S.O.S. (Stories of Service) - Ordinary people who do extraordinary work
From the little league coach to the former addict helping those still struggling, hear from people from all walks of life how they show up as a vessel for service and drive for transformational change. Hosted by Theresa Carpenter, a 29-year active duty U.S. naval officer who found service was the path to unlocking trauma and unleashing your inner potential.
S.O.S. (Stories of Service) - Ordinary people who do extraordinary work
The DeRito Act and the Fight for Military Justice | Adam DeRito- S.O.S #211
In this powerful and eye-opening conversation, decorated veteran and military justice reform advocate Adam DeRito takes us through his remarkable journey from Air Force Academy cadet to the frontlines of a battle few civilians understand: the fight against military retaliation.
Adam's story begins with his post-9/11 commitment to service, arriving at the Air Force Academy with real-world experience as a firefighter and EMT. After becoming an OSI confidential informant reporting cadet misconduct, his life took a devastating turn when he experienced sexual assault off-campus—and faced dismissal rather than support from his command. What followed was a systematic campaign of retaliation culminating in falsified medical records dated after he'd already left the Academy, an illegal tactic designed to permanently block his military career.
Despite these obstacles, Adam persevered through multiple administrative appeals, federal court battles, and political advocacy while continuing to serve in the National Guard and Army Reserves. His experiences led him to draft the Military Mental Health Protection and Justice Act (known informally as the "DeRito Act"), which would prevent commanders from weaponizing command-directed evaluations against service members who report misconduct.
The conversation exposes critical gaps in military accountability where commanders operate with minimal oversight, creating a chilling effect that damages readiness and unit cohesion. Adam's documentation of his case—including medical records falsified by someone without proper licensing—reveals how military mental health evaluations can be weaponized to silence whistleblowers and assault survivors.
For anyone concerned about veterans' rights, military readiness, or constitutional protections, this episode provides rare insight into how our military justice system actually operates and why reforms like the DeRito Act are desperately needed. Visit adamdorito.com to review the evidence and join the fight for accountability that affects thousands of service members.
🎧 Listen now and join the conversation as we shine a light on the systemic issues facing our service members—and those fighting to change them.
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Read my writings on my blog: https://www.theresatapestries.com/
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From the moment we're born and lock eyes with our parents. We are inspiring others by showing up as a vessel of service. We not only help others, we help ourselves. Welcome to SOS. Stories of Service hosted by Teresa Carpenter.
Speaker 2:Hear from ordinary people from all walks of life who have transformed their communities by performing extraordinary work hello everybody and welcome to another episode of stories of service, and today I'm so happy I have another in-person guest, and this is only my third in-person guest in the house. So, as you see, every time we do this we try our best to level up the tech a little bit and make sure that we make this, as guess, as most comfortable as possible. But what I'm so excited about having you on, adam, is that you, you are everything all in one you're a warrior, you're a fighter, you're in the army, you've done so much, you're an advocate, and so I'm so happy to have you on the show. Welcome to the stories of service podcast well.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. You know, the humidity and the temperature down here in Mississippi is about as high as the level of crumpeters at the United States Air Force Academy, so I'm happy to come down here and talk about it.
Speaker 2:Yes, right now. If you guys are from the South or you've been to the South, you know that right now the weather here is absolutely incredibly unbearably hot at certain times. But that's just the way things go. It's the way we roll. But first off, I want to read a little bit about Adam and then just get right into this conversation.
Speaker 2:So today we're going to be talking to Adam Dorito, a decorated veteran public servant and fierce advocate for military justice reform. His journey began on the front lines of public service as a firefighter, emt and search and rescue technician before attending the US Air Force Academy. After transitioning into a 14-year career in the oil and gas industry, he founded Leatherwood Development Group LLC and earned a Master's of Science degree, demonstrating the same tenacity that drives his mission today. But this is much more than just a talk about your business. We're also going to be talking about the Military Mental Health Protection and Justice Act, better known as the Dorito Act, where he has taken a stand against sexual assault and retaliation within the military ranks. His advocacy continues at the local, state and federal level, consulting on legislation that protects service members and strengthens accountability. Currently serving in the Army Reserve as a military industrial specialist, he also hosts two reform-focused podcasts, dark and texas, and tomahawks, where he amplifies the voices of like-minded veterans, and he holds leadership roles as well and is a national vice chairman of america's first veterans association and the board of governors for the members for board of governors. Member for the colorado hispanic republicans. And your mission is clear it's to empower veterans and first responders to unite in defense of the freedoms they fought to protect, and so today we're going to talk all about that.
Speaker 2:So, first off, as I always ask all of my guests who have served in the military, where are you originally from and what made you decide originally to go into the Air Force?
Speaker 3:So originally I was born in Poughkeepsie, new York. I grew up in a small rural farm town called West Milford, new Jersey. It's pretty close to the upper state New York border and I was a 9-11 kid so my dad's cousin had gotten killed in 9-11. We watched the towers collapse from my hometown of West Milford, new Jersey. You could see the smoke billowing and piling up from New York City there in our mountain town in New Jersey and I've always wanted to join the military. I was a kid I was always drawing pictures of planes and you know tanks and stuff and dressing up and playing Army and stuff.
Speaker 3:But 9-11 really solidified that for me and my junior year, when I was in high school, one of my fellow football players who had joined the Marine Corps the year prior he had gotten killed in action in Iraq right at New Year's Eve in 2005.
Speaker 3:Right and New Year's Eve in 2005. So it kind of hit home. You never think that these things are going to hit your little small town in the middle of nowhere, especially in New Jersey. But when Brian Pirello got killed in the Anbar province he was a swift boat water operator in the Marine Corps. You know the whole town came out and you know we had the fire trucks and we renamed the postal office after him. And you know, when it hits your hometown it's like wow, this war is real. And that time in iraq in 2005 and 2006 was pretty insane. And that next year I turned 18 and I found out I got accepted to the united states air force academy and I got accepted to all the federal service academies. I worked uh, very hard as a child to you know be the best I could.
Speaker 2:I joined the civil air patrol yeah, because you did a lot before, even the military, as a in the, in the civic realm like you said you joined the civil air patrol.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like when I was 12 because I thought it was cool to dress up in like little airports bd uniforms and run around and learn like cadet leadership stuff. But I did like hawk mountain rescue uh school out in pennsylvania, learned basics of search and rescue technician stuff, became a certified emt and a firefighter in new jersey. So I was very, very active in my hometown in addition to being like the captain of the track team and playing varsity football. Because I didn't think my grades were that good. I had like a 3.9 when I graduated but I'm like, oh man, those grades aren't good enough to get into the academy, so I better have that well-rounded aspect. So I really tried to do as much as I could and be like Captain America of my little small town and I got the letter to go to the Air Force Academy.
Speaker 3:I was super excited and I chose to go to Air Force because I wanted to fly F-22s. That was my dream and I'm like you know what. I just want to leave my small town. I want to get away from the East Coast, I want to go out West it. And you know, it's like my mom said Be careful what you wish for.
Speaker 2:Right, right. And then I wanted to let you guys know that we will probably go over an hour tonight. This is going to be a kind of an in depth conversation about what is what happened to you at the Air Force Academy and then what you did with this, with this experience. So tell us a little bit about your first couple years, uh, attending the air force academy and what that experience was like for you yeah, so it was pretty interesting.
Speaker 3:I went and reported into basic cadet training five days after I graduated high school, so I didn't have any time off, so I pretty much packed my bags, showed up in a t-shirt and shorts, um, you know, just joined the cadet wing at that point in time and what took me back was you. Like I said, I worked very hard to get to the Air Force Academy. I didn't come from a family with a lot of money. We grew up pretty poor. We had, you know, grew up with like hand-me-down clothes and welfare Thanksgiving, so to speak, from the community. So when I got there I thought, like everybody was kind of like me.
Speaker 3:Like we worked really, really hard to get to these places and alpha mentality of like serving your country and, like I said, our country was involved in heavy combat at the time.
Speaker 2:so like the expectation was, like you know, like we're all gonna die and go to combat in iraq, you know like that was the mentality we all thought was gonna happen for sure and um, you know, I showed up there and I realized that there was a few kids like me.
Speaker 3:You know, I met this one kid from west virginia. I'll never forget his story. So, like he, you know, we were getting issued our uniforms and our you know first pair of shoes. And he like sits there and like starts crying. And I'm like stop being such a little bitch. Like why are you crying? Like we're in basic training. He's like this is the first pair of new shoes I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 2:That must've been kind of strange, you know. So for me I'm like okay.
Speaker 3:I connect their dad's a general or a colonel. It was like their third or second choice. They didn't really want to go here, they wanted to go somewhere else, or they were definitely there to play Division I sports. A lot of people kind of get duped into going to these service academies playing Division I sports. Like, oh, you only have to do a five-year obligation of service but you get to play division one football and go play for the NFL. I mean, some do, but that's kind of a lie, you know. So they trick. It's very hard to get people to play at division one schools at service academies because most of the people who are really talented to play division one they go to like real division one schools like LSU or you know, alabama state or something like that.
Speaker 3:Um, so to convince really talented players to go active service obligation when their objective is to play professional sports is really hard. So there's definitely a major disconnect. We call it the Tizo gap. The terrazzo is the area between the cadet buildings. We call it the Tizo gap because there's a disconnect between the NCAA players and, like the normal cadets who got there on their own, so it just wasn't what I expected.
Speaker 3:I really did not enjoy my time. When I got there, I realized I had a lot of personality conflicts, especially being fresh off the boat, so to speak, from New Jersey, east Coast attitudes are very different than Midwest or Deep South. Right, I'm very direct, I'm very in your face. I curse way too much and that's just not how most of the people who go to these service academies are. They're all polished silver spoon in their mouth, type of kids.
Speaker 2:Right and to be fair, I was a firefighter, EMT I I experienced death already.
Speaker 3:I experienced horrific car accidents. You were already very mature. Um, so when I got there, like most of these kids, like the highest achievement they had was like being in the national honor society in high school or getting a varsity letter for sports. Well, I had all that, uh, and I did addition to other things to my, to my community. So, uh, there was definitely personality conflicts. Um, I will never forget the first time I got in trouble in basic training. I got yelled at because I just couldn't stop laughing Because you know, when you go to basic training like you expect like the most in shape, scary people ever. And I showed up. It's like a bunch of fat kids with bad haircuts and I'm just like what is going on Like this is the Air Force cadet basic trainees. And I didn't know I wasn't like Air Force MTIs or military training instructors, it's cadets that were teaching basic training. So I didn't understand that. I thought like you weren't allowed to do that.
Speaker 3:I thought like you were going through real basic training and I, just, I, just I couldn't stop laughing. And then they made me fill out this piece of paper of why I thought it was appropriate to laugh at the senior cadets and I will never forget. I'm like cause I was like well, sir, you should learn the definition of leadership, which is the art of influencing and directing people in a way that will obtain their willing, obedience, confidence, respect and loyal cooperation and achieving a common objective. And once you do that, then I'll stop laughing. That didn't go well for me.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. So nobody wants that person that, even though they are more mature or they're smart or they get it, they want you to just humble yourself and be very and this was a hard lesson I had to learn, right, it was like I should have learned to shut up in color.
Speaker 3:That's never been my attitude towards anything, apparently, hence why I'm talking to you on this podcast. But yeah, I mean like there was a lot of personality clashes so I knew I couldn't quit. I didn't want to quit the academy. So I found another pathway and I started doing those things, and that was there was two individual cross commissioning programs at the Air Force Academy. So people don't know this. When you go to a federal service Academy, whether it's Navy, merchant, Marine, army or Air Force or Coast Guard, you could actually commission into any branch of service you want.
Speaker 2:There's actually I didn't know that until until so it's it's just a gentleman's agreement that if you go to the Naval Academy, you stay Navy or Marines.
Speaker 3:If you go to Air Force, you stay Air Force or now, space Force. If you go to West Point, you stay Army. So I talked to the Army guys there and I did something called Army programs. So if you complete that you can either go to jump school or air assault school as a cadet. And then I also did Marine Bulldog later on in my career there and that's winning a slot to go to Marine Officer Candidate School. And later on in my cadet career which we'll get to later I decided that was going to be my path. I wanted to be a Marine officer. I wanted to lead men and women into combat. I really wanted to do the real thing. And that's what I ended up trying to do without my time and throughout that, as a cadet.
Speaker 2:Do you think that by you going into something different than what all the other cadets were doing, I mean, were there a lot of people at that moment when you were there doing the same thing and cross? Well, they tried.
Speaker 3:So I remember, I remember like in army programs you start out with like 200 kids up on day one for the screener and by the end of the night we had 40 left and by the time the program ended there was like 10 of us, you know. And same thing with Marine Officer Canada school, like I think 150 kids tried out.
Speaker 2:And by, like I think 150 kids tried out and by the time they selected who was going to go and who made it through the screeners over six months, it was nine of us, so it was incredibly competitive to try very competitive do this and then here you were, crossing over into marines which is completely different animal the hardest service that we all know.
