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
When The System Turns On Its Own | Doug James - S.O.S. #214
What happens when a system designed to protect our warriors becomes their greatest threat? In this powerful conversation, retired Air Force Colonel Doug James exposes the devastating impact of false allegations in military justice—a crisis he knows firsthand.
As the former President of Save Our Heroes, Colonel James witnessed hundreds of cases where innocent service members faced career destruction from unsubstantiated claims. The patterns were disturbingly consistent: allegations emerging during contentious divorces, after relationship breakups, or when service members sought career advantages. Even more alarming was how the military justice system seemed designed to prevent fair outcomes.
"These general officers are more scared of Congress than they are the bad guys," James reveals, explaining how political pressure created a climate where securing convictions became more important than finding truth. He points to the case of Lieutenant General Susan Helms, whose distinguished career ended after she determined there was insufficient evidence in a sexual assault case—a decision that cost her a fourth star and sent shockwaves through military leadership.
The structural problems are profound. Military courts require only a 75% majority to convict, defense counsel are typically inexperienced compared to prosecution teams, and cases drag on for years before collapsing over basic evidentiary issues. Even after exoneration, many service members face the permanent stigma of "titling," affecting everything from employment opportunities to basic rights.
Colonel James doesn't just identify problems—he offers solutions. Requiring unanimous verdicts, properly resourcing defense counsel, and creating conviction integrity units would restore balance to a system currently failing those it should protect. Until then, his advice to accused service members is clear: "Get a civilian attorney and fight like hell."
This isn't just about individual injustice—it's a national security threat. Talented warriors are being lost to service, others avoid command positions entirely, and the system that should uphold our highest values is undermining trust in the very institutions responsible for our defense. Listen now to understand why military justice reform must become a priority for anyone who values both justice and military readiness.
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Good evening everybody. And as part of my continuing coverage of the military due process system and what needs to be fixed, I have honed down on the issue of false allegations. That is just so blatantly unfair and has ruined lives, has caused so much damage and is not talked about enough. So today we are talking to Mr Doug. James Doug, how are you doing today? Good, how are you? I'm doing wonderful, and thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing not only your personal experience, more importantly, what you experienced while you were running a large nonprofit that was dedicated to helping those who, unfortunately, were victims of false accusations. So, as I always get started with this podcast, welcome to the Stories of Service podcast. I am the host, teresa Carpenter, ordinary People who Do Extraordinary Work. And to get us started, as we always do, we will start with an intro from my father, charlie Pickard.
Speaker 2: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. Hear from ordinary people from all walks of life who have transformed their communities by performing extraordinary work.
Speaker 1:And we already have Darren Lopez on the call.
Speaker 1:Darren Lopez is a prior guest who so bravely shared his story with this issue just a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1:So, doug James, he is a retired US Air Force Colonel, a320 Captain, aerospace Strategist and former President of Save Our Heroes. He has flown 119 combat missions, worked alongside General Petraeus and Mattis, led crisis response efforts across the Pacific and testified before Congress to advocate for wrongfully accused service members. From writing industry standards, safety checklists to fighting for justice in a broken military legal system, his story is one of unrelenting leadership, integrity and purpose, and tonight we're going to talk a little bit about his experiences flying the A-10 and F-15 in combat, coordinating multinational forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, but, most importantly, we're going to be talking about how false accusations nearly destroyed his career and, more importantly, the careers of so many others that came after him, and what he did about it. He also testified in front of the Senate, as I said, and led with Save Our Heroes, and now we're also going to talk about ways that we can fix this problem and what we must do to protect the innocent. Welcome again, doug.
Speaker 3:Thanks, teresa, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Most importantly, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's such an important conversation that we need to keep having and I will keep having guests on, and this will be a continuing series on the Stories of Service podcast as I explore all aspects of this issue and from your standpoint. First off, before we even get into that, where were you born and raised and why did you join the Air Force?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, I grew up in Northern California, born in Monterey, grew up in Santa Rosa, california, northern California, hawaiian country. I always wanted to be a pilot, since I was a kid, you know, not necessarily a fighter pilot, but just a pilot. And I went to pilot training at Williams in Arizona since closed down, and then did pretty well out of there. Flew the A-10, which I loved. I loved flying the A-10 as a lieutenant was you know I like to say a license to steal. Flew the a-10, which I loved. I loved flying the a-10 as a lieutenant was you know I'd like to say a license to steal flying the a-10. Uh, did well again and then went off the f-15.
Speaker 3:Flew the f-15 for two different assignments. Uh, one at eglin I was there during what we called the burger king assignment system, so I stayed there for four years on the beach and then went right down the street to uh tyndall and trained uh people how to fly the f-15. And then uh up to the pentagon. I worked at the pentagon for three years in fighter requirements, uh, and then as a reservist I stayed and worked uh legislative liaison and then back active duty you mentioned working for General Petraeus and General Mattis down at CENCOM for almost four years, which I really enjoyed, even though it was a desk job, and then back to my civilian employer and then finally ended up in Hawaii working ops for PACAF headquarters in Hawaii Another great assignment, obviously, so I cannot complain about my assignments.
