Bigamy, fraud and adultry; O-6s don’t half step
Greg sends us a link to the Army Times which tells the story of the former commander of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, Col. James H. Johnson III who has been charged by the Army with forgery, fraud, lying and bigamy;
The woman who was his sweetheart while he was a cadet at West Point — and then his wife and mother to his two children — said she was sure her husband was unfaithful but had no clue he had wed his alleged mistress.
Kristina Johnson, 47, said she was shocked to learn about the second marriage, finding out only after being denied Tricare health coverage.
A Flathead County, Mont., official confirmed to Army Times that Col. Johnson married a woman named Haveen All Adin Al Atar on Nov. 9, 2011, by double proxy, meaning neither party was present. Montana is the only state that allows double proxy marriages.
Army Times has been able to identify — through several sources — that Al Atar is the daughter of Col. Johnson’s cultural adviser in Iraq.
So, then he presented the Army with false divorce documents to get the mother of his children removed from Tricare, and also traveled with his second wife for fun and frolic at the government’s (your) expense.
27 counts of malfeasance;
• Four violations of Article 92, or failure to obey orders.
• Four violations of Article 107, or making false official statements.
• One violation of Article 123, or forgery.
• Eight violations of Article 132, or fraud against the United States.
• Six violations of Article 133, or conduct unbecoming an officer.
• Four violations of Article 134, a general article, which in this case covers the alleged bigamy and adultery, according to an Army source.
What a numbnuts. Throw everything away, affect the general morale and discipline of the entire Army for some strange. Good move, Colonel. Was there something in the water of that year group? O-6s are falling left and right through out the services. Well, mostly Army and Navy. You almost expect for the lower enlisted, the E-4 mafia, to try to get away with this shit, but, damn, a colonel?
But I guess there’s a lesson to be learned here – never leave an ex-wife anything they can use against you cuz they will. Every. Time.
Category: Big Army
Yep, just throw your entire career away cuz you got horny. I know Jonn likes to pick on the E-4 mafia, but stupid knows no bounds and is proven that even O-3 and above aren’t always immune.
“The road to hell is paved with the bleached bones of Lieutenants that didn’t listen to their Sergeants”.
I gotta wonder what was going on during his deployment, if wife #2 is the daughter of his cultural advisor….
Even GOs sometimes get the hots for the new and end up screwing the pooch instead. See one each Maher, John. He was a 2-star on the Joint Staff. He retired as an O6 (and was lucky not to have lost that).
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/17/us/general-is-demoted-2-ranks-and-made-to-retire-in-sex-case.html
I worked for Maher briefly many years ago. Helluva guy, and appeared to be a great leader – but apparently also couldn’t keep his pants zipped. And in his position, he fully deserved the screwing he got for the screwing he got.
I hope this Johnson gets serious time. He was in a position of high responsibility, and took advantage of that for personal gain. For that, Johnson deserves to be nailed to the wall.
And yes: the pun in the last para involving this guy’s name was intentional. (smile)
The good Colonel has proven the quip, “God gave men two heads but only enough blood to operate one at a time!?”
So what are they gonna do to him? Bust him and throw him out? Bust him a little and let him retire? Bust him, give him some brig time THEN throw him out?
COL Johnsons antics have been going on for years and were fodder for many a discussion next to the coffee pot here in Germany but the bigamy charge is a new one to me. If you go back and read some of the news articles from last year it’s amusing in a “WTF is he smoking?” kind of way. It was a very public, very ugly feud between COL and MRS Johnson and it looks like it’s not over yet. I recall one interview where the garrison commander for his base called him a liar for trying to get his wife sent back to the states but keep his son in Italy without telling the wife. And his wife was under fire for telling a group of FRG wives to take care of their own needs rather then get that itch scratched out in town, if you get my meaning.
Miss Ladybug: classical Mesopotamia and Central Asia has a long tradition of using marriage to cement political and/or commercial relationships. The tradition dates back to at least the time of Alexander the Great, and perhaps far earlier. A modern-day instance of that would be my guess as to what was going on here.
Yat Yas 1833: Historically, retirement at a reduced grade would be my guess. However, the Army has in fact sent seniors to do time on occasion when the charges were serious. Fraud, forgery, and making false official statements are pretty damned serious, and in civilian life the first two would be felonies; I think that’s also true about the third. In the military, failure to obey lawful general orders or regulations is also pretty serious. So I’m hopeful he’ll get time.
Whether they go the “full monte” and give him dismissal as well (the equivalent for an officer of a Dishonorable Discharge) – dunno.
I could understand playing around; relationships sometimes go bad, and people change. And while reprehensible, being a low-life horndog IMO isn’t the main issue. Many senior government officials (including more senior officers) have behaved similarly, if in general far more discretely.
