At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) questioned Matthew L. Lohmeier, nominee to be Under Secretary of Air Force, about his book, "Irresistible Revolution: Marxism's Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military."
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you, Senator Butch. Senator Duckworth.
00:02Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:03Mr. LaMeyer, you know as well as I do from your military service that upholding good order and discipline is a foundation for our professional fighting force.
00:12Lethality relies on a honed practice of service members following lawful orders.
00:18I myself, even though as a progressive serving in the military, did not agree with President Bush's decision to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when we should have been destroying the Taliban in Afghanistan, still volunteered to go and I'm proud of my service to this day.
00:34Sometimes service members have to serve against their own personal opinions.
00:39Circumventing commanders on the battlefield in real time could lead to life or death mistakes.
00:43As former Secretary of Defense Mattis wrote, officers must carry out a policy to the best of their ability, even when they might disagree with that policy.
00:52To that end, I have questions about your commitment to this core principle and the troubling signals that your confirmation would send to those in uniform.
00:59You claim to have only written your book and gone public after the Inspector General concluded that your complaint had no merit.
01:06But we all know that there are other channels available to service members concerned about commander decisions or policy choices beyond the IG.
01:15Before you chose to write your book or speak out in the media about policies that concerned you, did you consider being a whistleblower to your senators or representatives, which would have been protected under Title 10, Section 1034?
01:28Yes or no?
01:29Yes, Senator.
01:30You did consider it.
01:31That is news to us.
01:35I ask that you present this committee to any correspondence that you may have had with members of Congress.
01:41Copy.
01:41I'll do that, Senator.
01:43Did you file an Article 138 complaint, which under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, allows service members to seek redress for a wrong conducted by a commander?
01:53I did not, Senator.
01:55Okay.
01:56So, why did you not?
01:59There are many months in question, the time frame that we're talking about here.
02:05But at the time that we separated, after I had been relieved of my command, and there was a command-directed investigation about me as well as the general officer that had relieved me of my command,
02:16it was a traumatic period, a period of hardship for my family and my children.
02:20No, I'm not talking about that.
02:21I'm talking about when you were writing the book.
02:23And you were still in uniform.
02:24You chose to write, you made the decision to write the book, because you said there was no other way for you to address your concerns.
02:31And you said that you did reach out to members of Congress, which is news to me, but you did not file an Article 138 complaint prior to writing the book and speaking out in public.
02:40I understand.
02:40I misunderstood your question, Senator.
02:43And my answer to your previous question, you asked if I had considered reaching out to members of Congress, and the answer to that question was yes.
02:49Did you do it?
02:50I had communication with members of Congress, and I'd be happy to provide that to you.
02:56I exhausted all of the means that I understood available to me.
03:00I'd been counseling with the base IG, Space Force IG, base legal, Pentagon public affairs, and the entire chain of command to include members of the Joint Chiefs before I published a book.
03:10So nobody talked to you about Article 138 complaint, which is a recourse that you could have taken.
03:15If that was discussed, specifically Article 138, I don't recall the circumstances as to why I chose what I did at that time regarding Article 138 specifically.
03:29I'm concerned that you didn't follow through on all of the recourses that were available to you.
03:33You are allowed to have your personal views, but there are rules governing how public servants, public service members can be in opposition to lawful orders.
03:41With your actions, you signal to those under your command that it is okay to be insubordinate.
03:47As Peter Favre, a scholar who served in George W. Bush's National Security Council, has written, and I quote,
03:52military officers who believe that the policymaking process is heading in a bad direction have ample recourse to advise within the chain of command.
03:59If their advice is not heeded, the country would not be better served by senior officers provoking a civil military crisis to advertise their policy differences with civilian leaders.
04:08You were relieved of command not for your beliefs, but for how you chose to express them on active duty while holding a position of authority over others.
04:17That is not persecution. That is accountability.
04:21And if, as a former commander, you cannot recount the basic recourses available to service members, how can we expect you to lead airmen and guardians?
04:30You were relieved of command not for your beliefs, but for how you chose to express them on active duty while holding a position of authority over others.
04:38So if it's true that you followed these steps, you still decided to circumvent the chain of command while still on active duty, to speak out publicly without informing your leadership.
04:49You could have resigned and spoken out or continued serving and kept your mouth shut, but instead you decided to continue serving and violate your professional ethics.
04:57You were allowed to have those personal views, but there are rules governing how public service members can be opposition to lawful orders.
05:03And so I sort of feel like you broke the rules, there are ways to do this, and you chose to instead circumvent those rules.
05:13That sets the standards for the people that you are about to take charge of to continue to circumvent the rules.
05:19And that is not conducive to good order and discipline within the military.
05:24Do you understand that? That is my concern.
05:26If Chairman Wicker is okay with me responding, I'd be happy to.
05:29Sure. I think the question is, do you understand that that's her point of view?
05:34I understand your view, Senator.
05:37I think in value or in principle, you and I agree on many things that you've said.
05:42I will reject the idea that I did anything unlawful, unethical, or publicly contrary to...
05:51I never publicly criticized my chain of command.
05:54I never publicly was politically partisan while acting in an official capacity.
05:59And both of those allegations were the reasons I was relieved of my command,
06:02and I wasn't found guilty of either of those things.