User talk:Morinao: Difference between revisions

I want to say amazing job on the lists of 4 star generals. It inspired me to come back for a while to wikipedia and try to fill in some of the red links. --Nobunaga24 23:49, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Morinao. You are off to such a great start on the article Austin M. Knight that it may qualify to appear on Wikipedia's Main Page under the Did you know... section. The Main Page gets about 4,000,000 hits per day and appearing on the Main Page may help bring publicity and assistance to the article. However, there is a five day from article creation window for Did you know... nominations. Before five days pass from the date the article was created and if you haven't already done so, please consider nominating the article to appear on the Main Page by posting a nomination at Did you know suggestions. If you do nominate the article for DYK, please cross out the article name on the "Good" articles proposed by bot list. Also, don't forget to keep checking back at Did you know suggestions for comments regarding your nomination. Again, great job on the article. -- JayHenry 20:28, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On July 25, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Austin M. Knight, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Hi Morinao. You are off to such a great start on the article Louis R. de Steiguer that it may qualify to appear on Wikipedia's Main Page under the Did you know... section. The Main Page gets about 4,000,000 hits per day and appearing on the Main Page may help bring publicity and assistance to the article. However, there is a five day from article creation window for Did you know... nominations. Before five days pass from the date the article was created and if you haven't already done so, please consider nominating the article to appear on the Main Page by posting a nomination at Did you know suggestions. If you do nominate the article for DYK, please cross out the article name on the "Good" articles proposed by bot list. Also, don't forget to keep checking back at Did you know suggestions for comments regarding your nomination. Again, great job on the article. -- Jreferee ^(Talk) 17:08, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On 31 July, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Louis R. de Steiguer, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

On August 29, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Harry D. Felt, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

I had never seen that source before. Already found three pics of generals I had looked everywhere for, uploaded them a little bit ago. Haven't found the oral histories yet, but still searching. I was reaching the point on some of these guys of just writing "XXXX was a US Army general who commanded XXXX" and hoping someone else could fill in the blanks. The Air Force has a much better system of archiving general officer bios and pics.--Nobunaga24 04:00, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I did get, thru wiki email, a letter from an associate of Warner's who wanted to create the article on him. I never got around to replying, but did create the article after reading the email. I think perhaps it might be the same person, or perhaps even the good general himself.--Nobunaga24 22:50, 13 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for writing Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army. I expanded and added references to the article. Daniel Bush 06:58, 23 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a little late saying "thanks" for you saying "congratulations." I'll take that as a barnstar/certificate of appreciation/Wikipedia Distinguished Service Medal. And thanks for your contributions to military history articles. Just out of curiosity, what is your military background? I don't know if I'll be around to reply, but if you answer in the next few days, I might see it. I'm retiring for a second time...alas, I have become exhausted in my personal life, and have come to feel this is just one more boulder around my neck. I did what I set out to do, which was to complete or start all the U.S. Army four star general articles.--Nobunaga24 03:07, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On 18 October, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Barksdale Hamlett, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

On 20 October, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Clarence S. Williams, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

On October 22, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Richard H. Jackson, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Thanks for your contributions! Nishkid64 (talk) 21:10, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On October 23, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Charles P. Snyder (admiral), which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Thanks for your contributions! Nishkid64 (talk) 03:38, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On November 1, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Louis McCoy Nulton, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

		The DYK Medal
		Awarded by this editor for a Did You Know contribution that appeared on the main page, a hook that was well written, referenced, and displayed irony, a fact related to a distinguishing characteristic of the subject of the article, or other notable property. AwardBot 15:02, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your response to my question at Talk:General_(United_States)#Missing_information. Note my response to your response. - Shaheenjim 18:29, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On Talk:General (United States) you said, "After the war, both March and Bliss reverted to their permanent ranks of major general when the World War I emergency legislation expired." Maybe this is a dumb question and I'm missing something obvious, but where did you get that information? I couldn't find it in the introduction to Commanding Generals or in its section on Bliss. What was the exact url of the specific page that said that, and what was the exact quote? - Shaheenjim 04:08, 3 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On Talk:General (United States) you said, "After the war, both March and Bliss reverted to their permanent ranks of major general when the World War I emergency legislation expired, but Pershing was advanced to General of the Armies." At first I interpreted that to mean that Pershing was advanced to General of the Armies at the same time that March and Bliss reverted to Major General (or after they reverted). But it looks like Pershing was promoted to General of the Armies on September 3, 1919, and March didn't revert to Major General until June 30, 1920. That would mean that the army had a Lieutenant General, a General, and a General of the Armies all at the same time. Would you confirm that for me? Thanks. - Shaheenjim 16:03, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help on Talk:General (United States). I added the info you gave me on the talk page to the article. Note my new questions at Talk:General (United States)#Missing information 2 and Talk:Chief of Staff of the United States Army. The question at that second link implies a contradiction to your earlier statement on Talk:General (United States) when you said, "after 1906 the highest rank was again major general." - Shaheenjim 19:56, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for answering my question at Talk:Chief of Staff of the United States Army. How about my questions at Talk:General (United States)#Missing information 2? Do you know the answer to them? - Shaheenjim 22:19, 5 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history we had been talking about where to put the history of Generals in the US. People are now having that same conversation again at Talk:General_of_the_Armies#Pershing. I don't know why they insist on having the same conversation in multiple places, but that's not up to me. Anyway, I invite you to reaffirm your position there. - Shaheenjim 02:14, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On 11 December, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article John H. Sides, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

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On 24 January, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Charles D. Griffin, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

While I greatly appreciate your contibutions to the List of United States four-star officers‎ in updating pending four-star nominations, but isn't it jumping the gun with putting LTG Martin Dempsey and LTG Raymond T. Odierno names in the List of United States Army four-star generals? They have yet to be confirmed by the Senate as well as assumed the nominated assignments. Neovu79 (talk) 04:11, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

		The Minor Barnstar
		For your contibutions in keeping the List of United States four-star officers up to date as well as its corresponding pages. Neovu79 (talk) 08:13, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! - Morinao (talk) 17:24, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for uploading Image:United States Fleet flag officers, 1934.jpg. A machine-controlled robot account noticed that you also uploaded the same image under the name Image:H76413.jpg. The copy called Image:H76413.jpg has been marked for speedy deletion since it is redundant. If this sounds okay to you, there is no need for you to take any action.

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On 23 February, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Frank H. Brumby, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

On 25 February, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Maurice E. Curts, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

On 18 March, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Edward C. Kalbfus, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

On 29 March, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Lynde D. McCormick, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

The Navy's official website still lists ADM Henry G. Ulrich III as an active officer as of March 6 2008. Should we re-add him back to the List of United States four-star officers? Neovu79 (talk) 04:07, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with that. Language to address the offices would be beneficial. However, since List of United States four-star officers is a broad statement in itself, would it be favorable to move the article to List of United States four-star offices? Let me know that you thank. :-) Neovu79 (talk) 19:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What about List of United States four-star positions? Neovu79 (talk) 20:38, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've been think about it for a while now, what do you thing about List of active duty United States four-star officers? Neovu79 (talk) 05:55, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

After looking it up, hyphen would not be gramatically correct four active duty. I have made a requested move from List of United States four-star officers to List of active duty United States four-star officers. Feel free to add your imput in the discussion page. :-) Neovu79 (talk) 23:20, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I did think about doing the peer review first, but for reasons unknown to me I nominated it for feature list status directly. I can withdraw, or you can (bit busy for a couple of hours I think, so if you still see it up there later, just point whoever to this conversation and say it's being withdrawn). The peer review first would be helpful for sure.--Nobunaga24 (talk) 00:53, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Morinao. You have new messages at The ed17's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

On 25 September, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article John E. Gingrich, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Wow, I'm blown away to see an article so fully formed and so well-researched on New Pages. Hats off! TallNapoleon (talk) 06:08, 14 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, thanks, I've been working on it for a while now. It's a relief to finally be done! - Morinao (talk) 06:21, 14 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On 21 October, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article James L. Holloway, Jr., which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

On 3 January, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Stanley A. McChrystal, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Royalbroil 00:32, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nice article on this guy. He was once captain of the USS Rankin, a ship I served on and have written a lot about. We never could find too much about him, though. Your article has provided a LOT of additional information. Thanks. Lou Sander (talk) 02:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome! One time I tracked down his daughter and talked with her on the phone. She was a lot less helpful than your article -- I speculated that she and her dad didn't get along, or that maybe he wasn't home very often. BTW, his nickname among comrades was "Wally," and people thought highly of him when he was Captain of the Rankin. Lou Sander (talk) 15:46, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note to let you know your work is noticed and appreciated! My area of interest is the history of the United States Army between the Civil War and World War I, so after seeing List of major generals in the United States Regular Army before July 1, 1920, I just thought I should say howdy and leave a token of gratitude. Keep it up!! I hope to run into you again. Ejosse1 (talk) 18:37, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

		The Original Barnstar
		Thanks, Morinao, for expanding Wikipedia's coverage of the history of the United States Army by creating the article List of major generals in the United States Regular Army before July 1, 1920. Ejosse1 (talk) 18:37, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! It's great to see someone working on that period of the Army's history, which is way underrepresented not just in Wikipedia but in the literature in general, especially compared to the Civil War. I'm doing lieutenant generals next so I'm sure we'll continue to cross paths. -Morinao (talk) 20:53, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On May 11, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article List of major generals in the United States Regular Army before July 1, 1920, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Hello! Your submission of Frederick J. Horne at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 04:13, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On October 8, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Frederick J. Horne, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

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File:Frederick J Horne.png is now available as Commons:File:Frederick J Horne.png. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 12:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I did keep in mind what you wrote on formatting, before applying my changes, and I knew I was nitpicking. My previous changes were aimed mostly at readability of the code (articles get messed up by bold newcomers who couldn't understand the coding). I am pretty sure the code of that article can be significantly trimmed, but honestly, don't have much interest, and just applied quick changes. Great work with assembling all that information. Materialscientist (talk) 07:49, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am a newbie in the coding and learn by experience. (Same daily experience shows me that most tables are overloaded with code.) If I were seriously trying to trim the code, I would go to help desks, starting from "table" and other code templates used in the article. I have experience with helpdesk on images; it was quick and professional. In your table, you can use |<center>X|Y instead of |align=right|X  |Y with almost equal result. There should also be a tweak to avoid "valign=top", but I don't know that - formally, wikitables don't allow to specify vertical text alignment in the top line (though they do with horizontal). This is the best help on tables I know, but I feel it is by far incomplete. Materialscientist (talk) 08:38, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On November 4, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article List of lieutenant generals in the United States Army before 1960, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

I'm changing Arthur D. Struble's education for Military Academy to U.S. Naval Academy and his commissioning date to 1911. The link] from the Naval Historical Center from his bio page states as such. :-) Neovu79 (talk) 18:25, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is a better solution, and I really like this one. Good work! Thank you. Pdfpdf (talk) 00:24, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Morinao, I'm messaging you because I wanted to get your two-cents on this. I've read several articles that after Admiral Allen steps down as Commandant, he will remain at his presidentially appointed position of National Incident Commander, by the request of the Secretary of Homeland Security, to continue to oversee the oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico. Now the articles does not state that he leaves active duty. It does state that he will be working closely with Rear Admiral Mary Landry, USCG, who is the federal on-scene coordinator, and other federal agencies. At the end of this message are two articles that state as such. My question to you is, do we leave him in the List of active duty United States four-star officers even though his position is only for the cleanup effort, or remove him? Here are the acticles. [1] [2]. Neovu79 (talk) 13:46, 23 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, he's probably awaitng retirement, though I would say if he's still actively doing something pertaining to the government while in uniform instead of using up leave time while awaitng retirement, we should a least give him active-duty credit. Let me know what you think. :-) Neovu79 (talk) 02:03, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I've made the changes. :-) Neovu79 (talk) 22:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good question. My logic is why they would announce a transitional billet on a nomination announcement? Usually they are just reassignement there pending nomination. I do remember reading about him coming back to the Pentagon for a transitional assignment, but usually they don't send that to the Senate, am I right? Allen's nomination for isaf/usfor-a was announced with the announcement for Petraeus for CIA and Panetta for SECDEF here. 20:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

If they are forcing him to leave immediately as Deputy of CENTCOM, that would made a lot of sense. If not, that same law allows Allen to transition to a new billet within 60 days of leaving office. So do you suggest we leave his four-star nomination on the page until we find out further details on his special assistant assignment? I know it doesnt mean anything yet, but Allen's four-star nomination has yet to be sent to the Senate. Also, just an after thought, have you noticed a lot of Navy SEALs have moved into or going to be moved into a lot of top jobs already this year? You've got Joseph Kernan moving to deputy commander of USSOUTHCOM, William McRavan to commander of USSOCOM, and now Robert Harward to deputy commander of USCENTCOM. Neovu79 (talk) 21:32, 4 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As you have five or more DYK credits, you'll need to review another article at DYK before your nomination can be approved, per the QPQ rule: "Review requirement – Reviewing another editor's nomination is part of the nomination process for self-nominations. This makes it more likely that all nominations are reviewed in a timely manner. You may add your nomination before you undertake a review, but before it is approved, please review another editor's nomination and indicate at your nomination which you have reviewed, and (if you know how to do this) provide a link to the diff for your review. New nominators (those with fewer than five DYK credits) are exempt from this review requirement, as is the nomination of another editor's article. For help in learning the reviewing process, see the reviewers' guide." Once you've done this, just reply at the nomination page, stating what you have reviewed. Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter. Harrias ^talk 01:04, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the notification; that sounds too much like work. I've withdrawn the nomination. - Morinao (talk) 16:12, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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I did, yes. - Morinao (talk) 08:47, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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Thought this might interest you. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2017 that was signed into law will be reducing the total number of four-star positions by five as per Sec. 910 of the bill. Neovu79 (talk) 01:45, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the note -- I hadn't noticed this had been signed.

It looks like Sec. 910 was only in the House version, not the Senate version, and was dropped from the version that actually became law. The Senate originally wanted to cut four-star positions from 41 to 27 -- 3 per service plus the JCS and other joint commanders -- by the end of 2017! It looks like all the final law does is reduce the total number of general/flag officers by 10% by the end of 2022 (Sec. 501). The Secretary of Defense is supposed to submit a proposed grade distribution to Congress by April 1, which will specify how many four-stars to cut.

