Capt. Chris Koury and Cmdr. Rita Szymanski for months were looking forward to the outcome of Central Command’s investigation.They had asked the leadership to look into their discoveries of crippling vacancies in the Army reserves and of answering machines — installed in top-secret areas — that could be used as remote-controlled eavesdropping devices.
But the results of the investigation brought a profound shock.
They themselves had been the investigation’s focus.
The directorate’s chief of operations produced a "summary of findings" for the leadership that was as detailed as it was selective in presenting witnesses’ testimony.
Marine Corps Col. J.T. Coggin’s report ran eight pages. It relied heavily on a few statements critical of Koury and Szymanski, mainly those of their new superiors, the senior leaders of the Resources Division: Chief Stanley Silverman, Deputy Chief John Ward (who had recently been promoted), and Navy Cmdr. Sandra Brooks (Ward’s predecessor).
The division recently had taken over the Reserve Management Office, which Szymanski supervised.
The officer who was the supposed focus of the investigation, Maj. Janice Palmer, worked in the same office and managed the directorate’s Army Reserve program for Szymanski. But she had been spending much of her time participating in beauty pageants and other activities at the Tampa Bay Tall ’n’ Terrific Club, and her work was suffering, many officers testified.
Coggin’s report largely ignored testimony from numerous officers who wrote that Palmer had failed to give her reservists assignments, that her files were so poorly kept they had to be reorganized several times by others at the request of her boss, Szymanski.
Coggin wrote instead that "no firm evidence is available" that Palmer had misused her time on the job. A "spot inspection" of Palmer’s files weeks after the investigation began demonstrated her records were "not as efficient" as those of the other services, "but not so bad as to consider formal charges of dereliction of duty," he wrote.
Szymanski, on the other hand, should not have put "repeated pressure" on Palmer about her alleged mismanagement, Coggin wrote. Koury should not have "continued to insert himself" into the situation at all, he wrote.
Coggin and the Security Division chief, Air Force Lt. Col. Joel Baker, were in complete agreement on the leadership’s handling of the answering-machine monitors. Both wrote that no damage assessment was required.
Baker testified that immediately after Koury told him about the existence of the monitors, he flashed an e-mail throughout the directorate, telling employees to disconnect the machines. Then he conducted a walk-through inspection of the Reserve Management Office and the other facilities to make sure that the order had been obeyed and there were no other security violations. After that, he considered the matter closed.
"I felt unauthorized disclosure of SCI (sensitive compartmented information), or any classified information for that matter, from within the confines of the RMO was highly unlikely," Baker wrote. "Feeling that no security violation had occurred, I did not call for an investigation."
Turnabout
On July 9, 1999, Central Command’s director of intelligence, Brig. Gen. Keith Alexander, and other members of the senior leadership, arrived at a decision in the investigation.
They decided to bring charges against Koury.
The official letter charged Koury with conduct unbecoming of an officer for "inserting himself" into the chain of command, and fraternization.
Once Koury found a copy of the investigation, he understood why. Written like a bull’s eye across the first page were the leadership’s initial instructions to Coggin.
"Determine how Captain Koury came to make conclusions that prompted the allegations.
"Who provided him with information?
"What action did he take?
"Who did he inform?
The orders were signed by the deputy intelligence director, but Silverman admitted to writing them. He testified to consulting the base judge advocate general and Ward beforehand.
Brooks testified that she and Silverman discussed what to do about the "growing Reserve issues" just before she herself left for a new command.
"I recommended that the first/easiest to go should be Capt. Koury, and I recommended that occur soonest," she wrote.
Koury soon discovered that Ward and Coggin themselves had a history. According to military records, they had worked together supervising the earlier construction and renovation plans of the base Joint Intelligence Center, the division of the Intelligence Directorate primarily responsible for intelligence.
The punishment
Koury was facing an admiral’s mast, a non-judicial military proceeding in which a superior officer decides innocence or guilt, and if necessary, punishment. It probably would have been a slap on the wrist, he was told. But it would have tarnished his previously stellar career.
There was an alternative. Koury could opt to fight the charges in a court martial, his legal advisor, Todd Wynkoop, told him. The felony conviction was punishable by up to five years in prison.
Two days later, Koury came down with his own decision: He chose to fight.
In the end, Koury’s decision didn’t matter. Command never followed through with the prosecution. If it had, Koury’s allegations about security breaches and mismanagement at Central Command would have been aired before other officers in court, Wynkoop said in a phone interview.