Speaker 2:So that also. But I think what it was is that you had already been incredibly challenged as a young adult and you had already had all these experiences that were hard. And so you got to the air force academy and you were like this isn't what I, this isn't the hard challenge and the rigor that I thought, but this marine option will be. So you go into, you start to do this, and then what happens?
Speaker 3:well, I mean, like I said, my commander and I didn't get along at all. Uh, I got in plenty of mischievous trouble when I was a cadet, like all cadets do. One time we got in trouble for an email war because back in the day before memes were like an actual thing, like this is before smartphones, like Facebook, just came around. So I remember we sent out class-wide emails and hit reply all on Microsoft office, on the entire base-wide email system, which I don't recommend doing. That Don't do that, because it jammed up all the servers and like clogged everybody's stuff. So we got like in trouble for like jamming up all the commanders inboxes, because that's where we're just, you know, roasting each other throughout the night getting ready for an inspection. And when people tried to open their inbox in 2007, with, like you know, 250 gigs of RAM or whatever it was like, it just slowed the entire network down.
Speaker 3:So another time we we saw a senior cadet making out with his girlfriend by the ATM machine. So we put a bunch of Capri Suns in a water balloon launcher and we're, you know, performing an artillery strike. So, you know, typical cadet mischievous things. But, you know, at the end of the day, I had my small group of rugby friends. I played rugby at the academy. That was kind of where I found my friend group outside of you know, training for the army and the marines and you know, like I said, this is kind of where my story begins is because, like you can't find you know women to date when you're at the academy, right? So a lot of kids were on these like dating websites, like trying to find girls to hang out with on the weekends at university of colorado, colorado springs, uh, and I engaged in one of those web.
Speaker 2:I don't even remember what year was it that this happened? Like 2008, something like that sophomore. At that point, yeah, I was a sophomore at the time.
Speaker 3:Okay, and um, I talked to this one person. There's a bunch of salacious emails sent between her and I like 10 of them, but then never met the person, never talked to him on the phone like it wasn't a big deal because I could never leave base anyway. So you know, can never get a pass to leave base and didn't think much even on the weekends you weren't able to.
Speaker 3:Oh no my commander hated me like I was restricted all the time with, like the rest of the freshmen or sophomore cadets, you know so I never was just a email exchange back and forth.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I was like what 19 years old, so whatever idiot 19 year olds say everyone's done when they're 19 didn't think much of it. And then I come back from christmas, leave that year. So that was like 2008, sounds like right in the beginning of what? 2009 ish or some timeframe. And my commander calls me into his office, lieutenant Colonel Christensen. He's like hey, you need to go talk to OSI. No idea who OSI is, you know, I don't even know what that acronym means at the time.
Speaker 3:So they told me to report to this building and I I go to this building and it's like it's like out of the the movies, like you go down this long staircase and like the hallway is really cold and there's like a steel sign on the wall that just says osi and I'm like what the hell is this? And there's a mirrored wall with one chair in the corner of the small hallway and it's like I knock on the window and like someone's, like someone will be right with you and they open the door and there's like these two guys dressed in suits. I'm like, yeah, as my commander said, you wanted to see me. Oh, come on in, connectorito, we've been expecting you, okay. So I go in there and they walk me into this room and it's obviously an interrogation room and I'm like, oh, this is interesting. I've I've never had nothing but positive in interactions with law enforcement at this time, like as an emt and a firefighter.
Speaker 3:So, whatever I sit down, I'm like, all right guys, what's up? And they just like, oh, yeah, you know how you doing, and trying to get to know me, and like, oh, you know, you've always seemed like you're a pretty good guy. You know, we've kind of done some research on you, like you were a firefighter, you were an EMT, all this other stuff. I'm like, yeah, like where's this going? They're like, well, is this your email address? And they pull out this like stack of like printed out papers off like some 1997 Microsoft Word, like MS-DOS program. I'm like, okay. And I'm like, yep, just like, were you aware that she was under the age of 18?
Speaker 2:I was like no, how would I know that?
Speaker 3:because right there in the emails it says like because back in the day you do asl, like you're talking on aol instant messenger okay, right. And. And the person I was talking to said like 19 female colorado springs right. I'm like nope, they said they were the same age as me and like okay, so you didn't know.
Speaker 3:I was like no, I had no idea. How would I know that? They're like okay, well, we just wanted to make sure that you didn't know that this person was under the age of 19 or whatever, or 18, right, and I'm like okay, so they leave the room for like three hours and just sit and they just leave me they just leave me in this room. Now. I'm looking at my watch and I'm like I gotta do homework tomorrow, like I missed rugby practice right. It's now like 10 o'clock at night.
Speaker 3:I normally get up and they just leave you there to make you wonder what is going on and I normally get up at like 3 o'clock in the morning cuz I go swim and hit the pool and do a 1500 meter swim, you know, before I go to class and stuff. So I'm like, alright, this is gonna suck tomorrow, I'm not getting any homework done, I'm gonna get chewed out by my you know professors and stuff, whatever. They come back in and they got like a Big Mac and like a number one for McDonald's and they're like sitting there have me like write out the statement of everything that had happened that I just explained to them verbally. I'm like, okay, then they leave the room for like another 30 minutes and then they come back and they go. Okay, well, we just we just wanted to make sure that you know you weren't really involved in this. I'm like, yeah, I obviously didn't know I was involved.
Speaker 3:I've never left base, I never even talked on the phone.
Speaker 2:No, no, it was all just email.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we had flip phones back then, like you could only send like 160 text messages, so this is all strictly through email, through this website. So they come in, and then this female agent comes in as well and they sit down, they go. So do you know if any of these things are actually going on at the academy? And I sat there, like what do you mean, like these things? I said, like you know, like cadets, like trying to date underage women or, you know, drug trafficking or underage drinking. I'm like, yeah, I have like an entire list. You know what I mean. And they're like, oh, like, well, how would, how would you kind of like to work for us? Like how would you like to, you know, tell us what's going on? Because you know, obviously, when osi walks around the cadet wing, you know, they know it's us, but like you know, you could be someone on the inside for us and just help us, you know, make the academy better, you know, help, help, find out all these problems.
Speaker 2:And immediately I said, yes, I'm like, yeah, that sounds fun to me, like doesn't matter did you think that, when they were offering you that, that it was also a way out from the things that they thought that you were being?
Speaker 3:well, I never got charged with anything.
Speaker 2:I never got arrested like this wasn't like, it wasn't anything like that so nobody ever made you think you were in trouble for the fact that you didn't know this. They were just like, oh, it was like a target of opportunity. Hey, you came in we saw that this was something that you thought you were involved in. But it was something that you were. It was something far different than what you thought. But hey, hey, you have an opportunity to help us out. And you were like, hey, let's do this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and, like I said, I was restricted on base anyway. So I mean, the only thing I did was I just listened to conversations of cadets what parties were going on that weekend, what hotels they were at, who was buying the booze? Whose colonel's car? Whose daddy was letting him use the car that weekend to go get the booze from playing. Hey Mister, down the street off South Academy Boulevard where the drinking parties were going on on the weekends, in the kid at dorm. And then back then a big thing was spice, because spice wasn't illegal in the military yet. So a lot of kids were going out and buying spice in the Springs and getting high and they didn't have drug tests for it back then. So kids were getting all screwed up with hookahs and stuff in the quads between the dormitories.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I was a confidential informant for OSI, and for those of you who don't think this is true or that this could never happen, I just want to be really transparent. What was the name of the mission that you were involved?
Speaker 3:in, so it was called Operation Gridiron. That's what it devolved into.
Speaker 2:Operation Gridiron. So please Google that. So I did all these Googling in this research to verify everything that you're telling me. But this was actually a program at the Air Force Academy where they would enlist cadets to spy on other cadets and then report their wrongdoings to OSI. So now you're this confidential informant. Tell me a little bit about that experience.
Speaker 3:Well, and I thought it was kind of fun because I didn't have to tell my commander I didn't get along with anyone in my cadet squadron. I thought most of the kids that I went to the Academy with were kind of shitbags, so to speak, and I thought I was holding myself to a higher standard, like trying to go into the Army or the Marine Corps and trying to play rugby and stuff. So you know, like I said, I thought that removing people from the Academy who didn't deserve to be at the Academy, was a priority Because they were doing nefarious things.
Speaker 2:They were doing things that we shouldn't be doing. They were talking to girls who were underage, they were using their positions and their rank and where they were to basically prey on younger women.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and they would try to date like girls in high school and go to prom with them and stuff, like it was super weird um you know, but that's the way some cadets are at the academies and, to be fair, as I learned over the, this isn't just an Air Force Academy problem. This happens at West Point, this happens at Annapolis, this happens at the Coast Guard Academy, this happens at Merchant Marine and this happens throughout active duty service as well. Right, this isn't just like an academy thing, but I was at that base. That was my you know scope of control and what I knew about the military at the time, right, and it also gave me free reign to leave base to go meet up with OSI across base. And then I always get my my free dinner Cause I'm a broke cadet.
Speaker 2:And you also let's be clear here you formed a rapport with OSI. These guys kind of became colleagues of yours. Yeah, like we got along really well.
Speaker 3:We'd hang out at OSI building on, cause I can. Like I said, I can never leave, so on Friday nights I'm like. I get to hang out with them for like two, three hours.
Speaker 3:We get to debrief the week because, I'd collect all my information during the week and then I'd go on a jog or a run and I'd go to OSI on Friday, because that was my reason I could leave. The cadet area was I'd go work out right, and I'd go hang out with them till like 10 o'clock at night when no one's around they give me free dinner, we debrief for the week and they say, all right, cool man, and what you would hear and the things that you knew.
Speaker 2:So how long did this go on for?
Speaker 3:Um, I mean, it was like the last two years I was at the Academy, right, so like 2008 to 2010. Um, you know, and I trusted it was agent Szymanski and agent Munson. I still remember them to this day. They I thought they were great guys, right. Um had a really good relationship with them. I trusted them and this is kind of where, like, my story escalates, right. So things are going pretty well later in 2009. I'm just getting ready to go to Marine officer candidate school.
Speaker 3:I was one of the nine kids to get selected. So this is like my junior spring of junior year going into my senior year, right. And what happened was, is my commander's like all right, dorito, you can have a pass for the weekend? I'm like score. So my roommate was a West Point guy, because I always roomed with the foreign kids, or I roomed with the cross transfer semester kids from other academies, because I didn't get along with anyone in the Air Force Academy. So I just picked everyone else that didn't want to room with the squids or the West Point guys or the foreign guys that couldn't speak English, right. So because I like them, I get along with them.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean, and so my roommate's like, hey, we're, we're going to run the Fort Collins marathon and we know, like you're not a big drinker, you want to be our designated driver when we have to drive back the next day. I'm like, yeah, sure, so, and I'm 21 at the time, and we go up to Colorado state university, which is like two hours North of the air force Academy, and they're like, oh, like, there's this party going on, we're gonna hang out with some people the night before, we're gonna carb load, we're gonna get pasta, we're gonna drink some beer, and then we're gonna go run the next morning, and then you know you could drive us back after the race. I'm like, yeah, sure, so we go to some random dorm party in the middle of colorado state university and it's like a scene out of american pie, like there's just beautiful women everywhere and there's people hanging out and rolling kegs down the streets. I'm like, wait a minute, so this is what college was like. I mean, I've been missing out on this this entire time. You had an extra pair of gloves this whole time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're in the Rockies, so I'm having a good time, like I'm meeting new people. It's not at the academy, so it's like there's like five or six cadets there, but the rest of them are like different environment, that are not cadets and whatever else, right. And then this woman hands me this drink and I start talking to her. You know, um, this larger blonde girl didn't really think anything of it and, to be fair, like I knew, I had no my drinking limits before. Um, I went to the air force Academy, like when I was in high school. I drank underage the last month I was in high school to figure out where my tolerance was, and then my friends fed me saltine crackers while I was crying and throwing up on a wooden porch in the Poconos in Pennsylvania Right.
Speaker 2:So you kind of knew.
Speaker 3:So I kind of knew what it felt like to be drunk. I knew what it was. This was different because I don't remember anything after like 11 pm, like 12 o'clock in the morning and I hate when I say this because you hear this from a lot of survivors but oh, I blacked out, I don't remember anything. Well, that really happened to me. I actually don't remember anything.
Speaker 3:The next thing I remember is I woke up at like seven o'clock in the morning in some dorm room at CSU. I had to be back in formation at 10 am and I had the worst possible headache possible and this wasn't like I'm a hangover, you know headache. This was something different and like as an EMT, I recognize like something was wrong and I didn't have like activated charcoal with me or anything to absorb anything in my stomach, so my cell phone's dead. I might thank God, my car keys were in my pocket and my jeans. But when I looked down I realized something was wrong, because I looked down below the waistline and like everything looked like it had been hit with sandpaper. So I obviously had been assaulted or something had happened right, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time. Like I had a really bad headache. I was more worried about getting on base than what had actually had happened to me in that moment.
Speaker 2:And not being in trouble.
Speaker 3:Right, and not because that's the kid. Oh man, the one weekend I get to leave and now I'm going to get in trouble again for being late to formation, right, that's how cadets think. Like the closest Denny's I could walking down the street because Colorado State University is all, like you know, it's a college town so it's pretty easy to find stuff I sit down, I get the greasiest, fattiest thing I can put in my stomach. I drink an entire pot of coffee. I walk across the street to the gas station, I chug like two to three Gatorades. I buy a couple more for the ride.