The House version specifically designated four-star component commanders for grade reduction, which seemed aimed at the 5 overseas four-stars (USARPAC, USPACFLT, USNAVEUR, PACAF, USAFE). I guess it could also have taken down the NORTHCOM/STRATCOM/TRANSCOM components (USFLTFORCOM, AFGSC, AFSPC, AMC), but probably the services would have just set up separate NAVNORTH/NAVSTRAT/etc. commands since they only had to give up 5 four-star positions. Reducing only the 5 overseas components would have shifted the service-specific (non-JCS, non-joint) Army-Navy-Air Force four-star balance from 5-5-8 to 4-3-6. Maybe no surprise that Senators McCain (Navy) and Reed (Army) didn't bite.... -- - Morinao (talk) 05:47, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's really the only position available and a process of elimination. In the past four years, the Army has refused to announce four-star positions that pertain to Army specific posts. The only reason the Army announce Chiefs and Vice Chiefs of Staff is because it's written in law. Army officers are announced for Joint Chiefs, combatant commands, and other joint positions, because it's the Department of Defense that announces them and not the Army. Out of all the Army specific four-star positions, General Perkins is the only one that has already submitted paperwork for retirement. He already extended his term by a year partly due to Congressional fighting over Presidential nominations. Also all other four-stars in the Army specific positions still have over one to two years left in their terms. All of the combatant commands, except for CYBERCOM, have commanders who still have over one or two years left in their terms. Also, LTG MacFarland has only been in his position as DCG of TRADOC for less than a year. The chances of the Army pulling a stunt similar to how General Dempsey went from Chief of Staff of the Army to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in less than a year is very rare. Neovu79 (talk) 01:14, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a reference link for you. Townsend expected to be new US Army TRADOC commander. Neovu79 (talk) 22:03, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. Thanks for the link. - Morinao (talk) 04:40, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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TRANSCOM? LOL, who would have thought? Usually, the Department of Defense announces their joint four-star assignments. Its normally the Department of the Army that doesn't announce their service specific four-star assignments. All this time, I thought LTG Lyons was up for an Army command since it wasn't announced. I pegged him to take over for GEN Abrams at FORSCOM since Abrams is on the shortlist to take over for GEN Brooks in Korea. Maybe the DoD was affraid to publicly announce that an Army general was taking over what is historically been an Air Force unified command. Neovu79 (talk) 21:45, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For an Army logistician like Lyons, I think it had to be either TRANSCOM or an early turnover at Army Materiel Command. All of the other Army, theater, and regional combatant commands have always gone to a combat-arms officer, and he doesn't have the background for any of the other functional combatant commands. Even the new AFC seems to be earmarked for an infantry officer with budget expertise.

What's remarkable is that Lyons isn't even a Transportation Corps officer. He was commissioned into the Ordnance Corps, and his entire career through major general was in logistics and sustainment. He didn't get his first real transportation job until becoming TRANSCOM deputy commander as a lieutenant general.

Even more remarkable, if for whatever reason you pass over the heir apparent at Air Mobility Command, then Lyons' two years at TRANSCOM might actually make him the most qualified three-star in any service in terms of experience as a general or flag officer. The Marines' Broadmeadow has been TRANSCOM deputy commander for less than a year. The Navy's TRANSCOM deputy commanders are all retired and their component commander is only a two-star.

Then you look at the Air Force, where the default succession would have been from 18th AF->AMC->TRANSCOM, meaning Tuck->Everhart->McDew. Instead, Everhart was passed over, and Tuck is backfilling Lyons as J4. Martinez seems to be the only other three-star with any significant airlift experience as a general officer, so maybe he is headed to AMC this year instead of Tuck. I suppose the Air Force could have just nominated another fighter pilot for TRANSCOM, like they did for AFGSC, but at that point you might as well pick an Army officer. - Morinao (talk) 04:11, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That is very interesting. Miller is a career reserve officer, and for a reserve officer be nominated for a fourth star extremely rare. There is only one known four-star position that follows a reserve officer pipeline and that's the Chief of the National Guard Bureau and currently General Lengyel still has two more years remaining and I haven't heard of him requesting for early retirement. U.S. Northern Command's deputy commander has been a reserve officer three-star since 2008 (also particularly from the National Guard), and there was once talk about making the commander of USNORTHCOM a four-star officer from the National Guard, but that never came to fruition. Even now, General O'Shaughnessy only assumed command of USNORTHCOM this past May, so that rules out that job going to Miller. Her career, staff positions and commands held, are pretty broad throughout her career, so I can't make heads or tails on what current-known four-star position she may be inheriting. My hunch is that they are opening up a new four-star position for her. I hope they announce something soon. It's killing my curiosity. Neovu79 (talk) 09:36, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

After doing a thorough review of the remaining four-star positions, so far I see one likely and two outside possibilities. Generals Ellen M. Pawlikowski and Carlton D. Everhart II and Admiral Kurt W. Tidd are all scheduled to retire. That makes U.S. Southern Command, Air Force Materiel Command and Air Mobility Command available. Out of the three, Air Mobility Command is the most likely destination for Miller, in my opinion. Miller has a lot of experience as a commander of reserve air forces, particularly in air mobility and airlift, which AMC encompasses. In the earlier part of her career, she's flown in a hand full of the aircraft AMC uses. But most importantly, a good portion of AMC is comprised of reserve airmen and Air National Guardsmen. Neovu79 (talk) 14:02, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's amazing, and why it's so much fun to track these things! I think it has to be AMC, with an outside chance at VCSAF if Wilson is retiring or moving on early. (She's Air Force Reserve, not Air National Guard, so wouldn't be eligible for CNGB.) It's remarkable that although she has a long career in air mobility, her entire general officer career has been in either the Joint Staff or AFRC, without any postings to AMC or 18 AF headquarters, in contrast to previous AMC commanders. It makes me wonder if someone thinks Scott AFB has gotten too insular, and needs a shakeup (especially after losing TRANSCOM to the Army). Also makes me wonder if Stayce Harris was being evaluated for the job when she was the first Reservist to be appointed AVCSAF a couple of years ago. - Morinao (talk) 18:03, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

From what I know, General Everhart and Miller are both proponents for the Air Force initiative of swapping aircraft parts between units within the AMC, Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard in order reduce the need of purchasing extra parts or aircraft as seen here. Everhart and Miller have been working very closely together to push this change through. I think that probably has something to do with her nomination (assuming she is slated to take over AMC). And with Everhart retiring, what better person is there to continue their efforts within AMC, than the person who aligns with your goals. So, I bet Everhart had a say in picking his successor. Neovu79 (talk) 20:40, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Everhart is listed to officially retire on November 1, 2018 as stated here, so this leads me strongly to believe that she's taking over for him. :) Neovu79 (talk) 18:50, 27 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Just thought you would want to know, that on August 13, 2018, President Trump signed into law, the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019. It includes the re-establishment of the U.S. Space Command by the end of 2018. It will temporarily be a sub-unified combatant command under U.S. Strategic Command, who's commander will be a four-star general or flag officer, until it can be separated as a full unified combatant command. Neovu79 (talk) 08:03, 19 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the note. Have you seen this WSJ article yet? Lots of four-star rumors. - Morinao (talk) 19:16, 20 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's very funny, because I just read Report: Air Force General May Be Next Head of Joint Chiefs just before looking at your response. It pretty much mirrors WSJ's report as well. I think Generals Goldfein and Hyten are fine choices for either Joint Chiefs assignments. But, the law states that the chairman and vice chairman, and cannot both be filled by officers at the same service branch at the same time. Goldfien would be at the top my list for chairman. It's sad that no Navy officer is being considered for any of these important positions, cause the Navy has been sorely under represented in joint four-star assignments the last 3-4 years. Neovu79 (talk) 22:25, 20 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well...Navy needs to focus on not crashing their ships anymore. They are lucky to have saved PACOM after Swift went down for that. Still, if Goldfein gets CJCS, you could imagine Hyten replacing him as CSAF -- he was apparently the runner up last time -- and a nuclear admiral like Foggo or Richard getting STRATCOM (which should open up next year anyway).

Well, I truly doubt that is the reason that the Navy has been passed over since those events all occurred within a year of Admiral Swift being considered for USINDOPACOM. The Navy has steadily seen a decline in four-star assignments since Admiral McRaven retired from USSOCOM and they continued to lose positions when Admiral Winnefeld stepped down as vice chairman, and then Admirals Gortney and Haney retiring in 2016. Since the retirement of Admiral Rogers this year, the Navy has seen a 1 to 5 loss ratio, with the lone gain being USSOUTHCOM with Admiral Kidd. Kidd is retiring this year and Vice Admiral Faller has been nominated to replace him. But, when you have the Army with about the to see an increase from 11 to 14 four-stars and the Air Force with 14, which by the way has 7000 less active-duty personnel than the Navy which has only 8, so can see that there is a disparity and imbalance of four-star officers. Neovu79 (talk) 06:22, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fun trivia I just noticed. The only time the entire JCS membership turned over in the same year is when Eisenhower replaced all the Truman chiefs upon entering office (except CMC, who wasn't a full JCS member yet). Since then, JCS appointments have been staggered, due to deaths, firings, SACEUR appointments, etc. But in 2007, the CNO was appointed CJCS, thereby synchronizing the CNO and CJCS schedules, since both typically serve four years. That triggered VCJCS to be replaced since he couldn't be in the same service as CJCS. Then the next two appointments synchronized CSA (2011) and CMC (2015) as well.

So if Goldfein is appointed CJCS in 2019 and synchronizes CSAF to the CJCS schedule, that means CJCS, VCJCS, CSA, CNO, CSAF, and CMC will all turn over in the same year -- the entire JCS except for CNGB. And this pattern will continue until one of them dies, gets fired, or quits (or someone decides it's bad practice for everyone to leave at the same time). - Morinao (talk) 00:09, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well at least starting in 2021, the vice chariman's synchronicity with the chairman's year of assumption will be fixed. That is when the vice chairman's term limited is increased from two year to four and when appointments will be staggered with a two-year gap between chairman and vice chairman appointments. So it is possible, that the next VCJS could serve up to 6 total years from 2019 to 2025 with this law change. Neovu79 (talk) 06:22, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Neovu79: Unfortunate that that didn't happen, since Mark Milley was nominated instead as a sign of protest by the president towards his secretary of defense. SuperWIKI (talk) 16:36, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've recently submitted a request to move National Guard of the United States to National Guard (United States), and I want to get your honest feedback on the subject. Neovu79 (talk) 16:25, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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		The Barnstar of Diligence
		For all the work you have done, attempting to find sources for General of the Armies. Skjoldbro (talk) 13:24, 23 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, this is SuperWIKI. I was hoping to get your help since you're better acquainted with the EasyTimeline format than I am. I ecently created this page, and I'm still running into code problems with the format. Seeing as you created the whole thing from scratch in the four-star articles (per my history searches), may I request your help to develop them (officeholders and position timelines) for the Army other service three-star pages in future? Much appreciated. SuperWIKI (talk) 01:40, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi SuperWIKI, I added position and officeholder timelines to the Army three-star general article. Unfortunately, I don't think I will have time to do the other services, so I hope these examples are clear enough for you to adapt, correct, and tweak as desired. - Morinao (talk) 04:12, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks anyway! If possible, I'll try to do them. If there's problems, I can always make an edit request. Thanks very much again! SuperWIKI (talk) 04:16, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, definitely helped. Thank you! SuperWIKI (talk) 06:14, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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I've been meaning to create three-star Army, Air Force, Marine, and Navy officers lists for as far back as 1960 (where your lists end) but the Congress website only lists nominations as far back as 1980. Wanted to ask how you get your hands on all the information you have that's not readily available, and ask if you have anything that I can access and use to that effect. SuperWIKI (talk) 06:13, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately my secret is to limit my scope to before the Officer Personnel Act of 1947, which is about when the quantity and quality of general/flag officer documentation starts to fall off a cliff. I only did the three-star lists up to 1960 because of tombstone promotions, and even then the Navy vice admiral list took a decade longer to assemble than the Army and Air Force lists.

For these twentieth-century lists, all I can suggest is to go through each year of the official registers, if available. For example, the 1970 Navy register is at least sorted by rank, not alphabetically: https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AMH/USN/Naval_Registers/ Even if a register is alphabetized by name, Acrobat Reader text search actually works decently well in a PDF, so you can often search for "VADM" or similar (which is what I wound up doing for the tombstone vice admirals).

You can also look for nominations pre-1980 in the Congressional Record. If I find a name or office, I usually also run a search in Google Books and newspapers.com (subscription), although both are less fruitful after the 1960s. - Morinao (talk) 08:05, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the advice! Also, I'm assuming that the reason you don't seem to make many edits is because it took you a decade to assemble the above list off-site? Looking forward to working with you in future, I believe we and Neovu79 share a passion of tracking future general and flag officer appointments. SuperWIKI (talk) 08:28, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

P.S: A handful of Army appointments to three-star rank haven't been announced yet, any idea where you think these guys will go? SuperWIKI (talk) 08:31, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have much less time to spend on Wikipedia than I used to, so I typically only engage when I post a new article. Since I don't have time or energy to defend previous articles against entropy and vandalism, I only post an article when I am completely done editing it, since I know I'm going to have to disappear for long stretches afterward.

Regarding Army appointments, I always guess wrong on these, but it's still fun to try. I see Waddell is retiring, DTRA has had an acting director since January, I Corps an acting CG since June, III Corps is about due to rotate, and the Fifth Army CG is up for promotion. Not sure what's going on with Schwartz, but either NSHQ or Israel-Palestine needs a replacement.