Speaker 1:No, you've had a very, very, very distinguished career, and I always think the people that get to do the aviator jobs or do some of the more, the cooler things that we offer and harder and quite, quite harder, and are just some of the people that I just admire the most. And tell me a little bit about how you became acquainted with the justice system. You did work on the Hill and so you probably got exposed to service members who had been impacted by military justice system or had something happen. But tell me just a little bit about how you got involved in this issue.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like you said, I was on the Hill for as a reservist, actually about eight years or so. So that's how I learned pretty much the system Not that anybody's an expert, but learned the system, the good, the bad and the ugly. But my career ended up on a false allegation, uh, against me and uh, I'm not going to go into details because this isn't about me, this is about the other people out there that are falsely accused, in my opinion. Um, and so we fought and fought, uh, against a really baseless allegation One uh, I was retired quickly, uh, and then uh ran into Save Our Heroes because, quite honestly, teresa, I was. I was mad about it.
Speaker 3:Um, I you know, uh, the quote I was told, which I always tell, is uh, take your gift and go home, and it took me two days to sit on. I said what gift you guys? You know I got retired. That's not a gift. I wanted to stay in. So I said this this is not right. And then I found out about save our heroes at the time they were looking for new leadership and uh, and then started with them and I was shocked, teresa, shocked.
Speaker 1:When I got into Save Our Heroes, we were following 300 cases and I could argue that over 50%, in my opinion, were false allegations that's a great place to start, because one of the questions that I had that a lot of people do have is how did you guys, when you first got into this, how were you able to sort of piece which people that were coming to you that really had a legitimate issue with this problem and then which people needed to be punished and and and are, and are being held accountable properly?
Speaker 3:yeah, thanks for the question. I I, when we were the Hill, I got asked that all the time you can see the threads of every case and you can know right away yeah, this is a false allegation. Obviously it's not proven that it's a false allegation, but the threads of false allegations are pretty much the same. Usually it is a wife who's gone through a messy divorce, a girlfriend who's broke up with their boyfriend. It could be even a service member that wants to get the permanent change of station PCS of their choice. Maybe they want a new, a great job, and then simple game theory kind of kicked in. They knew they could get this stuff and then they got VA benefits and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 3:It's a really easy thing to kind of identify when you start throwing in the motives. Uh, I will tell you, there were cases that I got involved with it or the other way. It was obvious that this was true. This allegation was not false. Uh, in fact, I just got right a couple years ago, but, um, yeah, they all followed the same format right and I can tell you and as as it comes out in this discussion.
Speaker 3:I can tell you cases that track the same almost exact fact pattern, as they say in the legal world, but they're different cases, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:It does. It does, and one of the things, too, that I neglected to mention is the Savior Heroes did have two investigators, people that worked in investigations, who would also look at these cases, look at the evidence and determine if these were people that you wanted to work with and reach out to and help. And then people who, who had uh, had what had, what they deserved. And so that's the first thing is is determining which of these cases are false and which ones are not. But the problem was that you weren't able to rely on military justice or the legal system to parse this out through their investigators or through their lawyers. And tell me a little bit about when you saw it in your own experience and then now saw it being repeated by people you were coming in contact with saver heroes. How did that make you feel?
Speaker 3:yeah, well, you got to look at the genesis of this. What started it?
Speaker 1:I'm going to put you on full screen so that I can help. People can see and take in what you're saying okay, um, yeah, the genesis.
Speaker 3:The start of this was the pressure on of congress. They believe there was a serious sexual assault, uh epidemic within the military and so, you know, 2015, 2016, ish, they started putting huge pressure on the military to fix it. The the military was pushing back saying you know, hey, we got this, we can handle it, and then this kind of unwritten battle started. There was a couple major cases that kind of started this going the wrong way for the military. I think the one that hit home the most for me was General Helms, who was Lieutenant General, female astronaut, flew on the shuttle five times. Incredible lady, incredible.
Speaker 3:Lieutenant General Susan Helms yes, Right Incredible role model for women. Susan Helms yes, right Incredible role model for women. And she got wrapped up as a convening authority in one of these cases. Now, the convening authority for those who don't really understand how the military judicial system works, but in one of these cases, the convening authority is the person who makes the final call on what happens to the individual and what happens to the individual. General Helms at the time got involved in one of these cases, felt like this person should be held accountable, but not in the way that Congress assumed. General Helms didn't feel there was enough data there to make the call that the Congress was expecting. So she didn't feel there was enough data there to make the call that the Congress was expecting.