Speaker 3:My cell phone's dead, so I'd like walk around and like try to get some area orientation and remember where I parked my truck. I get in my truck, I charged my cell phone up, I call my commander and said hey, sir, I'm just going to be a little late, like I'm having some issues getting back down. Oh, of course, cadet Dorito, the one weekend I let you out and now you're going to be late. So I'm like whatever. So I start driving back down to base and you know, I report in like want to hear what I had to say. And he's like well, why are you late? And I'm like, sir, I think I got sexually assaulted last night and then he immediately just goes. Oh yeah, the 225-pound rugby player got sexually assaulted at a party. He's like you, probably just drank too much.
Speaker 2:I'm like no, sir, like Terrific, because people just assume because you're a man, that you can't be sexually assaulted.
Speaker 3:Well and most people don't understand this is more men get sexually assaulted in the military than women.
Speaker 3:They just don't report as much and it's statistically accurate because there's more men in the military than women and over my time, over the years, I saw a lot of males get sexually assaulted.
Speaker 3:It's even something that goes on today extensively and it was hard to talk about. I didn't tell any of the cadets because obviously air force academy cadets and I don't get along. So I actually immediately went to the sexual assault response coordination center, or the sark we called it at the time, and I filed an unrestricted report, just like we were trained to do. You go through all the classes every year, even back then. It's a big thing. So you know I filed a real report and I went to a counselor and I debriefed everything with them and everything that I could and they tried to find out who this person was and try to help me out as much as I could. Well, the funny thing is the next day I get a phone call from OSI and they're like hey, man, we heard some bad stuff happened to you, but these are the people that I trusted the most.
Speaker 2:Right? So of course you're going to tell them everything that happened. I tell them everything.
Speaker 3:So they said get in our car, you're gonna take the day off of school today.
Speaker 3:I'm like, yes, I get out of class yeah, hanging out and you have a supportive network, now hanging out in the back of an unmarked police car about this issue, and we drive all the way to colorado state university, right, we drive all the way there and we meet with a detective his name is detective adam smith and we sat down and we talked about it and he actually believed me and actually my osi agents believed me because, like the evidence and everything that I said was correct. Now my biggest problem because, like I'm a guy and this is 2009, like when I came back from the academy, I took a shower, so it wasn't like no, they didn't take any medical dna or or anything like that, you know. So for me it was just like my story. What had happened that they could still physically see, um, and then my unrestricted report, which you have to swear to. It's the whole process.
Speaker 2:Well then they had to go off of your credibility, and at that point the OSI agents obviously felt you were credible.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'd worked with them for over a year at this point, Exactly, so I thought they were going to take care of me. And then this was the first biggest mistake I ever made, because I didn't have any knowledge of this, I didn't know my rights. So you know, college, state, university, they were doing this big investigation and they were going to try to find this person. They were going to charge them and they were going to find out what happened, or they. They kind of determined that it might've been GHB that I got drugged with, based upon my my, my physiological reactions to what happened with the drug and how my head felt and you know the the conditions that had occurred after that. They ended up finding who she was. Later on We'll get to that.
Speaker 3:But OSI is like hey, man, this is like two and a half hours away from the academy, and the only way we can really help you with your case is if you hand jurisdiction, because it happened outside the academy in a different county under a different police department. Right is, you need to hand jurisdiction from Colorado State University Police Department over to Air Force OSI. And that was a huge mistake Because I didn't know at the time. I always, like I said, I never had a bad experience with law enforcement before that. Right, it was always trust the cops, yeah you know, yep, exactly, and I worked as a firefighter, worked as an EMT, you know I mean I always trust.
Speaker 3:I made plenty of statements in court, you know, for car accidents and deaths.
Speaker 2:And there have been no reason why you wouldn't have assumed that the military justice system would do the exact same thing that the civilian justice system does. And you were already working with OSI and you already had that rapport. So naturally, when they said they were going to take over the case, you were like, OK, sure yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I give jurisdiction back to OSI and then they immediately start an investigation and then it all comes, basically a summary. That was well, we can't do anything because we can't charge her, because it didn't happen on base. I'm like right.
Speaker 2:Then why did I even give you the jurisdiction?
Speaker 3:And this is when I realized I screwed up because now she's not going to get charged and now they're just trying to handle this restricted report in the system because you understand, or this unrestricted report. What people don't understand is is when you file an unrestricted report in the military that goes straight to Congress every year for the sexual assault reports for every base. They were trying to find a way not to submit that report to Congress because it makes the Air Force Academy look really bad and makes people start asking questions. I didn't know that until later on, but I didn't understand why they were putting so much effort into making this go away.
Speaker 2:You wanted to see this person charged and held accountable?
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely and see this person charged and held accountable. Oh, absolutely. And not only that, it got worse. I mean, this woman found out who I was on Facebook and I was on staff duty because I couldn't leave that weekend, of course. So I was like on Facebook you could put what your status is, and this is like an op sec thing, now that I'm an Intel guy, don't ever do this. I'm like I'm going to go run Eagle's Peak to prep for Marine OCS because I'm like a 21-year-old idiot and I put things out on the internet like that.
Speaker 3:Well, she apparently what I found out later was like her dad was like a retired colonel and she had access to like military bases, right, and she tracked me down while I was at the Air Force Academy and like found me while I was on this trail on the mountain, right, like stalking me, like she was actually stalking me game, so like I tried to run ahead of her to like a loser in the woods somewhere, and then she like twists and falls and like claims that she got injured and I'm like, well, not playing this game. I immediately call 9-1-1. I'm the cadet on staff duty. So I call 9-1-1. I get Air Force Academy, Fire Department, air Force Academy, security forces and flight for life and El Paso County search and rescue to go up there and pull her off this mountain on a helicopter. You know what Documented it all.
Speaker 3:I called my commander. He said oh, of course you're involved with this woman who you claim sexually assaulted you. I sat there and went. No, she came too bad. She drove from Colorado State University all the way down to the Air Force Academy to stalk me and she gets to the hospital and then my commander makes. And then my commander makes and I don't understand like why. I thought this was a good idea because my commander immediately goes. Well, she found you know my command phone number and she said she left her purse and everything in her car at the bottom of the hill, so you have to go deliver it to her at the hospital. At what point in time does any commander direct someone who is under investigation for sexually assaulting you to go give them their, their credentials?
Speaker 2:somebody who doesn't believe you, right, so?
Speaker 3:I immediately grab a witness. I have another cadet with me, he's one of my sophomores and I said get my truck. You're coming with me to witness everything in person, to realize what I'm dealing with, right? So there's never going to be alone with this person, at any single point in time. So we go all the way to the hospital and she's like oh my god, I'm so injured. I'm like you're sitting in the er waiting room, like, yeah, they give her like a bottle of ibuprofen or something like here's your wallet. Don't ever talk to me again, right? Like I'm only doing this because Lieutenant Colonel Christensen told me to do this. And Harrison just goes. Well, I said his name, harrison just goes. Yeah, man, she's nuts. I'm like thank you, you saw this in real time, right?
Speaker 3:So we go back to the cadet wing and I don't hear anything for about a week and then I get called into my commander's office again and he's like she called me and said that she's pregnant. And I'm like what are you talking about? You know, she's like well, she, she printed me out some of her blood work and it says that she's pregnant. I sat there and went. I don't like, I'm not a doctor, I don't know how to read any of this stuff.
Speaker 3:Like, first of all, I don't know how that happened, like I don't, you know, I, I don't know, I can't. I have no explanation for you, right? So I'm just about to leave for Marine officer candidate school and I had to go meet with the vice superintendent, who's a no sex. And he goes Dorito, we don't know what's going on with this woman. We're going to do our own investigation while you're gone. But just go to Marine OCS, go do good things and come back and we candidate school and apparently she had gone and contacted my sister and told my sister that I was her boyfriend and to give her her mailing, my mailing address, at marine officer candidate school. So now I'm at marine officer candidate school and I'm just getting pounded with like piles of letters that this person is writing me while I'm at.
Speaker 3:I still have all the letters. I kept them just for federal court reasons in the future, which we'll get to Right. And and even the Marine Corps was like Dorito, what is this stuff? And like I showed up to the Marine Corps officer candidate school and it was like the hardest thing I've ever done and you know, and I'd get there and I'm like so happy to be, you know, getting hazed like the way I should have been hazed. Like when I joined the military. I thought what happened when I went to the marine corps was going to happen to me, like when I joined the military in general, right, when I get to the marine officer candidate school, it's like push-ups, running like all the things you want no mercy, right?
Speaker 3:I'm like. I felt like, okay, this is these are my people.
Speaker 3:This is where I belong. I graduate marine officer Officer, canada school. It was really hard. I mean I made some really dumb decisions when I was there.
Speaker 3:Like I remember we were on this ruck march and they run up to me in the middle of the night while we're doing this 12 mile, like it's like three o'clock in the morning you can't see anything in front of you in the Quantico woods, and they're like Dorito, are you a blue falcon? And I'm like thinking in the back of my head, I'm like I don't know military terminology. I was in the Air Force, you know, and they're like I'm like I Gunnery Sergeant, this candidate is a blue falcon. And I thought they meant like the Air Force Academy mascot. I did not know that blue falcon meant well, buddy fucker.
Speaker 3:So immediately I'm sitting there and I see all the gunnery sergeants sprinting in their glow sticks down the hill of Da Nang in the middle of the woods. I just got, I got lit up Like I was doing satellites around the entire battalion. So my 12 mile ruck march was like probably 15. But I made it through. You know, I graduated and then I even had Marine gunnery sergeants come up to me and said, dorito, I mean, we tried to get you to quit you know we really hard, but like you made it and we would be so happy to endorse you to be a second lieutenant at the united states marine corps. So you're like mission accomplished, I made it through, yep. So I go back to the academy and I'm like all right, I just all I have to make it to two more semesters, that's it.
Speaker 2:I'm just gonna be the gray man and, at this point, what was going on with this investigation with your?
Speaker 3:I haven't heard much from it like you know what I mean like it kind of faded away into the thing. Well, we can't do anything.
Speaker 2:So it was just like okay, well apparently, I guess.
Speaker 3:At least the one thing they found out was she was lying about being pregnant. Like, of course she just made that whole thing up and she was just calling the superintendent's office at the Air Force Academy. Like what are you nuts? Like the three-star's office. So when the it's just raises flags and I had to sit at the position of attention and salute and tell the whole story like 19 times.
Speaker 3:So I get back to the Air Force Academy and the Air Force doesn't consider the Marine Corps Leadership Officer Candidate School as a leadership credit for the year. So I still had to do a leadership credit when I got back to the Air Force Academy. So I show up in my Marine uniform, about 20 pounds lighter, buzz cut and they didn't even recognize who I was. And then I got assigned to cadet basic training. But the problem was when I got back there was a swine flu outbreak, so the entire base was quarantined on the side that I was supposed to go back to. So they assigned me to the prep school instead.
Speaker 3:Now, I never went to the Air Force Academy prep school. I didn't do the five-year program, I did the four-year program and normally the only cadets I send over there for basic training or cadets who were graduates of the prep school who went to the air force academy. So I was in this unique situation because of the swine flu outbreak, where I got sent over there as a direct entry guy. Now I go over there. Marine corps cracked out of my head. I'm in the best shape of my life. I'm running circles around these kids. I'm running. They're in pt gear. I'm in boots and utes like I'm just having the time of my life torturing these like 18 year old kids and prior enlisted guys right, guys, right. So it was a great experience and you know, are you still reporting with OSI.
Speaker 3:Not at this time, but we're going to get.
Speaker 3:We're going to get into like how they got re-involved in this, so kind of at the end of their basic training I I told them like my story about how I got sexually assaulted and that you know, your command is never going to really back you up and if you guys have problems, like just let me know about it.
Speaker 3:Right? So about September, that timeframe I got contacted by several preparatory school cadet candidates and they were telling me that there was like all this underage drinking and that there was a fraternization issue going on with one of the cadets and like a chief master sergeant there, and so I reported all this stuff to OSI and I said, guys, look, this is kind of like my last bang for you. Like here's these like 30 plus kids, and a lot of them were NCAA recruited athletes, so a lot of the kids don't have the grades to get there on direct entry, so they go to the prep school so they can play football right so they can play football for the Air Force Academy right, so their grades aren't good enough so they send them to this prep school?
Speaker 3:yeah, to get higher SAT scores and ACT scores makes sense but the problem is a prep school is a big recruiting area for football. I mean, they spend millions of dollars to convince these kids to come to the Air Force Academy and even though their grades aren't good enough, they'll get them up enough just to get them over to the academy to play D1 football, right, yep, and everybody knew this at OSI.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the D1 football, just like with the Naval Academy, that's where the PR is, that that's where they make all their money. I mean, that's where all the glory is is Naval Academy football, Air Force football, Yep.