So maybe Fenzel will go to Assistant CJCS; Fletcher to DTRA Director; Mennes, Calvert, and Matlock to I Corps, III Corps, and Fifth Army; and Evans to NSHQ? - Morinao (talk) 21:28, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Forgot to mention, I left a list of vice admirals from 1960 to 1963 here. - Morinao (talk) 16:35, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(looks at Congressional Record) Oh my. Is there any way to narrow down all of these for nominations or tell which ones actually cover appropriate nominations? SuperWIKI (talk) 17:13, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On the Congress.gov website, try searching for some variant of '"vice admiral" nomination' in the Congressional Record, and narrow your search to one Congress at a time (example). This will return a bunch of PDFs, which you can download, open in your PDF viewer, and search again for "vice admiral". It's still a ton of work (~100 results per Congress), but maybe a little more tractable. - Morinao (talk) 17:29, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! SuperWIKI (talk) 17:41, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

An editor claims Walter F. Boone, Harry D. Felt and Arleigh A. Burke are missing from the list. Just want to confirm if you did miss anyone. SuperWIKI (talk) 04:31, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Felt is #194 on the list. Boone and Burke were promoted directly from rear admiral to admiral. - Morinao (talk) 06:23, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Morinao, I noticed you were actively editing and wanted to take the opportunity to ask if you had taken notice of a discussion from last spring about ranks, (it can be found here). Please take a look and perhaps participate, or at least let me know what you think. Thanks & Cheers - wolf 13:35, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I just saw your summation of the old 6-Star Rank page fiasco, and wanted to get in touch with you via a quicker method than talk pages; is there a Wiki Discord or something? AlternateWars (talk) 21:23, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi AlternateWars, sorry, I only check in very sporadically, so talk page is typically the most reliable way to get in touch with me, and even then it may take awhile, as you can see. I don't know about other Wiki channels, but happy to consider any suggestions. - Morinao (talk) 05:02, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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Morinao HAHHAHAHAHHA.... HAHAHHAHAHAHA. I'm sorry!🤣 SuperWIKI (talk) 04:39, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.: I was going to ask for help on if you're able to get your hands on any U.S. service registers from 1960 to the present. Considering I live in Asia, wanted to ask if you have any special access to any registers that cover those years. Currently doing this. For consistency, would you prefer the three-star list pages I make be named "three-star" or by the specific rank of "lieutenant general" or "vice admiral"? SuperWIKI (talk) 04:42, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, sorry about that. I did see that article and was going to create a Coast Guard vice admiral list up to 1960, like the others, but decided there just aren't enough Coast Guard vice admirals to justify splitting up the list by decade. So I followed your Space Force three-star format instead.

I don't have any special access to registers, especially after the late 1970s, which is when my neighborhood government repository stopped archiving the print copies (and not sure I have access to that anymore -- I've moved, and it was a university library anyway).

I generally like precision, where possible, so since the only type of Marine Corps three-star officer is a lieutenant general, I prefer "Marine Corps lieutenant general". But I don't really have a strong opinion about "three-star general" vs. "lieutenant general" or "lieutenant general in the Marine Corps" vs. "Marine Corps lieutenant general", so feel free to move any of these if you are trying to enforce consistency. - Morinao (talk) 04:52, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For the Coast Guard list, I'll begin migrating information and images you don't have on that list yet, and eventually cut my own page (if that's possible) since yours is better constructed than mine. SuperWIKI (talk) 05:07, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pinged you about Charles R. Bender on the talk page. SuperWIKI (talk) 07:25, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Finally want to ask: what's the future projects you're working on? To prevent a list clash like what happened to, I'd be interested to know what lists to this effect you're working on next. SuperWIKI (talk) 12:07, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think the only post-1947 lists I'm contemplating would round out the vice admirals with:

• List of United States Maritime Service vice admirals
• List of United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps vice admirals
• List of United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps vice admirals

Also cover both federally and non-federally recognized three- and four-star generals in the National Guard, like Delaware(!) four-star general Francis D. Vavala and Mississippi four-star general Emmett H. Walker Jr.:

• List of United States National Guard four-star generals
• List of United States National Guard lieutenant generals

Some of these lists are a bit overkill -- PHS is just a subset of surgeons general, and NOAA has only two entries -- but it's good to have someplace to log every new three-star so no one falls through the cracks.

I don't know how long it will take for me to get around to these, so go ahead and grab them if you find time first. The Coast Guard vice admiral list was only a clash because the difference in scope caused a difference in format, and I doubt that will be an issue for any of these lists. - Morinao (talk) 04:10, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Already did List of United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps three-star admirals. However, you will certainly have more information and research into the history of the actual rank than I do, so I would greatly appreciate such additions. Just add them below the timeline like every other list. Additionally, the different in format (visually and via code) for the list was in response to a critique by User:Sbb, who says that your usual style of tables no longer fit MOS:ACCESSIBILITY guidelines. SuperWIKI (talk) 04:20, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, perfect, done. It might also be interesting to make an additional list for USAR/USNR/USAFR/USMCR three-stars, even though it would be redundant with the decade lists, since they are scarce enough to view in one place and it's interesting to see which positions have been opened to reservists beyond just chief of their respective service reserves (e.g. Colglazier, Dumont, Waddell). - Morinao (talk) 04:36, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree about the redundancy. An article akin to Tombstone promotion which, at least by intention, is intended to assess reserve positions and not be primarily a list would be more appropriate in my opinion. That's less likely to provoke some eyebrows over simple reorganizing already available lists in different ways. For now, I'm intending to do lists up to the 1990s at best, as the Defense Technical Information Center has very helpfully provided general/flag officer lists from 1986 to 1998. SuperWIKI (talk) 04:41, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If so, should you finish the lists you've set out to do and have the time, could you also assist in perhaps updating and making longer the rank history sections for the Army, Navy, Marine and List of United States Air Force four-star generals in time? Those sections haven't aged well, and I'm struggling to add the necessary information, even with the sources you've listed in the references section. It's also hard to ask for assistance, given that rank and appointment history is a niche area of Wikipedia even for the Project: Military history folks. SuperWIKI (talk) 04:14, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.: Been trying to make legislative history tables for the four-star ranks, but my, those are hard. Do you have tips on wording the entries, capitalization of positions, and otherwise? Those little things are what I've been agonizing about lately, and seeing as you're more proficient at these, I was meaning to ask for some tips when you came back in. SuperWIKI (talk) 04:23, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I can pitch in on the history sections (and legislative histories). For those sections, I generally try to capitalize the organization but not the position (e.g. capitalize Army Ground Forces but not commanding general), except in the legislative histories if the law itself capitalizes the position (e.g. Commandant of the Marine Corps). But I've been pretty inconsistent about this. - Morinao (talk) 04:36, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That inconsistency may or may not have lead me to some hour-long quagmires before; I tend to be very particular about standardization. SuperWIKI (talk) 04:38, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's like the old programming joke:

There are 2 hard problems in computer science:

1. cache invalidation
2. naming things
3. off-by-1 errors

Number 3 is the joke, and number 2 is no joke! - Morinao (talk) 04:47, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

🤣🤣🤣🤣 dying of laughter Glad I'm able to talk about these things with you, User:Maliepa, User:Neovu79, User:KingEdinburgh and User:Thewolfchild. Not a lot of people understand these kinds of issues we have. SuperWIKI (talk) 04:50, 22 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Found this. Think it'll be useful. SuperWIKI (talk) 09:45, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You mad lad, you upgraded the timelines while I was standing still! Nice job, your timeline are always a treat! Right now working on command lists for the unified combatant commands. Now there's the legislative histories and major text updates left. Hope the baselines on the sandbox are good enough so far! SuperWIKI (talk) 03:59, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Acronyms for the three-star lists are becoming such a pain, since they're more inconsistent than the set-in-stone four-star positions, not to mention dual-hatted commands shifting all the time and having to check when these shifts happened... SuperWIKI (talk) 04:08, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear, has it really been nine months already? Sorry, I started digging into four-star legislative histories and what a bottomless pit that project has turned out to be. Thanks for the sandbox baselines, they were a helpful starting point. - Morinao (talk) 05:53, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm writing an article that benefits from some of your work here--it's about the evolution of tombstone promotions from blanket promotions to the more honorary individual type, which seems to have transitioned from early attempts to promote Billy Mitchell posthumously in the 1930s and 1940s (his promotion eventually passed Congress in 2004, but was never acted on). Anyway, I'm looking at your section on the appointment clause promotion authority, and I'm curious if you know of any other cases other than Bulkeley and Smith who were promoted this way into or in retirement (and how can you tell they were promoted that way--I assume from the fact they were confirmed by the Senate just prior?). The problem is that for those already retired, 10 USC 601 clearly states that they must be on active duty to be confirmed, and as of 2000 Congress codified the honorary promotion route under 10 USC 1563, which until recently clearly required a bill passing both chambers. I'm trying to figure out if anyone else was elevated via appointment clause authority, particularly if already retired. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foxtrot5151 (talk • contribs) 03:39, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Morinao rarely answers queries on his talk page anymore - if you need an immediate answer you can try asking Neovu79. As for me, I don't have an immediate answer on other cases besides Bulkeley and Smith. SuperWIKI (talk) 04:35, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Foxtrot5151 while an officer can be approved for promotion per 10 U.S.C. § 624, the secretary of military service, must still issue a date of rank for an officer to assume rank under 10 U.S.C. § 741(d). If the secretary doesn't issue a date-of-rank. Then the officer is administratively not promoted and cannot assume the rank. 741 was effective as of 1981, so I couldn't tell you too much about honorary ranks prior to that date. I do know that the military still issues, honorary ranks, ie Richard Dean Anderson and Bill Cosby. If a retired officer receives an honorary appointment to a higher rank, they are entitled wear the rank, but are not allowed any of the financial benefits of the higher rank. 10 U.S.C. § 1563 doesn't say that the secretary of defense or the secretaries of a military service, requires the explicit approval of Congress to issue an honorary rank. Only that they need to submit to them justification for issuing said rank, only that they are required to wait 60 days after submitting the justification to Congress, to issue the honorary rank. That doesn't mean Congress doesn't have oversight and cannot block it, as the U.S. Constitution grants them that power, it just means that it is extremely rare for that to occur, since honorary ranks, as stated above, has no effect on the person's pay, which means it has no effect John and Jane taxpayer. I hope this helps a little. Neovu79 (talk) 05:27, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I will grapple with this. Yes, 10 USC 1563 is now delegated to the secretary of defense's discretion, but between 2000 and 2021 it required a bill, which you can see from the original authorization in 2000 (and in practice, all of the honorary promotions in the interim were packaged into the defense bill). That legislative route had been going on a while, but was only sporadically used. Eight Army general officers from WWII were issued tombstone promotions that were strictly honorary in 1954, and then Gen. Claire Chennault was advanced in 1958 (all of those cases had no pay or benefit provisos attached--the honorary promotions are apparently only honorary because of the proviso normally included in those bills saying no pay or benefit implications). I'm curious if other individualized promotions via bill or the unilateral route had that interpretation. For example, General Geiger and Admiral McCain both received posthumous promotions in the 1940s, but there was no proviso about pay or benefits, so I assume they were both actually promoted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foxtrot5151 (talk • contribs) 19:35, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Still looking at this closely. There's a few provisions that clearly prohibit the Senate confirmation promotion route for retirees per 10 USC 601a (requiring them to be presently "serving on active duty") or anyone above O-10 who doesn't meet the time in grade requirements by law under 10 USC 1370. Since there is no alternative to these requirements, my read is that prior to last year the executive could not promote someone without a bill of relief releasing them from the public law requirements (now they could just do it with the DoD notice and 60 day waiting requirement, however). Foxtrot5151 (talk) 14:52, 3 October 2022 (UTC) Ah, just looked at 10 USC 1370 and see it was only codified last year. Anyone know what predated this, as it must have been under another section of law?[reply]

You can identify Appointment Clause appointments by inspecting the wording of an officer's nomination on congress.gov. For example, Bulkeley's nomination says:

The following named officer to be placed on the retired list in the grade indicated under the provisions of Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, United States Constitution.

For a full list of Appointment Clause appointments going back to 1981, just search for "Clause 2". Examples include:

• Ira C. Eaker and James H. Doolittle, retired lieutenant generals promoted to general on the retired list in 1985. The Senate unanimously passed the usual joint resolution to promote them, but its sponsor, Barry Goldwater, took offense when House members tried to bargain with him and convinced President Reagan to instead nominate them directly (Doolittle, James H.; Glines, Carroll V. (1991). I Could Never Be So Lucky Again. New York City, New York: Bantam Books. p. ix.).
• Richard H. Truly, a rear admiral retired as a vice admiral to become NASA Administrator in 1989.
• John D. Lavelle, nominated unsuccessfully for posthumous promotion to his former four-star grade in 2009.

Maybe the cleanest reference for Appointment Clause appointments is a 1998 Military Law Review article reviewing options to promote Husband E. Kimmel posthumously to four-star admiral (Scott, Roger D. "Kimmel, Short, McVay: Case Studies in Executive Authority, Law, and the Individual Rights of Military Commanders". Military Law Review. 56 (June 1998): 118–120.):

Currently, there is no statute under which Rear Admiral Kimmel may be posthumously advanced....The only avenue now available for the posthumous advancement of Rear Admiral Kimmel is a direct Presidential appointment, with advice and consent of the Senate, under article 2 of the Constitution....Such constitutional appointments do not create military entitlements [as the GAO ruled in 1986]. (Lieutenant General Ira Eaker and Lieutenant General James Doolittle were advanced to grade of General on the retired list in April 1985--military pay entitlements, however, depend on statutory authority)

In 1998, Congress authorized the President to advance retired lieutenant general Benjamin O. Davis Jr. to general on the retired list, without requiring Senate confirmation. A Pentagon spokesman made the following claim (Graham, Bradley (December 10, 1998). "A Fourth Star For A Fighter". The Washington Post.):

While the United States has honored other retired senior officers with advancement in rank, the action has been limited to 10 since the end of World War II -- three each in the Air Force and Army, four in the Navy, according to a Pentagon spokesman.

Not sure if that means 10 retired senior officers total, or 10 actions to promote retired senior officers (e.g. the 1954 act that promoted 11 retired or dead Army lieutenant generals).

- Morinao (talk) 05:54, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, a few observations from what I've pulled. Benjamin Davis received a bill of relief in the defense bill (112 Stat. 2035), which is what later became standardized by 2000 when they codified that process into Title 10.

I think the first modern attempt for an individual honorary promotion with no pay and benefit implications was Billy Mitchell, which was advanced repeatedly in the 1940s and 1950s, but didn't actually pass Congress until 2004 (and then wasn't actually promoted b/c of being too controversial). I think Mitchell's bill got the pay and benefit proviso because this was a way of making it less controversial, and some of the tombstone promotions in the 1930s and 1950s had this also, for the same reason (no cost to the gov't is always less of a fight in passing a bill). Because they were trying to promote Claire Chennault in 1958, I think they transcribed the proviso from Mitchell's legislation into his bill, which passed immediately. He had terminal cancer and they were trying to promote him before he died.