Speaker 1:So she didn't think there was evidence. She didn't think there was evidence to convict. No.
Speaker 3:And that's her job. Keep in mind she's the convening authority. That's what she's there for. She was a three star at the time. President Obama had just nominated her for a four star To be head of Air Force Space Command. What a perfect person To be, you know. You look at the history Female shuttle five times Was actually on the ISS. I didn't know. Anyway, senator McCaskill at the time Thought that she was making a poor decision and because of the pressure she put, she put a permanent hold on her nomination.
Speaker 1:Over a case that was under her purview Exactly, and you can read you don't believe me, don't believe me.
Speaker 3:You can read about it. It was all over the newspapers at the time. Bottom line is she had to retire. That's a shame for our country and that's going to lead me to something down the road later when we discuss this. But bottom line, I think that sent shock waves to some of the general officers and high-ranking individuals in the military that, oh no, basically they were a dead man walking or woman walking, ie they had to either convict an innocent person or else they were going to lose their job, because one of the things we harped on when we were on the hill was save our heroes. It only takes one senator, just like we saw in senator mccaskill's case, to hold the general officer's nomination and basically ruin in their career, in their career and also not tell them why.
Speaker 1:I mean, that was my understanding too, that they you don't even and do you even have to know who held the nominee, who who held it back like is that even public?
Speaker 3:it was public at the time with senator mccaskill. You can read about it, right?
Speaker 1:I'm curious though if now like, can, can, can one senator hold it back? You not know which Senator it was or you not know why. I mean, that's it's. It's incredibly crazy to me and that definitely probably shook, uh, sent shockwaves through the rest of the flag officer and general officer community that if you don't follow suit and do the same thing, then your career, everything you've worked for, your entire life, everything that you've been, everything you've had up to this point is now going to be gone. And I'm sure there were some people who probably retired before this even could could impact them. But if you're put in that position, what, what do you do? And I'm? Then it becomes what do you do for the pleadings? Like, do you get a young military member to plead out or do you try to find ways to not make it go to this point? Because now you're in this position that it's going to get the attention of Congress if you make what they consider to be the wrong decision.
Speaker 3:Correct and we saw that. In fact that's in the history books as well. There's a famous case, general Crawford, who was the assistant JAG for the Army actually the Navy at the time. He forced Admiral Lorge to reverse a decision on a Navy SEAL and it was actually shown in court that this is what he had done, and so it's called the unlawful command influence and it was actually proven in court that, uh, admiral crawford did that uci is what they call it for short, so that's what they started doing.
Speaker 3:There's some other weird stuff. Uh, I had two cases that were very familiar that I can recite and I'm not going to go into details, I'm not going to say names etc. But typically what we would see is the convening authority knew the situation and they knew. All they have to do is get some sort of conviction, slash NJP, nonjudicial punishment, and they're good to go. Congress is going to come off.
Speaker 3:So we've seen multiple times where that's what will happen. They'll go to the individual and, especially if it's a lower-ranking individual, they'll say hey, so that you don't have to go to a court-martial, I'm going to give you NJP, give you njp. You know that they might sugarcoat, say it's not going to hurt your career, which we all know is false. We're going to give you the njp and then you can go on your merry way, otherwise we're going to take you to a court martial. Now I would always say if you're innocent, go to the court martial, call their bluff and I have had multiple cases where they called the bluff and the next thing you know, the case is dropped. It might be a year, might be a year and a half later, but the case is dropped for no reason other than go away. So that's what we saw a lot when the pressure was put on these convening authorities.
Speaker 1:Right, and I think what they wanted to do was show that they were being tough on sexual assault. So if they could show that they were being tough on sexual assault through NJP or through a plea deal that didn't have to be litigated in court, then they saw it as a win-win. When it was in fact hurting, hurting the service member because they could not now advance in their career. They would, like you said we're going to talk about, they could be titled I mean, there's all kinds of things that would happen from these NJPs and now you have a person who might not even get all the benefits that were afforded to them for joining the military. Post-military Correct, correct.
Speaker 1:That type of knowledge I don't think is very well known, unless you're in the more senior ranks, like me, and you are. If you're a very junior sailor or a junior service member, you don't always understand what the ramifications of these things are going to be. And tell me a little bit about the defense side. So you have the defense service offices and you are afforded a, a quote-unquote public defender, public defender from the defense side, and then you have the prosecution side. But tell me about what you've seen and sort of the patterns with save our heroes with the resources that the service member would be afforded through the defense uh legal service office well, what we saw is typically the defense was over their heads.
