by Sharon Rondeau
(Jul. 7, 2021) – This segment of former U.S. Army Capt. Gary Mason’s story describes the ongoing difficulties he encountered while at Fort Lee, VA as his chain of command attempted, in various ways, to administratively end his career even as a congressional inquiry Mason filed with the office of Maryland Sen. Benjamin Cardin remained open.
To that point, Mason had been wrongly accused of being AWOL and denied a routine Officer Evaluation Report (OER) and combat awards while stationed in Hawaii and “illegally” stripped of the Top-Secret security clearance he was granted not by the Army, but by the U.S. State Department when he was employed as a diplomatic security officer.
In Part 47, Mason described how he was told that the only avenue by which he might obtain assistance in working through the issues with his chain of command was if he had a connection to a college fraternity, something he found very odd at the time.
As the situation deteriorated at Ft. Lee and Mason faced the likelihood of a “show-cause” board, he was compelled to report for psychological examinations at the time and place chosen by his command.
In Mason’s own words:
Gen. Wyche was getting ready to leave and up for promotion to three-star. There was talk of his wife going around the post bragging about the fact that her husband was up for three-star.
At that point, my wife started picking up the phone and called the DOJ and spoke with them. She called the Secretary of Defense and chief of staff of the Army. She had the personal phone number to Gen. Wyche’s office and got the lieutenant colonel there. Gen. Wyche was refusing to meet with me so that I could tell him the truth. I was told by the Army Logistics University Company Commander not to go up there. I tried, and they told me, “You can’t come in unless someone authorizes it or you make an appointment.” They were blocking me from the opportunity to go and see Gen. Wyche.
I told Sen. Cardin that Wyche was refusing to provide an open-door policy. It came down to a three-person vote that you already know about. Lt. Col. Holton, ALU Battalion Commander, a Caucasian male, sat me down in his office and said, “This is above my pay grade. I should be honest with you. Whatever’s going on is at a very, very high level. I can’t talk about it. I’m going to tell you this: even if I went to court, I’m not going to talk about this.” And I said, “What are you saying, Col. Holton?” He replied, “What they’re doing to you is wrong, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m going to vote against the GOMOR in your file, but somebody has it in for you. You must have gotten someone way above mad, and they want you out of here.”
So I said, “Look, you need to do what’s right, because if you don’t do what’s right, Lt. Col. Holton, you’re going to go down. Tell Gen. Wyche that he’s a liar. Everything he’s doing with this GOMOR is a lie and he shouldn’t do it.”
So my wife called and told the secretary about the GOMOR. My wife said, “Do you know who I am?” and the lady went quiet. My wife then said, “I’m Capt. Mason’s wife; did you hear me?” and she said, “Yes.” And my wife said, “You tell Gen. Wyche to remove the GOMOR from my husband’s file because it’s a lie.” When the secretary went quiet, my wife said, “Did you hear me?” and the lady responded, “Yes, I heard you,” but she refused to say anything because she probably believed what she was saying could be used against her. So they probably were given orders: “Don’t say anything to Capt. Mason because it’ll be recorded or go into a congressional. Don’t say anything…”
Now Gen. Wyche had put everybody on lockdown: the JAG office, the IG office, the EO people…everybody at Ft. Lee was on lockdown and refused me any administrative or legal service, which was a violation of the UCMJ. So, I started going off-post; I drove to Ft. Meade, Md.; I went to their JAG; I went to their IG and EO, and I got the same story. Once I told them what was happening, the first thing they did was get on the phone and start speaking with each other. These were phone calls with Hawaii, the 25h Infantry Division, 8th TSC to Ft. Lee; from Ft. Lee to the Pentagon; from the Pentagon to Ft. Lee.
I started going to every Army installation in Maryland, DC and Virginia to talk to different EO officers and IGs. And you know what happened? The first thing they would do, once they took my name, was get on the phone. Then they would say to me, “Because you have a congressional inquiry right now in full effect, we can’t get involved. We can’t support you. You have to go back to your command.” And I said, “Well, my command is harassing me; I need someone else.” And they would say, “Because of the congressional inquiry and the Privacy Act, we can’t assist you.” So, they were saying that no one in the U.S. Army could help my family and me. The only thing I could do is get a paycheck, and I had to be in uniform. They couldn’t put handcuffs on me and lock me up in the stockade because I hadn’t done anything wrong.
The JAG Office at Ft. Lee refused to work with me. When I would go in, there was one African-American JAG officer who would lock his door so I couldn’t come into his office. He was talking to me on the phone and said, “Hawaii has been trying to get you to go back there.” And I said, “Hawaii can’t redeploy me.” I think what they were doing was trying to get me to believe something that was false.