I pulled the files on Doolittle and Eaker, and it's completely bizarre--the USAF Chief of Staff and Deputy CoS for Manpower & Personnel both said it would require a bill per the Chennault precedent, because it would otherwise violate title 10 provisions and be unlawful. Then they ran into the House resistance, and did it by Constitutional appointment authority instead, even though this contradicted their earlier judgment. Then the Comptroller General ruled this was unlawful for pay purposed in 1986, which I see you already found. So I think there's a good argument that the advancement itself is also statutory, simply because Title 10 implements that provision of the Constitution (no different than many other areas of law). At least that's what the USAF seemed to think, but it appears they were overruled by Goldwater, who was a personal friend of Doolittle and a retired USAF Reserve MG himself--it's pretty clear he didn't care how it was accomplished, although as SASC chairman he should have been pushing against this.

The Kimmel article is interesting and I'll take a look. Kimmel and the other Pearl Harbor officer (Short?) were both advanced in the defense bill in 2001 (114 Stat. 1654A-119).

Thanks again for the references. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 14:58, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just took a look at the article. So that's the exact argument made by the USAF leadership in 1984 leading up to the Doolittle & Eaker promotions, that 10 USC 601 wouldn't allow it. But that statute is the implementing legislation for Constitutional appointment authority--the appointment clause doesn't supersede the statute, so long as it's lawfully implementing it. So my read is that the article is wrong, evidenced by the fact that they didn't advance Kimmel and Short that way--they eventually used the legislative route, which became standardized by that time. If the appointment clause authority really did trump all statutes that seemingly narrowed it, then it would also supersede all statutes enacted, such as 10 USC 1563. And I think that's incorrect, clearly. I'm going to recommend going back and fixing the Doolittle and Eaker promotions, which would require a bill of relief, since Title 10 currently only delegates authority for the honorary promotions up through major general (so inapplicable to these two officers). Foxtrot5151 (talk) 15:22, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, still working through this. I pulled the Attorney General's ruling cited in footnote 262 of that Navy JAG article you sent. The citation is wrong, incidentally--it's actually 41 Op. Att'y Gen 291, and concerns whether the President has to adhere to statutory restrictions on appointment of brigadier generals (the statute required acting per a promotion board, so the legal question is whether the president could just promote a GO directly under the appointment clause and not act through a board). The answer was no, the President could bypass the board because that's an impermissible restriction on constitutional authority, because it effectively subordinates the president's judgment to a board of officers. But the Atty Gen says that Congress may place valid restrictions on appointment clause authority, and specifically points out prior rulings such as "Congress may point out the general class of individuals from which an appointment may be made" (29 Op. Att'y Gen. 256), and generally that "the unquestioned right of Congress to create offices implies a right to prescribe qualifications for them," so long as they are "leaving scope for the judgment and will of the person or body in whom the Constitution vest the power of appointment." It's a safe bet that restricting regular appointment clause nominations to presently serving officers is a permissible restriction, given that honorary promotion is functionally meaningless (this never would have entered into the minds of the framers, because of course the appointment clause is meant to allow appointment of actual functionaries, not trivial honorary promotions for people not actually serving in that grade). 131.252.136.222 (talk) 18:47, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There's a whole string of Op. Att'y Gen. opinions on this, although they're quite old. But I do think that statutory restriction is valid for reasons described above. I imagine the calculus to violate that sort of statutory restriction was influenced by the fact that this was merely an honorary promotion and not likely to generate much blowback--consider, even if HASC or someone else objected, what might they be able to do about it? I mean, they could craft a simple or joint resolution condemning the promotion, but to the extent that the controversy was the methodology and not the promotee, that would probably look bad. No private citizen would have standing to object to it, so the legislature would have to address it directly. Also checked on Commander Scott, but unfortunately he passed away in 2012, so I won't be able to solicit his opinion. His own citation militates against his argument, since the attorney general in no way said that the appointment clause could override any statutory restriction. 131.252.136.222 (talk) 19:43, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There is at least one case where the President nominated officers without legislative authority, but the promotions stuck because the Senate voted to confirm them anyway. During WWII, the Navy had permanent legislation authorizing up to 4 admirals and 12 vice admirals, and emergency legislation authorizing temporary grades but only up to rear admiral (Act of July 24, 1941, 55 Stat. 603). By March 1942, all 12 permanently authorized vice admirals had been appointed, so the President started nominating temporary vice admirals and admirals even though the statute authorized only temporary rear admirals, including the four-star promotions for Halsey and Spruance. Apparently people grudgingly agreed that if the Senate confirmed the President's nomination, the appointment was valid:

The CHAIRMAN. How many vice admirals have been made?

Admiral JACOBS. We have had a total of 14.

The CHAIRMAN. You are permitted to have three over?

Admiral JACOBS. We had 3 by the Act of 1917 which was increased by 9 additional in 1941.

The CHAIRMAN. We have three over.

Admiral JACOBS. Yes, sir; that is 12.

The CHAIRMAN. How do you get 14?

Admiral JACOBS. Under the temporary promotion bill, the President nominated them and they were confirmed by the Senate.

Mr. MAAS. There is no provision of law authorizing the President to make those nominations. We have placed a limit on the number of vice admirals. Congress, in its wisdom, placed a limit on the number, to which the Navy Department agreed. The temporary promotion bill stopped them at rear admiral.

The CHAIRMAN. Under the Department's suggestion, they did not want the temporary rank to go above that of lieutenant commander and lieutenant.

Commander HOPWOOD. Yes, sir; that is true.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, as a result of the decision of the committee and of the Congress, we have included admirals and vice admirals.

Commander HOPWOOD. Yes, sir.

Regarding the pay and benefit proviso, most tombstone promotions before the 1920s did include additional pay because they were incentives to request early retirement, since officers were hard to retire involuntarily before the statutory age of 62 or 64. After WWI, the Navy instituted a strict age-in-grade policy that involuntarily retired decorated captains who convinced Congress to authorize tombstone promotions for combat citations as a consolation prize, but without additional pay since their purpose was not to hasten retirements but purely honorary.

Since the hundreds of tombstone promotions for WWII combat citations until 1959 were the honorary promotions that most members of Congress were familiar with, post-WWII legislation to promote retired or deceased officers followed the same no-additional-pay template. Examples include 11 Army lieutenant generals (1954, 68 Stat. 492), MacNider (1956, 70 Stat. A201), Chennault (1958, 72 Stat. A67), and McCutcheon (1971, 85 Stat. 833). Geiger (1947, 61 Stat. 978) and McCain (1949, 63 Stat. 1171) were promoted posthumously because they were entitled to a combat citation tombstone promotion but died before retiring, and Walker (1951, 64 Stat. A271) supposedly was up for promotion when he died in the Korean combat theater. I guess you could also count Washington (to General of the Armies in 1976) and the current attempt to promote Grant, whose laws do not include no-additional-pay clauses because it is so obvious.

Other examples include unsuccessful attempts to promote Mitchell, MacArthur (to General of the Armies in 1955 and 1964), Wayne E. Meyer (to vice admiral in 2008), and Chuck Yeager (to major general in 1995, 2004, 2008). Yeager is interesting because the 2005 NDAA actually authorized his promotion one section before Mitchell's, but the President never made the nomination (despite several fansites claiming a 2005 promotion). The House version of the 2009 NDAA tried to force Yeager's promotion by making him entitled to hold the rank of major general on the retired list (as opposed to Meyer, who was authorized to be appointed on the retired list to vice admiral), but the Senate dropped that provision along with Meyer's.

Kimmel and Short are also interesting because the 2001 NDAA simply requested that the President advance them on the retired list without additional authorization, presumably under the Appointments Clause, but no President has been willing to overrule the original decision not to promote them, especially this long after the fact. The President was willing to nominate Lavelle under the Appointments Clause in 2010, after new evidence surfaced in his case, but SASC never scheduled a vote.

I agree that Doolittle and Eaker were a definite break in precedent, which had previously required special legislation. Interesting to hear what the Air Force thought at the time, thanks for pulling their files. At that point Goldwater was already halfway through his last term, and going out in a blaze of glory (Goldwater-Nichols, etc.), so I guess was willing to torch traditions. Presumably Doolittle-Eaker was the precedent for Reagan to invoke the Appointments Clause in 1988 to nominate Bulkeley, who was basically the Doolittle of the Navy.

I actually don't know how Levering Smith got advanced to vice admiral on the retired list when he left active duty in 1977. I just lumped him under the Appointments Clause section for lack of a better place. Now that you mention him, I feel like he must have had a private law, or a section in an appropriation bill like Rickover, but I was never able to find one or the text of his nomination.

- Morinao (talk) 23:56, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think the problem with the WWII example is that if the authorization is the prerogative of the entire legislature, absence of House consent is another separation of powers issue. It's worse, obviously, if they're using that pathway precisely because it avoids House oversight. I'm going to check and see if I can find any caselaw on this. The litigation normally only comes up in cases of removal rather than promotion, because then a private citizen has the standing and compelling reason to sue over it.

Yes, I caught the link between the blanket tombstone promotions having the no pay proviso, such as with the Army generals (thanks largely to the info on the Wiki), and suggested that this practice morphed into the individual promotions in the 1950s timeframe. I did look into several of the individual cases you listed (e.g. MacNider, Geiger, and McCain), but noted that few of them had the no pay proviso included in their bills, with the exception of Chennault, which I found confusing--I'm going to check and see if I can find any Comptroller General adjudications on the legality of those, since a bill would theoretically make them compliant with pay legislation, unlike Doolittle & Eaker). I wasn't aware Yeager hadn't been acted on, as well as Kimmel and Short (which make more sense given the controversy).

In re: the difference between authorization and entitlement, it's no coincidence that the same Att'y Gen. opinion I quoted above also said "Congress may not, in connection with military appointments or promotions to higher offices, control the President's discretion to the extent of compelling him to commission or promote a designated individual" (41 Op. Att'y Gen. 292). The distinction between authorization and adjudication (as well as what even what makes a bill ripe for executive action) has clearly confused many officials on these promotions. This was the reason the AF started mistakenly claiming Mitchell was promoted as of the late 1950s--the director of the AF Records Center put an official summary in his personnel file that alleged he had already been promoted in 1947, based on a bill that had only passed the Senate. So they obviously didn't understand how laws even pass Congress, much less that they didn't automatically result in Mitchell's promotion. That exact date and claim ended up on the modern AF MoH website (https://www.af.mil/Medal-of-Honor/Mitchell/), which presently claims he was promoted to MG, and also that he has a MoH.

The AF web bios also mischaracterize the authorization for Doolittle and Eaker's promotions, although it seems nobody really understood that one except Goldwater and the AF leadership, who just stayed quiet about it for the most part. I just pulled Goldwater's private correspondence, and he boasted to a friend that he pushed that through despite the prohibition on promoting reservists past two-star general. He also wrote Doolittle about the same, saying House passage was a prerequisite, and then reversing himself and saying he just asked Reagan to fix it. Curiously, the AF contemporaneously claimed it was their idea (a mere LTC's brainchild with no legal staffing?), but either way the basis is dubious. There are 84 pages of executive communications in Doolittle's OMPF, which is pretty unusual (at least based on most OMPFs I have seen). I think a staffer or archivist may have hoped that a historian would find those eventually, because that would explain it better than some sort of mistake.

Incidentally, I started chasing this because the Wikipedia page for Jimmy Stewart was claiming Reagan promoted him to MG in retirement in 1985. I quickly debunked this by searching for a bill and pulling the records from the Reagan Library, but discovered that Stewart had a history of allowing Reagan to introduce him as a MG on the campaign trail, which he didn't correct until someone introduced him as a BG and Reagan corrected the staffer. In 2013 the Wikipedia claim about Stewart's promotion was picked up by the AF Reserve recruiting center, who made a recruiting video claiming Stewart had been promoted to MG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U1lLf3DhK4&t=1s. The AF Magazine also repeated the claim during that period. Then, in typical fashion, the Wikipedia page cited both of them as having verified the claim, which is a case-study of circular attribution. When I started pulling records on Stewart, I discovered that Stewart had actually initiated the lobbying effort to promote Doolittle (by sending a telegram directly to Reagan), and that the media had actually confused the Doolittle promotion with Stewart at one point, apparently because they both go by "Jimmy," and possibly because Stewart was involved in a lobbying capacity.

Anyway, have written a scholarly article for Air & Space Power Journal and a popular version for Air & Space Forces Magazine. I am waiting on more records from NARA's center for legislative archives--they already pulled the docket for Goldwater's resolution, which doesn't have much, but I'm digging to see if there's anything else from when the resolution hit HASC (where it stalled). I would like to give you some sort of attribution, but have no idea how to do that. Do you have an email or some contact method that isn't personally identifiable? Foxtrot5151 (talk) 17:18, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I was able to active an old anonymous email: Email me there if you want to get in contact directly. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 21:21, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Circular attribution can be a real pain. At least the Jimmy Stewart story (which is really interesting, thanks for digging into it) seems to have originated off-site. A couple years ago, I had to rewrite the General of the Armies article from scratch after discovering two similar cases. In the first case, a serial fabricator inserted a claim that MacArthur was up for promotion to six-star general to lead the invasion of Japan in 1945, and that spread to other websites. In the second case, someone extrapolated from Pershing's official chief of staff painting that his four-star insignia was gold instead of silver to distinguish his higher rank from other four-star generals, and inserted that speculation in the Pershing article in 2007, which was embellished by a self-published book on U.S. Army uniforms in 2009 that was cited by a WWI encyclopedia in 2014, and from there infected academic publications along with a bunch of post-2007 news articles.

Totally agree that the WWII example is sketchy as hell. It took me a long time to convince myself that actually happened. If I hadn't found that hearing transcript I would still be looking for the authorization for temporary three- and four-star admirals.

Regarding the prohibition on promoting reservists past two-star general, you might be interested in Robert Colglazier's senior officer oral history, if you haven't already seen it. The Officer Personnel Act authorized temporary three- and four-star appointments from any component of the Army of the United States -- regular, reserve, or retired (e.g. Hershey) -- but made no provision to retire reservists with a permanent grade higher than two stars, so Colglazier needed a private law (80 Stat. 1666) to retire as a lieutenant general. The PDF from the Army War College website seems to have disappeared again, so let me transcribe the relevant section (Tape C-181, Side 2, pp. 316-318).