Speaker 3:They could, honestly, teresa, they could be the defender one week and on the prosecution side the next week, and you know, the bases are so small. They would talk to each other on Friday nights and they would talk to each other about the cases. So you weren't getting a fair shot, the cases. So you weren't getting a fair shot. The servant, the, the defense, would, uh, try to help the convening authority in a roundabout way to get what they wanted. So they would say to the accused who's their technically their client? Hey, yeah, ngp might be the way to go. And so we typically saw that now you brought up the higher ranks. Yeah, you know, you're older, more mature. Think about the young, 23, 24 year old. You know, sergeant, staff sergeant, and we call them in the air force. They're going to be scared. I mean, there's there's no doubt about it. They're going to be scared. They've got some colonel breathing down their neck. So what do you think they're going to do?
Speaker 1:Whatever it is that they want them to do.
Speaker 3:Yep, exactly so that's typically what we saw. Honestly, I would. I don't want to throw the military legal system under the bus, but the defense was in there over their heads they really were. They didn't understand. They didn't understand simple phrases like said and now a lot of civilian? You could go to a civilian attorney, a family law attorney, and they know exactly what said means Sexual assault and divorce. They don't think it exists.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think too that's sort of where the problem stems from is a lack of resources that were fair on both sides Resources for the defense, resources for the prosecution Jags but they've got this entire convening authority chain of command who's now weighing on this issue all the way up to Congress, right, that wants a certain outcome, and so it's that against a sailor. And if that especially if a sailor has a highly publicized case that's in the media, well then every convening authorities, bosses and bosses and bosses, are now going to weigh in on this issue. And then that's where I think we're seeing these examples of unlawful command influence, because now the military just wants this thing to go away and they want to find a way to mitigate this as much as they can. And so tell me a little bit about how Save Our Heroes would help them.
Speaker 3:And so tell me a little bit about how Save Our Heroes would help them. Yeah well, we had seen so many cases of these, teresa, that we knew, like I said before, we knew the fact pattern, we knew what would happen, we knew some of the tactics that the prosecution would use.
Speaker 1:Like what.
Speaker 3:So I won't go into details. Okay, okay, I understand. Yeah, because I I mean proprietary information, sure, sure, but fair enough.
Speaker 3:uh, there are some aggressive tactics that military investigators will use that's all I'm going to say, and so we would talk to them about it, to be careful, you know, blah, blah, blah, um, and so yeah, so that's what we do. We'd also help them, um, you know, with their, their defense, basically get their facts together. Uh, you would be surprised at, um, how naive and I could throw myself into this too how naive people are when they're under investigation, how they can't believe that their leadership would be investigating for something as stupid as it was Right. So we would help them level, set the playing field. Hey, you're investigated. This is not good. Here's what's going to happen and here's what you need to do.
Speaker 1:So what were some patterns that you saw, like the ways in which these cases would fall apart? What were some of the reasons why the people that would get justice did?
Speaker 3:Very detailed, obviously, one that went over a year, and they just did some research on who went to the gym and at what times and found that it didn't make sense because they had all the gym records. I mean simple stuff. We had one where a TV show wasn't on that the accuser said was on. I mean this is basic stuff that you could go look at Basic investigatory procedures.
Speaker 3:Right, you could look on week one and go it can't happen, right. But they would go through a year, year and a half investigation and then that would be their coup de grace. Well, it didn't happen because the Jim records said it didn't happen. Come on.
Speaker 1:Wow happen, come on, wow. Do you feel that there are also things that are baked into the court martial system that set it up to not be as fair as it would be if these cases were being litigated on the civilian side?
Speaker 3:Yeah for sure, we were on the Hill multiple times. We'll save our heroes. One of the big things is you don't need a uh, unanimous panel decision to convict somebody. In the military I think it's 75 basically six out of eight of the general court-martial. Uh, we actually this is the scary thing we were actually on the hill in a office I won't tell you what side of the aisle it was, but but, or what side of the building but where a staffer admitted that they probably put a innocent person in jail from a panel.
Speaker 1:So that was somebody that served on a panel and told you this and understood that this was already baked into the system. I would say that the panel issue the fact that it doesn't have to be a unanimous verdict. And then the other thing that I've been told about is the number of attorneys that are afforded to one side versus the other side. So one side is an accuser of something, of some sort of a crime, and then one side is the accused and as far as I've learned is the accuser gets a set of attorneys from a special victims unit and then the accused is sort of stuck with whatever defense attorney happens to be available at the moment, who may I mean who may or may not have even seen their case or is familiar with their case or can or really has the bandwidth to dig into their case yeah, usually the defense gets somebody that's a junior lawyer, uh, on at the, at the wing, or the, you know the, wherever the unit is, um, that they basically want to throw to the wolves.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the, the accuser. The accuser gets the special victims, gets their own lawyer, basically, which added some complexities. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but it adds some complexities to this, to the whole process itself, because now you have three lawyers. You know, to keep it simple, you've got the prosecution, you've got the defense and now you got the special victims unit lawyer. So, or or the, the, the accuser's lawyer. So how does that work? And they haven't been able to define that, they haven't. And there's cases where you know, the, the accuser's lawyer is getting in fights with the other two. No, this is true, you can, you can go all this stuff up.
