“Swinger” General David Haight busted
We wrote about General David Haight when he was relieved from his post this last summer for conduct that we don’t expect from flag officers.
Armstrong, who told USA TODAY in interviews that the relationship began with a flirty email and ended after assignations with multiple partners at swingers’ clubs, hotels and her home, says Haight had promised a future together. “I gave him the best years of my life,” she said.
In a statement issued after news of his reprimand broke, Haight vowed to work with Army investigators untangling his dark, off-duty life.
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The general had built an enviable career in special operations and light infantry assignments, but one “aw, shit” is all it takes.Apparently, the general had “Haighters” (see what I did there) who left anonymous tips with the Army Office of Inspector General
Well, according to USATODAY, he’s been recommended to be busted down to lieutenant colonel for his retirement;
A board of his peers called for Haight to be busted to lieutenant colonel, a demotion that will cost him nearly $43,000 per year in pension pay. Fanning, in an interview, said he had accepted the recommendation after a panel of three officers reviewed Haight’s conduct — and his secret second life — and determined that lieutenant colonel was the last rank in which he had served satisfactorily.
Category: Army News
Don’t worry LTC, if I can live on retired O-5 pay, so can you.
The only difference between us now is that all 30+ years of my military service were honorable.
Swing on, swinger.
This man comes from one of the wealthiest and most privileged families in Utah, He is the grandson of Mormon apostle David B. Haight and the cousin to Jon Huntsman, Obama’s ambassador to China and recent potential nominee to Trump’s cabinet as a potential Secretary of State. This guy will not miss a beat.
I hope his wife, who by all reports wasn’t on the swing, takes him to the cleaners.
She just might do that. Here in my home State (Virginia) not only is adultery a felony, it’s also cause for an at-fault divorce. I don’t know the relevant laws here, and have no legal authority besides, but it looks like swinger-boy here is gonna take a financial bath very, very soon.
Not quite. He is from a different branch of the Haights who married the Huntsmans (Huntsmen?). Indirectly related through a great grandfather.
One of my buddies at BYU tried dating his daughter and got a family history lesson on his first date.
He is gonna look at that reduced retirement check and say “yes it was worth it”.
I’m assuming you forgot /sarc in your post, or it was just applied. Because 43k a year reduction, pending divorce and subsequent spousal sep pay most def ain’t worth it. Just my .02 anyway… Unless there were some special Unicorn swingers involved. Neve seen anything in my AO worth what it’s going to cost him. But.. I’ve been wrong before.
Somewhere out there GEN Ashbury is on his best behavior.
Had his partners been same-sex, he would have been untouchable.
What the (HONK!) ever happened to “Keep your indiscretions one hundred miles from the flagpole”?
I do not want him cashiered for being a horndog (assuming 100% consensual partners), I want him smacked for being an ill-disciplined idiot! He was told the standards of conduct expected of him. He chose to violate them, and wasn’t discreet enough to keep it out of the papers. One might expect a new butterbar to be this dumb. A General is supposed to know how things work, and how to work them. “Don’t crap where you eat!” is sound advice.
This was -stupid-.
Amen, if he had been a repressed homosexual shunted by the white male patriarchy he would be courageous, not unlike Eric Fanning, BTW.
While his conduct is definitely worthy of punishment, I find the sexual puritanism oddly out of place given our ever changing stance on sexual conduct.
It seems to me that the only group of people still bound by any moral code are hetro men. Seems odd….
It also seems odd to me that covering up abuse at Abu Ghirab didn’t merit this level of punishment, covering up the facts surrounding Tillman’s death did not merit this, nor did getting caught in a very public situation while the current commander in Afghanistan.
Standards; they are the same for everyone or they are not standards.
Well, I say let’s hold on to that standard. It may make a comeback. Who would have thought (better still, bet big bucks, that Trump would win?) In other words, the seemingly impossible is possible, after all.
Back in the olden days when I was in the 10th SFG(A), we spent quite a bit of every year away from the flagpole for ski training, an annual European exercise, and various mobile training team operations and miscellaneous schools. As a bachelor officer, I was quite surprised that many of my married counterparts (with beautiful wives) went to work trying to find some “strange” as soon as we got out of town. This conduct was not viewed as an UCMJ crime. Had it been, we would have lost half the married officers and NCO’s. Back then, SF wives reportedly complained that a Green Beret was a guy who passed through Ft. Bragg every 3 or 4 months with a duffel bag full of dirty laundry and a hard-on.