Speaker 3:So I report on this stuff. It's like my final case I'm doing, it's going into the fall timeframe, like October going into Christmas leave stuff, and all these kids are getting investigated by OSI. Now, all of them. And that's my job.
Speaker 2:I reported all these cases, all these incidents that were going on underage drinking, the fraternization with the senior enlisted person on base, um, all this other stuff, and I sat there and went you guys have fun. I have one more semester to make through. Yeah, I don't want my job. I did my mind. I said I'm gonna use as a mole. I'm done.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna hide in my room. I'm not talking to anybody. I moved my room to the other side of my commander's hallway just so I wouldn't even have to pass his office every day going to class no, and I'm like I just have to make it like five more months. Yep, that's it. And, to be fair, I had a little bit of an ego because I really want to be Marines. I had, like the Marine Corps recruiting poster outside my cadet room.
Speaker 3:I'm not saying that was the best option, but, like my senior NCO is like what was her name? Br Beritha Ruiz. They just hated me. You're not a Marine, you're never fucking going there. You're going to be stuck in the Air Force. You're going to have some shit job Like you're never going to go anywhere in life. I was like, okay, thank you. Coming from the person who already completed a commissioning program here. I'm just waiting to knock this one out too. I just had to finish my degree. I'm not saying that my ego and my Jersey side of me was good but it was like the one thing I had that they couldn't take away.
Speaker 3:I did this military school, I completed it and you didn't, right, right. So what happened was, uh, I get called back into my commander's office Like January, we come back from Christmas leave and he goes hot Dorito. I got you Like you're under investigation for fraternization, and I sat there and something like, what are you talking about? Yeah, you know. So apparently all those kids got called in after Christmas leave and they're under investigation. From the stuff we reported in September, and October, all these athletes.
Speaker 3:So OSI built their cases on Christmas leave. They came back and all these kids are getting called in for investigation, right Cause they're trying to get them out. So they don't go to the academy. And this guy named Lieutenant Colonel Eric Rocky he's the prep school commander at the time, from what I heard from one of the prep school kids was called me and said hey, dorito, we're getting brought in for questioning about what was going on here. I sat there and went well, you know what's going on. And they were telling me well, lieutenant Colonel Eric Rocky is telling everybody to claim that you were involved in an unprofessional relationship with them by meeting with them and observing them and talking to them. And he's telling everybody to tell the same story. And I'm like oh, here we go. So my commander's like well, you got to go meet with OSI again. I'm like fine, let's go clear this up.
Speaker 3:So I go down and talk to OSI. I'm like I thought we were done, guys. I thought the intent OSI is supposed to be above the chain of command. That's how you keep accountability legally in the military. At least that's what I thought, right. So they were talking to me about the cases and they said look, you have five of these preparatory school kids, even the one you put up that was, you know, apparently having sex with their sponsor, dad off base, you know the senior chief master sergeant or the chief master sergeant and I was like, yeah, that's your job, you're the cops. Go do your job, go be cops. I'm a cadet, you know what I mean. I'm not a law enforcement officer. And they said well, you know, they're going to give you a frat. It's an article 15. It's no big deal, like there's no charges. It's nonjudicial punishment.
Speaker 2:And these are your buddies. Let me just frame this for a minute.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The people that are telling you this. These are people that you've already built like a trusting relationship with. These are people that are saying you're going to be fine because you have worked with us for the last couple years, you've built a relationship with us, and this article 15 is a way. In my view. It was them trying to meet the two sides in the middle. It was them trying to appease what the students were saying and then, at the same time, um, give you something that they thought or they were trying to tell you at the time wasn't going to damage you forever right and that's what I thought I mean, the way they explained in article 15.
Speaker 3:like frat is frat, it doesn't't really matter, it's not a big deal. This happens in the military all the time. It's a slap on the wrist. You're going to do 30 days extra duty and you're going to walk away from this and go be a Marine and serve this country.
Speaker 2:And people all the time get what we call Article 15, because that an NJP and then go on and still continue to serve. So you thought that was what was going to happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, keep in mind, I have three months to graduation. At this point I'm like, so you're telling me, if I just sign this statement and agree with you and I take an Article 15, this is over. Yep. And they said, yes, absolutely Okay, didn't have a lawyer, didn't have any legal counsel.
Speaker 2:Didn't go to defense. Yeah, didn't do anything. Didn't do anything and you didn't think that you had to.
Speaker 3:No, I worked with these guys for almost two years at this point in time. Right, so I signed this Article 15. I'm like whatever.
Speaker 3:I 15. I'm like, whatever, I don't care. I'm like I just want to be left the fuck alone, finish my finals and get out of this place and go to the marine basic school, tbs, right. So then it just starts to accelerate. They were trying to get me on anything and everything, like if I didn't have my shoes tied right, they'd stop me in the hallway and try to give me like demerits. Now, to be clear, at the air force academy, if you get 225 demerits it's presumptive disenrollment, right. But even with an article 15, even with my uh, that whole email thing with the so-called fake 13 year old or whoever, that was right, even with that it was like 50 demerits. And what they gave me was misuse of government network, because I did it on my cadet computer, but they didn't give me anything else. Like it was a cadet punishment, wasn't even a real punishment, right. They gave me an lor letter of reprimand and then they gave me 50 demerits for misuse of government network great, big deal. So I think at this time I had like 70 demerits, 240. 225. Sorry so. And even with the article 15, which was like, say, another, I don't even remember what it was like, 30 or 50. It's. On my four-year request, which we'll'll get to later, I was less than 150. So I still had like almost 100. I had to get to have presumptive disenrollment. So even with the Article 15 and all the stupid shit like sleeping in my room when I was a freshman, I wasn't even remotely close to the 225.
Speaker 3:So I'm staying in formation one day and noon meal formation. And noon meal formation at the academy is when, like all we call it the zoo for a reason. All the people stand on the wall and they're watching all the cadet 40 squadrons March to noon meal formation. Right, and I'm out there in my dress blues. Now, keep in mind, I'd been wearing my Marine Corps Eagle Globe and anchor on my dress blues every day since I graduated Marine officer candidate school this specific day.
Speaker 3:Apparently it was a problem and keep in mind, the Marine Corps Eagle Globe andor is an authorized uniform device in the cadet uniform manual for anyone who's completed Marine officer candidate school and, like I said, it was the one thing I was not going to let them take away from me. So I had some cadet come up to me, the uniform standards and evaluations person, and go Dorito, take off that, take off that Marines icon. I'm like no. And they said you better listen to what I say. I'm the Stan Eval cadet officer.
Speaker 3:I'm like it's not happening. And if you know the Stan Eval code, it's in the cadet uniform manual. I'm authorized to wear it. I'm not taking it off. So then he goes and tells the senior NCO, bertha Ruiz right, the one who yelled at me for having my Marine Corps recruiting poster outside my door you better fucking take that off If you don give you another NJP for disrespecting a senior, non-commissioned officer. I sat there and went well, uh, tech, sergeant Ruiz, you are supposed to enforce the uniform standards of cadets and if you knew the uniform manual we would understand that this is an authorized uniform device. That's an unlawful order and I am not taking it off my uniform. I'm not saying that was the best response, but I was digging my heels in at this point and this is what we talked about last night.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you gotta choose your battles, but I get it. It was like the one thing that you were proud of. It was the one thing I had. It was the one thing I had and it was the one thing you wanted.
Speaker 3:So then she immediately goes to the commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Christian, and he comes over and says he's the guy that doesn't like you. You're gonna take this off. This is an unlawful order. I'm not taking it off and I didn't.
Speaker 3:I did not take off the EGA and then after that, magically, they give me like an obscene amount of demerits, like it was like 50 or 75 or something, whatever the record says, like I said. And oh well, well, now it's, you're over 225, and now you're presumptively disenrolled, and now we're going to start this hearing to get you out of the academy. And then, on top of that, like I had a sexual assault counselor, right, so the entire time this guy named Major Todd great guys to meet with him once a week. We used to just go through this whole thing ever since I'd gotten sexually assaulted and my commander would not stop harassing me about forcing a CDE on me, which is a command directed evaluation. Right, I had no idea what that was. And they said look, all you have to do is go into this lab, go take a computer test. It's called an mmpi. I forget what mmpi stands for, but for you, psychology people.
Speaker 2:I'm sure why. Somebody in the comments will be able to say what it is multi-model personality inventory maybe I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, whatever it is so I say, okay, major todd, who is not a psychologist, he is my sexual assault counselor at the cadet peak performance center. They, I said, if I go take this test and I clear the test, can you please tell my commander to stop harassing me? He wouldn't let me play rugby, he wouldn't let me work out, he wouldn't let me do anything except be on a suicide control roster which I had to sign into and out of my cadet room every day and go to class, and that was it. So he took me out of every single social group possible to isolate me, like he was trying to make me do something stupid and I just refused to. I would just sit in my room and do nothing.
Speaker 2:I'd do my homework and read a book, watch like band of brothers or something. Adam, if you didn't have this lieutenant colonel as the, what was he?
Speaker 3:the, the common he was the cadet air officer commanding of cadet squadron 18 at the time and he still works at the pentagon today, hi, greg so if that guy and you had not crossed paths, I wonder if you would have graduated yeah, probably, and he also to be fair, he was also rotc and wasn't an academy grad, so he had a chip about cadets in general because he wasn't one of us.
Speaker 2:One of us so you have now um a come. He's trying to get your the guy that you've been talking to about your sexual assault experience. He's trying to get the guy that you've been talking to about your sexual assault experience. He's trying to get a command-directed evaluation, Keep in mind.
Speaker 3:He's not a psychologist, right, he's just my counselor from the Peak Performance Center. So I go and take this test and I go into this room at some building at the academy Never met with a doctor. It was some senior airman who said all right, cadet Dorito, here's your test. They open up the computer, I take the test, I leave the room, I go back to my cadet room. It's an automatic computer test. The computer test comes back as whatever. Major Todd gets the report back from the computer center and he says, yep, there's nothing to see here. And he tells Lieutenant Colonel Christensen to stop harassing Cadet Dorito and leave him alone and just let him graduate Right.
Speaker 2:Hmm, I didn't know that part. So basically your counselor tells your you know.
Speaker 3:Commander.
Speaker 2:Commander, your commander, boss of the academy. Leave this guy alone, let him graduate.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like they're just trying to get me on anything. So now it's 100 days out from graduation and it's something called we call hundreds night. Hundreds night is the night you find out you're getting your assignment, and even your commander doesn't know what it is. It's in a secret envelope that comes from the Pentagon that gets mailed out, because you get all your assignments when you graduate.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Right, and everyone's like he's not going to get it. Like, cause it was me and like my five best friends, like at the Academy at the time, who went through Marine OCS together, right, and we don't know. So we just we shaved our heads, we put on our Marine Marpat uniforms and just said we'll see what happens. Like you know, you had the special operations kids who were going to Stow Crow or special tactics officer, combat rescue officer. They were dressed in like their fins and their masks, cause they all knew they were going to go there. You know the pilots are all wearing, like you know, aviators and like whatever that you're going to be, I don't know.
Speaker 3:I just, I just, I was just hoping to God that I got it. So Okay, so we get there and it's a big. They have Mitch's Mountain, which is a giant pile of ice cream, and it's like this big ceremony in there and they're like All right, everyone open your envelopes. Like you know, the commandant gets up there and tells everyone to open up their envelopes. And I opened up my envelope and it says you've been assigned to the United States Marine Corps, quantico Virginia. You're so happy and I was, oh, I, oh, I was such an arrogant prick about it. I'm not going to lie.
Speaker 3:Like I get on top of the table and I did you and I'm out. I'm not saying that that was the right response, but I'm like I am free of this place. I am out of here. I have to make it 99 more days and we got a mandatory pass that weekend, so we were all allowed to leave, no matter what our restrictions were. So what I did is I drove to Breckenridge, colorado, and I went skiing by myself for three days and didn't talk to anybody. It was great. Um, I come back on Monday. I'm like all I gotta do is finish finals. I just have to take my finals for my classes and I pass on my finals. And I wore my Marpats the day I uh finished my last final Cause.
Speaker 3:On the last day of finals, you jump into the cadet fountain. That's kind of like tradition there. So I come sprinting out with my Marine Corps flag and I jump into the fountain, grab my pictures, walk off into the sunset and I'm like it's like one more week to graduation. Like and we're out of here, right, and you know my commander's, like you know we're going to do whatever we can to stop this and like keep in mind, there's no, no decisions have been made, like they're trying to put me through all these, like disenrollment hearings with a hearing officer, like you know, non-judicial punishment for that article 15, right, and now they're trying to make the case of well, he had an article 15 and and now he's over 225 demerits were you going back to your osi buddies and going wtf like, why is this?
Speaker 3:you told me this article 15 wasn't going to count well, the best part was is the osi agent came back and testified in my hearing that I should graduate and to leave me alone. So they had your back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that never happens, and that's when it came out that I was a confidential informant because they had your back. Yeah, and that never happens. And that's when it came out that I was a confidential informant, because they had to finally admit. Well, how do you know cadet Dorito? Oh, he's been working for us for like the last 20 months or so, you know. So it came out in the hearing that I had worked for OSI. And now then they connected me to the football investigations. The superintendent found out, my commander found out, so now they realized that I was tied in with all these investigations that were about to blow up at the Air Force Academy. All over the news, right, they made it their mission at that point to find any reason to make sure I couldn't graduate. But no decision was made. Final, they couldn't do anything about it, right? So my whole family flies out, right, my grandmother's there.
