It took long enough.
Nine months after an Army four-star general was reported to have repeatedly interfered with a command selection board to favor his apparent mistress, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth has forced General Charles Hamilton into retirement.
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Army Secretary Christine Wormuth — in a dramatic and rare move — on Tuesday fired one of the service’s top generals following an Army inspector general investigation that concluded he improperly intervened in the process for selecting senior commanders.
Gen. Charles Hamilton, who had been the head of Army Materiel Command, was removed after what officials described as a flagrant abuse of authority aimed at securing a leadership role for a subordinate officer who was found unfit for command and had an inappropriate relationship with the general, according to the IG report.
The move marks the first time in nearly 20 years an Army four-star general has been outright fired and comes after a Military.com investigation in March detailed how he attempted to intervene on behalf of the subordinate officer. The publication’s report earlier this year immediately triggered both his suspension from the command leadership position and the inspector general probe.
They call it “dramatic,” I call it pathetically inadequate and long overdue.
I’ve covered this story previously; see Four-Star General Suspended and Under IG Investigation for Tampering With Command Selection Board and Go Big or Go Home: Army General Blasts ‘Racist’ Promotion System as Reason He Meddled to Help a Favorite. This is the short story.
One of the officers selected for battalion command was an unnamed female lieutenant colonel who worked for General Hamilton as his military assistant and assistant executive officer. When she went through the selection process, the board declined her with a vote of 0-5 for having “counterproductive” leadership traits.
Hamilton sprang into action.
Hamilton immediately asked for the lieutenant colonel to be re-paneled, effectively getting another chance — an unheard-of move, according to some Army officials familiar with the process. Officers who fail typically have to wait a year to try again.
[Director of the Army Command Assessment Program, Col. Robert] O’Brien granted the repanel “solely based” on Hamilton’s request, according to his own memo. However, Col. Townley Hedrick, chief of staff of the Command Assessment Program, told the lieutenant colonel she was being re-paneled due to “technical issues,” the memo added.
It’s unclear what technical issues would warrant a redo of an assessment panel. The next day, Hamilton called Hedrick, thanking him for “playing a part” in re-paneling the lieutenant colonel.
Between the first panel and the redo, Hamilton called three different panel members — Maj. Gens. Jeth Rey, Trevor Bredenkamp and Hope Rampy — to discuss the lieutenant colonel, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Military.com. Panelists are supposed to be anonymous to avoid lobbying, one Army official explained, and are often finalized just hours before a panel as a safeguard.
Throughout the morning of the second panel, Hamilton repeatedly sent text messages and called senior assessment staff, including Hedrick and O’Brien, asking about interview results, O’Brien explained in his memo.
At noon, the second panel was complete. The lieutenant colonel was again found unfit for command, but this time in a 2-3 vote, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation. She was found to have “ineffective” and “counterproductive” leadership qualities.
Hamilton inquired about the results several additional times throughout the day until after 9 p.m. It’s unclear when, if ever, the results were formally shared with him.
As a note, the panel members are supposed to be anonymous to prevent this kind of tomfoolery, but someone leaked the names and phone numbers of the panel members to Hamilton so he could lobby them.
The fact that the program director wrote a memo complaining about Hamilton’s behavior is extraordinary. What is even more extraordinary is that he caved to the pressure to give this clearly unqualified officer a second chance and that other generals were afraid to say anything.
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But now we have more information.
- General Randy George, the Army Chief of Staff, knew what Hamilton was doing and abetted it. George was Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s senior military assistant before his meteoric rise to the Army’s chief of staff.
- The officer Hamilton pushed onto the command list was in the bottom 1% of the 811 officers considered for battalion command.
- This officer’s second shot at command selection was the first time anyone had been given a second shot.
- General George inserted this officer on the command list despite her having been twice declared unqualified.
- Hamilton was banging the officer he was trying to get promoted.