Speaker 1:Right and what were some of the things that you learned when you started advocating for this on the Hill, like, what was the reaction to Congress when you started to talk about these issues? How was their? What was their feedback like in general?
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, this is a hot topic, so I mean, it's like a you, like a hot potato. Nobody wants to touch it. So you kind of understand that, but you don't, because innocent people are getting thrown into jail. So that was probably the biggest reaction. But then it got killed once it it would never get to the member, because now we did have some members that were interested but didn't go anywhere and we knew for a fact mainly your constitutionalists, because it is unconstitutional in my opinion. But the other side will say, well, ucmj is not supposed to be constitutional. So that's the counterargument. So the Hill is just a hot potato and, um, you know, I you mentioned, I testified in in front of the senate armed services committee and I think it was march 2019, it was a subcommittee, uh, led by senator jill brant, um, and we had a tough time getting in that in the first place, they didn't want us in there, and the whole, the whole uh hearing was on sexual assault in the military and, uh, there was one side that was for the victims and then our side was for the accused and, and, and I think honestly, teresa, they understand that it's an, it's an issue, and my big thing that I said was this is a threat to national security.
Speaker 3:That was my big thing. I harped in the five minutes I got to speak is this is a threat to national security? And I had a stack of stuff defending my position next to me because I was ready for the hammer to come and all the nails to come to me from senator gillibrand and whoever else was on that committee and nobody said a word because they realized you could take if you wanted to without firing a shot. You could go into an old club on a friday night and take any high-ranking individual you want out, with just a allegation.
Speaker 1:They know it.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's also to be honest with you.
Speaker 1:Why I feel there's a lot of people who get out before they take command or will not take command is because they're terrified of having to deal with this issue or be accused of this issue.
Speaker 1:Either they're going to be accused or they're going to have to weigh in on someone who's been accused, or they're going to have to weigh in on someone who's been accused and then feel pressured to come to a certain conclusion without there being sufficient evidence to prosecute for a crime. And I was hopeful that, with this new administration, that this was something that was going to be looked at. We haven't seen that yet, or I'm not aware that they've looked at this issue yet, but I remain hopeful because I believe that somebody like Hegseth, who has been accused himself, would personally understand something along these lines, and so I stay hopeful that this is something that they'll want to look at and realize has led to people that are, like you said, likely sitting in jail today and have exhausted their appeals, but unfortunately they were under a system that was stacked up against them, no matter what evidence they had.
Speaker 3:You know, and the sad thing is Teresa they don't even have to be in jail. I know of a couple cases where they were young fighter pilots accused and the military kicked them out basically for no reason at all. They weren't tried or anything, they just made them go away.
Speaker 1:Now that's that's a national security issue, because these are warriors, these are people that you spent millions of dollars to train those kids.
Speaker 3:In both cases they were young, and now you're kicking them out for no reason at all. Basically because you're scared. That's what it boils down to, and I say this all the time and I'll say it. I said it in Congress a number of times these general officers are more scared of Congress than they are the bad guys.
Speaker 1:And that's what's unfortunate it really is. I mean, this issue reminds me, on some levels, of the COVID mandate issue. Like, instead of really litigating what was considered FDA approved or what was considered legally distinct and interchangeable, they just made a blanket determination that it was a lawful order and now, years later, it's still being litigated, whether it's in the press or if it's in court, whether or not it was a lawful order. But instead of just really having taking the time to really investigate if this was the right decision, we just threw out a bunch of warriors who are pissed by the way and won't back down, and this issue is, to me, very, very similar. This is an issue that these guys aren't going to back down from, and they can't because people's lives, their careers were ruined and, as you said, this is a threat to national security because it's going to keep happening unless something changes. Yep, yep.
Speaker 1:So what are some of the resources that people have today? If this happens, if they're accused, what advice would you give them?
Speaker 3:The biggest advice. It's a tough, tough one to swallow, but if you're accused, you have to get a civilian attorney as well. There's plenty of experts out there in this um. It's going to cost money and that's the one thing that is tough to. To talk to some young kid who doesn't have this money but it's. You know, it's your life. So you're gonna have to pay because you're not gonna get the help from the military side. You're really not. So you know, just pay it and then, if you really aren't guilty, fight like hell. Don't give up If they say, go to a corps marshal, go to a corps marshal, make them take you to the corps marshal. So that's my advice, but you've got to get the civilian attorney, mm hmm. So that's that's my advice, but you got to get the civilian attorney realize.
