yeah.
Mr. Kelly [continuing]. But what we have is very transient
units, so there is never any ownership of the people in that
unit. Because my squad leader today, after I deploy, I come
back, I have a new squad leader who doesn't know me.
Mr. Harmon. Yeah.
Mr. Kelly. When a soldier rotates in, they rotate out to
another unit, and they go somewhere where no one knows them.
That soldier that--you talk about the female soldier. That
comes straight from General McConville and straight from
Sergeant Major Grinston. And I heard that a year ago at the
ASEP-B [Army Strategic Education Program-Basic] course, where
they said, ``Not in my squad.''
Mr. Harmon. Uh-huh.
Mr. Kelly. ``We will protect that person.'' And that is
what the senior-level leadership--but that has not filtered all
the way down to each soldier. But when they do buy that, ``Not
in my squad,'' that is when we protect our own.
And I just wonder if maybe we rotate people so much that
they don't have ownership of the people who are in their squad.
Mr. Harmon. Yeah. I think that could be so. But I don't
think it addresses the problem that we saw at Fort Hood.
Mr. Kelly. Okay.
Mr. Harmon. In other words, to have an Army where sexual
harassment and sexual assault is not tolerated, I think it has
to be cultural and it has to be across the whole Army.
So I don't think making it where you would stay at one post
would solve that problem. And I will be the first to say it is
not something we really looked at, but I don't think that would
solve the problem that we address.
Mr. Kelly. Yes, ma'am, Ms. Ricci?
Ms. Ricci. Yeah, if I may----
Mr. Kelly. Come up.
Ms. Ricci. If I may, I also had soldiers tell me exactly
the opposite problem happens at Fort Hood at times, where you
have individuals who have been there for 10 years, and this
pocket of indiscipline has developed because they all have
allowed it within the same organization.
So there is also that opposite problem that can take place.
So certainly not rotating every year, but we also don't want to
have the same individuals stay at the same location for that
long and have this complacency develop.
Mr. Kelly. Okay.
And real quickly, because I am running out of time, but I
do want to say this. When we start disclosing behavioral health
issues and firing soldiers, when we advocate that when the
person is found guilty of doing something and say that should
have been cause to relieve, but on the same token say that we
should be able to go to behavioral health and it not impact our
career, you can't have both of those. You can have one or you
can have the other.
That is why due process and equal application of the law is
so important. But we can't disclose medical information about
one person and say, let's fire them from their job because now
we know they did bad, and hold people accountable for not
firing them, and then say, oh, but you can trust us, it will
not have an adverse impact on your career.
And I just hope that we don't take that out of that. I
still think that our personal medical information and the need
to be able to go get help for behavioral issues should never be
outweighed by the fear of losing your job when someone
discloses that, that it is a career- and life-ending episode.
And so, with that----
Ms. Ricci. I couldn't agree more.
Mr. Kelly [continuing]. I have to yield back.
Ms. Ricci, if you can----
Ms. Ricci. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
The difficulty is that there are MOSes and jobs where, if
you do have a significant mental health issue, you cannot be
kept in that position. So how that is handled has to be very
delicate, and there is a balance that can be struck.
So I couldn't agree with you more, Ranking Member Kelly.
Ms. Speier. Mrs. Davis, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Again, I really appreciate all the hard work that went into
this.
You talked--and I am trying to remember who said this, but
that, in a way, what they did, when it came to having those
discussions about sexual harassment on bases, that it was
divorced from other efforts. So how do we change that?
Because, to be honest, I attended some trainings; I believe
it was at Fort Myer here. And we visited Lackland Air Force
Base and really tried to look in depth at some issues that were
happening there. And, you know, I feel like we have seen this.
We just keep repeating this movie. And how do we--I am not
certain how we get to that. Because it is critically important.
In looking at these issues that you wanted to, you know,
really see some resolution, are there other services that you
think were doing this so differently that it provides the best
example of what we all should be doing?
Because I think, to an outside observer, you know, people
think of our troops, they think of people serving in the
military; they obviously have a very great allegiance to one
service or the other. But, on the other hand, they don't expect
people to, at their core, come with different cultural issues
that makes it so difficult to address these concerns, these
issues, these tragedies.
Where is the example?
Mr. Swecker. I am not sure that--we subjected Fort Hood to
such intense scrutiny. We really, really looked under the hood,
no pun intended. But I am not sure that any other--you know, if
we did this elsewhere, we just don't know what we would see.
But what we did see here was the command emphasis. Soldiers
will go where they are led. NCOs will go where they are led.
And it really has to come from the top. And I think the former
military officers here would agree with that. Everything comes
from the top.
