"Something About This Firing Doesn’t Add Up"

2015-08-20T14:32:02-04:00

From: JQ Public Blog

On February 4th of this year, Lt. Col. Lance Annicelli’s boss recommended that the squadron he was commanding be given annual recognition for its superior performance under his leadership. Eight days later, she temporarily suspended Annicelli from command. She told him he would be investigated because of specific, egregious allegations about his conduct. She didn’t tell him what those allegations were or who made them. She assured him he’d be put back in command if the allegations were unfounded.

The next day, his boss’s boss made the temporary firing permanent. The mysterious allegations were promptly broadened into a vague, accusation not emanating from a person but from the chain of command itself. An ex post investigation was conducted to cement the legitimacy of the decision. Annicelli was isolated and prohibited from speaking with his former teammates. This also prevented him from confronting and defending against the supposed allegations. His lawyer’s efforts to generate character references on his behalf drew harassing fire from the chain of command and its legal apparatus.

Unable to resist, Annicelli was doomed to professional ruin on the basis of an allegation alone, and he’s never even been told who made it or what he was claimed to have done. After two decades of committed service, he wasn’t even afforded the basic dignity of a fair process. He was promptly abandoned at the whim of a colonel whose decision couldn’t be questioned without embarrassing the chain of command that empowered him. The 2-star general entrusted with a sacred form of appellate authority over Annicelli’s case ignored his valid pleas concerning process deficiencies, conflicts of interest, and obvious lies told by his supervisors to cover the tracks of their specious decision. Just like that, a career was over. This sort of thing has become too common in today’s Air Force, and senior leaders aren’t doing anything to rein it in.

Through silence and inaction, the Air Force is encouraging and even incentivizing abuse of power. Commanders are governed by no meaningful checks or limits on their use of administrative sanctions such as relief, reprimand, and downgraded performance reports. Unlike courts-martial and nonjudicial punishment proceedings, firings and reprimands are not subject to meaningful standards of evidence or process safeguards. This has created a massive punishment loophole for power addicts to enforce not just the rules, but their own stylistic preferences, through a fascist doctrine of total obedience and obliterated agency. The chain of command holds sole authority over whether to question its own decisions, creating a crippling power imbalance and an endemic conflict of interest that leads to corrupted outcomes. It also strangles dissent, robbing the Air Force of a badly needed internal discussion among leaders.

But this doesn’t prevent the mind-boggling lunacy of the process from being exposed and critically questioned. In Annicelli’s case, the velocity and violence with which he went from a commander to the career scrap heap raises huge questions about how absolute the power one Air Force commander exercises over the fate of another should be, and how the system should respond when power is wielded without reasonable or noticeably ethical constraint.

To illustrate the terrain of these questions, let’s take a look at Annicelli’s Promotion Recommendation Form, signed in 2014.

The Air Force was prepared to promote this officer to Colonel two years early, and as this document reflects, there was plenty of foundation for it. His record was a two-decade honor roll of spotless excellence. Had he registered a few high marks here and there but not built a continuous streak, it might be reasonable to think he was just skilled at winning over some bosses but not truly superb enough to impress them all. But a record of near-universal #1 stratifications, constant awards, and recognition at the highest levels of the service speaks to consistency, adaptability, and steady growth in performance over the course of many years. This evidence debunks pet theories about Annicelli’s firing that rely on him secretly being a poor performer, untested leader, or simply hard to get along with.

When you bracket those pet theories and try to square the circle created by his abrupt sacking, there are basically three possible theories.

The first is that Lance Annicelli somehow managed to cultivate and conceal a toxic persona horrific enough to get him fired, but effectively obscured until it suddenly boiled over in the period of eight days, acidic enough to instantly melt the bond of trust and confidence he had clearly established with his boss before that day.

To the extent anyone entertains this theory, it’s a massive indictment of the Air Force’s developmental process. If it’s possible to bring an officer to the brink of O-6 and have that person pushed energetically for early promotion into the senior ranks without the system taking notice of lurking toxicity so severe it necessitates such swift and severe consequences, the system itself is not to be trusted and must be fundamentally re-thought. Paradoxically, this means the system’s own indictment of itself in the form of a questionable firing should not be trusted either, because it was undertaken by officers raised in the same system, themselves potentially riddled with unseen flaws of character despite their awesome biographies.

But this isn’t a promising theory. It stretches plausibility. While it’s possible for a caustic personality to escape the notice of an aloof supervisor or two, fooling a career’s worth of bosses is unlikely, especially in an Air Force increasingly seized with dual fixations on micromanagement and perfection.

