U.S. Central Command is investigating a 15-allegation complaint against current and former senior leaders of the command’s Intelligence Directorate, intelligence officers say.The complaint accuses CentCom’s former deputy director of intelligence, retired Air Force Col. Stanley Silverman, and the chief of the Intelligence Directorate’s support division, civilian official John Ward, of violating personnel practices and federal standards of conduct, mismanagement, unethical behavior and collusion, according to several intelligence officers who have been contacted by a command investigator, Air Force Col. Bob Scott.
Scott’s questions concerned mismanagement and inappropriate conduct, said one former Defense Intelligence Agency official, Victoria Brittain, who worked at CentCom for several years.
“I told him I had heard a lot of things indirectly from people I was sitting around,” she said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
The complaint alleges that the behaviors of these senior leaders have been a detriment to the Intelligence Directorate and the command as a whole, hurting the efficiency, health and morale of CentCom employees.
Sixty officers and employees of CentCom’s Intelligence Directorate are listed as witnesses to the actions alleged in the complaint, which a group of senior military officers delivered to directorate leaders last April.
The 60 include two top-ranking civilian executives in the Defense Intelligence Agency and more than a dozen colonels, captains and commanders who worked at or with the command’s Intelligence Directorate.
Ward refused to comment on the allegations, referring The Star to the command’s public affairs office.
Silverman was out of the country and could not be reached for comment.
A command spokesman, Air Force Maj. Mike Escudie, would not comment on the investigation.
“When allegations of misconduct are received by headquarters CentCom they are properly acted upon,” he said. “It is inappropriate to comment on any rumors or possible allegations.”
The Anniston Star first reported on the complaint in a July series on intelligence and security lapses at CentCom, Tampa headquarters for U.S. forces in the Middle East.
The Star’s four-part series focused on the case of a local Navy Reserve captain and two other intelligence officers who allege their superiors retaliated against them for bringing several intelligence problems to light.
The officers, Chris Koury of Weaver; Navy Cmdr. Rita Szymanski, who has since been reassigned to Strategic Command, at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb.; and Army Sgt. First Class Doraine Dorman, of Virginia, had discovered among other things that key intelligence positions at CentCom were short-staffed.
Koury says the satellite-imagery shop staff — the specialists who study infrared, radar and photo im-ages taken by satellite of thousands of sites in the Middle East — was depleted by nearly 50 percent.
He and the others say they believe the manpower problem added to the void in intelligence on ter-rorist activities and weapons of mass destruction in the years leading up to the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan.
In addition, Koury and the other officers discovered that the answering machines in use at Cent-Com’s intelligence center could act as remote room-monitors, accessible worldwide with a simple telephone call.
They allege their supervisors, including Silverman and Ward, moved to oust the officers after they reported their concerns to them. Koury and Szymanski sought whistleblower protection, which the Department of Defense temporarily granted while reviewing their accusations.
After receiving information from the two officers’ superiors — the same accused of taking reprisals against them — the Defense Department’s inspector general declined to grant them permanent protection. Shortly after, they and Dorman were removed from command.
Koury and Szymanski later joined the 60 witnesses in the complaint. Dorman, who never sought protection, did not.
In a related issue, the Department of Defense inspector general recently began re-examining the captain’s accusations of retaliation. Third District Congressman Mike Rogers, R-Anniston, requested the review.
That investigation is pending.
To learn more about this story or to read The Star’s original series, “Flawed Intelligence.”