Col. Milhorn had refused to give me my awards or my OER before I left Hawaii, so technically what was a problem began to blow up. When Ft. Lee asked about it, Milhorn claimed I never showed up to get it. That was the whole issue in Hawaii; I kept asking, “Where are my awards and my OER?” And if I didn’t get it, I wouldn’t get promoted.
They were trying to end my career administratively if they could, but everything they were trying wasn’t working.
It got kind-of messy, and Mrs. Hubbard wouldn’t play their game. She said, “I’m doing everything by the book. When you’re playing with security issues, it goes above the Department of Defense. They can’t suspend or revoke something they never gave you.”
I wrote a letter to Sen. Cardin and said I wanted Maj. Acker and the 130th Engineering Brigade held accountable for lying on government documents about my security clearance. Sen. Cardin’s office never responded. But if I had been punished for the allegation, it would have caused imprisonment and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
Since Ft. Lee would not give me access to on-post housing, I was driving back and forth six hours a day, three hours coming and three hours going. I started going to Walter Reed, and as that was happening, I was getting very little sleep and began having sharp chest pains. I went in to the doctor at Walter Reed and he asked me what was going on.
From there, I began to tell them what was happening at Ft. Lee. There was the psychologist, Dr. Gilbert, and a psychotherapist who had me come in weekly. Then I was told about a program called the IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program), and the doctors told me, “We want you to come because we believe this is causing sever post-traumatic stress, and we think we can help you.” So they accepted me into the IOP, but that required me to be there 5 days a week. In other words, I could no longer report to Ft. Lee.
The doctors there said they believed I should be there for medical treatment, not at Kenner Army Medical Center or Ft. Lee.
So Ft. Lee realized they were getting ready to “lose Capt. Mason.” The information I was sharing with Hawaii, Hawaii didn’t want me to share with Ft. Lee and vice-versa. My whole medical history was going from post to post and installation to installation; senators were involved; and my wife started writing President Obama and then-Vice President Biden. We were talking to embassies and spoke with people close to the flagpole at the Pentagon. The closer we were to the flagpole, the bigger the story became.
Now my wife was regularly talking to small, independent radio stations and television stations. By necessity, she was the vocal person on the story, but people were starting to ask, “What is going on at Walter Reed and the JAG office?”
The Walter Reed JAG officer had told me, “Look, we can’t represent you…” and I said, “Why can’t you?” and he said the same thing: “You have an open congressional.”
Finally, I received a call back from an African American JAG officer at Ft. Meade named Capt. Tokay Hackett. He said, “I’m going to take your case.” What I didn’t know was that he was a frat brother of someone with a fraternity connection at Ft. Lee. Apparently, they called him and said, “We want you to represent Capt. Mason and tell Capt. Mason you’re going to represent him at the show-cause board and board of inquiry.”
When I first went in to talk to him, I told him what was going on and he listened to me. But the second time I saw him, he said, “When we get to the board of inquiry, I don’t want you saying anything. You need to just let me speak on your behalf.” And I said, “Why?” And he said, “Because they’re trying this…” And I said, “Tokay, you’ve already been co-opted. As a matter of fact, you can’t handle this case. Obviously, they’re telling you what to do.” And I’d found out that he was in a fraternity.
Apparently, they were calling him from Ft. Lee telling him what to do. So I got up and said, “You can cease and desist. I’m not going to bother. I’m going back to Walter Reed, and I’m in the IOP program.”
When I got back to the IOP program, he kept calling me and harassing me asking me to sign documents that he was my attorney. Then suddenly, Lt. Col. Holton from Ft. Lee started sending messages to the doctors saying, “Capt. Mason’s attorney needs to come and see him.” And I told my doctors, “He’s not my attorney. I’ve never signed any documentation.”
While I was in the IOP program, the doors were locked. Visitors couldn’t come in; they had to be buzzed in. We had our own classrooms, doctors, social workers and therapy. We went on trips; we did exercises and talked about traumatic brain injuries. There were a lot of people who had suffered sexual assault or other types of trauma. It was a complete program which went on for 3-4 months.
Initially, I was still assigned to Ft. Lee. Apparently, Gen. Wyche got upset and was telling Lt. Col. Holton, who was my battalion commander at the Army Logistics University, “We want you to go down there and see if we can get Capt. Mason back at Ft. Lee.” So, they sent him up here to meet with me, and I said, “While I’m in this program, you’re not supposed to be talking to me at all. Why do you want to talk to me now?”