When evaluating whether no-pay provisos were standard in individual promotion laws, I think it's important not to overweight posthumous promotions like Geiger or McCain, or loophole corrections like Colglazier. After the first combat citation promotion law included a no-pay proviso in 1925, individual promotion laws can be sorted as follows.

Non-honorary promotion laws don't have no-pay provisos, because they correct quirks in the law preventing standard promotions.

• Active officers needing special legislation to be promoted -- Vandenberg/Doolittle/McLain/LeMay/Norstad (1946, 60 Stat. 56), Beightler (1946, 60 Stat. 936), Bradley (1950, 64 Stat. A225).
• Retired officers needing special legislation to be promoted while on active duty -- Byrd (1925, 43 Stat. 821; 1927, 44 Stat. 933), Hart (1942, 56 Stat. 370), Land (1944, 58 Stat. 1011), Rickover (1973, 87 Stat. 621).
• Retired officers needing special legislation to retire with their highest active-duty grade -- Smith (1955, 69 Stat. A33), Colglazier (1966, 80 Stat. 1666).
• Retired officers needing special legislation to correct the mechanism of their retirement -- Nicholson (1926, 44 Stat. 1608).
• Reappointment on retired list of officers who resigned to accept civil office -- Quesada (1959, 73 Stat. A77), Eisenhower (1961, 75 Stat. 5).

Posthumous promotion laws don't have no-pay provisos, because dead officers don't draw retired pay.

• Dead officers -- Geiger (1947, 61 Stat. 978), McCain (1949, 63 Stat. 1171), Walker (1951, 64 Stat. A271), Cox (1952, 66 Stat. A144), Washington (1976, 90 Stat. 2078). Geiger, McCain, and Walker all had widows, but promotions above two stars did not increase retired pay or survivor benefits until O-9 and O-10 grades were created in 1958.

Certain honorary promotion laws don't have no-pay provisos, because they are meant to increase retired pay.

• Active officers awarded full active-duty pay in retirement -- five-stars/Vandegrift/Waesche (1946, 60 Stat. 59), Bradley/Spaatz/Spruance (1948, 62 Stat. 1052).
• Retired officers promoted to a higher permanent grade -- Groves (1948, 62 Stat. 1393).
• Retired/resigned officers promoted to rear admiral based on the Peary precedent (1911, 36 Stat. 1346) -- Byrd (1929, 46 Stat. 1633), Hobson (1934, 48 Stat. 1379). In Hobson's case, there was no increase in pay because at the time a captain had the same pay as a lower-half rear admiral.

Other honorary promotion laws do have no-pay provisos after 1925.

• Retired officers who never served in the higher grade on active duty -- combat citation promotions (1925, 43 Stat. 1279), Belknap (1927, 43 Stat. 1354), certain Army colonels (1927, 44 Stat. 1249), Hines (1940, 54 Stat. 1286), MacMillan (1954, 68 Stat. A88), 11 Army LTGs (1954, 68 Stat. 492), MacNider (1956, 70 Stat. A201), Chennault (1958, 72 Stat. A67), McCutcheon (1971, 85 Stat. 833), Davis (1998, 102 Stat. 2035), Mitchell/Yeager (2004, 118 Stat. 1918). Exception: Dismukes (1925, 43 Stat. 1279).
• Retired officers advanced to their highest active-duty grade -- WWI officers (1930, 46 Stat. 793), former admirals/vice admirals (1942, 56 Stat. 370).

Honorary promotions under the Appointments Clause -- no law so no proviso.

• Retired officers not on active duty -- Doolittle/Eaker (1986) were not entitled to higher retired pay. Presumably the same logic applies to Levering Smith (1977) and Bulkeley (1988), but apparently the question never came up before the Doolittle/Eaker GAO ruling?
• Retired officers on active duty -- Burkley (1965) and Calver (1966) were advanced to vice admiral on the retired list while serving as physicians to Congress and the White House, not sure if that entitled them to higher pay. Their promotions under the Appointments Clause surfaced when the Navy Department researched a response to a question raised during the hearing on the law authorizing Rickover's four-star promotion in 1973, which had been thought to need special legislation because retired Navy officers were ineligible for Officer Personnel Act appointments to three- or four-star grades. This seems relevant to the debate about Doolittle/Eaker.

- Morinao (talk) 12:55, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In re: Colglazier inteview, is it the one where he's interviewed by COL William M. Kearney? Their catalog is a mess, but I think this is it: https://emu.usahec.org/alma/multimedia/335867/20182051MN000012.pdf

That must be it--I see it's discussing the promotion of a reservist above MG. That's precisely what the USAF was hung up about in 1984, which they referenced as violating Chapter 837 of Title 10. I think by implication they meant section 8373, which has since been recodified, but you can see it here: https://law.justia.com/codes/us/1995/title10/subtitled/partii/chap837/sec8373/

Interestingly, that's also what Goldwater was hung up over. He wanted to promote Doolittle without establishing a precedent for others to do the same (a strange and contradictory position). So he wrote to USAF chief of staff Gabriel asking if they could somehow restrict it by regulation so nobody else could be similarly elevated. He also told President Reagan that it was impermissible for this reason, or at least he boasted to friends about this afterward.

Ok, thanks for the pay implication explanation. I assumed there was a structural difference for the posthumous vs. simply retired promotions, but didn't realize that death was the limiting factor. Interestingly, when the USAF advanced the Doolittle/Eaker promotions by appointment clause in 1985, the officer said specifically that it would elevate their pay because of the lack of a proviso if they didn't use legislation (as a bonus, he thought). So obviously it just never got any real staffing, because that would certainly have come out if it were reviewed by the general counsel (and that likely would have killed the effort, since it would have also raised the other statutory barriers).

Will keep going through this over the weekend, but the framework makes sense now. Thanks. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 16:49, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I was too flippant about dead officers not needing a no-pay proviso, since Mitchell (2004) is of course a posthumous promotion law with a no-pay proviso -- which was your original interest! But the principle is that purely honorary promotions are meant to be cost-free to the government, unless otherwise specified (e.g. five-stars). For Geiger/McCain/Walker, two things kept their posthumous promotions cost-free at the time, even without an explicit no-pay proviso. First, even living officers received no increase in retired pay from a three- or four-star promotion since the highest retired pay was O-8 until 1958. Second, from 1917 to 1956, military widows all received the same flat rate survivor benefit regardless of their husband's rank. From 1956, survivor benefits scaled with basic pay again, so at that point no-increased-benefits provisos should have become boilerplate in posthumous promotion laws, if they weren't already.

Yes, that's the right Colglazier interview. It reminds me that I forgot to mention my absolute favorite individual promotion law: Robert Scurlark Moore. Bobby Moore was a Regular Army Finance Corps officer who served continuously as a congressional liaison officer for 28 years(!), including all of World War II. Because the Senate was so understaffed at the time, he effectively became a full-time staff member of the Appropriations Committee and its mole in the Pentagon, much to the frustration of the Army, whose repeated attempts to relieve and retire him were foiled by the powerful senators holding its purse strings. By 1961, even McNamara couldn't get rid of him, and he finally retired in 1968 after 50+ years of service. I first read about this guy in the oral history of Herbert Powell, who rants hilariously how "Colonel Bobby So and So, Finance Corps" wrote special promotions for himself to brigadier general and then major general in successive defense appropriations bills, but I couldn't track down his name until Colglazier mentioned the incident in the Kearney interview (pp. 207-208).

- Morinao (talk) 21:26, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I just realized that you added significantly more names with statutory citations above. I'm unable to trace the history to anywhere near that extent, in part because the Air & Space Power Journal has a very restrictive max word-count of only 6,500 (including notes--which aren't insignificant with mostly legislative or archival citations). But, it's still very interesting, and I am planning to send a draft to the committee staffers I'm in touch with. I don't think that they are much invested in the honorary promotions any longer simply because they just delegated most of this authority to DoD, but that happened recently enough that they probably dove into at least the last 20 years of the honorary promotions statute. Also, I think the history is still important in the event someone tries to get around the current delegation for only one and two star promotions. So maybe it ends up in a folder somewhere and they pull it when it becomes germane to an executive attempt to push through an appointment clause promotion.

I've not found other pertinent Comptroller General rulings, although they're not easily searchable that far back. I think when I checked govinfo.gov they were not retroactively digitized very far. Many of them are on Lexis (and probably Westlaw and Hein), but I didn't find a particular section allowing me to search only those rulings (making it difficult to filter, because I was finding all sorts of extraneous caselaw and other adjudications that were merely citing comptroller general opinions). I'm fairly certain there are no other attorney general opinions any more pertinent than what that Navy JAG cited from 1956 (many of the more recent ones rely on totally different factors and are not for promotions), but I may dig into that again. Again, they are scooped up by proprietary databases, but don't seem to be readily available to the public in electronic format (but they are on the shelves at FDLP libraries, where I picked mine up). They are not as persuasive, as say, a SCOTUS decision, or even lower level caselaw in some cases, but they do represent an administrative precedent, since the Attorney General is usually faithfully trying to find balance and not merely paving the way for the executive in a pretextual manner (which that 1956 opinion does very well, IMO). That same barrier of access seems to have prevented the AF / Reagan Admin from discovering that decision, since it was directly on point with the Doolittle/Eaker promotions (and not particularly old at that time). The difficulty with relying on older determinations like that one is that executive authority has grown considerably in the last century, meaning you cannot treat it as merely a static construct. Thus, a ruling in 1956 isn't necessarily equally applicable to present day understanding of executive authority, although I suspect that it hasn't changed too much in this case. After all, there doesn't seem to have been a sea change in promoting via that method, and Congress arguably reasserted its authority to govern promotions in 2000 when they codified the Title 10 honorary promotion pathway. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 17:35, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, scholarly article submitted to Air & Space Power Journal. ASU's special collections sent me several files from Goldwater's papers, which are simply different versions of the story about taking the appointment clause idea to Reagan personally. Goldwater boasted that he told Reagan that the "reserve rules" prohibited the promotion, but that he had the authority to supersede this as commander and chief. It's notable that he kept referring to these statutory restrictions as mere "rules," perhaps because he'd grown so jaded that he didn't really see them as binding? Also, his advice to Reagan was wrong, obviously, since the President arguably doesn't have the authority to override a permissible statutory restriction. I'm doing another pull because there is a separate folder for correspondence with the AF Chief of Staff, Gabriel, but not sure it will be more illuminating. I'm hoping there may be something postdating the promotion to explain why the AF leadership so quickly flip-flopped, when they'd already identified the correct posture that only legislation would waive the statutory restrictions. Another strange finding that I didn't notice before is that weeks after the promotion, at the end of April, SASC incorporated Goldwater's promotion resolution into an early version of the defense bill. Evidently nobody had told the SASC staffers that Goldwater had already superseded the legislation by going around them, but they obviously got word eventually, because that provision was removed from later versions of the bill. That's pretty odd considering that Goldwater chaired that same committee, but I think it probably speaks to how the promotion wasn't planned and was simply something Goldwater seized on immediately. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 23:55, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Max word count is the mercy rule of publication, isn't it -- for both the writer and the reader! But for better or worse, Wikipedia has no such constraint, so I will continue to rattle on about precedents available to promote Doolittle and Eaker in 1985, when there were two established vehicles to promote officers outside the existing statutes: special legislation and the Appointments Clause.

• Special legislation was used for honorary promotions initiated by Congress before 2000, going back to at least the Civil War. This was how Congress gave Army and Air Force officers post-WWII tombstone promotions (e.g. MacNider, Chennault), and therefore the most obvious path for a legislator like Goldwater to get Doolittle/Eaker promoted, especially since the law could include a clause stating why the officer deserved the honor -- not quite the Thanks of Congress or Congressional Gold Medal, but classier than an impersonal Title 10 or even Appointments Clause promotion.

I wouldn't say Congress reasserted its promotion authority in 2000, almost the opposite, if anything. 10 USC 1563 creates a third promotion vehicle by letting the Secretary of Defense make honorary promotions up to O-8 administratively, if requested by Congress (2000) or on the Secretary's own initiative (2021), without the hassle of the Senate vote required by normal Title 10 or Appointments Clause promotions. But this doesn't restrict further promotions by special legislation or Appointments Clause. Presumably Congress reverted to legislation for Mitchell/Yeager in 2004 because a post-2000 honorary promotion request was declined.

• The Appointments Clause continues to be used for non-statutory promotions initiated by the President, typically substantive promotions not explicitly authorized by any law. From 1965 to 1994, its most frequent use was to promote military astronauts one grade after their first space flight. More relevant to Doolittle, and his eligibility as a retired reservist for promotion to four stars, was the use of the Appointments Clause to evade pre-DOPMA statutes precluding three- and four-star promotions for retired Navy officers.

In 1965, LBJ used the Appointments Clause to promote presidential physician George Burkley to vice admiral, since Burkley was a retired Navy doctor recalled to active duty but the Officer Personnel Act of 1947 only authorized three- and four-star appointments for Navy officers on the active list. It was invoked again in 1966 to promote George Calver to vice admiral on the retired list two weeks before the 77-year-old doctor left active duty after 37 years as Congressional physician, setting a precedent for similar tombstone promotions for Smith (1977) and Bulkeley (1988). Given these precedents, even Rickover's four-star promotion in 1973 could have been done under the Appointments Clause, had his promotion not originated in Congress, which probably preferred to honor him with special legislation anyway.

Note that despite being non-statutory, Appointments Clause promotions were substantive, not honorary. Officers who served on active duty in their Appointments Clause grade qualified for its pay, as the Comptroller General confirmed in 1962 (44 Comp. Gen. 93) after Burkley's Appointments Clause promotion to rear admiral. (Burkley's rear admiral nomination made no mention of the Appointments Clause or any other statute, but the Comptroller General interpreted it as an Appointments Clause promotion anyway. Interpreting the non-statutory WWII nominations of temporary vice admirals and admirals, which had a similar format, as likewise being Appointments Clause promotions would explain why they stuck.)

