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Military makes rare exception to grant leave for foe of veto
BY PHILIP DINE AND TERRY GANEY
Post-Dispatch
09/12/2003
A highly unusual exception to military rules was made so Missouri state Sen. Jon Dolan could get a six-day personal leave to return to Missouri from his Army National Guard duty in Cuba, his supervisor said Thursday.
Regulations say a newly deployed soldier must be on duty at least two months before getting a leave, and Dolan had spent only two weeks as a public affairs officer at Guantanamo Bay.
Dolan and his supervisor say no strings were pulled to get him out of military duty. Dolan, R-Lake Saint Louis, says he made his own arrangements - at a cost to him of $7,500 - to get back to Missouri to cast a key vote to override Gov. Bob Holden's veto of concealed-weapons legislation.
"Nothing exceptional whatsoever was done," Dolan said.
But the superior officer who gave him a six-day leave said she had made a highly unusual exception to military rules in his case.
"It's not something that happens often, and I have never seen it happen," said Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, chief of public affairs, an 18-year Army veteran and Dolan's boss. Hart was interviewed by telephone from Cuba.
Dolan, a major in the Missouri National Guard, has been on active duty in Cuba since Aug. 26. He leads a detachment that works with journalists who show up to cover the incarceration of suspected Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan.
Hart said she granted the exception given the importance of what Dolan wanted to do in Jefferson City. She said she believed her 23-member staff could get the job done without him.
"It is a one-time request," Hart said. "It will not happen again, I can assure you of that. He'll get back to soldiering, and we'll continue the mission here."
Hart and Pentagon officials said they had received no political pressure on behalf of Dolan and made the decision on the merits.
"None whatsoever," Hart said. "No one talked to me or my leadership. We did our homework, went to the state of Missouri Web site, which said that members have to be physically present there. We weren't going to just take one person's word."
Dolan said he flew a combination of commercial and charter flights from Cuba to Missouri. He said he made the decision to return after the House voted Wednesday to override Holden's veto on concealed weapons.
"I wanted to know I was needed because my mission, my family and my constituents are all equally important to me," Dolan said. "I'm not going to put one over the other."
A "service star" emblem, indicating a family member serving during wartime, hung on Dolan's desk in the Senate, and when he came in to the chamber, some people saluted him. There was also some levity.
"My hero!" said Sen. Harold Caskey, D-Butler and sponsor of the concealed-weapons bill.
After one lawmaker referred to him as general, Dolan said, "Not anymore. I'll be nothing after this."
A spokesman for Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., said that Missouri Republicans had asked him to intervene for Dolan but that he had turned them down.
David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, said the decision on the leave raises problems.
"Surely it has the impression of political pressure, and just for that reason, if I were the senator, I wouldn't have asked," said Segal, a consultant to the Pentagon and the Army on personnel issues. "That's the kind of thing the Guard should avoid."
At the Pentagon, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, whose area of responsibility - Southern Command - includes Guantanamo Bay, said she had no problem with the process.
"A commander on the ground has to weigh it out on a case-by-case basis, and I would never second-guess a commander on the ground. It's their decision," Burfeind said.
Burfeind said that as a legislator, Dolan was "in a unique situation," but that any member of the Guard could seek an exception. For practical reasons of travel, troops in Iraq or Afghanistan couldn't go home and back in a few days, she added.
Burfeind said people in the Guard or Reserves are in essence "holding two jobs. They're still kind of responsible for what's going on back at home. So they have a unique kind of challenge most people don't have to deal with."
P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, an expert in modern warfare and a former Pentagon official, said the "rare and controversial decision" raises questions.
"The question in my mind is, how do you set a precedent of which vote is OK to approve someone going back and which isn't, because surely there have got to be many votes," Singer said.
But Loren Thompson, chief operating officer at the Lexington Institute, a military think tank, defended the decision.
"I don't think removing one public affairs officer from Guantanamo is going to shake the foundations of national security. What he is doing in Missouri is at the core of the democratic system," Thompson said.
Lawrence Korb, who as assistant defense secretary under President Ronald Reagan handled personnel issues at the Pentagon, said the Dolan case raises a bigger issue. "People in elected office should not be in the Guard or Reserve," Korb said.
"You can't have both. If he is in there and he gets called up, he ought to resign his seat. When you join the Guard or Reserve, you join the military, and that's got to be your highest priority."
Reporter Philip Dine
E-mail:
[email protected]
Phone: 202-298-6880
Reporter Terry Ganey
E-mail:
[email protected]
Phone: 573-635-6178
