The two say they also encountered a leadership unwilling to address serious problems.After they were removed from their posts, they claim for trying to make their discoveries known, the two joined 60 Central Command officers and employees in a complaint against leaders of Central Command’s Intelligence Directorate.
The complaint, which sources say was given to the command leadership almost three months ago, charges two senior leaders of the Intelligence Directorate with abuse of power and with mismanagement, sources say. The list of complainants provided by the sources ranges from colonels to division chiefs to top-ranking senior executive officials in the Defense Intelligence Agency. The complaint is progressing, sources say.
The call
The path that took Koury to his removal and the ongoing complaint started innocuously enough. Koury, 48, had been called to Tampa in August 1998 to study the distribution of reserves in the intelligence facilities. The study was done routinely every three years. The assignment gave Koury, commander of a Navy Reserve intelligence unit in Atlanta, the highest security clearance — access to all top-secret areas.
Szymanski, 53, was among an elite group of full-time Navy Reserve officers who administer and train the reserves needed to move in and take over jobs when active-duty personnel are called to war. She recently had been assigned as supervisor of the Reserve Management Office, which oversees the Reserve intelligence program, about 400 uniformed personnel at the time.
Central Command, the headquarters for U.S. forces in the Middle East, is at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. It is a joint command, combining all branches of the military services.
Besides supervising the overall Reserve intelligence program, Szymanski, an intelligence officer for more than 20 years, managed the program’s Navy and Marine Corps reserves. She had two assistants for the other services. An Air Force major who handled that service’s reserves, and Maj. Janice Palmer, who managed the reserves for the Army — the largest branch of service at Central Command.
Palmer’s duties included assigning, training and paying the nearly 100 reservists under her charge. But for several months, she had spent much of her office time preparing to compete in beauty pageants at the Tampa Bay local Tall ’n’ Terrific club, her coworkers said.
Her activities apparently had the command leadership’s initial support. Her Tampa pageant was held in August of that year in the MacDill Officers Club. Palmer won that competition, and was positioned to vie for the Tall Clubs International title.
Empty uniforms
Several months later, the two Navy officers and a third, Navy Lt. Cmdr. John Bird, who was paired with Koury on the Reserve study, began to realize the extent of Palmer’s neglect, according to a record of testimony they later gave during a command investigation.At the time of their discovery Central Command was preparing for Operation Desert Fox, a four-day bombardment of Iraq in December 1998 intended to eradicate weapons of mass destruction.
With units deploying to the Persian Gulf region, command asked the Reserve Management Office to get its reserves ready for mobilization.
Palmer certified that all 96 of her Army reservists were ready, Szymanski and the other two Navy officers later testified.
As the call-up became imminent, the three Navy officers double-checked the Reserve rolls. What they found, Bird later testified, was disturbing.
Of the 96 reservists Palmer had listed by name as ready, just 30 actually had assignments, and just 10 had up-to-date phone numbers.
Even among the 30 assigned reserves, many hadn’t reported for duty or received training in several months.
Describing the findings later, Koury said that at first, the Navy officers thought those who hadn’t shown up were disinterested parties who wanted out of the program.
They were only half right. The reserves had not been disinterested — but by now they did want out.
Some told the officers they had traveled all the way across the country to look for positions at Central Command after Palmer had told them over the phone that there were none. Arriving at CentCom, they had learned she was wrong.
Others, frustrated at not being assigned to positions, had retired or had put in for new assignments. A few told the Navy officers that their phone call was the first contact they had had from anyone in the Reserve Management Office.
“If a (Reserve call-up) had truly been executed, the directorate would not have had the assets available that Maj. Palmer had led the (commander) and me to believe,” Szymanski later testified.
Palmer declined to answer detailed questions for this story. In her testimony, she would allege that by their “abuse,” Szymanski and Koury had prevented her from doing her job.
The machines
According to the testimony by the Navy officers, Szymanski gave Palmer weekly job-counseling sessions, without success. Meantime, after work, the major was becoming the topic of discussion and criticism from other officers.Then something else began to catch the attention of Koury and Szymanski. It seemed to them that Palmer was reacting to things that were said about her at the end of the day, when she wasn’t around.
After they criticized the amount of time she spent out of the office, her work schedule was removed the next day from the wall, they testified.
When they commented that she had left a temporary license tag taped to the rear window of her new car for more than six months, the paper tag was replaced the following day with a metal plate.
After discussing an overdue assignment they had given her, the document was placed the next morning on Szymanski’s desk.
They began to suspect she might be overhearing their conversations in some way, perhaps by using a recording device.
If Palmer secretly had used a recording device in the top-secret facility, that would be a security violation. Koury took his concerns to the chief of security, Air Force Lt. Col. Joel Baker. But Baker told him there was nothing he could do unless Koury actually found a recording device.
It was several weeks later, while Koury and Szymanski were refurbishing the Reserve Management Office, that they accidentally damaged an answering machine. They installed a new one from storage.
According to the instructions that came with the machine, it had a built-in remote-monitoring function. The feature allows a caller who has the machine’s remote access code and knows the codes needed for remote operation to listen for 30 seconds at a time to activity in the vicinity of the answering machine.
“That’s the recorder!” Koury remembers saying.
Regardless of whether the inexpensive, off-the-shelf digital answering machines actually had ever been used as Koury suspected, something Palmer denied in later testimony, he saw them as an undetected ongoing security problem within the top-secret areas of CentCom.
