Army Four Star General Fired After Intervening in Command Selection Process

I really think a number of senior Army leaders did not initially push back on General Hamilton’s attempts to manipulate the command selection process because they did not want to be accused of being racist. Clearly General Hamilton was playing the race card in his effort to get this lieutenant colonel a command:

But the four-star general spent about a month lobbying for the lieutenant colonel, despite deficient performance on the new command selection boards. The lobbying began before her board, when Hamilton made references to panel judges — a trio of two-star generals — that he knew the lieutenant colonel they would be reviewing.

Hamilton also reached out to an adviser at the Army Talent Management Task Force and the head of the Army’s BCAP for documents related to the lieutenant colonel’s assessment.

That lobbying was intense enough that Col. Robert O’Brien, head of the Army’s Command Assessment Program, wrote a memo detailing Hamilton’s effort, Military.com reported.

Both Hamilton and the former subordinate are Black, which Hamilton said has been a factor in mentoring the officer. In an Aug. 16, 2024, letter that he wrote to Wormuth about the battalion commander selection process, he said the new command selection method “fails to account for the psychological effects that systemic bias, discrimination, and overt racism can have on prospective officers.”

Army Times

What is even worse is that the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army even ended up giving in to General Hamilton’s lobbying for this lieutenant colonel to be on the command list even though she failed the selection process twice and being in the bottom 1%:

The lieutenant colonel scored in the bottom 1% out of about 800 candidates for command, failing the initial BCAP panel in a 0-5 vote after being found to be an “ineffective” leader.

Military.com

The BCAP panel interviews are done without the evaluators seeing the officer and all names are removed from reports so they can’t see the persons race. Yet General Hamilton was still claiming racism in the selection process. Also of interest was that this lieutenant colonel received a legion of merit as a major which I have never seen or even heard of before. A legion of mertit award usually goes to a Colonel after a successful brigade command or senior staff position. That should of been a red flag there.

The investigation into Hamilton did find he had an overly close relationship with the lieutenant colonel, but could not prove a sexual relationship. These false claims of racism has now done significant damage to the Army’s attempt to create as fair as possible system to select commanders in its attempt to stop any perceived racism in the command selection process. Fortunately an anonymous whistleblower came forward to the IG to call out this inappropriate conduct because if they hadn’t this unfit lieutenant colonel would have been commanding troops.