Pulling all this together is the most direct precedent for Doolittle/Eaker: the Appointments Clause promotion of Grace Hopper two years earlier. In 1983 special legislation was introduced to promote Hopper to commodore on the retired list, but (contrary to most of her biographies) Congress never passed it, having been preempted by the Secretary of the Navy's announcement that he was recommending the President promote her. Like Rickover, Hopper was a retired Navy officer promoted while recalled to active duty; like Doolittle/Eaker, her bill never passed Congress and she was promoted on the retired list by the Appointments Clause instead; and like Doolittle/Colglazier, Hopper was a retired reservist. But unlike Doolittle/Colglazier, there was no question that there existed a reserve O-7 grade to which to be promoted.

Also unlike Doolittle/Eaker, the Comptroller General ruled in 1986 (65 Comp. Gen. 774 (B-222860)) that Hopper was entitled to recompute her retired pay based on post-retirement years of service and promotions, including her Appointments Clause promotion to O-7. Hopper and Doolittle were both reservists promoted on the retired list under the Appointments Clause post-DOPMA. The only difference is that Hopper served on active duty in her Appointments Clause grade for longer than 6 months, so there was a statute that qualified her to recompute her retired pay.

Three months after the Hopper ruling, the Comptroller General decision (B-224142) against Doolittle and Eaker specifically cited the absence of any statutory basis to recalculate retired pay using their new grade. Had they been recalled to active duty as O-10s for 6 months, presumably they too could have recomputed their retired pay under the same statute as Hopper -- but not if they had been promoted by Goldwater's bill, which had the usual no-pay proviso (the bonus according to that USAF officer). So the honorary nature of the Doolittle/Eaker promotion was mainly due to lack of service in grade, not the Appointments Clause mechanism itself.

- Morinao (talk) 04:45, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the President's ability to supersede reserve rules preventing a four-star promotion for Doolittle -- was there a statute explicitly barring an Air Force reservist from being promoted above O-8? Or was there just no statute authorizing it? Going back to Rickover, the Secretary of the Navy testified before Congress that special legislation was the only way to give him a fourth star, because only officers on the active list could be appointed to three- and four-star grades under Title 10 -- i.e. "retired rules" prohibited the promotion. But this was merely the absence of authority to promote retired officers to higher grades, which the Appointments Clause could bridge, as the Navy Department belatedly remembered when they cited Burkley and Calver in their reply for the record.

Not sure what Chapter 837 looked like post-DOPMA, but the 1976 edition just seems to authorize the same permanent promotions for reserve officers up to O-8 as for regular officers in other chapters. These chapters don't authorize promotions above O-8 for regular or reserve officers, since O-9 and O-10 appointments are covered separately. But neither do they prevent reservists from being appointed to those grades under another chapter, which is why Colglazier could receive an active-duty appointment as lieutenant general.

The Army decided Colglazier needed special legislation to retire at O-9 in February 1966 because the law only authorized regular officers to retire in that grade. But it didn't prohibit reservists from being retired in that grade some other way, so if he had retired after Calver set the precedent of an Appointments Clause promotion of a retired Navy officer to O-9 in September 1966, perhaps Colglazier could also have gotten away with an Appointments Clause promotion of a reservist to O-9 on the retired list.

- Morinao (talk) 06:15, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, the other comptroller general opinions are helpful, and I agree, it looks like was clearly possible to promote reservists to these grades via the appointment clause--the main difference was simply being on active duty or the grade they were seeking (and whether there was a statutory restriction). The statute the AF identified wasn't a bar, per se, so much as a de facto cap (how they described it), because the statute didn't actually say their promotions were not possible above O-8, but rather only said reservists could fill O-7 and O-8 billets. I think this is it: https://law.justia.com/codes/us/1995/title10/subtitled/partii/chap837/sec8373/ The AF DCS for manpower and personnel said that the reserve statute barred Doolittle's promotion but that the primary impediment was both officers being retired and not on duty, which he said clearly needed a legislative waiver.

On 10 USC 1563, it didn't delegate the promotion authority in 2000--that was per an amendment in 2021 (evidently the committee got tired of it). Otherwise that whole post-2000 string of promotions in the defense bill would've simply been notifications rather than statutes. In 2000 it merely codified that legislation was a requirement for honorary promotions, at least by implication, because the statute didn't actually describe the authorization so much as required the same recommendations on the promotion's merit to the committee--the main difference is it didn't give the SecDef or anyone else the authority to make the promotion. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 14:53, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

See, for example, 10 USC 1563 as it appeared in 2019: https://law.justia.com/codes/us/2019/title-10/subtitle-a/part-ii/chapter-80/sec-1563/ Foxtrot5151 (talk) 14:58, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I get for being lazy and not looking up the original law (114 Stat. 1654A-115). Thanks, that makes a lot more sense. Yes, that is Congress saying, "stop blowing off our mail or we will micromanage you like this," which is pretty funny. But look at the four possible responses spelled out in 2000:

1. "does not warrant approval on the merits."
2. "warrants approval and authorization by law for the promotion or appointment is recommended."
3. "warrants approval on the merits and has been recommended to the President as an exception to policy."
4. "warrants approval on the merits and authorization by law for the promotion or appointment is required but is not recommended."

The first three recommendations correspond to "don't promote", "promote by special legislation", and "promote by Appointments Clause". So no change to the status quo for honorary promotion options. The fourth is "should promote by special legislation, but don't do it". I guess that means the officer merits promotion in isolation, but not in the context of some broader policy (e.g. to not relitigate history)? Is that the answer Mitchell/Yeager got, and Congress pushed through special legislation anyway?

Interesting that the AF hangup about Doolittle/Eaker was that they were both retired and not on duty. The DCS was probably wrong about Eaker, since retired regular officers continue to hold offices subject to the Foreign Emoluments Clause, so the Appointments Clause would likewise apply. But he had more of a point about Doolittle, since retired reserve officers do not hold offices when not on duty (before 1993, anyway; not sure if ROPMA changed anything).

One possible loophole -- if Doolittle retired with pay under the same statute as a regular officer, he might be considered to hold the same office as a retired regular officer. Don't think he did, though.

- Morinao (talk) 01:25, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Well, option three could also be interpreted as barred by regulation/policy, meaning not restricted by statute but otherwise permissible if the policy is waived because the executive promulgated the policy (although admittedly I cannot think of a scenario offhand that would apply in that way). So I'm not sure that means appointment clause automatically, but possibly if under one of those scenarios where it would be permissible.

Requested the ASU pulls today, and also reached the former AF head of legislative liaison by phone. He said that it was all the agency of Goldwater and his MA, Gerry Smith, who was a retired AF legislative liaison himself. He didn't recall the precise method that was used for the promotion, but I sent him the files in the hopes it might refresh his memory. He agreed with my theory of how the promotion went down, which is that the AF theorized it might be possible, this proposal got passed to Goldwater because they were already backchanneling to both him and his staff, and then he just ran with it without appropriate staffing (which is why the promotions happened overnight, were unplanned, and also apparently were not staffed with the normal legal scrutiny that would accompany something going to the White House). It's the simplest explanation because the AF claimed to have thought of this on the same day that Goldwater took it to the WH, and there's simply no way that they both came up with the idea at the same time independently.

Doolittle's entire OMPF was digitized by NARA, so I can look up what authority he retired under if that's listed on the retirement order. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 02:28, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the workup from the DSC for personnel, LTG Cassidy: https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/media/57283842/content/st-louis/military/rg-342/30479766/300_Doolittle_James_01_Page_492.jpg Foxtrot5151 (talk) 02:36, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This appears to be the retirement order. Authority is 10 USC 1331. https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/media/57283842/content/st-louis/military/rg-342/30479766/300_Doolittle_James_01_Page_416.jpg Foxtrot5151 (talk) 02:39, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Retirement pay authority is a different section, 10 USC 1401: https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/media/57283842/content/st-louis/military/rg-342/30479766/300_Doolittle_James_01_Page_417.jpg Foxtrot5151 (talk) 02:41, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the actual orders--apparently the earlier copy was just the request: https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/media/57283842/content/st-louis/military/rg-342/30479766/300_Doolittle_James_01_Page_419.jpg Foxtrot5151 (talk) 02:42, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Since we could find no authority under Title 10, we proposed to Senator Goldwater that such advancement should be effected through legislation. With Senator Goldwater's proposed legislation meeting resistance in the House, the White House asked if some more expeditious method existed. OSD and SAF General Counsels believe that Lt Generals Eaker and Doolittle could be advanced in their retired grade pursuant to the appointment power of the President contained in Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the US Constitution.

The Appointments Clause wasn't even on the radar of USAF personnel staff, who kept thinking inside their box of Title 10 personnel laws and Air Force precedents (Chennault). Their counterparts in the Navy could have told them about Hopper and other Navy precedents (Burkley), but maybe service staffs were too siloed in those days. (LeMay: "The Soviets are an adversary. Our enemy is the Navy.") It wasn't until the White House applied pressure that they finally consulted the civilian lawyers in OSD and SAF, who promptly suggested the Appointments Clause.

(Also love this postscript from an 88-year-old Doolittle to the Air Force chief of staff: "You very flatteringly said "your busy schedule". Being neither alert mentally nor physically I have no busy schedule. Sometimes I sit and think and sometimes just sit.")

- Morinao (talk) 05:04, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Morinao and Foxtrot5151: Here's another source for the both of you on promotions of reserve officers to general or flag officer rank, if not there already. SuperWIKI (talk) 06:47, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, do you know if they followed up with a later report? I assume that retired regulars and retired reserve are both not considered "active duty" for the purposes of the statute in this case study (which would make no sense, unless they are actually called up again in some capacity). Otherwise, that term seemingly has no meaning. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 22:54, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That 1960 report, highlighting the inconsistent promotion standards for reserve GOFOs in the 1950s, points us to Goldwater's actual hangup about higher reserve grades -- he was unimpressed with the quality and quantity of his fellow reserve MGs, and didn't think most of them could handle a third star. So he consistently opposed any three-star reserve grade, such as a 1970 attempt to legislate a third star for the chief of the National Guard Bureau that would have retired CNGB in that reserve grade:

The highest grade you can achieve in the Reserve is major general. I do not want to see that upset. We have one lieutenant general that I know of in the Reserve and that is General Doolittle....I think once you open this door by making this mandatory or even permissive, that we will see a flood of lieutenant generals in the Reserve ranks. As I say, I feel, having served 37 years in the Reserve and the Guard, that there are very few men that have been able to apply enough time in the course of that length of time to make themselves eligible or equipped to occupy the three star rank...I don't know when the law was passed putting the limit on major generals, but we have a lot of major generals in the Reserves.

Hence his 1984 letter to Gabriel:

The one fear I've had is that by accommodating Jimmy with four [stars]...we're going to sort of open the lid to three star National Guard officers and three star Reserve officers, which I totally and absolutely oppose.

Now if you can come up with some way of regulation that can be made solid and permanent, placing an absolute limit on two stars as the ultimate rank of a Reservist or a National Guardsman and make that well known, then I don't think we will have the opposition that we might encounter if we tried to gather the extra stars for [Doolittle and Eaker].

And Gabriel's reply:

This action should not open the door for such promotions to reservists and guardsmen, because the governing law...states specifically that officers must be on active duty to be eligible for three- and four-star promotions. Therefore, special legislation will be required to get Ira and Jimmy their fourth stars.

(Goldwater had already lost his fight against a three-star National Guardsman when CNGB was designated a three-star position under Title 10 in 1979, but reserve chiefs had to wait until 2001.)

- Morinao (talk) 06:17, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Since the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act further elevated the CNGB to four-star grade, with the VCNGB being considered in last year's and this year's NDAAs for elevation to four-star grade as well, Goldwater has suffered even harder losses posthumously. Not to mention a growing trend towards earmarking reserve and national guard positions for three-star and four-star grade (see 122 Stat. 501 for an example with the deputy commander of NORTHCOM).

Maryanne Miller in particular has definitively broken the convention of higher-ranked reserve and arguably National Guard officers being locked into specified career tracks (head of the service reserve command i.e. Air Force Reserve Command), by being promoted to general commanding an active USAF major command. It stands to reason that more may follow in the coming years, and that even currently ludicrous ideas, say the CNGB being recalled to non-reserve active duty to serve as CSA, CSAF or even CJCS, may be on the table. SuperWIKI (talk) 07:25, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, well, it's clear the USAF wasn't sold on it until that reversal. What I find odd is that the final memo on that doesn't seem to have been staffed other than through the legislative liaison (and no legal memos are attached)--they should actually have solicited formal opinions from those attorneys. Of course that could have happened separately, but I wonder if it was actually investigated properly? Does the appointment clause route actually allow this if Title 10 does not? I'm not convinced yet, particularly with Goldwater's comments about overriding the restrictions. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 16:50, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

At the iron major level, I'm not sure DCS/Manpower and Personnel staff were ever sold on the Doolittle promotion, period. They laid down their preferred line in snooty replies to the public:

Historically, the Services have not honorarily promoted any retired General Officers. Promotion policy has been and will continue to be based on the Nation's present and future needs, known military requirements and, most importantly, the individual's potential to serve in a higher grade.

Senators and deputy assistants to the President needed softer soap, so the next line of stonewalling was fairness: "many would contend that General Eaker had greater responsibilities during World War II." (It's hilarious how that argument backfired. Public: "Promote Doolittle!" USAF: "Unfair to promote Doolittle and not Eaker." Public: "Promote Doolittle AND Eaker! Anyone else you want to mention?" USAF: "...no.")

But the CSAF turned over in 1982, and Goldwater got the new boss to take an interest in the promotion in 1984, so then the Air Staff had to get on board. That's when they forwarded the relevant laws to Goldwater's staff (Title 10 three/four-stars, Chennault, Chapter 837 1, 2, 3) and finally suggested the Chennault solution, passing the buck to Goldwater.

Then when the Air Staff solution got hung up in the House, Goldwater went over everyone's heads to Reagan, apparently sending the action to a more cooperative office with the imagination or experience to suggest the Appointments Clause, presumably OSD/SAF General Counsel. The final Pelak memo seems to be memorializing for the record a decision imposed on DCS/M&P by that other office, who would have done any staffing, and all that was left for DCS/M&P to do was roll over and assemble a nomination package for SecAF to forward to OSD. (Unfortunately, MG Pelak passed away last year, but if he had a story to tell here, maybe he shared it with his family?)