Shortly after our meeting in the JAG office at Walter Reed, Lt. Col. Holton came to see me again, and I told him I didn’t want to meet with him, because I had found out that Casey was there, and Casey told me they were threatening his life. When he told me that, I said, “Oh, what happened?” Well, Lt. Col. Holton must have gone to visit Casey, and Casey told him, “Yeah, I’ve been seeing Capt. Mason.” He said Lt. Col. Holton then looked like “deer in the headlights.” He said his eyes got big, his mouth dropped. Apparently Ft. Lee had no clue that Casey and I knew each other. Once they found out, they told Casey, “We need you to stop talking to Capt. Mason.”
Casey had already begun to tell me what was going on with him while I was still in. He said he was physically assaulted but didn’t mention the sexual assault. He told me that Lt. Col. Holton was being sent on behalf of Gen. Wyche telling him, “Look, just be quiet and keep your mouth shut; don’t talk about what happened with your wife and the general and your career; we’ll go ahead and give you 100% disability and get you out of here.” But they were keeping Casey on the ward and giving him lithium and other harmful opioids, and I noticed how it was negatively impacting his though process. Some days he was with me, and some days he was totally gone, as if he was high on medication.
Every time I would see him, he would tell me something new. One day I went up there and they had moved Casey to another medical facility in another state. They moved him after he told me that Lt. Col. Holton was there asking him questions about me. Then he said to me that they told him that “Capt. Mason shouldn’t be talking to you, and you shouldn’t be talking to him.” Casey delivered a message to me saying that Gen. Wyche is mad and if I continued to talk, then my family and me would be harmed. And I said, “What???”
I don’t know if that was true or not, but I asked Casey, “Do you mind if I go and report this to Army CID and the NCIS?” Navy and Army were co-located. That’s the first time I went down and told Army CID, and then I told NCIS what was going on. They opened up a case, but they never got back to me. All of a sudden they just went quiet. They found out there was a situation with Casey; they had two soldiers from Ft. Lee getting treated at Walter Reed talking about the crimes that happened against them.
Now, I’m telling Sen. Cardin all of this, what’s going on, and I asked to see him personally. Sen. Cardin refused to see me and my family. We walked up there and his aides came out. They interviewed us but claimed Sen. Cardin wasn’t available to see us. I said, “We’ll make time any day of the week; just tell us when there’s an open spot.” But he refused to see us.
One day Lt. Col. Holton and another staff sergeant drove to Walter Reed and asked if they could see me. I said, “The only way I’ll see them is if I go and sit with them in the JAG office with an attorney present.” So they provided an attorney, and I said, “Can I record this?” They said they didn’t want to be recorded. Lt. Col. Holton then said, “Capt. Mason, Gen. Wyche is trying to push for the board of inquiry. Could you sign this document?” and I said, “No. I already signed a document.” He said, “He wants another one signed.” And I said, “It doesn’t apply to me according to the regulations. So, you can use the one I gave to you to give to Gen. Wyche months ago.”
He said, “Well, Capt. Mason, I know you don’t trust anybody…” I said, “Col., at this point I don’t trust one person. Why are you really here? Do you like driving six hours to come visit me? You’re visiting Casey, too.”
He just kind-of got quiet, put out a blank sheet of paper and said, “Can you just sign your name on this paper?” and I said, “Col. Holton, you want to take my signature and put it on some more documents, the way Hawaii did with falsifying documents.” So, I looked at him and said, “I know Gen. Wyche is telling you to do this, but Col. Holton, are you going to insult me?”
And he said, “Well, I kind-of figured you weren’t going to sign it.” And I said, “Take the piece of paper; I’m not signing a thing. You drove six hours for me to sign a piece of paper.” He just looked at me and shook his head and said, “Capt. Mason, I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life.” He drove six hours to try to get me to sign a blank piece of paper. And I said, “Col. Holton, look: I no longer belong to Ft. Lee.”
So here’s what Ft. Lee had to do: Walter Reed said they were going to “accept Capt. Mason into the Wounded Warrior Program.” They had gotten to the point where at the IOP the doctors were saying that it was “in the best interest that Capt. Mason go through a mandatory medical review board. We want to see if he’s medically fit to stay on active duty.”
So now the narrative had changed — they can’t put me out for the GOMOR. They told Lt. Col. Holton he needed to write a letter to the doctors at Walter Reed saying that “Capt. Mason is mentally unable to stand and defend himself at a board of inquiry or a show-cause board, so we’re going to go ahead and sign him over to you.”
They actually cut orders, had a board meeting and said, “We’re now going to reassign and attach Capt. Mason to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.” That meant, “We’re going to medically retire you.”