But Senior Field Grade officers should NEVER be given a pass for fraud, making false statements, or forgery. And that’s especially true when it’s done for personal profit, or if/when it involves use of their official position to mistreat someone else (as he apparently did when he tried to get his 1st spouse kicked off Tricare).
For the latter, IMO Johnson needs to burn. Completely.
dumb ass.
nuff said.
This guy was my first BN Commander when I got to 2/327 INF at Ft Campbell in 2004. Was shocked to see this. As a dumfuck private, I never had a whole hell of a lot of interaction with Col. (the Lt. Col.) Johnson, but I was still surprised to hear about this.
It takes a special kind of ignorance, or hubris (or both), to step on your dick that many times and keep on going. Wow.
Interesting bit of info, NoSlackDelta. Maher (see above) also commanded a Bn of the 327th Inf. If memory serves, it was also 2/327th Inf – but I could be wrong about that.
Thanks Hondo. I was a “chaser” in our Bn and I saw plenty of enlisted guys who did stupid stuff but never an officer. The worst I ever saw was a Sgt that was having an affair with the babysitter. She was 18 when they got caught but she was 17 when it started. He was busted to Private (E-1), sent to the brig for six months and was given a DD. He was a “honey” from Casa Grande about an hour south of Phoenix!
He must have a secret desire to flip hamburgers for a living, or something.
Talk about crash and burn!
My neighbor was FSO when the good colonel was a BN S3 @ Bragg back in the late 90s…said he was the epitome of a “perfumed prince” Fwiw.
I never served with COL Johnson, but my bud is prior service before he went ROTC and joined the dark side, so he’s a pretty good judge of character.
Guys who act like G.O.’s before they attain flag rank are out there– and the fall is a precipitous one if their sense of entitlement exceeds their legal and moral authority.
Yat Yas 1833: my impression is that it’s not common for an officer to dally like this guy did, and most are one helluva lot more discrete than this fool. And it’s even more rare among senior officers. But some choose to play anyway.
As others here have said: “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” This guy may well have won an all-expenses-paid vacation to Kansas.
Wow…To add to the stories of the brass who eff around and think they can’t be caught…At a TMC at Ft. Hood, I worked the lab. Lots of FTX’s going on. Inevitably, 1-3 days after they ended we would get 4-5 GI’s for symptoms akin to the “Clap”.
There was one FTX with a Mass Cal so medevacs were used. Twice that year, we had O-4’s come in to be treated. The joke was on them. In Texas, the state law required that you contact all sexual partners to be treated. Stupid is as stupid does, hey? One dude actually asked the PA to lie for him and God love him, he said, “Son, it just doesn’t work like that around here. Your actions were unbecoming of an officer and now you deal with the consequences.”
Payback is a Mother-effer… but this whole scene is Twilighzoneish!
#14 Ptolemy: The account of your friend sounds eerily similar to a LT James Johnson that I served with in the 82nd back in the late 80’s, whose father was James H. Johnson – CG of the 82nd at the time. Same attitude – sense of entitlement and wasn’t shy about letting others know who his father was. What are the chances? Hmmm….
I’m surprised that with all those charges that they did not add in one for sodomy. Or has that gone the way of DADT?
[…] a way, it’s too bad this guy wasn’t COL James “Bigamist” Johnson’s CSM. Those two would have made quite a pair, and it seems they deserve one another. Both appear to […]
Stars and Stripes has a new article out today. Apparently the court martial has started and he’s already admitting guilt on some of the charges:
“On the first day of his court-martial in Kaiserslautern on Sunday, Johnson pleaded guilty to 16 counts, or specifications, and not guilty to six others. Five others were dismissed.
Those he pleaded guilty to included: violation of lawful regulations by misusing government vehicles, cell phones and a travel card for personal purposes; making false official statements; fraud; conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman; adultery; wrongful cohabitation; and bigamy.”
[…] Airborne Brigade Combat Team) and his on-going trial for forgery, fraud, lying and bigamy that we discussed last week. But yesterday, he was found guilty of some of the charges, while others had been dropped earlier […]
[…] galling when they do so through abusing their subordinates. And as the case of our recent Johnson of an adulterous former Brigade Commander shows, sometimes they get away with being abusive for a while before getting nailed for other […]
I was this guy’s exec back in the day. I saw none of this activity and was pretty shocked by it all. http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2011/04/air-force-gurney-sentence-reduced-042111w/
It’s incredible that even though the sentence was lessened he still got ran through the ringer in comparison to the joke of a punishment most officers get. I remember the JAG officer who did practically the same thing and was forced to retire as an 0-6. Rough treatment there…