The second theory is that sometime between February 4th and February 12th, Lance Annicelli did something so severely wrong that it necessitated upending two decades of proven worth to the organization, yet wasn’t bad enough to get him court-martialed, offered nonjudicial punishment, or even bad enough to make it into either a formal allegation or an investigative record. This theory bears no credence, and to give it any would be to license an unacceptable betrayal of basic process and fairness. The chain of command, as the empowered party in situations like these, is entitled only to the presumptions it is willing to publicly support.

A third theory is more promising. It’s possible that Annicelli’s boss, Col. Jody Ocker, made a mistake, and had that mistake compounded by an impulsive decision by her boss, Col. Doug Lee.

Annicelli had taken command of a troubled unit and had been working hard to restore discipline and morale, starting with standards. He was making changes, acting boldly in some cases. He brought sharp elbows to the task, as we would expect. This was causing some grumbling among his senior NCOs and junior officers. Those complaints were reaching Ocker’s ears, though there is no evidence she ever did anything to peel them apart and distinguish rumor from actionable fact. Given all this, it’s possible that in early February, she found herself entertaining ambivalence about Annicelli and accordingly misjudged his headstrong leadership for abuse.

Her sparing degree of prior command experience would support the idea that Ocker could have misplayed the situation, failing to communicate sufficiently to genuinely understand, process, or correct what she was observing at the level of impression. It’s possible she grasped for the idea of an official investigation to proxy for the inability to sort out conflicting information, and it’s possible that she decided to sideline Annicelli temporarily while sorting things out.

If that was indeed her intent, it was quickly warped into something different by Col. Lee, who took it upon himself to make Annicelli’s relief permanent just a day later. There are indications Lee was looking for an opportunity to make an example of a wayward commander as an example to others. Perhaps Annicelli’s situation was just the opportunity he was awaiting, whether or not there was actually anything to it.

I’d love to be able to debunk this third idea, but neither Lee’s response to a prior media inquiry nor Ocker’s refusal to answer that query provide enough facts to falsify this idea, and the Air Force remains officially silent on the Annicelli debacle despite several Congressional and Inspector General complaints into the matter, along with the coverage here at JQP.

Of course, I’d love to be able to refrain from speculation altogether, and instead write an article analyzing the Air Force’s decision on the merits. But the Air Force doesn’t explain why it fires people, and that lack of explanation is the primary reason the merits, such as they are, should be given no weight. The Air Force is running a “trust us” system without doing the things necessary to deserve that trust. Oh by the way, honor and decency are still important despite the endless dictates of propaganda and political correctness. If a man’s career was committed and excellent enough to deserve the 2-star recommendation above, it deserves nothing less than a fulsome and dignified epitaph.

If the reason someone was fired can’t be explained in plain English, that person is entitled to have his or her job back. Or at least that’s how things should work.

http://www.jqpublicblog.com/something-about-this-firing-doesnt-add-up/

Response by SCPO David Lockwood made Aug 20 at 2015 2:38 PM

2015-08-20T14:38:03-04:00

Wow. Not right at all!

Response by MSG Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 20 at 2015 2:41 PM

2015-08-20T14:41:01-04:00

Every time I read something about this LTC, I continually feel he got the ramrod without any lubrication.

Response by LCDR Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 20 at 2015 2:50 PM

2015-08-20T14:50:54-04:00

Woah... I have got to be missing something else. Even if the "Reasons" are classified, a vague reason that explains a heck of a lot more could still be made public.

Response by MSgt Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 20 at 2015 3:08 PM

2015-08-20T15:08:54-04:00

This is something the Air Force is notorious for, but generally it is used to cover criminal behavior by the Officer in question instead of pursuing formal charges thus allowing the Officer and the Air Force to save face. So the second theory is actually very believable. However the fact that he is fighting it kind of makes it less likely, because if he had committed some crime his actions would bring it to light. I wonder if there was a climate assessment with some crazy allegations in it.

Response by Maj Mike Sciales made Aug 20 at 2015 3:13 PM

2015-08-20T15:13:46-04:00

Yes. This is the "goes all right until it goes all wrong" scenario. I looked at the time line and to make a guy go away that fast sounds like a Chapter 4, "Resignation in Lieu of Courts-Martial" also called "For the Good of the Service." In my experience as a career USAF JAG I saw a lot of guys go from 60 to 0 overnight, including a former immediate boss. How does it happen? Something comes to light, something that would reflect badly on the USAF, so in the early days, before things bubble up or out a person can work this. He'd been in place for over a year and had the recommendation 8 days before. For this to happen so fast, my best guess would be "sexual impropriety" of some sort. (This depends on how Puritanical the AF is this year) The next best would be some licensing issue. Medical and JAG have had embarrassing incidents of unlicensed people getting promoted and sex is always a player. If it's either of those, No LORs, no NJP, no investigation, just an admin action and gone.