Speaker 1:you know the the gloves are off. What have you seen in terms of press coverage gets adjudicated to see if there is support for that person. As we know, with Eddie Gallagher, for an example, that was a very successful, but he's also in a different category. He's a SEAL. He's got a very extenuating, a very, very compelling story. But is that something that you've seen that could help some of the people that have been impacted by this? Because I do believe that we're in a strange part of history where I think people are starting to get it. I thought I would get more grief or blowback for these shows, but I'm really getting none, and so I'm wondering what you think of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean that could work both ways. I give a tight profile. Obviously Etta Gallagher is a good one. So yeah, I can't, yeah it's a hard, it could go either way, yeah.
Speaker 3:But again I go back to my other statement If, if you're not guilty, use every lever you can to go for it. Right. Use your Senate, go. Use your Senate senators, use your congressman or congresswoman. Go through and say, hey, here's the deal. I have seen that be very successful. If anything, congress is not going to say, oh yeah, you're innocent, but they are going to put the pressure on the military to go okay, you're putting my constituent in jail. You better have a good story. That will happen. So that's why you do that.
Speaker 1:No, I understand Absolutely what would you say are some of the, I guess what are some of the ways in which you would see the system work Like. Have you seen some cases where they were done properly and the investigators did their job, and the defense did its job and and the prosecution did its job and the person was exonerated in a timely manner? Has that ever happened in any of the cases that you saw?
Speaker 3:no, no, be no. To be honest with you, I can say that from personal experience. I got that direct line. The system worked. No, it didn't work. If it took a year and a half, two years to figure it out, it didn't work.
Speaker 1:Right, because it doesn't take that long to investigate these cases.
Speaker 3:Right, these cases are cut and dry. I mean, the civilian authorities don't even want to touch them because they know there's not enough evidence there, so then they pass it off to the military and it's almost like the military is always trying to prove a negative, which is tough to do.
Speaker 1:Right, they're just looking for evidence, and one of the ways I've also been told that they do this is they'll start digging into your past. So if you've been accused of a violation or of a sexual assault, they will now then go into your past history and interview every single person that you've ever come across, and sometimes someone might have an axe to grind from your past, and then now you've got another charge or another allegation because somebody now sees an opportunity or so. So I think and I and it goes both ways I mean it sucks. That that's. I kind of understand why they're doing it, because if this person committed this terrible crime, then they definitely want to make sure that there wasn't anybody else who'd been impacted, but at the same time, it can unfortunately work against the person as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, keep in mind back to what we said earlier. They want to get a conviction. It doesn't matter if the conviction is the one that everybody thinks it is, if it was 10 years prior or whatever. They found something. It's a win for them. So yeah, but yeah it's again. Won't go into all the tactics that they use, but yes, that they use, but yes, I think.
Speaker 1:then just going forward. If you were sitting next to SecDef and he came over to you and said what can I do, doug, to fix this problem, what would you say?
Speaker 3:I would say, first of all, you got to redo the whole system. You got to make it unanimous court decision. You got to take the pressure off the convening authorities. Um, you got to realize that false allegations exist. Because they do exist. Congress has actually admitted in congressional testimony numerous times that false allegations exist. So you have to. I mean they sit there and they say at this sapper training or whatever, that you know there is no such thing as a false allegation, not true. Congress has said there are such a thing as a false allegation and I can bring you up the cases, but I'm not for calling. So that's what I would do Start there but make it a unanimous uh give, uh, you know, give the uh defense, the the resources they need. Get rid of the special victims unit, that, that or the special victims uh council yeah, council yeah, get rid of that.
Speaker 3:That's not doing any good, that's just. That was just to make it look good for congress, that's all that was so yeah there's a lot of things that can do.
Speaker 1:And those things are not, I think, hard to do with the right people in place to fix those problems. Those are not and those are things that I feel like the majority of the public would get around. Unanimous jury verdicts OK. Check Making sure that the prosecution and the defense are both similarly resourced. Check Making sure that the convening authority has nothing to do with the prosecution side. Check Like these are just things that I would think, with the right people in place, would just happen.
Speaker 3:yeah you would think that, but when we would save our heroes. I signed personally and was on the hill get to take those three or four things that we talked about to try to get rid of them. Personally talked at multiple congressional offices. That didn't get any traction. Another thing we did was finally, in the end we just sent notes to both the judiciary and the Senate the Senate Judiciary Committee asking just to hold a hearing on it. That didn't get anywhere. So they just don't want to touch this issue at all Now maybe under the new administration they will, but that's how it went. It went from here's some solutions to just hold a hearing and some stuff in between, and they don't want to do any of it see that there was just no appetite in Congress for them to address this issue.