Speaker 3:It was like all right all right Day before graduation day before graduation I marched in the cadet parade whole nine yards and the next day I have my uniform on, we're going to march onto the field and three hours before graduation they pull me from the ceremony, make me change back into service dress, out of parade dress and go sit in the stands with my family and they say you're not graduating today, you have 30 days extra duty to finish out your article 15 and you're getting late grad. And I'm like all right, so that was like the worst day of my life. Um, completely embarrassing my.
Speaker 2:Did they tell you three hours prior? They could have told you, I'm pretty sure, two days prior.
Speaker 3:I'm pretty sure they were trying to get me to do something stupid. You know what I mean. Like try to have some kind of like emotional reaction because they have your whole family come out like that yeah, and they're from jersey.
Speaker 3:They were pretty pissed, like my family is like the sopranos well, and it's just insulting to your family it was if they wanted to punish you for something that you were going to have to fight, got it my grandmother stood out of her wheelchair in front of my commander and almost slapped him in the face, and she was like 90 at the time or 85 was there, she was 85? My mom, my two sisters, yeah, wow, I'm sorry. Yeah, it was really bad. If there was a day I actually wanted to kill myself like that was it. It was really bad.
Speaker 2:And then to tell you to sit in the stands and watch all your. I mean, this just makes me mad.
Speaker 3:No-transcript my back and my quantico start date was july 10th, right? So I'm like, all right, it's may 26th, I make it to june 26th and then I have whatever 14 days to get to quantico. I could do this. So they put me on like some. I was, I like wasn't a cadet anymore, but I wasn't officially a second lieutenant. I'm like this interim rank, that means nothing. And they assigned me to build a gazebo at the cadet airfield and I'm pretty mechanically inclined. So you know what I did. I went to Home Depot, I got all the lumber and I built this. Amazingly, I'm pretty sure it's still there today. I carved my name into every single piece of wood that I laid underneath that deck.
Speaker 2:For anyone who's there, you can probably still see there For any of you guys, and I know there's still at least six people watching and there'll be people I know that will catch the replay. Like I told you guys, this is definitely a conversation. I think we're only an hour one. I think we're definitely going to go into our two.
Speaker 3:We haven't gotten to the fun stuff yet.
Speaker 2:Yes, but for any of you guys who don't know what happens when you're like in TPU, temporary holding unit or whatever this is the kind of stuff that they do They'll just assign you to go build a building or go clean something around the base. So they'll they'll make up something or they'll find something for you to do so so.
Speaker 3:I did.
Speaker 2:It bring back memories of things that I experienced as an enlisted sailor so I did it.
Speaker 3:I just kept just shut up in color. At this point, right, I'm like, all right, maybe I should. I mean, I should have learned to shut up in color, like eight months prior. But at this point I'm like, all right, I've gotten my kicked in enough, I will just do it, I'm told, and not fight it. Um, but they were still harassing.
Speaker 3:Like I remember I'm on my way back from the cadet airfield and I get pulled over by security forces and they had my car searched because my commander said I was possibly bringing weapons onto base to cause harm. And I'm like, well, that didn't happen, right, and no, there's nothing. I'm like I don't even have weapons at the time. So I'm like this is really stupid. But but just constantly harassing me, they're just trying to get me on something else. Like they're still trying to find a way to like actually get me out of the academy, like they, because that, at the end of the day, all this stuff is just dumb. Like people in the military, don't get kicked out because you get kicked out of the academy, which we're going to get to. You either owe a five-year service obligation as an officer and if you get kicked out, then you either owe 200 as an officer out of the academy.
Speaker 3:That's what you owe.
Speaker 2:Oh, I see.
Speaker 3:Now, if you get kicked out of the academy, you owe $240,000, or they make you go enlisted.
Speaker 2:Right Enlisted. For how many years?
Speaker 3:It's supposed to be equivalent to five years. I know some people who have done it for like three to four. Okay, so whatever. And day 30 comes along and they say put your service dress on and report to Lieutenant General Michael Gould's office. And I'm like, ok, so I report in there and he goes, cadet Dorito, and, to be fair, the colonel who really supported my case at the time his name is Marty France, who retired as a general. Love this guy. He's like. My second dad Backed me up. His son was a Marine. Like he thought what was going on to me is completely unjust. He was even the classmate of general Gould. So they, they knew each other really well. So I'm like all right, maybe everyone's just, you know, calm their pants down and like everyone's going to like stop being annoying, everyone's gone. I'm the only one left at the Academy, right, Everyone's on summer leave Like cadet. Basic training hasn't even started yet for the next class.
Speaker 3:And he calls me into his office and I remember Colonel French told me at the time he's like Adam, all they want to hear you do is just take responsibility. That's what they want to hear. Just take responsibility for everything you did and did not do. Just be that guy, and that's all they want to hear. You say, I'm like okay.
Speaker 3:So I go in there and General Gould's like plead your case. And I said you know, I need to take responsibility for the men and women that serve under me. So I am prepared to take responsibility for anything that I am accused of doing or did not do, because that's what officers do. And I'm ready to move forward and be a commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps and move on with my life. And he goes yeah, you're done, pack your shit and get out of here. And I just turned to him and I never forget what I said. I said, sir, I don't care if it takes 10 years, I will tell everybody what you did here.
Speaker 3:I didn't know it's going to take longer than that, but I left face and I walked outside the door and I was met with a canine unit, two security force officers with M4s and they escorted me around base forced me to pack all my stuff up in less than three hours and I had to call one of my officer friends who was a family friend down at NORAD, and they came like what's going on? And he starts ripping into my commander at the time it's like you are, he's a combat vet at 15 E fighter pilot from like Bosnia in the first Gulf war and he goes yeah, what a bunch of loser Academy people were trying to ruin this kid's life or a bunch of bullshit. Because you guys can't handle it. This is why I didn't go to the Academy, adam.
Speaker 3:This is why I told you not to go there like he's telling, though he's like these are ROTC guys just ripping these guys a lieutenant colonel, and so I pack all my stuff up. I had like forty seven dollars left in my bank account and they took all my money for my article 15. I had like a quarter tank of gas and I call my sponsor family at the time, phyllis and Walt in Parker, colorado, and I just say, all right, yeah, I need somewhere to go. I have no idea what to do, and I moved into their basement and just started trying to figure out the next step of my life, your life, you know.
Speaker 3:keep in mind I didn't get a DD 214. I didn't get anything. They just told me to get off base. Now, for anyone who's in the military, now't get any of that Right. I didn't get a DD-14. I didn't go through out-processing. They just told me to pack my stuff and get off base. That's not how that works. But I didn't have a lawyer. I didn't know anything at the time, so I was just doing what I was told.
Speaker 2:And nobody throughout this process told you about Defense Legal Service Office. Well, they had like out of her office, like they, they work for the commander. They weren't there to help me. So, no, that's the command jag I'm talking like. Well, at least from what I'm, I now understand.
Speaker 3:There's, you know, the command jag that works for the commander, but then every base and I don't know how the air force works it's all the same person okay, so there wasn't like a defense services legal office dl well, there was a defense jag, but there's only one jag on base and they were just told to have me sign my yeah, then just get out of there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're terrible people.
Speaker 3:Lindsay conserveros, worst lawyer in the United States Air Force.
Speaker 2:So then you go to go stay with your host family, yep, and you start your new life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if you want to call it that. So I mean, I got a free gym membership. The 24 hour fitness they gave gave me some gas money, and then I just started working out every day. That's what I do to deal with stress, Right? So I was working out like every day for like three weeks straight, for like eight hours a day, just because I had nothing else better to do I didn't know what to do.
Speaker 3:And then they turn around like, hey, if you're going to work here, or if you're going to be here all the time, why don't you just work here? So I just put like a bunch of money on my credit card and I go get a personal training certification and I just start like hazing civilians and they start paying me like $30 an hour to do that. Um, you know, and I was making like two to 300 bucks a week, uh, and then I start figuring out that the Air Force Academy is garnishing my wages at like 37%, because they didn't even give me the option to enlist which I didn't know was illegal at the time which we'll get to later, obviously, in the story but they were taking 37% of my pay, making no money, um, and then I took out some federal loans. I'm like all right. Well, my, in my mind. I'm like all right, I have three years from the time I finished Marine officer Canada school to commission. Right, cause it's still the Marine Corps.
Speaker 3:Different thing I'm like if I can just finish my undergrad technically cause they didn't give me my degree, they withheld it then I can probably commission with ocs, right, so I go to uc denver this is like 2011 time frame, right. So I'm like, all right, I have like one year and they transferred most of my credits over. I had to finish like 30 credit hours in like a year and a half, right. So it was actually really easy because I just got out of the academy, so finishing civilian school and working full-time was actually really easy for me. I was taking like six classes at a time and working full-time was actually really easy for me. I was taking like six classes at a time and working full-time at Lifetime Fitness. So between clients, I'd work till like noon and then I'd go to class from like noon to five every day, all week, right.
Speaker 2:And your plan at that point was to get your bachelor's.
Speaker 3:Yep, just a bachelor's.
Speaker 2:And then do what.
Speaker 3:And then commission into the Marine Corps because I had finished Marine Officer Candidate School.
Speaker 2:And you didn't understand the whole RE4 code.
Speaker 3:Well, I didn't have a DD-214, yet they didn't give that DD-214 to me until like eight months after the fact.
Speaker 2:So this was your initial plan, was okay? Fine, they don't want me in here, but I'll just go to OCS for the Marine Corps. So, yeah, I went to OCS.
Speaker 3:Already I graduated as a cadet. I mean, not OCS, but go, I just had to have an undergrad. So so, technically, the requirements to commission the Marine Corps is OCS degree. Got it. So I finished my degree right at the end of 2012, right at the end of the mark. But then the rift was happening under Obama and they were getting all these people out and they said hey, man, your pilot slot's not available anymore and they're not taking any more officer candidates and we can't let you in. So I missed my block.
Speaker 2:I missed my time frame and your DD 214 at that point had a code on there that wasn't going to let you.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So they listed me as a general discharge under honorable conditions, with an RE4, which says I can never serve in the United States military, ever again. And they were unable to waiver that, especially with the riff at the time Gotcha, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:So then you're like okay, what am I going to do for the rest of my life? I know that 37% of my wages are garnished. I owe $240,000 to the government. What do I do?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So like it was kind of weird that next week, you know, I was finishing up classes and my sponsor, mom Phyllis, comes up to me and she like slaps his newspaper on the table and she's like, cause she had worked in the oil and gas industry, and she's like Adam ever heard what fracking is? And I was like no, what's that she's like? Well, you know, it's mostly a bunch of ex-military guys, ex-cons, and they make a lot of money. You've seen the movie armageddon with bruce willis, right, well, you're not going to go up, blow up asteroids, but you're going to go pull something out of the ground. I sat there and went all right, whatever. So I show up to this interview and, uh, passed the drug test and they hired me on at $16 an hour, um, working 120 hours a week.
Speaker 2:Were you one of the guys like when you see what's the movie, the show, the TV show I was telling you about with Billy Bob Thornton? Oh, landman, landman, Were, you one of those guys that were on the ground initially.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so those are those are work over rig guys. But yeah, I did a similar job in fracking. So basically we would complete that well, put that system up and then those guys would come in and service the well. But yeah, I mean, my time in the UF was nuts, it was crazy, but, like I said, never thought I was going to go back into the military again. I'm just like all right, I'm going to make as much money as I can. I went from making $300 a week to $100,000 a year overnight.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:But 37% of that was more survivable money. So I got my own apartment. I moved up north. I'm like I'm just going to change my life and disappear and become a different person. And I did. I traveled all around the country fracking, working on drilling rigs and everything else.
Speaker 2:And during this years were you still trying to fight the Air Force to try to get your record corrected?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I had submitted because I met one of my first lawyers, Matt Greife, at 24 Hour Fitness, and I was trading him training hours for for legal hours. Right, I'll, I'll personal train you for free and then he'll work on my case, because he was a brand new he was a Fallujah guy just got out of the Marine Corps, you know, and he thought my case is bullshit. He's like dude. They violated so many of your constitutional rights here.
Speaker 2:It's insane, you know yeah, let's try to get my record correct.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so he submitted the first one but, like I said, the only evidence we had at the time was, like my command was mean to me and did the wrong thing, give me my stuff back, you know, and obviously my first two appeals were denied because, you know, didn't know anything at the time right.
Speaker 2:You didn't have any evidence that showed that I wasn't a bag, according to the air force.
Speaker 3:Right right, all right. So I'm like, all right, guess I'm not going back in, so, but I'm like man, I really can't get rid of this debt. I don't know what to do and uh, you know, this isn't a story I tell often. But um, I decided I was going to join the French foreign Legion and change my name, get a new passport, move out of the country and just disappear.
Speaker 2:But the problem is, when you do that, you can never talk to your family ever again.