We tend to blame the NCOs. It is not necessarily their
fault that they are not doing--they are the first-line
supervisors. It is not necessarily their fault that they are
not doing what they need to be doing, because whatever is
important to their commander will be important to them.
Mrs. Davis. Uh-huh.
Mr. White. Representative Davis, your questions are
searching for systemic, large-scale solutions. And I respect
that, because we did that too.
One of the things that we did was we looked across the
services--Army, Navy, Air Force--to find what each is doing
well. And what we found is that each have components that they
are doing well.
For example, one thing that the Army does well is it has a
schoolhouse where it sends people for SHARP training. That is a
good thing. Now, the efficacy of that training, the jury is
still out.
One thing that another service does very well is they look
at soldiers and what are the tendencies toward violence or
disrespect of other people. Because that manifests in SHARP,
but it manifests elsewhere as well.
Another service, one thing that they do well is they look
at the whole soldier from the beginning and through the life
cycle; what training and development do they need at different
life cycles?
What I think is a good suggestion is: Look at it all
together. Let DOD look at this and integrate all of these
strengths from the other services so we can make the cultural
change that the armed services need.
Mrs. Davis. Uh-huh.
Ms. Ricci. I just want to add real quickly that one thing
that became clear--and it may not be intuitive from the
report--is that, at the brigade level, the program can be made
or broken. So, if there was one place to focus emphasis, it
would be at that brigade-leadership level.
Mrs. Davis. Uh-huh. Okay.
Again, there are so many areas that we have looked at over
the years, and, certainly, that one of the special advocate,
victims' advocate, was a change that was made. And yet the
assurances that people in that position were especially well-
trained haven't necessarily panned out in the way that we would
like.
Is it realistic to expect that the special victims'
advocate can come and be developed with the training that is
required? Can we do it right? I mean, what does right look
like?
Ms. Ricci. I sure hope so, because I place a lot of hope in
the use of the special victims' advocate.
And, right now, one of the problems we have is the
awareness of soldiers. They don't understand the position. And
there are soldiers who turn down the assistance of the SVC
[Special Victims' Counsel] because they see them as part of the
command. And in the same way a soldier is not afraid to turn to
a Trial Defense Service attorney, they should not be afraid to
turn to an SVC.
Mrs. Davis. Uh-huh.
Ms. Ricci. So that education piece has to take place. That
has to be a very critical part of the whole SHARP program.
And as far as training, every SVC has to be fully
certified, and that certification has to mean something. I did
not look at the training that they are receiving. I was told
that every person who serves as an SVC does become certified.
Mrs. Davis. Uh-huh. All right.
Ms. Speier. The gentlewoman's time----
Mr. Swecker. May I add just briefly, we don't think there
were enough of them at Fort Hood. There is a very limited
number of SVCs.
Ms. Speier. How many are there?
Ms. Ricci. Currently, there are four certified SVCs at Fort
Hood. I have been told that there are others who also are
certified but only do it part-time to help during, you know,
surge periods. But I know there are only four and that it
really is not enough for Fort Hood. It is not enough.
Mr. Swecker. It could take as long as 2 weeks to get an SVC
in front of--with their victim, in front of CID to get the
original statement, the first statement out of them, sometimes
longer because of the overassignment.
Ms. Speier. And some of the SVCs only communicate with the
victim by phone.
Mr. Swecker. Right.
Ms. Speier. So there is----
Mr. Swecker. That is correct.
Ms. Speier. Mrs. Davis had another question.
Mrs. Davis. Just a quick question. Have we ever questioned
whether or not that is the best label for this individual?
Because what I found was a number of women, particularly,
and even, I think, a gentleman or two didn't like being called
a victim, even though they understood the position that they
were in.
And I would just throw that out there. Maybe somebody has
some other thoughts about it.
Mr. Kelly. Chairwoman, if I might, my wife is a victim
assistance coordinator in a district attorney's office, and I
100 percent agree. These guys need to be civilians. And when I
say ``guys,'' I use that in the guys and girls, both sexes
nature. They need to be civilians.
And 4 is not adequate to do almost 40,000 troops at Fort
Hood. But they need to be civilians, and they do not need to
transfer, they do not need to move between units, and they do
not need to be temporary in nature. They should be
professional, qualified people who know this job well.
And, with that, I am sorry, Chairwoman, but I yield back.
Ms. Speier. All right.
Ms. Garcia, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Garcia. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And I wanted to continue my discussion about Spanish-
surname Latinos, people of color. I notice, on page 121 of your
report, you do note that 44 percent believed the Army had not
come far enough in the promotion of women and minorities, and
54 percent of the respondents had concerns about how women and
minorities were treated in the Army.