Speaker 1:And here we are, 2025, and we're still talking about it and there's still people impacted by it. So I believe that this is a problem that is not just about false accusations. This is a due process problem. This is what I think this is and this when I say due process, I'm talking the administrative investigative process, I'm talking the court-martial process, I'm talking military justice in general, and that is one of the things that I really rest my advocacy around is fix the military due process system as a whole, because if you fix that, all these other problems then will also fix. But Congress is just going to keep hearing about this. If this doesn't get fixed, they're going to keep getting letters from their constituents, they're going to keep getting these nasty news stories so they can choose to ignore it all they want, but it's not going to go away and it's going to keep coming up in the press.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's amazing, teresa. I thought it would kind of die down but it hasn't. I mean, I'm getting calls all the time still on cases and, like I said, the fact patterns are pretty much the same as a case I did five years ago. Honestly, it's that close you could go okay. Yeah, I've heard this before numerous times on the phone I've talked. Yeah, I've heard this one before.
Speaker 1:Well, the good news, like I said, is the fact that I don't think that in this current climate, I'm getting any crap for talking about this, and I've always made clear and said it in many other shows I mean, you're the fourth show I think I've done on this issue and I've said that I have every. I have no doubt that there are, like you said, 50 percent legitimate cases and those 50 percent legitimate cases, or whatever it is, those must be prosecuted and those people must be held accountable. But those 50 percent don't get to be at the expense of the people that were not guilty of these crimes. So that is where this must be properly adjudicated and the civilian authorities they can be sued, they have the power of the litigation process bearing down upon them and I think that's also why they are held to that standard where they can't get away with this. And a really good example is the college issue, like I'm sure you're familiar with that.
Speaker 3:So can you tell?
Speaker 1:our audience a little bit about what happened there.
Speaker 3:I can't remember the specifics. I'll let you tell that one.
Speaker 1:Okay, Well, I think it's called Title VI. I can't remember. I know we've got somebody on this call yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, bottom line is they had sexual assault issues on college campuses all over the country around the same time and my understanding is they kind of did the same thing the military did. They started cracking down on it, they started holding these title nine thank you and they started holding all these different kinds of mini, mini, mini court cases like njPs or something along those lines, and men were getting kicked out. They were probably getting titled in the civilian community. They were thinking and I'd love to talk to somebody from a college campus that this happened to, and the parents stepped in and said nope, this isn't, we're not, we're not going to put up with this and basically remedied the situation. So if we can take what the colleges did and apply that to the military, I really do believe that there might be a solution there.
Speaker 3:Agreed. I think you hinted at the Pharaoh doctrine or whatever, where you can't sue the government.
Speaker 1:The Ferris doctrine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so I think that's a huge issue, which that was one of our recommendations hey, allow it and of course, that got shut down.
Speaker 1:Well, like I said, doug, we're not going to stop talking about it on the Stories of Service podcast and if you have recommendations for people that we can talk to, we will do it, because I will continue to make this a big part of my advocacy, because I want to think that one day we'll have safer environments for people to serve in Environments where they're more afraid of dying in combat than they are of Congress, because, unfortunately, we've created a place where people aren't safe serving and that can't go on. It can't. Nope.
Speaker 1:Nope. Is there anything else that I didn't ask you about or anything else that you want to cover down on that? We've that. We haven't gone over to this Because we've talked about the threats to national security We've talked about. Did we talk about VC, JCS, General Hyten's case?
Speaker 3:No, I kind of alluded to it, but that's one you could say is a proof that there are false allegations, because General Hyten wasn't convicted and he was accused and wasn't convicted. So obviously that's proof. And I think it was Senator McAuliffe Sally at the time who actually said in a hearing to the accuser something happened, but not what you said. So right, there is a senator saying in testimony it's a false allegation.
Speaker 1:Right, right. And so they know, they know that this is a thing and they know this is something that we have to get our arms around and we have to solve, and I'm hopeful that we will solve it. But, as I said, I do believe that the way to solve this is not to hone in on the COVID mandate, like the advocates on X want to just focus on that, or not just focus on this false allegation issue, but fix the military due process system, because when you fix that, then these other issues fix. But what are your thoughts also about re-examining some of the cases that have already exhausted their appeals with conviction, integrity units?
Speaker 3:That would be the first thing I would ask the SECDEF. I'd say, hey, sir, let's look at the whole system. Let's also go back, while we're looking at the system, and look at these cases, because, honestly, teresa, there are a lot of people that I know that are in Miramar or some other brig in the country, that don't belong there, honestly, and so those cases need to be looked at, right? So, yeah, that would be the first thing I would ask the SECDEF Please look at those and to look at those cases.
Speaker 1:There are examples within particular cities who've done this, so if they wanted to see like well, how do I do this? How do I pick which cases to look at? There are processes in place within the legal system that have been set up to do conviction integrity units correct.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I know you had Mike Kansaki on I think the last time and he was a big proponent when it was Saver Heroes about a conviction, integrity unit. And again that was something we brought to Congress.
Speaker 1:As another solution. Yeah, and they didn't.
Speaker 3:We had a laundry list of them, but they didn't get any traction.
Speaker 1:Well, I will say I appreciate you continuing to talk about it.
Speaker 1:I know that this isn't easy and I can tell there's some scar tissue from all the work that was put into this that didn't uh, sadly, uh come to fruition.