Someone in the leadership had approved installation of the machines without clearing it with security — standard protocol in top-secret areas.
An estimated 50-100 of these potential eavesdropping devices were sitting on desks throughout the Intelligence Directorate, where intelligence in the volatile Middle East is discussed daily. If unfriendly nations somehow had learned of the monitoring function, they potentially could have hacked into the phone system and listened to conversations, Koury and Szymanski and other officers said.
“There could have been any number of scenarios,” Szymanski said.
Monitoring problems
The machines were the latest of a number of worrisome problems, Koury, Szymanski and several other officers say.Central Command was short of active-duty staff in the key area of satellite imagery analysis. The staff shortage made it impossible to properly examine the mountains of intelligence data coming in, these officers say. They allege the situation endangered U.S. operations in the Middle East.
Security, too, was short of personnel, they claim.
When confronted, senior leaders downplayed the deficiencies, the officers say. They allege the CentCom leadership feared that admitting the problems would cause their superiors to see them as less competent than their predecessors.
The officers say the issues they saw have had a direct bearing on intelligence problems concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Without the proper fusion of agents, imagery, and other intelligence people working together to paint a composite picture of Iraq’s capabilities, top military officers would have had to make a more subjective call on the existence and extent of the weapons, several former intelligence officers say. That information, or its lack, could have made its way into the Bush administration’s decision for war.
The officers say when they raised the problems, they encountered systemic cronyism at Central Command. Leaders who were angling for promotions often ignored problems, they allege. The entire scenario was so worrisome, sources close to the situation say, that it prompted the recent complaint of the 60 officers and employees.
Some like Koury and Szymanski, want Congress to investigate the allegations of the complaint. Allowing it to go through the usual military channels would only end in the complaint being quashed, or worse, the officers say.
It could turn out, they say, the way Koury and Szymansky’s earlier complaints about Palmer’s missing reservists and the answering machines turned out.
Stars and stripes
When Koury and Szymanski took their discovery of the monitors and the missing reservists to the senior leadership’s attention, they themselves were investigated and eventually were reassigned. The leadership brought Koury up on charges.What transpired was recorded in the military’s investigation, which included the written depositions of 27 officers, including the leadership.
The Anniston Star obtained a copy of the investigation through sources close to the events.
Much of the testimony supports Koury and Szymanski’s claim that Palmer left her Army Reserve positions unfilled, something the major herself doesn’t deny in her testimony.
The record also shows that the leadership chose not to follow up the discovery of the monitors with an assessment of the potential damage, if any, that the devices might have caused national security. Such an assessment is required in cases of serious security violations, according to the Intelligence Directorate’s security manual.
Koury and other officers say the answering machines were unplugged after the discovery of the monitoring capability, but remained in the buildings for three more months until Commander-in-Chief Gen. Anthony Zinni heard about the matter.
After that, the machines got yanked.
In testimony, members of the senior leadership admitted planning the investigation of Koury and Szymanski and Palmer in an effort to have them removed.
Palmer later was promoted to lieutenant colonel. She now works for the Army Reserve inspector general’s office in Atlanta.
The senior officials who participated in the investigation and ultimate removal of Koury and Szymanski include the former director of intelligence, Army Brig. Gen. Keith Alexander; the former chief of the Intelligence Directorate’s Resources Division, Air Force Col. Stanley Silverman; and the former deputy chief of that division, John Ward.
Koury and Szymanski say their superiors retaliated against them to avoid the embarrassment of their discoveries, which they say could have harmed the officers’ promote-ability.
Alexander now runs the Army’s elite Intelligence and Security Command, which conducts intelligence for military commanders and national decision-makers.
Silverman retired from the military and is back at Central Command as a contractor, sources say.
Ward has become chief of his division.
Koury, who is now in the inactive Reserve, and Szymanski, who was reassigned to a new base, say their once-stellar military careers have been destroyed.
Their superiors did not respond to repeated phone calls and e-mails seeking comment for this story.
A failed plan
Koury, a fit man with thick black hair and a polite manner, repeatedly has asked Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, and Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, to investigate his allegations against the senior leadership, without results.Shelby’s spokeswoman, Andrea Andrews, said no one in the senator’s office could remember Koury. At a Calhoun County Chamber of Commerce meeting before the war, Shelby, who is the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he didn’t remember the captain either, but he added that if Koury’s allegations have merit, they should be looked into.
Sessions’ spokesman, Mike Brumas, did remember Koury. On Oct 27, 1999, Sessions, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen and the Joint Chiefs of Staff inspector general to investigate Koury’s allegations that the senior leadership ignored security problems and retaliated against him.
But these offices forwarded Sessions’ request to the Department of Defense inspector general’s office. That office already had investigated Koury’s allegations, a the captain’s request, and had found his charges did not have merit.
Correspondence from that office dated May 17, 2000, reveals it based its conclusions in large part on a previous investigation of Koury by Central Command’s senior leadership — the same investigation that got him fired and prompted his allegations of retaliation in the first place.
A representative for the Department of Defense inspector general’s office, Stephen Anthony, refused to comment on Koury’s case for this story, citing confidentiality.
“I know these findings are not what you desired,” Sessions’ subsequent reply to Koury read, “but I have great faith in the integrity of the Joint Staff, and believe your allegations were thoroughly reviewed.”
Koury and Szymanski say the rigid authoritarianism and protective nature of the military have kept their allegations from being heard. Meanwhile, they and 58 other officers claim the problems at Central Command have continued.