I agree that in this regime, if he had been gay he would have been untouchable.
What about the Lcpl who gets 6 months in the brig and a dishonorable discharge for adultery? For consensual sex by the way. Happened to a good friend of mine. A good man. El toro, 1994. If he and others got “cashiered”, so does this guy. It is only right. Officer or not.
I know this is somewhat of a false comparison, but this guy does something incredible stupid – stupid for a number of reasons – and gets relieved, busted, essentially fired and his pension reduced.
People in the VA lie, cover up and cause the deaths of vets and they get to either resign with their full pensions and bennies, or get shifted to another position with a slap on the wrist.
There is something wrong there.
“People in the VA lie, cover up and cause the deaths of vets and they get to either resign with their full pensions and bennies, or get shifted to another position with a slap on the wrist.”
Or they are required to be “re-trained”. It is a disgrace.
Ok, I’m going to come down on the other side of the fence here. What did this guy do that actually impacted his troops or accomplishment of the mission?
I’m just kind of confused here. On one hand, I’ve got in my enterprise email inbox guidance on integrating transgender personnel into the military…on the other hand, the same organization is still slamming people based on an early 1800s view of what constitutes acceptable off-duty sexual conduct.
Color me confused.
He violated the UCMJ. Bigly.
Next question?
A big part of that is the Adultery. Wherein, the Army is paying him a lot (shit ton for a GO) because he has a spouse, just because he has a spouse.
That money being a huge retention tool, Mother Army doesn’t like when it becomes public that you’re doing something to tarnish that.
Martin covers the “blackmail” issue fairly well.
If he were single and doing this and someone at work had brought it up, if he’d have said, “Hell yeah, I can’t show pics but there are some fine ass women I’m getting hooked up with!” not as big a deal. I’ve talked with quite a few SF guys at Bragg who were proud of those kind of activities, but not married. Granted, he’s a Flag Officer so not entirely off the hook, but it wouldn’t have been as bad I don’t think.
Well, right off the top of my head a general officer who has access to some of the most sensitive intelligence material in the entire country put himself an a position for some serious blackmail.
What if one of his “consensual partners” had a working arrangement with a foreign intelligence service?
The Soviets got an enormous amount of intelligence this way (and BTW I presume our intelligence services do, too. If not, they’re derelict in their duties.)
Whether the conduct expected of a flag officer seems outdated or not, it’s beyond question that Gen Haight knew what was expected of him. If he’d rather be Hugh Hefner than a general officer in the Army he could have resigned and opened up his own sex grotto and avoided all this. But he wanted to have both.
Think about it like this Grunt. How many junior Officers and enlisted men did he probably discipline with reprimand, Article 15 or recommend for Court Martial, who were doing the same thing he was doing and maybe at the same time? It’s hypocrisy and it’s a violation of the UCMJ in a big way. If we can’t trust the senior NCOs and Officers appointed over us, there’s a problem.
If he did discipline anyone over that, I hope those people get a good lawyer and have their record cleared.
Remember the ‘honey trap’?
And guess who gets to sit through the most SHARP Training? NOT the Generals!
Always! It seems like, doesn’t it?
So don’t ask, don’t tell has been repealed and transgenders can now let their freak flag fly, but if a straight white male wants to get some strange, it’s against good order and discipline?
Mad Dog needs to fix this shit ASAP
Relax, Mattis WILL fix this. It’s a matter of when, not if.
1. He got a little on the side – shocking, none of us would ever do that.
2. Did wild and crazy things his wife would not – even more shocking, none of us would ever do that.
3. Misused government resources by using his government cell phone to stay in touch with his girlfriend – now that is really shocking.
There but for the Grace of God, went many of us and I’ll venture most of those tight asses who sat in judgment of him.
Could use the same reasoning to excuse any and all thieves, too.
I doubt there’s a one of us who haven’t at one time or another, in one circumstance or another, seen something that belonged to someone else and though, for the briefest of moments “well… no one’s looking…”
But, most of us don’t give into that. Those that do deserve what they get when the piper comes calling.
Now, as to the dude under discussion…
He set himself up for potential blackmail. That is full fail of twitch control and absolute fail in self control.
NOTHING of that sort can be tolerated. Ever. Period.