Speaker 1:But it's kind of. It reminds me of the staff, Sergeant Carter, a situation with the Ferris doctor, and I had him on my podcast. He's paralyzed, uh, from a back surgery gone wrong and he told me, if anything, I'm just going to keep talking about it because I know one day in time whether it's five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now I'm paving the way, I'm showing that this was a problem and I'm creating that historical record and I think that, sadly, that's the best that we can do, because we're not in control of being the ones to fix the problem. All we can do is make that history and create history with shows like this that say this is still a problem. These are the people who are impacted by it. You're getting calls about it every day to this day, and this is why it's so important that we give people relief. So I want to thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show and talk about this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and thank you. I really really appreciate your, because a lot of people don't want to talk about this stuff. They really don't. And one thing I would like to talk to you at another date is titling, because that's something near and dear to my heart as well.
Speaker 1:Well, let's go into it a little bit because we have some time. We didn't go use the full hour, so tell me just a little bit about what that issue is.
Speaker 3:Well, that's kind of for this overall judicial thing that you're talking about. One way we're kind of chipping away at. The overall problem is with titling and trying to get rid of titling. Basically, in the military, if you're being investigated for anything, it could be, you know, sexual assault. It could be, you know, travel voucher violations, anything you had an investigation started on you and then you become what they call titled um it's I like to call it a scarlet letter and basically this titling stays with you for for basically ever, unless they can prove there was nothing to begin with and they have a technical term for that. But titling will follow you.
Speaker 3:We have cases where they want to use global entry for traveling. They can't get it because they're titled, even though this person was told they weren't titled. They were told it was removed, but it shows up as a shadow record in the FBI system that makes it look like there was an arrest. When there was an arrest it was just an investigation and this is started in the military system but then transfers and this is started in the military system but then transfers. This is one of the bad things of having all the systems talk to each other, because then it transfers into the civilian world. We were lobbying in Congress a couple weeks ago to try to get this removed. I think we're making good progress. It was going to be on this last NDA, but I think we got it. You know, started the ball rolling a little too late. I think it might be in the next NDA, but there's high profile people that are titled and know they're titled and will probably help us in this particular case. So it just makes no sense case.
Speaker 1:So it just makes no sense. No, I agree and this is also important to note that there's other things too no buying of guns, no working with kids, no law enforcement work. So there's quite a bit of repercussions that are happening when somebody is titled and just because you've been put under investigation. As we see, with some of these investigatory procedures, they're not always done in the most scientific format. So if they're not being done properly, then anyone can go under investigation. So this is very important to ensure that people have their due process rights protected and not have this scarlet letter, as you say, following them around for life.
Speaker 1:So thank you, doug, for your work and the work of many others who are working on that issue. I really can't thank you guys enough for all the people that are willing to come on and talk about this, because, you're right, it is not easy. I think I'm one of just a handful of shows that's willing to take this on and it's unfortunate and, as I've always said, I mean we've seen the Duke lacrosse case we're seeing now reports that maybe Harvey Weinstein, while he might've been a womanizer, he might've been a creepo, he might not have been a rapist, and these are conversations we need to have, and so I really look forward to some of these larger military podcasters looking at you, sean Ryan, to do some of these kinds of shows, because they're incredibly important and these people need to be heard. So in the meantime, I will keep talking about them, probably until I'm blue in the face.
Speaker 1:But, that's what I'm going to do, so, with that, anything else that we didn't cover down on that you'd like to add.
Speaker 3:No, I just again. I just appreciate you. One thing I'll say is you know, I've had multiple chances to do interviews on this and they, for some reason, they never materialized. So this is one of the few that has. So thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, and I will continue to keep calling on the military podcaster community. I'm going to the military influencer conference coming up, I am going to the MCON in Las Vegas coming up, and I'm also going to the VFW national convention. So top of mind will be talking to my fellow podcasters, who are all change makers and change agents on the internet, and say, well, hey, I got a case for you that is a really ripe for some change. So anyway, all right, thank you so much, doug. I'm going to go full screen, but I will meet you backstage to say goodbye as I go full screen.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for coming on the stories of service podcast. All right, guys got a two two this week. Tomorrow We'll be having aaron love. Aaron Love is a fellow patriot and, uh, he's also a former. A member I mean a member, a co-member of the america's first veterans Organization is a political advocacy group for which I am the mississippi president. So cannot wait to talk to aaron about politics and the administration, what we've done good, what we've done bad, what we could do better. So it'll be a spicy conversation and one that I'm really looking forward to. But on this, on the note of this conversation, I know it's a very serious topic I appreciate you guys staying with me and continuing to support the Stories of Service podcast, where we'll continue to be talking about the issues that matter and they're the most important to our service members. And, as I always say to close out these calls, please take care of yourselves, take care.