"Even if they (the leadership) tried to limit access (to the trial), there would have been at least five captains up there listening to the allegations that superiors at CentCom (Central Command) were screwing up security at CentCom, and I think that they were aware of that," he said.
Wynkoop, who now has a legal practice in Washington, D.C, said that in the six years he served as senior counsel with Navy Legal Service Office Southeast, defending high-ranking officers from serious accusations, he never saw a case like Koury’s.
The charges against Koury were "ridiculous," Wynkoop said. "I don’t recall any Navy captain even being sent to an admiral’s mast for those types of charges. I would characterize them as very unusual."
The replacements
Shortly after the leadership’s investigation of Koury and Szymanski began, Palmer was pulled from the Reserve Management Office and shuttled off to a new assignment on base. Sgt. 1st Class Doraine Dorman took her place.
Two weeks later, on the same day the command leadership brought charges against Koury, Dorman went to see then-Resources Division Chief Silverman. Dorman, a former Hillsborough County, Fla., sheriff’s detective brought a notebook cataloguing 33 charges against Palmer, which she had compiled after an audit of the major’s files.
Dorman alleged that, among other things, Palmer used her position to gain favors from reservists. Palmer allegedly paid a reservist for drills he did not attend and, in another case, received a discount airline ticket, taking the cost out of a reservist’s drill pay. Szymanski kept a copy of the receipt.
But Silverman asked Dorman to keep her allegations between them, Dorman told The Star.
"That’s when I knew something was up," she said.
Three months later, in October 1999, the leadership found Dorman unfit for active duty.
According to a letter from the command inspector general’s office to the base personnel director, Dorman had undergone a kidney transplant 10 years earlier, and was on the anti-rejection medication cyclosporin.
Attached to the letter was a medical fitness report dated July 21, 1999 — 12 days after her meeting with Silverman. Much of the information in the report was taken from a checkup Dorman had the year before. Apparently, however, the doctor who conducted that examination did not consider Dorman unfit for military service.
On the same day that personnel got the letter, Security Chief Baker received a memo with instructions regarding Dorman.
It was from Ward.
Dorman’s orders were terminated, it said, effective immediately.
"Please be cognizant of the fact that SFC Dorman’s CENTCOM J2 SCI security badge has not yet been confiscated," Ward wrote. "Please take possession of the SCI security badge and treat Ms. Dorman as a civilian requiring escort."
Dorman, 50, says the Army had long ago granted her a special medical exemption because of her unique qualifications. She not only had been Hillsborough County’s first female warrant officer, but she also held two doctoral degrees, in criminal justice administration and child psychology.
Since her discharge after Command alleged she falsified her medical condition to enlist, Dorman says she hasn’t been able to find work. She has no income, no pension, nothing to help her beat back the climbing medical bills that drain her of $2,400 a month. She says:
"And if I don’t get my medication, I die."
Loose ends
Not long after Dorman was discharged, Szymanski also received a letter from her superiors.
Gen. Alexander had lost confidence in her and wanted her removed immediately, his letter said. She says she was called into his office and told "to quietly leave command, just leave the command and quietly go away."
Command alleged she had knowingly failed to disclose Dorman’s medical condition, Szymanski recalled.
"I get this letter summarily kicking me out, telling me that I don’t have what it takes to be a leader," she said.
Her orders were terminated 20 months early, and she was reassigned. Now she works at Strategic Command, at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb.
"It’s unbelievable," she said. "The accusation was made, the interviews were done, and the person — being me — never got to speak."
Alexander declined to answer detailed questions for this story.
Syzmanski says she was punished for pursuing issues that would have been embarrassing to the senior leadership — or worse.
When word had spread that she and Koury were asking the senior leadership to look into their discoveries, others had started to come to them with their own stories of misconduct by senior officials. "It was like we opened Pandora’s box," she said.
Koury acquired 1,700 pages of contract documents that showed cost overruns and delays and a few potential security problems in the construction of the Joint Intelligence Center, which Ward and Coggin supervised.
"I go beyond being embarrassed," Szymanski said. "I go into the reason they (the leadership) did this. There was an undercurrent that a lot of people knew what was going on … And we were pursuing it further, by regulation …
"They were afraid we would uncover more than what we already knew. They didn’t want the string to be pulled on the burlap bag, that’s my take."