It seemed pretty obvious. As I said in a previous post, “A male general breaking all known rules on behalf of a female subordinate looks like more was going on here than fighting racism unless that’s what the kids are calling it this week.”
“Our investigation found a preponderance of evidence to support a finding that Gen. Hamilton and [the lieutenant colonel] shared a prohibited relationship that caused an actual or perceived partiality or unfairness,” according to the IG report. “Despite all the circumstantial evidence, we were unable to determine conclusively that Gen. Hamilton and [the lieutenant colonel] were involved in a sexual relationship.”
Unless one of the parties in an adulterous and/or prohibited relationship confesses, you can never have a definitive finding. I was second-chair on a similar investigation when I was an IG investigator. My boss said we should turn the evidence over to the general’s wife, and if she didn’t believe anything was going on, we should close the case.
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- Numerous senior Army Staff members were involved in placing Hamilton’s squeeze on the command list despite knowing the ethical quagmire they were creating.
Senior Army staff went through a lengthy series of steps to make that happen, including an entire briefing on the risks, and what could happen to the [Battalion Command Assessment Program’s] integrity if it were publicized that a clearly unqualified officer was placed in command. She was finally ranked 100 out of 811 candidates for command, presumably being scored ahead of candidates who passed the selection process.
There are two issues left hanging by this action.
What the Heck Is Going on With Hamilton’s Rank?
It was initially reported that Hamilton had been forced to retire as a major general. This is from Wikipedia:
After the investigation was completed, the secretary of the Army officially relieved Hamilton of his command on December 10, 2024,[16] and he has reverted back to his permanent rank of major general.
It was also on the Army General Officer Management Office website but abruptly changed. The @samosaur account (give him a follow; he’s great at keeping up on the behind-the-scenes stories in the Army) made the mistake of using a hotlink instead of a screen grab.
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According to reports, Hamilton’s relationship with this unnamed lieutenant colonel began when she was a major. He wasn’t exactly stealthy about what was going on.
For example, Hamilton awarded her the Legion of Merit when she was a major, according to the investigation. Such awards are usually presented to retiring colonels or one-star officers after they complete assignments with significant responsibilities.
“Gen. Hamilton’s direct actions to assist [the lieutenant colonel] began with awarding her an impact Legion of Merit and culminated with his request for an exception to policy to certify her ready for command to the Chief of Staff of the Army,” the investigation found. “Gen. Hamilton provided [the lieutenant colonel with several advantages he did not provide to other officers.”
If that award was dated after April 2022, his date of promotion to lieutenant general, he should be retired at the lowest grade at which he performed satisfactorily, which would be a major general. If the behavior began before that date, he could be retired as a one-star. Was Hamilton retired as a two-star, as the tweet suggests, and the dates changed to avoid additional embarrassment? Or was he retired as a two-star, and that decision overturned by someone higher than Wormuth?
Why Is General George Still Employed?
While I find Hamilton’s actions reprehensible and profoundly stupid, I understand them. Burning down a career and trashing a marriage wouldn’t even make it into the top tier of stupid stuff men have done in pursuit of sex. He was blatant, he got caught, and he paid a yet undetermined price.
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On the other hand, General George sacrificed his integrity; he forced weaker men to sacrifice theirs, and he damaged the entire Army by meddling in the command selection process and calling into question the fairness of future selection boards. And to what end? Did he owe Hamilton a favor? I think that unlikely with two men of such disparate careers. Did he really think the selection process was racist? If so, why intervene on behalf of a single woman officer when there were undoubtedly other black women not selected? Why not order the system changed rather than convening a clean-team to tidy up her sudden insertion on the command list? Or did he simply obey the Army’s DEI regime in the best tradition of Mark “White Rage” Milley and strike a blow against racism and the patriarchy?
It doesn’t really matter. When the man at the top of the Army is so utterly corrupt, the system has to act. It can either toss him out in a very public way, “pour encourager les autres,” as Voltaire would have said, or it can embrace the corruption. Right now, it looks like corruption is winning.