I really don’t like part of the misuse of government property charge – using the government cell phone to make personal calls.
1. 90% of the folks that have them do that on a daily basis.
2. If he did have a personal cell phone and was very careful to use that one for all personal calls – would that have made the government’s case against him much weaker?
Yeah this strikes me as extremely harsh.
And stinks of hypocrisy.
I have to agree with you that it is extremely harsh. His soon to be ex-wife is going to end up with half his retired pay or more. So he will be pretty well financially effed. He is going to have a tough time finding a job. And since under the current regime any kind of gay, lesbian, or transgender sex antics are okay, it does look hypocritical. But to this regime, 30 years of service as a warrior leader with two CIB’s doesn’t count for much. You need to keep in mind the kind of REMF’s and yes-men your King Putt placed in charge of the Pentagon.
“None of us would ever do that?”
Not sure of your point. It almost seems as if you are trying to use the “they did it too!” excuse from 2nd grade.
I won’t apologize for keeping my vows and my word of honor to my wife. Just because someone else decided not to be an honorable man (or person) doesn’t mean that I, or anyone, has to excuse their behavior.
When the Clinton / Lewinsky scandal broke, the left tried this same argument – that is was “about the sex” and “everyone does it.”
To me, it was more about the vow – a sacred vow – a man had made to his wife in front of God and witnesses.
If you cannot be trusted with keeping that vow, you cannot be trusted with keeping the vow you took as President.
Or in this case, the vow you took as a member of the military.
When things go wrong and a person is stripped of their possessions and comforts, all they have left is their word and their honor. When they throw continually throw that away by their own choices, don’t expect me to think of them as what they are – a person without honor, truth or commitment.
Furthermore, don’t expect me to follow them when they talk about honor and duty and truth to their unit and to the military.
Roger that …
Indeed you are correct, some of us actually chose to get married and remain faithful to our vows and the love of our life…some of us not so much…
I’m no saint but if I thought I couldn’t be faithful or didn’t want to be faithful I wouldn’t get married. Why set yourself up to fail if you know you you can’t keep your penis from directing your actions?
I actually like my wife as well as love her, I can’t even imagine wanting to hurt her like that…if he and his wife were into together, I guess that would be none of my business really and perhaps I’d have a different sense of it.
We always talk about stolen valor being the tip of the iceberg, it’s the same with infidelity. If you will lie and cheat the one person you promised not to until death do you part you will no doubt lie and cheat everyone else as well….it’s what lying adulterous rat fucks do.
You reap what you sow, he knew the rules he said fuck the rule and now the rules are going to fuck him, it seems fair.
Yep. Sorry that some get hurt feelings when a spade is called a spade, but that’s the way it is.
“but one “aw, shit” is all it takes.”
There’s an “aw, shit,” then there’s an “AWWWW, FUCK!!!”.
This is the latter.
“[Jennifer] Armstrong, who told USA TODAY in interviews that the relationship began with a flirty email and ended after assignations with multiple partners at swingers’ clubs, hotels and her home, says Haight had promised a future together. ‘“I gave him the best years of my life,”’ she said.” Yeah, well, before that, another woman, with whom he had four children gave him the best years of her life, too. Arnstrong was pissed. He probably led her along, telling her that he would be leaving his wife. She triusted him and believed him. That’s a scream, if that’s what happened. I mean, why wouldn’t she believe him and trust him. It’s not as if he wasn’t true blue to his wife while Armstrong was boinkin, boinkin, boinkin him.
Problem Air Cav is he was married to a good Mormon women and after having four children he thought she had died and went looking. That was because the sex was the same but the dishes were piling up in the sink. It is always the dumb shit scorned women who screws around with a married man, probably older than her. In this case, Mz. Armstrong is not that bright because after fucking him for 11 years he is still married to his wife and his kids are all grown.
Sounds like Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. According to the conversations she had with Linda Tripp, Bill was going to leave Hillary and spend his life with Monica.
AS TO (see what I did there) Bill Clinton, I seem to recall reading that he was dodging the lawsuit from Paula Jones by claiming as Commander In Chief, he was protected under The Soldiers Sailors Relief Act. If so, why wasn’t he subject to the UCMJ?
There is no doubt he was also sucking cock on the side, just saying.
That should not be relevant to the punishment even if true. But it would explain why they were excessively harsh.
No, Lars. If he went half or full queer, that would be a reason for today’s brass to be lenient.