And keeping in the question I asked about bilingual/
bicultural workings with the families, I think the same could
be true about soldiers. And your report does say that you think
that the survey results provide further support for the belief
that equal opportunity for people of color and women merits
further attention.
Mr. Chairman, how do you see that? I mean, what should the
Army do? What should Congress do? Or who should do it? I mean,
how did we give this topic further attention?
Mr. Swecker. So we had a very difficult time with this
issue, because it was so broad and so deep. And we were so
focused on the SHARP program itself that the EO-type issues and
the issues of equal opportunities, we just didn't go--we could
not go real deep.
But there were enough indicators there from our surveys and
our interviews and our group interviews to tell us that there
could be issues that needed to be explored deeper. And that is
why we included a separate section in the report about that.
But, with that, I also want to open it up to everyone else.
Ms. Garcia. Just very quickly, because I do have another--
--
Mr. Swecker. Sure.
Ms. Garcia [continuing]. Question, and I only have 5
minutes.
Mr. Harmon. I won't repeat anything that Mr. Swecker said,
but I think the Army needs more training and more meaningful
training in the area of racial sensitivity and including
unconscious bias.
And there is a lot I could say about this particular
section, but I want to respect you, Representative Garcia, so I
will----
Ms. Garcia. Right. Well, thank you. Because we did talk to
some young soldiers when we were there in the CODEL, and they
are, you know, young people. It is generational. They think
about a lot of these issues much differently than our
generation does.
But I want to go back also to some of the comments, Mr.
Chairman, you made about those critical first 24 and 48 hours.
The policy that is changed says that they must wait 48 hours
before they reach out to FBI and local authorities. What is the
reason for that?
Mr. Swecker. Are you talking about the new protocol that
is----
Ms. Garcia. Yes, sir.
Mr. Swecker [continuing]. Being promulgated? I didn't
notice that part. But, generally, the missing--you know, the
local law enforcement is the closest and probably the most----
Ms. Garcia. Please know that I am a former judge. I mean--
--
Mr. Swecker. Sure.
Ms. Garcia [continuing]. I am asking the question very
specifically. Because it seems to me that the Vanessa Guillen
case, they just waited, like, for over a month.
Mr. Swecker. I will give you the short answer. And I talked
to the FBI office there that is out of San Antonio but they
have a resident agency nearby. They don't have the resources to
go after every missing-soldier case within 48 hours. They just
don't have the people. That is why I referred it to local law
enforcement and I said that is probably the quickest, fastest
way to get things rolling with a missing soldier.
But, also, I think the MPs [military police] have a
significant role to play. They can ping that cell phone within
hours if they want to. And they have to get quick authorization
to do that, and you have to go to the phone company to do it,
but that is the fastest way to locate somebody.
Also, putting out a BOLO, a be-on-the-lookout. Neither of
that is done now within the first 24 hours just as a matter of
some sort of practice. I don't think it is built into policy,
but that is the practice of the MPs at Fort Hood.
And all that ought to be circumstantial. You know, if this
is a soldier that chronically fails to report or there have
been issues with this soldier----
Ms. Garcia. Sure.
Mr. Swecker [continuing]. That is one thing. But if it is
someone who doesn't have a history of failing to report, the
first hour or 2 hours you might want to ping the cell phone or
put a BOLO out.
Ms. Garcia. Right. Because you remember, in this case, it
was 2 months before they acknowledged there was foul play.
Mr. Swecker. It was a long time before they even entered
her name into NCIC [National Crime Information Center], which
is a pretty----
Ms. Garcia. Right.
Mr. Swecker [continuing]. Something that should have
happened fairly quickly.
Ms. Garcia. Right.
And then that leads me to my final question. Was there
anything that you all saw that warranted referral to either the
local DA [district attorney], the U.S. attorney, the FBI, or
anyone, in terms of any criminal conduct?
Mr. Swecker. I think that that is being addressed in the
15-6 that is looking very, very carefully at all of the
circumstances surrounding Vanessa Guillen's case----
Ms. Garcia. I am sorry. What is a 15-6?
Mr. Swecker. It is an internal investigation, basically.
Ms. Garcia. But I thought they finished the internal
investigation.
Mr. Swecker. I don't think they have announced their
results. I think they are still----
Ms. Garcia. So you are talking about the one the four-
stars----
Mr. Swecker. The four-star----
Ms. Garcia [continuing]. Are doing?
Mr. Swecker. Yes.
Ms. Garcia. Okay. So did you all get a copy of the
investigation that Overland did of Vanessa's unit itself?
