Marine Corps JAG whistleblower persecuted
Several of you have sent this article about Marine JAG officer Maj. James Weirick who accuses Commandant James Amos of covering up his undue command influence in the case of the urinating Marines. Well Weirick has been fired because of his inquiry;
Earlier this month, Maj. Weirick sent an email to a lawyer who had worked on Gen. Amos’ staff, urging him in pointed language to cooperate with investigators.
Marine higher-ups responded Tuesday with a series of retaliations against Maj. Weirick, Col. Siegel said.
• Marines escorted Maj. Weirick out of his office and seized his government computer.
• He was transferred to a nonlegal job as a training officer.
• His new commander suggested that he get a mental health evaluation and report for an interview with a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent, to whom he refused to talk.
• The major was ordered not to communicate with officials, including Gen. Amos, and was denied leave.
• He was told to turn over his licensed personal firearms kept at home, which he did.
• The Corps also is doing a risk assessment to determine whether Maj. Weirick is a danger to himself or the base.
“These steps are all designed for a single purpose and that is to undermine the credibility of Maj. Weirick, the credibility of his complaints to the [Defense Department inspector general] and to push him very close to the very edge of being able to drum him out of the Marine Corps,” Col. Siegel said. “I’ve been practicing military justice exclusively for 40 years, 25 of which were in the Marine Corps, and I have never seen anything quite this destructive carried out by people who I considered to be heroes, the commandant of the Marine Corps.”
Mike writes to tell us that he knows the Major and that he’s a good Marine and JAG officer.
Well, I’m sure that it was the toughest decision that the commandant and his staff ever made. The whole urinating Marines thing is silly, anyway. We all knew it was a purely political decision to court martial the folks involved motivated by an overblown media attack on the military as a whole. I’d piss on the whole lot of them.
Category: Marine Corps
Am hoping that the good Maj understands just how many folks out here have his back on this one.
And thank you, sir, for doing what is right when it would have been so much easier to go along to get along. Well, easier for those who have little to no understanding about what that serving with honor thing means.
GEN Amos needs a bit of karmic backlash on this.
One whistleblower, hammered flat.
I wonder how Amos looks in a mirror to shave every morning, the Judas.
I can’t say what the current U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces would say about this, but when I clerked at the then-Court of Military Appeals, the court would have struck this down in a heartbeat.
@2 – Won’t happen soon enough, but when it does happen, I hope he feels it.
USMCE8Ret, believe me, he will feel it.
That’s a reassuring thought, because he REALLY needs to!!
Sucks.
A bunch of these Perfumed Princes need to have their Kevlar rice bowls broken.
Between this and the Camp Bastion Generals debacle (but especially THIS), I worry about the Corps if this level of….honor stain is coming out of the CMC.
Shameful.
So, they do this to a guy who tries to fix something that he sees is wrong, but Hassan was just ignored. This is bullshit and completely dishonorable coming from the higher up of the Marines, none the less! What in the flying frak is this country coming to?
That video, which GEN Amos claims is classified, is still showing at your local video outsource.
It’s about as classified as a bowl of mashed potatoes.
GEN Amos is butt-hurt because someone he considers his inferior (GEN Waldhauser) told him ‘No’. He did not like that. He got mad. So he then chased those to ‘tattled’ on him.
What an asshole.
Why is this clown in charge of the USMC instead of Mattis? I was a bit disappointed in Mattis for his role in the Haditha mess, but this guy is a joke.
I’m wondering how Amos attained the rank he did. The guy was born in 1949 and will be 64 in November. His first “combat” was Iraq. I put that in quotes b/c I have no idea whether he led Marines in combat or just read their reports. Some of you may know what his claim to fame was. Feel free to speak up.
His only claim to fame would have to be, polishing brass door knobs and hand rails at the Pentagon or he was polishing….yea, that it. Polishing.
Gen. Amos is apparently a jerk, but he is also several pay grades too low to be the source of this scandal. Somebody ought to consider giving him immunity, and asking him a few choice questions about how he got the big idea that he was supposed to interfere in this matter. In particular, I’d want to know where the word “crush” originated.
And, don’t stop with Panetta.
Not exactly the second coming of Chesty Puller, eh? I wondered about Puller and his rank so I looked into it. He joined the USMC in 1917 and most of us know what he did decades later in the Pacific and in Korea. Well, the most decorated Marine in history didn’t receive his first star until 1951! I can’t help but wonder what he would say to a guy such as Amos.
Amos was chosen for his political reliability, rather than command ability, same as all the other branch bosses in the military at this time.
Amos is a Marine in Name Only (MiNO)
@13, Susan:
Mattis’s chance at Commandant ended when he publicly stated that there were times when it felt good to kill the enemy.
He became, officially, Politically Unreliable in his Correctness at that moment.
We, as a nation and a people, have been owned and operated by the Thought Police for far longer than we’re willing to admit.
@13
Amos, and other high brass hats are all Obamabots. No guts, and certainly no glory. No honor, either.
@#16. Agreed, Valerie, this goes higher than Amos.
Gen Amos as a 1 star in 2000/2001 was under IG investigation for alleged cover up of V-22 Osprey problems. The computer hard drives of Brig Gen Amos, and his then boss Lt Gen McCorkle were seized. The Lt Col in command of Osprey Sq was caught on tape ordering maintenance crews to falsify records (60 Minutes did a segment on that). Somehow Amos came out of it unscathed, and his boss LtGen McCorkle retired.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1914&dat=20010303&id=MqZGAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ZvMMAAAAIBAJ&pg=4122,536836
@22. Ahhh-sooooo. The linked article said that the investigators were looking into whether the officer who falsified the records had been “pressured” to do so by his superiors. Gee, that sure sounds familiar. And, yes, it would be interesting to learn what part, if any, Amos had in this. Was he a rat who gave up his boss or was he wholly ignorant? There are no other possibilities. What’s past is prologue.