Speaker 3:Um, so doing this? No, I found a contact, I found a way I was going to jump the border in Canada. They were going to pick me up over the border in North Dakota, and then I was going to get over to France, and then what year was this?
Speaker 3:2013. Oh, sorry, no, it was like 2014 and a half. Okay, Right, so I did my first couple years in the oil field and whatever else, and then I'm like I'm just gonna try this, but before. I did that because deciding to join the French foreign legion is a big deal, Because, like I said, if you decide to keep your French citizenship and change your name, you can never return back to the country you came from. Now you have the other option you can take your name back and your passport back, and so I decided to try enlisting one more time. You know it had been almost five years at this point. Right, we're going on 2015. So I go into every single recruiter's office Marine Corps, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, Army and they all say dude.
Speaker 2:You have an RE4. We can't help you, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I know everyone gives a National Guard shit, but I walk into the national guard's office and I had been on the news a few times, Cause that's when operation grid iron had come avail and like 2013 on the news, but no one took it really seriously. But it was like short news clips on the news about it and how did?
Speaker 2:it grid iron get exposed.
Speaker 3:So there was another. So this is how I found out and not to backtrack too much but other cadets that were involved as CIs of the program are also getting screwed and they went public on ESPN about exposing things in the football team and I sat there and went oh, I was in that program. I was in Operation Gridiron. I'm also one of them, so it wasn't just me. There was multiple other cadets that were involved, but they were involved more extensively. They were actually going to parties and doing drugs. I was just collecting intel and giving it to OSI. They expanded on that program after I left, because all those kids were going up for trial in 2011, 2012, right, but I was gone. I was a civilian, I wasn't paying attention, anything at the Academy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I go into National Guard's office and they're like, hey, we're new, that kid that was on the news like I know this sounds really weird, but we're like we were always like kind of hoping you were gonna stop by this office, you know. And I told him the whole story of the holes I had to fill in for them and they said well, this is the unique thing about the guard we can have an exemption with the governor. That overrides federal DD two, fourteens, because he's the commander in chief of the national guard, not the president. So you exempt yourself from federal rules, title 10 under title 32. And I sat there and went, great, let's do it. So they call at the time who's now a senator, governor Hickenlooper, and he's like, oh yeah, that's the guy from the news, right, he calls office and everything else and like, all right, yeah, let him in. But he's got three conditions for him.
Speaker 3:Let him in the guard. One of them was I had to go in as an e4 and I had just finished not only my other degree but I finished my master's degree at the time too. So I'd finished my master's degree in global energy management, the specialization oil and gas production, because that was going to be my career. So I just stayed in it, just graduated from that, and I had to go in as an E4. Because I had a five year break in service, had to recomplete army basic training at 27 years old.
Speaker 3:And the third condition was I had to go into special operations and in the National Guard there's only two special forces groups. There's 20th group and 19th group. So 19th group was one that's in Colorado and I only had one of two choices of MOSs, which is your job, and it was either parachute rigger, which is 92 Romeo, or generator mechanic, which is like 88 Mike or something or an 88 Bravo or something like that. And I sat there and went. Well, I jumped out of planes at the Air Force Academy. So I guess parachutes sound kind of fun. So I decided to be a parachute rigger for the 19th special forces group as a junior enlisted soldier, e four, 27 with a master's degree, making over six figures a year. So so I did it. I'm like if I can get in, then this will hopefully be my argument to stop paying this money back Cause I'm doing my enlisted time.
Speaker 2:Right, at least Right. That's a, that's a fair thought rationale.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I take like 18 months. I go on active duty, I go to basic training and then I go to airborne orientation course and then I go to airborne school and then I go to rigor school and I come back and everything's fine and I go to 19th Special Forces Group. Went through that whole hazing process of being a support guy in a Special Forces unit, meeting all the Green Berets and everything else Great guys to work with but I just kept my mouth shut. I packed my parachutes, I jumped out of planes, I shot my guns, I did my job. People kind of knew my story but for the most part I kind of learned my lesson from the first time, instead of like telling everybody to shut your mouth and keep quiet, more humble this time.
Speaker 1:Yeah especially I'm also 27 like. I'm literally almost 10 years older at this time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm 28 now, I guess. So uh, we were out training in Utah under the new free fall system for the RA-1 with the Green Berets and the 211th Attack Reconnaissance Battalion is out there in Utah all Apache guys and I ended up meeting them at a bar out there. We did our parachute class, had a couple beers at a local brewery and they're like hey man, you should come over here and direct commission as a warrant officer. Go street to seat, we'd love to have you. You know, I think you're a great guy. You've always wanted to fly. Like, come fly apaches with us. We're deploying in 2019. You knock this out. In two years you can come fly with us overseas in afghanistan.
Speaker 3:I was like this is awesome. So I fill out my whole flight packet. I get all my recommendation letters from 19th group everyone two years with a security clearance and special forces. I'm like all right, now I now I'm going to go commission, I'm going to go back on active duty for a couple more years and I'm going to go do a deployment fly Apaches. Life is great. I get all the way down to Fort Carson, I have my orders for Fort Rucker, just getting the final medical stamp on them and they go hey, man, we can't let you go. And I sat there and I was like why? And they sat there. Well, the major psychological conditions. I'm like what are you talking about? Keep in mind. This is 2017. This is seven years after I left the Academy, right, and I they pull up the record and I look at it and it says I have like all these crazy personality disorders and all this other stuff that, keep in mind, I went through MEPs in the army. None of this stuff ever got pulled Right.
Speaker 2:Because the army doesn't talk to the Air Force, even though they knew, when you joined the Army, that you had Air Force prior experience and, as you explained to me and you might have already said this, the governor's office waived your RE4 discharge status. So there was no secret about the fact that you had been in the Air Force, but it took them all the way to you applying for an officer program for them to go.
Speaker 3:Which I find convenient.
Speaker 2:Oh, wait a minute. There's all these personality problems or mental health issues that will now prohibit you from going for the Special Army Warrant Officer Pilot Program.
Speaker 3:Yep. And so I go down to the medical office, I do a four-year request in person with Fort Carson and I have them pull all my records that they come out with and they print them out, and they hand me the pile of paperwork and I'm flipping through these things. I know something really weird I have no idea who Dr Kristen Nicole Henley Price is, and on top of that, the date that's stamped on top of the record is September of 2011,. One year after I left the Air Force Academy. So how is it possible that a doctor I'd never met saw me when I was a civilian working at 24 Hour Fitness at a base I've never reported to? Because everyone knows when you're in the military, you cat card skate every time you go into an appointment.
Speaker 2:I think that they would have dated it at least to when you were there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they screwed up.
Speaker 2:So we found out they retaliated against me and another thing that they did in those records which, by the way, um, I will go here on split screen so you guys can see both of us. But if you go on adam's website, which I've linked to in the show notes description, you can see all these medical records. So everything that adam has talked about is backed up with evidence. In fact, he has a link on his website, adam, do we to Adam?
Speaker 3:drew calm calm.
Speaker 2:That says evidence and you can go on there and then you can look at these medical records and you can see that they are in fact dated after you left the Academy yeah. I was, and that just that's a mind-blowing to me that there is somebody who signed medical records after after you left the Academy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so this is clearly a case of retaliation, and I, my lawyers at the time, were like we got him.
Speaker 3:We have black and white evidence that they retaliated against you for reporting sexual assault, harassment and misconduct. And on top of that, what we also found out was like well, why would they change it in 2011? This doesn't make any sense. We can't prove this, but the theory was all of those kids that were getting brought up on charges including the woman that was in an unprofessional relationship with the chief magistrate, the underage drinking, the drug trafficking with Spice, all this other stuff they were all going up for court martial in 2012. Traffic English, spice, all this other stuff they were all going up for court-martial in 2012. So our theory was they were going to change my medical records to discredit all the reports I had done with OSI in order to not be able to submit them as evidence against those cadets. Because, at the end of the day, like those 30-plus cadets that we were going to investigate and have charged, only two of them ended up getting convicted Jamil Cooks and this other guy named Claxton. The only reason I say their name is because it's a federal prosecution.
Speaker 2:And they were not athletes.
Speaker 3:No, they were athletes. Okay, they were on the football team.
Speaker 2:That did get convicted, but there were a lot of other people that you were reporting on that did not get convicted.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they all got away with it and they were convicted sex offenders. But here's the funny thing. Here's the funny thing In the NCAA you could be a convicted sex offender and still play football. So they got a dishonorable discharge from the United States Air Force. They got 90 days time served waiting in their cadet rooms for their trial never served any actual prison time. And then they went to other various Division I schools around the country, played football and then got recruited for the practice squad for the Green Bay Packers and the Washington Redskins Okay, all right, I did not know that convicted sex offenders could play football, but I guess that doesn't surprise me and yeah, ok.
Speaker 2:So the next thing that happens you see these euphoria, these records, and you see that they dated them in 2011, when you weren't even at the Air Force Academy anymore, and you go well, this is clearly retaliation. I'm going to fight this. And and what happens next?
Speaker 3:so we submit another Air Force Board of Corrections and Military Records and we sit there and go black and white evidence because there's new evidence so we can spin another board right. And they clearly violated this. I even went to the Air Force Academy with my maroon beret, walked right to the superintendent's office keeping my new general at this time so they have no idea who I am as an e4, and I sat there and go. Here's my demand letter I want back pay, I want to be reinstated with my degree, I want to be reinstated with my commission, otherwise I'm going straight to the news and the federal courts with this.
Speaker 2:Because you were like. This is falsified medical information.
Speaker 3:Black and white.
Speaker 2:Black and white falsified.
Speaker 3:Yep. And they wrote a letter back and told me to kick rocks. And then someone's like wait, that was that Dorito kid from like seven years ago. They realized who I was. They didn't know I had gotten back into the military and done all this stuff and I'm like, oh, I'm back and now I'm way smarter and way more angry. Um, you know? So they refused. They said let's go to court. So we go to 10th district court, federal court, federal court so let's, let's, let's, let's shape the battlefield here.
Speaker 2:I know, because this is a complicated story and I see there's still a lot people there are still with us after an hour and 15 minutes, and so I want to thank all of you for your patience and hearing this story. But sometimes we've got to do these long-form podcasts because people need this kind of context. So you go, it's black and white evidence. The board of uh air force corrections, air force board of corrections and report is like nope. We like nope. You've exhausted your administrative options.
Speaker 3:Correct and you have to do that before you do that, which you have to do before you can go to the federal court.
Speaker 2:So the 10th district, where is that?
Speaker 3:That's Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it's the federal court in Colorado and New Mexico. You file a lawsuit against the Air Force.
Speaker 3:Yes, well, at first, to be fair, I filed it against a doctor. First. I filed it against Kristen Nicole Henley Price for being a medical professional, who we also found out at the time. She didn't have a medical license. She was some trainee, second lieutenant with no medical license, not a doctor, signing medical records a year after I graduated. And she didn't even have a medical license in the state of Colorado until 2012. Okay. Which is a year after my records were falsified.
Speaker 2:I also had a question when you were telling me this story last night the major, the resilience gentleman.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Major Todd.
Speaker 2:Did you ever, were you ever able, after you discovered that this happened, to get back in touch with him?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, he 100% backed me up and he wrote affidavits to the courts and everything for it.
Speaker 2:Did he have contact with this Kristen person?
Speaker 3:No, at no point in time, because he was in the counseling center and I have no idea where this lady was assigned at the 10th medical group somewhere, because when I read those medical records it does say that she consulted.
Speaker 2:I thought maybe I misread it.
Speaker 3:I don't know if they've ever met, I think maybe they talked on the phone or something at some point.
Speaker 2:I have no idea what that relationship was, but in 2017, when you were trying to go through this board of correction, he was writing this major who you were talking to, the only person that you ever talked to on a counseling basis. He was writing letters in 2017 saying why are you doing?
Speaker 3:Correct and also I even Vouching for your credibility, I even paid and went to an independent psychologist and was independently evaluated To show that I wasn't didn't have these actual conditions.
Speaker 2:Oh, in 2017. Yep to say hey, I'm qualified.
Speaker 3:Yeah, dr Gurgich. Her letters are actually on the website too, If you go to the forms.
Speaker 2:I see. So in 2017, you were independently evaluated to see to determine if you were fit to go into the army and be a commissioned officer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, cuz, keep in mind I was in Special Forces and they wanted to verify that. Hey, you know, we're sure this is fine.
Speaker 2:And, to be fair, flight training is like one of the hardest, most stressful training in the military and they want to make sure that the people that they have in flight training are of the best physical and the best mental shape. So that part I totally understand. But you went above and beyond, like you said, paid out of your own pocket, to see a psychologist who evaluated you and made her his or her professional deter, her professional determination that you were fit for duty.
Speaker 2:yep, so you do that yep you have affidavits from the major that you saw even while during this period and you go to district court you try to take her to court the the person that was not practicing with a medical license.
Speaker 3:We had her. We had her served at her house by the sheriff's office uh, because she was in maryland at the time, I think and we found her, obviously because the courts are going to find you yep and uh she. We offered her a plea. We said if you testify and tell us who told you to change these records, we'll offer you immunity in the case.
