It’s who you know….

USAToday tells the story of Major General John Custer and his friend, Marty Dempsey who covered for Custer’s bad behavior;

The two-star general had an inappropriate relationship with a woman and lied to investigators about it, made his staff buy sexy clothing for her, subjected his underlings to racist and sexist emails and allowed himself to be photographed with another woman licking the medals on his formal dress uniform.

After the report was received and signed by top Army officials in September 2010, Maj. Gen. John Custer, commander of the Army’s intelligence school at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., faced public shaming and the loss of rank.

That’s when Gen. Martin Dempsey intervened. Dempsey, then the four-star in charge of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, struck from the record the substantiated finding of Custer’s inappropriate relationship. That left the board of three generals deciding Custer’s fate with two relatively minor charges and the letter of reprimand that Dempsey had issued.

So because of Dempsey’s intervention, Custer was able to retire with a $160,000/year pension.

Dempsey, a little more than a year later, ascended to the top of the uniformed military: chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. From that post, he would lament the ethical crisis in the military and the scourge of sexual assault and harassment. He and the chiefs vowed to root it out.

[…]

Stories in the last year by USA TODAY about the “swinging general,” Maj. Gen. David Haight, whose serial promiscuity killed his career, the demotion of the three-star adviser to the Defense secretary for drunken carousing at “gentleman’s clubs,” and the firing of another on the Joint Staff for adultery show that misconduct among senior officers has been anything but eradicated.

Category: Big Army