Response by Sgt Aaron Kennedy, MS made Aug 20 at 2015 3:34 PM

2015-08-20T15:34:53-04:00

Unfortunately, Command like any Billet is a Privilege. Relief of Command is at the whim of the appointing authority. Doesn't make it right, just makes it a fact of life.

If a piece of information, true or not, comes to light which alters the perception of the appointment authority, then that's really all it takes. This isn't about Justice. This is about the Responsibility of Command at the senior-most level, and acting on all available information. Failure to act on available information makes one culpable for the crimes of your subordinates. As the old saying goes "failure to properly supervise..."

Response by SrA Daniel Hunter made Aug 20 at 2015 3:38 PM

2015-08-20T15:38:46-04:00

(Complete Speculation) Option four, Col. Jody Ocker had a romantic interest in Lt. Col. Lance Annicelli and was attempting to curry his favor. After making the February 4th recommendation she discovers he is not interested and so she sets out to sink him.

Response by MSgt Robert Pellam made Aug 20 at 2015 3:46 PM

2015-08-20T15:46:36-04:00

Okay, I agree with most everyone on here. But as far officers go, we don't know the whole story and it seems that major portions of it are being covered up. That in itself begs the question or questions of what really happened.

As far as AF leadership and even Military leadership goes. I have ranted about the lack leadership the Military Officer corps. seems to omit when things go wrong. Generals who commit major Fraud and waste are just asked to retire. Adultery is just a word that may mean retirement or may mean a quiet desk job. Senior Leadership marches to a different tune then the rest of the Military.

I have always understood its more political than military when you get past certain ranks. I just think its crap to hold the majority of a military to a degree of standards but have no qualm about breaking those standards yourself or even blatantly abusing the system with no repercussions except a possible news article in the Military Times, and a quiet send off.

I apologize for the Rant, thank you for listening.

Response by SSG (ret) William Martin made Aug 20 at 2015 5:02 PM

2015-08-20T17:02:19-04:00

This is what I have learned about complaints in the military:
1. The subject does not have a right to face the complainant (unless there is a court marshall and then the complainant can be called as a witness)
2. The CoC does not have to share the charges with the subject
3. The subject will suffer everything a true guilty person will suffer including and not limited to temporally or permanant loss of clearance, and removal from leadership position. Depending on the seriousness of the charge and MP involvement, a brief stay in a cell while being inprocessed is very possible.
4. From my experience, CoC does not like to look bad or lose so keeping the subject in the dark telling him or her not to investigate is a possibility.
5. The cases as founded defined: the complainant said it happened and therefore it happened and whatever the subject says is irrelevent.
6. If the complainant comes clean and admitts they made everything up, everyone goes back to work and the complainant will probably not be punished for lying and because the military does not want to look bad for punishing victims especially the U.S. Army.

Response by Maj Kim Patterson made Aug 20 at 2015 5:41 PM

2015-08-20T17:41:38-04:00

Something about Tailhook didn't add up, either...until details started coming to light from unofficial sources.

Response by SPC John Decker made Aug 20 at 2015 7:17 PM

2015-08-20T19:17:08-04:00

This sounds like it started with an error in judgement, and because of EGO, snowballed into a miscarriage of justice. As was said in the piece, without having all the facts, and being unable to get certain questions answered satisfactorily, the level of indignation this story seems to call for is impossible, other than to say the the U.S. Air Force needs to get its act together.

Response by TSgt Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 21 at 2015 3:18 AM

2015-08-21T03:18:22-04:00

I had a similar situation happen to me. Due to a false account of a conversation from an egotistical officer, an inaccurate perception of my performance was formed without gathering all the facts. My supervisor began to slander me to all leadership as quickly as possible. I attempted to plead my case to my Superintendent and First Sergeant but fell on deaf ears. My supervisor disseminated false information about me so effectively I began to notice people treating me differently within days. This situation ultimately resulted in my removal from my duty position for, and I quote, "Maybe you're not the right person for this position." Along with my speedy removal I was served an EPR with a rating that made me appear to be nothing short of poor NCO and a failure.