Written by Bill Brown
How Do We Exhaust All Forms Of Military Redress? S.O.S. Podcast #196
In a case with the worst levels of insubordination, hostility, and lack of military discipline the decision makers are not running cover for poor command leadership. Despite the Investigating Officer finding (1) harassment, (2) gender discrimination and (3) bullying by Officer the Commander of Quantico, Jenny (Ouellette) Colegate only substantiated harassment. Furthermore, the Cmdr Colegate provided no written explanation for how the Investigation Officer found gender discrimination and bullying by an officer and she did not.
In our appeal to the Office of the Secretary of the Navy we argued HMX-1’s failure to interview twelve (x12) key witnesses listed in the PAC Complaint in the face of reported severe levels of insubordination is strong evidence that was ignored in the Appeal Decision. How is it not arbitrary and capricious to not interview (x12) key witnesses. We provided 11 singed certifications from those same witnesses who make it clear HMX-1 Leadership violated Marine Corps Order 5354.1F by failing to enforce high professional standards of performance, conduct and discipline and that the HMX-1 had severe levels of insubordination, hostility, lack of military discipline.
However, similar to Cmdr Coalgate’s decision, the written denial of our Final Appeal to Secretary of the Navy by Jonathan Hirsch (He/Him) ran cover for poor leadership and was extremely vague and lacked any supportive rationale besides “I have considered”, “I have found” or “I have determined”.