Many Appointments Clause invocations do seem to originate this way, when the President or political appointee like John Lehman short-circuits the normal staffing process to promote someone arbitrarily, and the bureaucracy has to scramble to rationalize the promotion after the fact. For example, LBJ just handed silver oak leaves to the Gemini IV astronauts at their welcome-back ceremony, without consulting OSD or NASA, which then had to invent a policy to promote returning astronauts using the Appointments Clause.

- Morinao (talk) 07:37, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, agree, it's quite possible it was imposed on them--the fact that Gabriel and Cassidy had already gone on record saying legislation was required supports that view (and they never changed their tune, at least in writing, although the Pelak memo did get routed through Gabriel). But the Pelak memo also made incorrect claims about Doolittle & Eaker being eligible for higher retirement pay, which also suggests it wasn't studied very closely (at least by DCS/M&P). I could be wrong, but I think Goldwater just ran with this, possibly based only on hearing a suggestion that hadn't been staffed. His own writings seem to suggest this also. Anyway, have spoken to two of the legislative liaison folks from that period, including the major general who actually drafted SJ Res 14 (the legislation that stalled), and they think that theory is plausible. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to backtrace it completely, but the folders I've requested from the Goldwater papers may be the best shot (docket for SJ Res 14 and also private correspondence with Gabriel). Gabriel's XO is also still around, so I've reached out to him to see if he knows anything else. Yes, I noted that Pelak was recently deceased, but I've identified at least four people who are not--including several general officers and a few civilians who were at equivalent levels, so I hope that will be enough. It occurred to me that these files really don't belong in an OMPF at all (84 pages of mostly executive communications?), and I wonder if someone stuck them in there just to get the record corrected eventually. I mean, the promotion order and the comptroller general decision are germane, but not the rest of it. NARA certainly only digitized what was already there--to include extra research would be well beyond their mandate, I think.

If DoD/AF GCs were involved, they may still have a copy of the workup that isn't archival. I've had some success in the past getting around the confidentiality of legal advisories--this was an important part of my effort to amend a title 10 statute in 2013, because I was able to document by FOIA requests that OSD had drawn policy from the wrong law, in spite of legal advisories that told them what they had done was unlawful (it led to over 25 years of unlawful policy). It turns out that any waiver of a legal opinion's privilege is permanent, so if you can prove that it's ever been released outside of the government, that's a slam dunk. Also, material amendment of the governing statute also waives the privilege in most cases (because it precludes the possibility of litigation, since the law no longer exists in that form). I do wonder if I might use that as the basis of a request here.

Yes, the response by bundling of the Eaker & Doolittle promotions wasn't lost on me--I simply noted that they eventually incorporated Eaker "to avoid embarrassing him," which I think is fair. Goldwater claimed that this was done at Doolittle's insistence, and perhaps it was, but I think he was likely reacting to the known rebuttals from the AF that were already out there, since they had been using that excuse from the very beginning of the lobbying effort in 1981. One of the private citizens lobbying for the promotion said it was making Doolittle extremely angry. He was grateful for the promotion at the end, I think, but apparently disliked that all of these people were trying to say he alone deserved special recognition.

In re: CNGB, I actually know GEN Hokanson, so I may tell him this story the next time we correspond. I think the deputy commander of Northcom amendment may also have been aimed at him, because he previously held that position (although not until 2015, per this website: https://www.nationalguard.mil/portals/31/Features/ngbgomo/bio/2/2295.html). Maybe they were just looking ahead? Foxtrot5151 (talk) 16:30, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Really? I thought the Jan. 2008 provision was meant to lay the groundwork for H. Steven Blum to become NORTHCOM deputy in 2009, as recognition for his unusually long term as CNGB (which was evidently extended by Congressional vote). The long term, presumably, was to allow for the paperwork and politicking to make the CNGB a four-star run its course. SuperWIKI (talk) 02:47, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you're right, I was just reflecting that Hokanson was in Northcom for several assignments also (not consecutively--I think he was there as a brigadier from 2010 to 2012. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 06:23, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just took a look at the Pelak memo again. Interestingly, it does have the Air Force GC's signature, Eugene Sullivan. I should have noticed that. It wasn't yet staffed through Secretary Orr, however, which is interesting (perhaps it had already been preempted because the promotion was already in the works?). Foxtrot5151 (talk) 18:14, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wondering how quickly this all went down at the end. Do you know when Goldwater appealed to Reagan? "I refused to trade these promotions for my vote on the boondoggling projects of a bunch of rookie congressmen....I marched up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House and asked President Reagan to make a formal request of the Senate for the promotions." I don't see any individual meetings with Goldwater in Reagan's official diary between Feb 25 (when S.J.Res. 14 went to the House) and Apr 3 (Pelak memo), although Goldwater left a message with Reagan's secretary on Apr 4, perhaps a thank you call or a prod to keep the nomination moving through the White House staff. But I don't know how complete that diary really is, even for days when Reagan was at the White House. I do see a budget meeting with Congressional leaders the morning of Apr 3, which Goldwater would have attended. If the "boondoggling projects" were related to the budget (e.g. base closures), then Doolittle/Eaker might have been germane enough for Goldwater to raise at that meeting, which would dramatically escalate the promotion's political saliency since he was a key player in the big budget fight that year. Then that would explain why the staffing suddenly seems so rushed later that day.

And I wouldn't be too hard on Goldwater not sweating the details -- he had the fundamental principle down, which is that the President has the Constitutional authority to make this promotion under the Appointments Clause, and the rest could (and, at Goldwater's level, should) be left to the staff to sort out. Even Pelak's comment about retirement pay, however incomplete, isn't exactly wrong. Doolittle/Eaker probably could have been authorized increased retirement pay under Title 10 if they met the statutory requirements by being recalled to active duty for 6 months like Hopper. However unlikely that scenario, Goldwater's bill would have explicitly precluded it. Perhaps better staff work would have turned up Colglazier's private law, which eliminated this ambiguity for Colglazier by affirming he was "entitled to all the benefits of retirement in the grade of lieutenant general", but I doubt it, given that they had already had 4 years to discover that precedent.

- Morinao (talk) 12:48, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it really was about base closures:

In April [1985], Senator Barry Goldwater, [SASC chairman], released an unofficial list of 22 bases that he said were candidates for closure....Mr. Goldwater said the list was not official because the Administration was worried that lawmakers threatened with the loss of a facility would "hold pro-Administration votes on other matters as hostage to later concessions by the Administration on base closures."

- Morinao (talk) 18:23, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Goldwater says that he appealed to Reagan in person the day prior to the promotions dropping in the Senate, meaning the same day that Pelak produced that memo, 3 April. Obviously the Goldwater action was already in the works, so if he got the idea from the AF it probably was passed to him a day or two earlier, hard to say for sure. I kind of doubt he could just walk into the oval office without an appointment (I mean, this wasn't the Trump WH!). But what's interesting is that Secretary Orr never actually signed the Pelak memo, which is telling--perhaps it simply was preempted by the time it got to him. Also, we know that at least some staffers in SASC probably weren't aware of what Goldwater did, because they kept pushing the SJ Res 14 and incorporated it into the Senate version of the NDAA, which was released at the end of April. I mean, with all legislation of that size, who knows when they actually wrote all of that (it says legislative day 14 April, but still, well after 4 April when the promotions were confirmed). But I think that speaks to the spontaneity of Goldwater's actions--I imagine he got word of this and just acted as soon as possible.

So I got through to GEN Eberhart, who was Gabriel's XO at this time, and he says he remembers this whole affair and will talk with me on Wednesday. Also connected with Eugene Sullivan, the former SAF/GC who signed the Pelak memo--he replied and said he remembers this as well, but we haven't set up a time to talk yet. So I imagine I'll get some clarity between those two interviews.

I think the fundamental question remains--did the president's authority really supersede lawful regulation from Congress? I agree that it would be entirely different if Doolittle and Eaker had been "recalled" to duty, however nominal, but of course that didn't happen. It's an interesting question because there isn't any litigation of this particular problem at all, so the courts have never answered this one. You'd never be able to litigate failure to promote under either channel here, because it would fall to either the president not nominating you (and he has that discretion unambiguously), or Congress not authorizing a bill (which cannot be contested either). So in theory any redress would fall to the House--they would have to protest an action that the Senate was complicit in as we have here (which itself is bizarre, and only because of the conflict of interest of Goldwater's). But what would that look like? A simple resolution condemning the promotion? A referral to someone? I mean, that all seems ridiculous for an honorary promotion, which is probably why nobody so much as publicly protested. But it does raise questions about the promotion's validity, and perhaps ones that cannot be answered with any certainty. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 05:36, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Makes one wonder about how many more supposedly "ordinary" promotions actually were a total zoo behind the scenes. These days, the climate's shifted from "do we promote this distinguished officer" to "do we promote the position" à la CNGB. What other little known case studies do you have besides the ones we've already discussed? SuperWIKI (talk) 07:25, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I only looked into this one because I was trying to disprove the claims about Jimmy Stewart's promotion. After I got on the phone with the EIC of Air & Space Magazine (who had published one of the Stewart claims), he suggested looking into these promotions as legitimate counterexamples. So I checked for legislation, and noticed that the bill had stalled but that the AF historical records incorrectly said they had passed. So I'm stringing together Mitchell, Chennault, and Doolittle/Eaker to show the progression. All AF cases and all peppered with historical inaccuracies. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 14:55, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If Goldwater met with Reagan on April 3, then I think it has to have been that meeting in the Cabinet Room from 9:35 to 10:25 between the President and Republican Congressional leadership to discuss budget and tax reform. There's no other window in Reagan's schedule before he retired to the Residence that afternoon. I can't confirm Goldwater's attendance -- Reagan's diary lists attendees in an Appendix A that I can't find, and I don't have institutional access to the CQ Weekly Report article (April 6 - Reagan, Senate GOP Reach '86 Budget Accord) that seems to be the only possible writeup (unless someone like Regan, Dole, or Dominici took notes). But as SASC chairman whose committee was drafting defense budget cuts, Goldwater was right in the middle of the budget negotiations. He was also a notoriously loose cannon who had recently upset everyone by forcing Weinberger to compile a list of the 22 most closable military bases, and then publishing it a week after the Doolittle/Eaker bill went to the House (an incident that eventually led to BRAC). So if Goldwater went to that morning budget meeting at the White House and complained to Reagan that he was being shaken down in the House over Doolittle/Eaker, then Don Regan, the administration's point man on the negotiations, might have seen indulging Goldwater's hobbyhorse as an easy and cost-free way to help keep the cantankerous old man onside, and directed the White House staff to immediately unblock the promotion, and from there the urgency rolled downhill to the Pentagon.

But I am just speculating here. Much better to ask someone who was actually there. Looking forward to hearing how your interviews with GEN Eberhart and Mr. Sullivan turn out.

Was this actually legal in retrospect? I don't think it's a question of the President's authority superseding lawful regulation from Congress. The absence of any statute positively authorizing retired reservists to be appointed to O-9/O-10 grades does not imply that Congress forbade it. It just means the Air Force could not use Title 10 for the appointment, and had to appeal to alternate authority from Congress (special legislation) or the President (Appointments Clause). The current ineligibility of retired reservists for promotion dates only to 1989 (103 Stat. 1461), and arguably applies only to Title 10 promotions.

In a similar case, the Air Force JAG in 1983 (OpJAGAF 1983/75) argued that it was legal to use the Appointments Clause to promote astronauts without convening the board required by Title 10, because a Title 10 promotion board was just one method of promoting an officer to an existing grade. "The language of [this law] dictates a very specific procedure for individuals promoted '...under this Chapter.' It does not describe qualifications for the office....We believe that any promotions made by the President depend on what grades exist at the time of promotion." The reserve O-10 grade had existed at least since the Armed Forces Reserve Act of 1952 (66 Stat. 487, "an individual shall be appointed as a Reserve commissioned officer...in a grade corresponding to one of the grades of the Regular component of that Armed Force") under which Doolittle was nominated to be a lieutenant general in the Air Force Reserve.

It might be different if the reserve grade of general either never existed or had been abolished (e.g. termination of general grade at Sheridan's death) or explicitly disqualified retirees from being appointed (e.g. laws requiring Secretary of Defense and FAA Administrator to be civilians), and the Senate confirmed the President's nomination anyway. Then the House might be able to claim standing based on nullification of its Article I, Section 8 power to regulate the military. But the same logic would apply a fortiori to all of the astronaut promotions since they all evaded Title 10 promotion board laws passed by the House, and even got paid at the higher grade, unlike Doolittle/Eaker. Even if the House had standing, the courts would almost certainly dismiss a direct clash between Article I, Section 8, and Article II, Section 2, over a cost-free honorary promotion as a nonjudiciable political question, as in the TEFRA case.

- Morinao (talk) 00:07, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Eberhart remembered this but didn't have anything to add other than my theory seemed plausible, and that Gabriel and Goldwater were very close. He said the way it eventually was worked out was most certainly a back room deal--"smoke filled," evidently. I just sent the files to Sullivan but we haven't worked out a time to discuss--I sent him the whole enchilada because I wanted him to see everything (which is a lot, unfortunately).

In re: legal, but what about 10 USC 601? That's the larger issue, because that statute expressly regulates how the president appoints and fills those ranks, and it clearly is regulating who the president may appoint via this method-- it says that the nominee must be "serving on active duty" as a prerequisite for nomination. Am I understanding this wrong?