Mr. Swecker. I have seen it. Yes, we got a look at it. I
think it was broad enough in scope, but it also was taken
over--it was overtaken by the four-star. So that was halted in
its tracks.
Ms. Garcia. Well, I have been after it, because it has been
promised to--I have been promised to get a copy of that now
for----
Mr. Swecker. Yeah, I think that that has been subsumed----
Ms. Garcia [continuing]. Months.
Mr. Swecker [continuing]. That has been overtaken by the
broader investigation that's being conducted by the four-star,
to my knowledge.
Ms. Garcia. All right. Well, thank you all so much.
I yield back.
Ms. Speier. All right.
We are coming to the close of our hearing, but I do have a
couple of final questions.
You just referenced something about Vanessa Guillen's case,
in which it wasn't put into the NCIC until 2 months in. Could
you just kind of run through a list of things that you think
were not done well in that investigation?
Mr. Swecker. Well, I think it went into NCIC somewhere
about 48 hours in, which we felt like was a little bit late.
I hesitate--I think we all hesitate to go deep into the
Guillen case and the things that went wrong, because the
investigation, the four-star investigation, is looking at that
very hard. And I am very reluctant and I think we are all very
reluctant to step on that investigation, for very good reasons.
But I do think that there is--they are looking at the right
things, because we have been in liaison with the four-star on
that and we have given them some material from our review.
Ms. Speier. Okay. Just as long as it doesn't become a
FORSCOM IG report that is counter to everything that you came
to conclusions on.
On page 114, you state, ``It was a culture that was
developed over time out of neglect and persisted over a series
of commands that predated 2018. A toxic culture was allowed to
harden and set.''
So, while the Army is taking steps to address those who are
presently--were in command at Fort Hood, your comments suggest
that this has gone on since 2014 or maybe before. So how do we
address those leaders who then went on to other installations
and bases and commands but were part of the problem?
Mr. Harmon. Madam Chairwoman, I am not a--you know, I think
as Mr. Swecker said, we have identified for the Army both all
the problems that we could ascertain in our deep dive and some
of the recommendations. I really think it is up to the Army to
determine how far they want to go back with any type of other
actions.
It certainly was beyond the purview of what we did, to go
back and to figure out every person in the chain of command. I
think it would have hindered us from coming to the good report
that we did.
So I am not trying to dodge your question. I think it is
really up to the Army to determine the answer to your question.
Ms. Speier. Or maybe----
Mr. Swecker. May I put some perspective around that----
Ms. Speier. Sure.
Mr. Swecker [continuing]. If I can?
I mean, we had a hard time fixing accountability on one
person, and we didn't feel like that was our role.
What we did see, though, is that there has been a lot of
conflicts, a lot of warfighting going on over the last 20
years, and we think that the commands', the various commands',
100 percent focus was on readiness, and in their peripheral
vision they didn't see this, and it was an act of omission
versus an act of commission.
So you can almost understand how it happened. It shouldn't
have happened. But, given the context over the last 10, 15
years, we felt like they took their eye off the ball on
something that was very important and never made the connection
between readiness and recruitment and the health and safety of
their soldiers because of what was directly in front of them.
Ms. Speier. Well, Mr. Swecker, I appreciate your comments,
but we have spent almost a billion dollars over the last 10
years on this issue, and nothing changes.
And your report underscores the fact that, you know, this
culture continues, that climate surveys are not seriously
reviewed and action taken on them; SVCs, although we have put
money there, are inadequate, and people don't even know they
exist. As much as they have these ostensible trainings, it
appears that at Fort Hood they were checking boxes and it
wasn't even going on.
So, at some point, we have to say that we have to turn
this--we have to do something differently. Because this is not
working, and your report underscores it. And there are lives
lost because of it.
And, you know, now we have Airman Aposhian who was murdered
in her dormitory just a few months ago. I mean, it is becoming
frightful. And when you have family members who are asking the
question, ``I don't know if it makes sense for my son or
daughter to go into the military because I fear for their
lives, not overseas, but here at home,'' we have a huge
problem.
So I know we should bring this to an end. I think what I
will do is reserve my question on suicide, since you looked at
50 of them, and have a conversation with you offline. Because
it is another area that this committee is very concerned about
and one that we have to get a better handle on.
Any final comments you would like to make, Ranking Member?
All right. On behalf of all the committee members, your
work has been just so helpful and informative. And it helps us
recognize that we could do a whole lot better if we just hire
all of you for the next few years and have you go base to base
so we can clean things up. But we will have to evaluate that.
Thank you again for being here. Thank you for your service
to our country and to our military.
And, at this point, we stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:15 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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