Speaker 2:And and she refused.
Speaker 3:She refused and immediately demanded protection from the US Attorney General. Okay. So the case went from Dorito versus Chris Nicole Henley Price at all to Dorito versus USA.
Speaker 2:Okay, so now it's back to the Air Force that you're suing instead of her.
Speaker 3:Yep, because she's got this protection over her because she's still as a government employee.
Speaker 2:And she's also on active duty at this point. Yep, so she is using her, the protection of the government to shield any, any kind of liability. So then you go against the air force in federal court.
Speaker 3:Tell me what happens next so we go to mediation at first because even the judge was like we shouldn't let this stuff into open court because the evidence is pretty black and white that you guys did this. So even justice it was at the time he was chief justice Bremer he goes, yeah. So you guys might want to try to find a way to settle this. And I offered them a plea right there on the phone conference with the Pentagon. I said look, I want back pay, I want my degree back, I want to be reinstated as an officer and I want my medical records corrected.
Speaker 2:You're just asking for everything that you. I've only asked for things that.
Speaker 3:I've earned. I've never asked for anything more. And they sat there and said no 10 minutes later. All right, forget the money, don't care about the money. Give me my degree, give me my commission. Correct my medical records? No, don't even. Yeah, okay, I don't need my degree, I already have two more. How about my commission and correct my medical records? No, okay, how about you guys just correct my medical records? No, I even offered to sign an NDA and I said I'll never talk about this, ever again, if you guys just do the right thing. And they said no.
Speaker 2:So this is the mediation before open court, open federal court.
Speaker 3:So then they file a motion 12-6 Bravo, stating that this is a tort claim and that we can't sue under this because it's not. The Air Force does this yeah, we had to file under a tort claim and we filed it the wrong way. So motion 12-6, bravo, to dismiss. So we get it dismissed out of the actual court. So we go to the 10th District Court of Appeals, which is right below the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2:So you appeal the federal court. Motion 12-6 Bravo the dismissal.
Speaker 3:Yep and the judge comes back, all the appellate court and they say Mr Dorito, the United States Air Force violated your constitutional rights and your records were changed in an error or an injustice.
Speaker 2:However, they backed up that these medical records were not the evidence. The evidence does not show that. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:They agree that the evidence is very speculative and that I had all the evidence on my side. And then they state, because of Parker versus Levy, that the military is a separate society and should be treated as such and therefore we cannot tell the military what to do. You will have to direct the executive branch to force the Air Force to change your records. So I'm like you've got to be kidding me, right? Like I said, the next appeal would have been a search. You would already go to the Supreme Court. But that's $2 million. I'm like, all right, let's. Oh. So search.
Speaker 2:You already go to the Supreme Court. But that's two million dollars. I'm like all right, let's. Oh. So you had. Okay, that's an interesting factoid. So if you had two million dollars just sitting around, you could have appealed to the Supreme Court to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and some people who have tons of money sitting around that have maybe done that anyone wants to give me two million dollars to go to the Supreme Court, let me know right, but it's too late now, right, yeah? But well, it's not too late. I could still technically file if I really wanted to, because I got a motion to dismiss without prejudice, which means I'm allowed to refile at any time, given new evidence Right.
Speaker 2:So if you refile with new evidence, do you start at the bottom or do you start after the appeal?
Speaker 3:I would start after the appeal, so I would just go right to the Supreme Court with it.
Speaker 2:That Without prejudice, without prejudice.
Speaker 3:With prejudice means you can't refile, get this case out of the court system Without prejudice, yeah, so that's one round of ammo. We're saving the magazine for, theoretically, down the road, because what I did was is that all right? Well, I'm going to go to the president of the United States now, and I'm going to go to the secretary of defense and I do Right. So now it's like 2020 timeframe.
Speaker 2:And this is kind of like Adam's chapter three and again all those who have stayed with us um. I thank you so much. This is really chapter three of your story and this is the chapter called advocacy, because this is now. You've exhausted every option. You've done the administrative option, you've done the federal court option. You're still serving in the national guard, national guard. You're enlisted at this point and you're like you know working in the oil field working in the oil gas man and you're like I'm gonna get political, so tell me what happens.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I go on Andy Stump's cleared hot podcast and it blows up everywhere, but most people accuse me of lying. There's no way this story is true. There's no way this is going on.
Speaker 2:And if you guys go to Andy Stump's podcast episode 137, episode 137,. As I did last night, you look through all the comments and nobody. No, I wouldn't say nobody. I would say it's like half and half. Yeah, half, believe you, half don't. Yep. But did they go to your website? Did they read your documentation?
Speaker 3:People are lazy.
Speaker 2:They have the squirrel. So I did those things. I appreciate you at length yesterday, asked all kinds of questions, just like I did with Darren Lopez, a gentleman, unfortunately, who in my opinion was prosecuted under a false accusation. So even in your case I did the same thing. I wanted to make sure that anybody that I bring on the show I vet them. I do what I can to make sure that I'm bringing you guys credible information and I'm giving you a chance to credibly share your story. So you go on.
Speaker 2:Andy stump's cleared hot podcast yep, and then after that, um, I go to the president of the united states but after you go on that podcast and this is a lesson learned about storytelling you did forget to leave out one very important yeah, and it was under the advice of a fellow academy grad.
Speaker 3:They said hey, man, you need the grad community on your side, so don't talk bad about the football team.
Speaker 3:So everyone always asks on the andy stump podcast uh, why, why would they spend all this time going after?
Speaker 3:It doesn't make any sense, of course. You order a shit bag whatever else and, to be fair, one thing that didn't help me was the air force's reply to the 10th district court of appeals, and this is what people, when they google me, misinterpret this the defendant gets to write their side of the story first, then the plaintiff gets to write their side of the story and then there's the judge's decision after that. But if you don't pay the $50 to read the entire 50-page dissertation on that, you only see the first two pages on justdialawcom. And then the first thing that the Air Force Academy says about me on this official federal court document is Adam Dorito was having an inappropriate relationship with a 13 year old, which didn't happen, and we discussed that story. There's a lot of context on it, but what they were trying to do was they were trying to destroy my character with public opinion, because the second you write that, even though it's not true like it destroys your credibility.
Speaker 2:People aren't. This is such a complicated story that most people are not going to do the deep dive that I did.
Speaker 3:Correct.
Speaker 2:To try to get the full context On top of that.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't be in the United States military with a secret security clearance at the time in special forces, if any of that was true. So we immediately replied back to that response and tried to sue the government for slander and libel because they clearly lied and falsified not falsified, but they just said lies in a written document and publicly. But then the court comes back and says well, you can't sue the government for slander and libel, so they can say whatever they want about you in federal court documents.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm like this is awesome so now.
Speaker 2:You're not allowed to sue the military.
Speaker 3:So now, when people see that online, they immediately think I'm this horrible person, even though, like, they're missing so much context out of that.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So I go to the president of the United States, I go to the DOD, pentagon IG. I go to the secretary of defense, so Lloyd Austin, joe Biden's office in the DOD IG at the time, and then I get on Denver seven news again which you can see those news clips on YouTube about it, and the president offices comes back. We're referring this to the case of the IG. Same thing with the SEC, af and the department. Uh, secretary of defense, we're going to refer this to the IG. The IG comes back and says well, we pulled up that court document. It says you were a total shitbag with a 13-year-old and all this other stuff. So we're not going to even investigate this case.
Speaker 3:These are just lazy people that don't want to do their homework. Incredibly lazy, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's the part that just blows my mind. Right. These are government officials that don't take the time to care enough about somebody's case but they tell me I have to go through another administrative process.
Speaker 3:Right? So since I exhausted these administrative processes yet again, I'm kind of at like a hold. I'm like, all right, what do I do next? I don't have any new evidence. How do I oppose this?
Speaker 3:So I actually get called up for active duty at the time. So now it's right, like august 2000, uh, 20. Right or 21? No, it's 21. Because I, oh remember it. It was 21 because that's when the evacuation of Afghanistan was going on, which I was involved in. So I was Operation Allies Refuge. One of my classmates from the Air Force Academy's family was trapped on ground. I knew some of the combat rescue officers and the ODA guys on ground, so we coordinated to get his family evacuated and got about 36 people out of Afghanistan. Soon after that I had gotten married to my fiance. At the time I got called up for active duty.
Speaker 3:I left for Fort Bliss in October, deployed to the Middle East as an 88 Mike truck driver and then soon was reassigned as a 35 Fox, which is an intelligence analyst, because of my knowledge in oil and gas, and I was helping doing operations in CENTCOM. Next thing I know I'm reporting weekly to the G2 to General Carrillo as an E4. I'm getting to travel to Jordan and work on the Syria border mission for drug trafficking. Captagon IED attacks, drone strikes out of Tower 22, and all the other bases we have up there in Syria Built up my street cred. A lot did an active combat deployment in a combat zone. I did a job way outside of my scope of responsibility as a certified parachute rigger. Got coined by everybody, got all these awards. I'm like right now I have street cred, now I can come back and say got coined by everybody, got all these awards. I'm like, right now I have street cred, now I can come back and say do you believe me now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like you did the work. You did the work.
Speaker 3:So I come back after that. Uh ended up getting a divorce because my wife had an affair the entire time I was gone. So going through that, while then I had major surgery, I got injured when I was overseas. I'd have two reconstructive leg surgeries, so that was a fun time. So I'm hanging out on opioids, trying to recover, going through a divorce, trying to go back to work in the oil and gas industry and rehab myself through physical therapy and learn how to walk again Just me and my dog hanging out.
Speaker 3:And then we find out that the Air Force claimed that they had changed my medical records and that we didn't have to do anything anymore. And I'm like what are you talking about? This doesn't make any sense, because what happened was I came back from deployment and I transferred to civil affairs. So I switched from the guard to the reserve. So I instantly got promoted to E5 because a slot was available. I moved into an Intel position in civil affairs and I had to get a top secret security clearance certified. So now I have a TSS CI, which a hundred percent everything the Air Force said about me is invalid, because you would not have a TSSCI with anything on your record as an intel analyst and we claim you know Dorito's going to the 440th. He needs to do all these things. And the Air Force claims well, we changed your medical records. What are you talking about? They claim they changed my medical records and then they added they changed some of the personality disorders and then they added more test scores.
Speaker 2:Right, because at first you were probably like good, they changed it, they made it right.
Speaker 3:Did you think that at first I did but then I go in there with another FOIA request and now there's another bunch of handwritten notes and if anyone knows anything about medical records in the military, nothing is handwritten.
Speaker 2:There's no handwritten signatures. Right, there's no, and the reason those aren't on the website is because we're still going to court with those. Try to keep those. So those are new information and that's something that people need to keep in mind to. Every single time there's something new, you have to use that as the new reason why you can hope to try to get this corrected and get someone who will actually do the deep dive that I've done on this case.
Speaker 3:So now I have new information. So and it's the process where now we filed for another board of corrections and military records, because we have new evidence proving not only did they falsify my records, they did it, they did it again, they changed them again in real time. So I'm going through this whole entire process and then they say, well, if you want copies of your records again, you have to request them again A third time. I request another four year request. Then I get a letter back saying from the Defense Health Agency saying, well, we have no records of your medical records at all in the United States military. I'm like you understand, I'm still in the United States Army.
Speaker 2:That's DHA, not talking to the Air Force Right.
Speaker 3:So now, they're claiming my records don't exist.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So I'm like okay, that's it. So I go on more podcasts. I start doing all this stuff. I get contacted by someone who's willing to represent me pro bono as a lobbyist in DC. She tells me to put on my uniform and come to DC. Didn't know anything about DC uniform stuff at all. I show up to Washington DC and to start knocking doors, going down and telling people are floored, like what the heck is going on. People are taking pictures with me. We're going in.
Speaker 3:Next thing I know I got 15 missed calls from the Pentagon saying specialist Dorito or Sergeant Dorito, are you or I was a special at the time because I was waiting to get promoted to Sergeant. They're like are you walking around the halls of Congress like why? I'm like, yes, I am. They're like who authorized you to like well, I'm not here on a paid status, I'm on title 32, I'm just here on my own volition, because you guys won't fix my record. So I guess I have to go do it myself and force my congressional members to force this issue, right? So then we start drafting something called the Dorito Act, right? Because we realize they're not going to fix my case administratively.
Speaker 3:I've done all the right things. I've gone through the court systems. I've gone to the president, I've gone to the SECAF, I've gone to the Secretary of Defense. What other recourse do I have? So if the judicial branch isn't going to do anything and the executive branch isn't going to, then I have to go legislatively. So we call it the Military Mental Health Protection and Justice Act, which we just call the Dorito Act because it's easier to remember. But there's nothing in the UCMJ that prevents commanders from using command-directed evaluations or CDEs, from falsifying your mental health records and retaliation for reporting sexual assault, harassment or misconduct.
Speaker 2:This is so crazy to me that you even have to have a law to say that you can't do this. It's like saying that you have to have a law in the book to say that you can't steal.