You are a weirdo. Obsessed with using the power of the state to control sexual activity.
If I were obsessed with all that you claim, knucklehead, I would not have time for any one of those imaginary obsessions of yours. I don’t want the gov’t in the bedroom, Commissar, but neither do I want to get pummeled with queerhood everywhere I look.
And another thing, you commie. Name the regime that makes a big stinkin’ deal every time it appoints a cocksucker, butt fucker, or carpet muncher to some gov’t post? I know you aren’t that bright so I’ll help you out. That’s oBaMa and his fellow progressive/marxist/democrats. If they would not make an issue of it, that would go a long way to ‘normalizing’ the perverts for many more people. Not me, but many.
Zika-Commie, do you know what the word facetious means?
EUCOM’s web manager may need to know that this is still posted: http://www.eucom.mil/media-library/document/33110/j3-mg-haight-bio
What does Bergdahl think about this?
He says, Traitors are treated better.
There you go Big Army.
I do not know all the details. But this seems too harsh.
Losing a star I understand, even to Colonel maybe. But LTC? $40,000 per year for the rest of his life is essentially a fine of about half a million.
We have had several presidents that had affairs; at least one in the oval office.
And presidents have been subject to the UCMJ since exactly when, Lars?
Not the fucking point is it?
Adultery is selectively prosecuted in the military.
WTF is your obsession with other people’s sex life?
Get some help, Lars. Sounds very serious. Don’t put it off any longer, for the sake of…for the sake of…okay, scratch that. Go ahead and keep putting it off.
This punishment actually INCREASES the risk of blackmail.
Blackmail works because the consequences of public awareness significantly outweigh what the blackmailer wants.
Most cases of adultery or even swinging are ignored in the armed forces.
Hell, even a recent high profile case of adultery with a subordinate only resulted in reduction of one grade for retirement.
This, however, significantly increased the cost and thus make people more susceptible.
We all know it will do nothing to actually STOP adultery. Even potential death sentences fail to do that.
This however has sent a strong message t
Christine Keeler and John Profumo, 1963.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/profumo-resigns-in-sex-scandal
Keeler was also involved with Yevgeny “Eugene” Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache who some suspected was a spy. Profumo was the Brit Sec’y of War, with access to extremely sensitive material.
I’m sure that Haight had the same kind access as it related to what he did, but he led with his crotch instead of his brains.
I hope he enjoyed the rides he got.
“Most cases of adultery or even swinging are ignored in the armed forces.” –Commissar
No opinion there. No guesswork. Just cold, hard Lars fact. Larsfacts. I like it. They’re a special kind of fact, the kind that no one can corroborate because Lars concocts them.
WTF? Adultery is absolutely ignored. If it were not entire chains of command would have collapsed. Commanders would have to fire half their staff.
This is a fact.
While it may not be ignored, adultery is certainly not pursued on its own. Most the time I’ve seen it pursued it was tacked on to something else.
Unless you have someone willing to confess they were banging a married service member, the cases go nowhere. The ones I have had come up against were when angry spouses called up saying they had their signifigant other dipping his wick elsewhere.
I would tell that if proven, they could face a court martial and reduction, fine, etc. To a woman they would say ” I just want him to stop seeing that bitch”
My response was for then to seek counseling, and if it came to it they should seek divorce.
I would call in the Marine and have a one way conversation telling them they needed to consider if that piece of ass was worth their marriage and career.
To back up JOD’s statement – from the original post that Jonn made when this came to light,
“Investigators also determined that he had spent nearly 24 hours on his government cellphone and sent more than 800 emails on his military computer to Armstrong.”
Haight was using a computer and cell phone to keep in touch with his freaky-deaky booty call instead of using his personal computer and phone to hook up with her. He fucked up… he made the decision to use government devices to contact her. The adultery charge was added on to probably “nail the lid on the coffin” to end his career and help the board in their determination on when his honorable conduct ended.
Sucks to be him… can’t wait to see what his wife does to his ass.
Again, this is Larsfact. Now it’s half of all officers. Where are your sources? Do Larsfacts speak to women officers, too? Or maybe, you sexist pig, you have, as I suspect, only males in mind. Better take another stats and feminism class, Lars.
Lars is hot for this sex story stuff.
Idiotic. It is only the right that is obsessed with outing this kind of shit.