Speaker 3:You know correct. But but this is how the commanders circumvent the vanessa gain act, the brandon concerto act and the sergeant first class stasek act. Right is that. You know vanessa gain that takes sexual assault investigations away from the commander and puts him into another dod entity. Great sergeant first class stasek act takes uh medical malpractice and you can't sue them in the civilian courts but you can sue them through another DOD JAG office, like the Defense JAG, whatever office.
Speaker 2:You can go through. You can go through the service branch departments at the Pentagon and basically, have them like investigate themselves which, to this day, they've never adjudicated.
Speaker 3:A single case since 2017 with that act. A single case since 2017 with that act. And then the brain of Concerta Act allows service members, without retaliation, to seek mental health services, but it doesn't say that they can't put you on restricted status, can't take away your job, can to make your flight status, everything else right. So the Dorito Act closes that loophole.
Speaker 3:Finally, all three of those things on all of them because it says if you do and if you change those records now, we can charge commanders under retaliate or retaliate away your flight, pay or doing these other things that loophole that's closed states in the act, which is what I get constantly fought on, is that we can charge you under hippo, which are already existing federal laws that civilians are entitled to under their constitutional rights. That if your doctor cuts off the wrong leg, you can sue them right in the army you can't do that.
Speaker 3:So we wanted to say if there's any service members specifically to command directed evaluations, because you got to go small. You can't just act big right. You're not changing ferris doctrine overnight. It's never happened right.
Speaker 2:But if I can do cde, just on the cde just on the cde because you had a cde in your unbeknownst, to my knowledge.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, I never knew about this to this day.
Speaker 2:You don't have any documentation of that cde no you don't have nothing you don't have anything, any administrative document that says that you're a commander, that lieutenant no, you see the medical records on my website ordered a cde, but you just know, by those notes from kristen nicole henley price and I'm sorry, nicole henley price okay, you know from those records that your commander ordered her to conduct a CDE.
Speaker 3:Correct.
Speaker 2:Or referred you to her.
Speaker 3:Well, and on top of that, what came out during our investigation was remember that cadet that was in that unprofessional relationship with I reported the chief mass sergeant. So she made it through all five years of the academy because she was at the prep school and then all four years at the academy and then she got charged as a cadet, which we found out through our work in 2015. She was having sex with this married guy with three kids. The entire time she was a cadet and while she was a prep school cadet and was charged under court martial with this guy because they got caught at a hotel and then she was going to marry this guy when she graduated as a second lieutenant because he was retiring as an E8 or whatever e7 or whatever it was, and then he was divorcing his wife. They got an apartment in colorado springs, I'm like. So wait a minute.
Speaker 3:And then if you look at the time frame on there, it says september 2009. So that was the exact time frame that I reported and the exact time they accused me of fraternization. So the reason why that girl and all her friends accused me of fraternization? Because they were covering up for her unprofessional relationship with a senior enlisted person of the United States Air Force Academy, which is McMail versus USA. You could look it up on the internet. Her name is abbreviated as HL, right, it lays out the whole thing. And then she walked away. Today she's a major in the United States Air Force. That guy got a dishonorable discharge as an E2. So we submitted that as new evidence in the appeal, saying like this is all monkeyed up, like we have all the evidence for it right, you have new information.
Speaker 3:You submit another correction which we haven't heard back from yet. So that's new.
Speaker 2:I'm still waiting to hear back from that. So you have an ongoing case, yeah, so but?
Speaker 3:but in the meantime I I realized that I just need to get involved politically, because if I need to pass this law, you need to convince members of Congress and the Senate to put this in the NDAA or the National Defense Authorization Act right. So I start getting involved in politics. I start showing up to Mar-a-Lago at President Trump's house. I start going to fundraisers for senators and congressmen. People start hearing my story. They start taking me seriously.
Speaker 3:I start going on more podcasts. I was on DC Rumble, I was on a whole bunch of other things and people start coming out of the woodwork. Then I find out it's not just me. I start interviewing people on Dark Saber and the Tuxes and Tomahawks podcast. I find out their CDEs are used as a weapon by commanders to take down people that they don't like, because if they say you're crazy, you have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars proving you're not. And who's going to do that? Well, I did. I mean, even to this day. Over 15 years I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting this and I've gotten more spending money on fundraisers and political events with way less money than I ever did going through the actual administrative process.
Speaker 2:That's sad.
Speaker 3:It is. But the worst part is is that you know I helped all these elected officials in the state of Colorado get elected Gabe Evans, jeff Hurd, lauren Boebert, jeff Crank and I said you know, hey, I'm going to support your guys' candidacy, I'm going to speak good things of you. The only thing I ask for you guys is, when you guys get elected here in 2024, is that you support the Dorito Act when I go back to DC. Every single one of them blew me off.
Speaker 2:Because it's military and because supporting anything that's military is contentious, because the American people are not holding Congress accountable. They're not raising enough of a stink to Congress for Congress to hold the military accountable for the ways in which our service members are being treated, and it has to stop. This can't just be a concerted effort of people who are interested in stopping the COVID mandate. I get it, you go all over X. There's this army, army, army of service members, prior service members, one who's currently still serving fighting this issue of accountability with the COVID mandate, and I do believe that is a very, very worthy cause and one that needs to be weighed in on. But this is so much bigger than that. This is about due process, this is about the American people, not just those in the military, and let's start somewhere. Let's at least start with the veterans.
Speaker 2:We need every single military podcaster energized about this issue, and I say this all the time and I'm going to keep saying it until I'm blue in the face. I might be the only military podcaster. I might be one of five military podcasters. One day I want to be one of an army of 100, 200, 300 military podcasters, and then I want this stuff being talked about on Megyn Kelly, then I want to see Sean Ryan talking about it, then I want to see Joe Rogan talking about it, then I want to see Candace Owen talking about it. Then I want to see Candace Owen talking about then.
Speaker 3:I want to see Fox, msnbc, cbs. I will tell you that command-directed evaluations are weaponized against service members for more than the covin mandate was exactly, far more, and it's hurting more people, people. This is this. Sexual assault survivors a national security issue.
Speaker 2:This is not just about some service members not getting their day in court. This is about us having the best and brightest who want to come in and serve and the best and the brightest who want to stay in, and we're not going to get that if we don't get due process.
Speaker 3:But like why do I have to fly to the state of Connecticut to meet with Senator Blumenthal, who's a Democrat, and I can't get a single person in the state of Colorado to fight the Air Force? Academy.
Speaker 3:Why do I have to go to Tommy Tuberville? Why do I have to go to Derek Van Orden? Why do I have to go to Wesley Hunt? Why do I have to go to every other literal congressman and senator other than my own state, where the Air Force Academy is? Why? Because the Air Force Academy is the one paying their political donations from the football team.
Speaker 2:That has to stop. So that's why we're having this show. And you got very, very close, you know, as we are now almost at the two-hour point Actually we're only at an hour and 40 minutes which makes me very happy, uh, that we didn't go as far as, as long as I thought we would, but because we're kind of closing up, but I want to say you got so close to getting this act past this year.
Speaker 3:We did tell me a little bit about yeah so we we had a sponsor on the floor and I won't say specific members because they like to keep that quiet um, we had them get it presented on the floor. We were going to be good to go this week and then Mike Johnson called early recess and prevented the members from putting floor amendments on. So now I'm going to go back in November and hope we can get it in on emergency action, but it's likely we're gonna have to wait yet another year because of national politics. Right, and it's really unfortunate, but this is the system. But, like I said, the only way we're going to resolve this issue is legislatively. I literally have to get a law written in that forces commanders to comply, because they just break the law. The military has become the fourth branch of government outside the legislative, executive and judicial, and they do whatever they want Because like I said, Congress isn't holding them accountable.
Speaker 3:The military is a separate society and should be treated as such and therefore we cannot tell them what to do.
Speaker 2:And you know we saw with the and I mean the only reason I bring up the COVID mandate is because we saw a success story. We saw that at least with this religious accommodation issue, and only that issue. By the way, the COVID mandate was not about the interchangeability or the FDA approved versus informed consent. It had nothing to do with that. It had to do with the fact that people did not get proper vetting of their religious accommodations. That's my understanding. That's the only thing the federal court weighed on, weighed in on, but my point being is that the federal court said you can no longer, uh, implement a coveted mandate. And we've seen this in federal court for another issue, too, that I want to talk about on a future podcast, with the bah issue. We have seen federal courts weigh in on military issues, so they are willing to do it but they're not forcing them to the comply yeah that's the problem.
Speaker 2:That is the problem they're not. Even if they weigh in and they have a judgment, a lot of times the military is not complying with those judgments. That's what's happening with this BAH issue that I want to bring up on another podcast is that even when the people are vindicated in federal court, the military sometimes doesn't comply with the federal courts orders. No, I understand.
Speaker 3:I said I'm still serving. I reported in the 440th. My battalion commander at the time was Tulsi Gabbard before she became the director of national intelligence and she ended up pushing my package for 38 Gulf and I got accepted for direct commission as a captain. So the funny thing is is I'm still serving soon to pin here as a captain. I'm in the military, I'm still serving in oil and gas. I am involved with most of the major political players in the United States and I've done everything. Most service members are never gonna go as high as I have. I have proven that the entire administrative process is broken, the entire military system of appeal is broken, that our entire judicial system is broken. And what breaks my heart is I'm still serving, I'm not out. I still go and train my young men and women every single month to make sure that they're ready for the next generation of warfare.
Speaker 2:And we can't give up.
Speaker 3:But if our service members raise their right hand to protect the Constitution against the United States all enemies, foreign and domestic, but the biggest domestic enemy is the enemy within the military and that they're violating our own constitutional rights then what are we fighting for?
Speaker 2:I agree, and this has to change, and there's enough people out there that I believe will make this right and will try to change it. I'm very optimistic about this administration.
Speaker 2:Matt Lohmeyer let's go, let's just sign a letter, let's just get this fixed right now, and I'm optimistic that we have the right people in the right positions to make this happen and we will do whatever we can on the outside to try to support these people, to get these things passed, and I welcome any of them to come on my podcast to give this kind of long form, contextual conversation that I'm having with you right now. I will do the same thing with any political appointee. I'll do the same thing with any military official, because that's what really we need is this truth and transparency and reporting. And I do believe that the military podcasters they have such a golden opportunity right now to do exactly what I'm doing right now and interviewing people like yourself not just you, adam interviewing other people who've been impacted by these issues and having these long-form conversations so that we can get some initiative and some momentum going. I'm going to continue to read the letters of those who were falsely accused of certain issues. I'm going to continue to read those who were not properly served by the military due process system, because I do believe that we are better than this and I do believe that one day we'll fix it, and I hold on to that hope and I think that what you're doing today is an act of bravery.
Speaker 2:I think that it was not easy to keep rehashing these issues and to keep telling this story over and, over and over again and then to not be believed. It kind of did break my heart to look at Andy Stump's comments on there, knowing that I had just read all the evidence. That's why I didn't sleep last night. I didn't tell you. I think I told you this this morning. I said I woke up last night and I was up for like four hours, just like in my mind, because I mean, I do, I take these stories really seriously and it just breaks my heart that, like, this is the military that we signed up for and they're not treating people properly and they're not doing right by their Service members and it's got to change. So I do. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. Was there anything else, any other part of this detail or anything else you want to say to our audience before?
Speaker 3:we wrap up the call. Well, I mean, for me, the way I think about it is like if not me, then who? And the reason I don't give up on this is because if I quit as far as I've gotten, no one else is going to take up where I've left off. I've been fighting this for 15 years, they this for 15 years. They still have 240 000 in my credit report. They still haven't given me my degree back and I'm going to be a commissioned officer serving in the military, uh, and involved heavily in politics.
Speaker 3:And to my politicians out there who won't support us and do the right thing, when you run on supporting the veterans and oil and gas workers and farmers and ranchers and then you're sitting around doing nothing, if it takes the fact that, like that's why I became the vice chairman of the american veterans first association, if you don't figure this out, I will find people to replace you because we're tired of it. You said you represent us. You said you care about us. Well, I just want to sit at home and hang out with my dog on my farm and raise a family.
Speaker 3:And if you're forcing me to open up the gates and go back to DC to force you to do your job. I'm going to do it and for those who want to follow me, you can go to adamderitocom, follow my Instagram, adamderito2010. And on Twitter it's Adam Derito. Right, like I'm all over this stuff all the time, but like I'm not going to give up until this is resolved, because this is something that is very serious, that has affected tens of thousands of service members, that's ruining people's careers and we need to make sure we have the best of the best absolutely well.
Speaker 2:Adam, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the stories of service podcast. Thank you to all of you. I know there's a lot of comments. I see Darren Lopez, I see Jane Babcock. I will definitely go through these again, and, and and. I will go through the comments later and and provide some feedback. But thank you for those of you watching the replay, please come to us with your questions, with your concerns, and I'm not going to stop having these conversations because I know how important these conversations are. So, thank you so much, adam. I appreciate you coming on the Stories of Service podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, teresa, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Awesome. And for all of you, I'm now facing my other camera. We've got the three cameras set up tonight, so it was the first time I've done that with a wide angle camera one and camera two. So thank you so much for for for for staying with us. Um, as I always close out these calls, please take care of yourselves, take care of each other and enjoy the rest of your sunday evening. Bye, bye now cool.