I do not regard it as that big a deal and certainly not justification for the penalty.
Like others have pointed out numerous times in this post, a lot of this has to do with his covering it up, doing things on the government’s dime and setting himself up to be compromised by foreign intelligence agencies.
Oh, c’mon, Old Dog. The Piuperdink doesn’t care about or want to hear about Haight’s compromising position. All he cares about is kicking up a fuss and being the center of attention. His hobby is picking fights. Thought that was clear. His ‘argument’ is invalid because he ignores Haight’s real offense, which was putting himself in a vulnerable position for foreign agents to take advantage of him and his biggest failing.
Those things don’t matter to the Piuperdink, because it’s an ossifer you’re talking about and you don’t know from squat about that because you were enlisted, and enlisted are all stoopids in the view of the commissar.
“I do not regard [adultery] as that big a deal.” Gee, why does that not surprise me? It’s only a promise, a vow that, when broken, undercuts or destroys marriage and family.
Gleefully, what you regard as a big deal matters not to people who make these decisions.
Adulterous behavior is a substantial drain on morale, a threat to national security (whether you believe it or not, again, is not relevant), and a detractor of good order and discipline. Men, or women, who have to spend time worrying about the fidelity of their mate (or hiding their own infidelities) are distracted in their jobs. Invariably, that costs lives. The collective wisdom of several generations of military and civilian leaders believe, with good cause, that the effort to temper that behavioral flaw is to provide significant disincentives to engage in it. That it is often (not “absolutely” or “most”ly ignored, as you inartfully claim) ignored is less a testament of its impact on the command and speaks more to the fact that weak-kneed officers and NCO’s like yourself have infected the leadership ranks. That the punishment for senior officers is severe is not a secret, especially to senior officers, nor is it unexpected. Had you made it into a leadership position, perhaps that lesson would have become clear to you. Since you obviously didn’t, let me distill it down for you: There is value to being a good example; there is greater value in being a horrible warning.
Perhaps since the concept is so difficult for you to grasp, you might put as much distance between yourself and the military and its business as possible. Both parties will reap the benefit.
WRT infidelity, I’ll echo what RGR769 said above about his time in 10th Group. He mentions officers – I was an NCO and a support guy (MI) but I saw the same thing in the NCO ranks. There were married guys who said TDY meant “Temporarily Divorced” and started chasing poontang the moment we touched down in a TDY location.
Now the reality is, we don’t really know what goes on inside a marriage and for all I know at least some of these guys may have had an “arrangement” with their wives, i.e. a kind of “don’t ask/don’t tell/don’t knock anyone up and don’t get an STD” kind of thing (Certainly I knew guys at both Fort Lewis and Fort Bragg who boasted about hooking up with hot SF wives while their husbands were deployed, so you never know.)
But for most of them, it seemed they were doing it just because they could, and I have to say that I lost a lot of respect for them when I saw how they behaved once they were away from home. More than a few went through bitter divorces later, which I figured pretty much served them right.
Bottom line is that whether or not adultery is considered somehow “acceptable” or at least not punishable by American culture as a whole, the military has its own rules and someone as high ranking as Gen Haight certainly knows what those rules are.
IOW, Do the crime, do the time.
I would also point out that the mere fact that regulations against adultery are enforced “selectively” means nothing. If you look hard enough you can find all military laws enforced “selectively”, that’s what prosecutorial discretion is all about.
Considering that during his career, Gen Haight probably slammed enlisted soldiers a lot harder for lesser crimes, I’d say his retirement at O-5 rank with all the bennies that come along with that looks like a pretty soft landing to me.
And how many times do you think Haight had an officer or enlisted Soldier in front of him during his career that he disciplined for adultery or warning them about fooling around with married spouses?
Well, on one hand he is a giant dirtbag not only for what he did in uniform but for how he treated his wife. On the other hand he didn’t make excuses, fight it or carry on. He co-operated, accepted the punishment and is leaving. Something to be said for that.
Yes, he is still a dirtbag.
I’m used to most everyone here bitching about how the zeros get away with crap that they would burn an enlisted soldier for. Now dropping a guy down to the last rank in which he honorably served is being discussed as too harsh.
He knew the rules and he could have stopped his stupidity days or weeks after it started. If he had, it would have been chalked up to stupidity. Since he decided to carry it on for 11 years and into the GO level, he got what he deserved.
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