The Attorney General opinion I quoted from in 1956 actually struck down a promotion board statutory prerequisite as impermissible because it unduly narrowed the President's options and gave that discretion to his own executive branch subordinates. So I think there is precedent for overruling cases like that. I'll take a look at the JAG opinion. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 02:57, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just read that opinion, which is very similar to the 1956 Opp Atty Gen ruling. It makes almost all of the same points, so I'm actually surprised they didn't cite it. My sense is that Section 601 does describe qualifications for the office as the opinion admits: Congress "may create a class of eligibles but not dictate the designation of an individual," and goes on to describe qualifications like age, citizenship, experience in the military, etc. Here, the requirement to be serving on active duty encompasses several of these--they were unable to hold the office due to both age and probably almost 40 years of perishability of experience and cognitive ability. It closes by arguing that the constitution does not permit restrictions on "the grade, circumstances, number or timing," but the active duty requirement wouldn't fall into these, would it? Foxtrot5151 (talk) 03:32, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Another pertinent quotation. The statutory restriction "does not preclude the selection of others who meet the qualifications of the office." But Eaker and Doolittle (and really any retirees so far past their prime) wouldn't meet the qualifications of the office for a variety of reasons, some of them statutory, some practical. Otherwise, just recall them and that problem is solved. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 03:36, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Emailed the Reagan Library about the purported meeting on 3 April. Interestingly, Goldwater was a scheduled attendee for the 3 April meeting with congressional leadership at 9:30am, but bowed out (he's on the "regrets" list). It was attended by Dole, Thurmond, Simpson, Chafee, Cochran, Heinz, Domenici, and Packwood (and a bunch of House members also). I asked them to go back and check on the two days prior, if possible. It looks like Goldwater was writing about this months later (November is the letter he wrote to Gen. Knobloch, a former Doolittle Raider), so obviously his memory wasn't great. He also wrote to Doolittle's biographer that "I can't swear to this, but I have a feeling that Ira had passed on before he could receive his star." That was in 1990, but the promotion was only five years earlier! Perhaps he was having cognitive issues? Foxtrot5151 (talk) 19:00, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also digging for more administrative precedents, but not finding much. I did find that the DOJ's office of legal counsel was citing the 1956 Atty Gen opinion on the appointment clause as recently as 1996, as a way of evidencing the president's authority to supersede statutory restrictions in the case of acting or interim appointments. They used the parenthetical (President has the constitutional authority to appoint “key military personnel to positions of high responsibility” without following statutory procedures). But that's not really an accurate summary of that opinion! It very clearly was subject to the caveat that it was only in "exceptional" circumstances, and only when encroaching on the president's constitutional authority or judgment. Citation is 20 OLJ 162. The opinion in question was by Walter Dellinger, the Asst. Atty. Gen. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 19:17, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, Goldwater's only appearance in the presidential diary in April is on the 4th itself, at 12:08pm. A phone call. If that was the interaction, then the whole affair didn't go down the way he claimed, but I guess that would technically predate the confirmation happening. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 19:20, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Senate opened at noon that day and the nominations hadn't yet been received--Sen. Dole mentioned them and said they were expected. It looks like the nominations were their last order of business, and they voted and then adjourned at 2:29pm. So I guess it's possible that the phone call led to the nominations being transmitted immediately, although that seems very unlikely to me. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 20:03, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oh interesting, thanks for following up on that. Maybe we shouldn't be taking Goldwater too literally, then. "I marched up Pennsylvania Avenue..." could just be literary license to jazz up and compress some esoteric legal maneuvers into a readable anecdote. And the 12:08 call could be Goldwater saying, "Hey, Senate just opened, where's my nomination?" and Reagan's secretary assuring him, "It's en route, the courier just left the White House." I don't want to make too many excuses for Goldwater being confused about Eaker, since he did have early Alzheimer's by the end, but Eaker had his fourth star pinned on by his wife and Gabriel at the Pentagon at the end of April, and Doolittle by Reagan and Goldwater at the White House in May, so is it possible Goldwater missed Eaker's ceremony and later wasn't sure he ever got one?

For 10 USC 601, the key word is "method". That statute defines a method to appoint a three- or four-star general on the retired list by designating a position to carry the grade ex officio, to be filled, with Senate consent, by an officer on active duty above the grade of colonel, thereby qualifying that officer to retire with that grade personally. But nowhere does it forbid other methods to achieve the same outcome.

Before DOPMA, for example, the 1976 edition of the U.S. Code had several independent methods to appoint a three- or four-star general in the Air Force:

1. 10 USC 8034/8531: Appoint, with Senate consent, any general officer to four-star grade while serving as Chief of Staff of the Air Force, or Chief of Staff to the President (three/four-star grades also authorized for JCS Chairman, Surgeon General, Senior Military Representative to UN).
2. 10 USC 8066: Appoint, with Senate consent, any officer on active duty above the grade of brigadier general to a position designated to carry that grade (precursor to 10 USC 601). Every reassignment to a different three- or four-star position had to be confirmed by the Senate, and the officer reverted to his permanent two-star grade while transitioning between assignments.
3. 10 USC 8442/8447: Appoint, with Senate consent, any regular officer, or reserve officer on active duty, to that temporary grade, which persisted until vacated by the President. Only the initial appointment needed Senate confirmation, not subsequent reassignments within the same grade, so for convenience the Air Force (and Army) used this statute instead of 10 USC 8066 to appoint three- and four-star officers, from 1953 until temporary grades were abolished by DOPMA in 1981.
4. 10 USC 8445/8447: Appoint, with Senate consent, in time of war, anyone to any temporary grade, which persisted until vacated by the President no later than six months after the end of the war if not a regular officer (successor to WWII law under which Knudsen jumped straight from civilian to temporary lieutenant general).
5. Special legislation (72 Stat. A67): Appoint Claire L. Chennault to three-star grade on the retired list with no increase in pay, without submitting a formal nomination from the President for the Senate to confirm. This only works if we construe the Senate's vote to pass the bill and subsequent signature and commissioning by the President as just another way to organize an appointment by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, per the Appointments Clause.
6. Appointments Clause: Appoint, with Senate consent, anyone to any existing grade. All of the above are really just different processes for exercising this underlying Constitutional authority.

Okay, if the Appointments Clause is so unlimited, why doesn't the President just nominate anyone to anything, and ignore all the statutes? Because the Senate can also reject any nomination for any reason! And violating a statute they passed is a great way to provoke them to block an appointment.

Conversely, no one can force the President to make any appointment, and no one can force the Senate to confirm it. So it doesn't really matter how an appointment is structured, or which statute it invokes, or whether that statute has a qualification clause limiting the President's choice to a single name, or whether there is no statute at all, just a deal in a smoke-filled back room. Once both the President and Senate sign off on an appointment, its validity under the Appointments Clause can't be challenged by anything less than a conflict with some other part of the Constitution, like the Ineligibility Clause.

- Morinao (talk) 06:23, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thanks for the explanation. Yes, I had realized that Senate confirmation (or lack thereof) is the only effective check there. And arguably it was compromised by Goldwater, who probably didn't openly disclose his own motives (at least to the rest of the Senate). Senate confirmation doesn't necessarily mean it was lawful, but of course there's an argument both ways that will never be resolved. There is caselaw on the inability to force the president to make an appointment (relying on those Atty Gen advisories). From memory, an officer had sued over a nomination that apparently was confirmed by the Senate, but didn't result in an appointment for some inadvertent reason (per the court, all three are a requirement, tracing back to Marbury v. Madison case, I think).

I actually thought about mentioning the ineligibility clause in passing because of Goldwater's contemporaneous service as both senator and reserve general for about a decade prior to retirement from the AF, which was part of the problem here. I have always disagreed with that practice (can you imagine Goldwater or Lindsey Graham being "assigned" some reserve duty by an effectively junior AF officer?). Having hosted some VIPs in my lifetime, it's pretty obvious that having a SASC senator "report for duty" within the military would just be like some sort of command inspection drill, and would be far more of a distraction than produce any meaningful duties or work product. But, since Congress is the judge of its own members' eligibility, it's unlikely to end anytime soon. I found a case years ago where Graham had been appointed, rather unwisely, as an appellate judge ruling on some enlisted member's conviction. Case is here: https://www.armfor.uscourts.gov/newcaaf/opinions/2006Term/05-0260.pdf The convicted member appealed on the grounds that Graham was violating the ineligibility clause, and the court found that Graham was in violation and remanded the case.

Ran across one AF Civil Law opinion from the 1990s that said AF JAG was uncomfortable going around DOPMA to advance the head of USAF Dentists to an O-7 billet. It was on Google Books and not open access (which is weird), but I'll see if I can pull it up on Lexis. I did not write it down, unfortunately, and am not certain it is on point. 131.252.55.137 (talk) 18:23, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, the AF civil law opinion is in OpJAGAF 1997-2000, pp.423-44. For some reason it's only offering a limited preview, but seems to be an interesting case where JAG is saying an appointment could in theory be made outside of DOPMA but shouldn't be! https://www.google.com/books/edition/Civil_Law/dPLkAKjtJYkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22promotion%22+%22article+II,+section+2,+clause+2%22&pg=PT439&printsec=frontcover 131.252.55.137 (talk) 19:14, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I actually linked that last civil law opinion in the "Appointments Clause promotions on the active list" box above, although it's long since buried in the giant walls of text, and I guess it wasn't a very informative box title anyway. But there are actually two very similar civil law opinions in that volume. The first one (OpJAGAF 1997/76) uses almost identical language to say a direct Presidential appointment under the Appointments Clause is the only alternative to make an O-7 appointment outside of DOPMA. The second one, about the dentist (OpJAGAF 1998/108), says that O-7 might even be junior enough to be considered an inferior officer under the Appointments Clause whose appointment can be delegated to the Secretary without involving the President or Senate, but this is a bad idea. So the JAG endorses using the Appointments Clause to appoint general officers outside DOPMA with Senate-confirmed Presidential appointments, but not with unilateral Secretarial appointments.

There are a couple recent cases of a confirmed nominee suing over an appointment the President refused to complete (Dysart v. United States (2004), Schwalier v. Hagel (2015)), notably Terry Schwalier, whose promotion to major general was canceled after Khobar Towers, and alternately reinstated and withdrawn.

Completely agree that it's poor form for sitting members of Congress to maintain active reserve commissions, especially members of the Armed Services Committees who oversee their own military chains of command. It's always funny when someone calls out their conflict of interest in public, they are completely unamused.

- Morinao (talk) 06:37, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

For the benefit of others reading this talk page, this is my understanding. In the aforementioned SASC meeting, Senators Strom Thurmond and Barry Goldwater are taking personal offence that Senator Joseph S. Clark Jr. is questioning the objectivity of reserve military officers with active commissions to serve in Congress.

This refers to a 1930 statute from Congress that means, in a congressional context, that only a reserve officer on an extended period of active duty, for instance in times of war or emergency, is considered an executive branch employee and must resign from Congress. Weekend training exercises (as is standard for National Guardsmen) does not require a Congressperson with a commission to resign. Today, this means that Trent Kelly, commander of the Mississippi Army National Guard can still be a sitting U.S. Representative, with Steve Stivers as another modern example. Senator Clark opines that the above statute is unconstitutional, and Thurmond responds with a charge that he and others in similar circumstances are being personally dishonoured.

In addition to Morinao's point above, it's obvious to me that separation of powers is threatened when lawmakers are de facto serving as executive branch employees paid for every day they serve (unless there's a separate law preventing that for reserve military Congresspeople). The original source subtly mentions the "separation of powers" problem as well, but not explicitly. SuperWIKI (talk) 08:08, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Goldwater: "I seriously resist the charge of conflict of interest. I see no conflict of interest at all." Definitely quotable. I called Goldwater out for his obvious conflicts of interest, so I may go back to that one! I wasn't aware of the 1930 statute, but you can't really put lipstick on that pig--it's just facially unconstitutional per the plain language of the ineligibility clause. I rather doubt the clause was intended to apply only after a 10 second rule kicks in. "Oh, oh, not extended yet--you're still in the legislative branch!"

Yes, I was just reading about Schwalier because of the Fogleman resignation connected to this (I was told that Fogleman was a scholar of Doolittle, leading me to look up his master's thesis in history from Duke, and also read several other articles and interviews). Fogleman replied that he had only interviewed Doolittle once, I think while teaching history at USAFA as a major, and didn't know about this whole affair. Interesting that the BCMR corrected Schwalier's record and then had to undo the correction due to legal deficiency. Sounds like their legal advisor was out to lunch.

It's quite a coincidence, but I had also submitted a BCMR case that very year (2007) to award a military decoration, which they denied via form letter that I later proved was copied verbatim from a denial authored at least 20 years earlier (it matched the others in the FOIA reading room except for some text in a different font and even different color). Among other defects, that meant that they had recycled the legal merits from the mid 1980s, which made the statutory authority outdated, because it had subsequently been amended in the FY1990 NDAA on that very point. I wrote to the AF General counsel who had authored the outdated legal opinion--he wrote me a complete retraction and supported my case, saying the BCMR had clearly and materially erred. But the BCMR staff would not reconsider the case per their review boards legal advisor (a retired AF JAG LTC), who said it was not new and relevant evidence because I should have raised it the first time. He just kept interpreting the statute in absurd ways that couldn't possibly have been the intent of the legislature, because his interpretations rendered the amendment inapplicable to anyone. Apparently he was personally embarrassed that some non-lawyer like me would try to offer alternatives that conflicted with his legal opinions. So I dug into the OLC FOIA exceptions and figured out that I could request any legal opinions that had ever been released to BCMR applicants, due to the permanent waiver of attorney client privilege. This issue had resulted in probably 50+ BCMR cases, so many legal opinions were cited in the FOIA cases, and they sent me many of these legal reviews from both the review board attorney and the AFPC's own counsel, all of which were based on outdated law. This led me to FOIA records from OSD, which led to the discovery that the policy proponent for the medal had based DoD policy on the wrong law, which I was able to prove because multiple Navy TJAG opinions had informed them of this, and I found the actual policy drafted prior to the change of law, making it unlawful for several decades. But I couldn't convince anyone to fix it, and being in uniform actually was unhelpful, because officials could rebuke me even if they weren't in my chain of command (which they did, even though I wasn't even in the AF). That led me to ask a former AF General Counsel (actual) to assist me, and she circulated my research to SecAF (acting) Fanning and the chief of staff (Gen. Welsh), leading to their support of an amendment in the FY2013 NDAA. Anyway, not at all surprised that the BCMR screwed up the legal merits of a case in 2007. That body was a joke, at least at that time, and I rather doubt it has changed much in the interim. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 15:54, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Air & Space Operations Review (recently renamed) accepted the article pending some minor revisions. The reviewers found it compelling both in terms of general history and particularly the theme of misinformation, which seems to be a very relevant theme right now. Air & Space Forces Magazine wants to publish a condensed version also (and offered to run it by the AF for queries and factual correction of the errors beforehand), so long as Air & Space Operations doesn't object. So I'm going to try and deconflict if the EICs don't have a problem with articles on the same general topic. One of my informal reviewers offered to pass to the AF Chief of Staff, but it now appears that it's on too fast of a publication track to get that feedback. I need to revise by next week for Air & Space Operations Review, but have out for informal review from about a half dozen JAGs, so hopefully will get some substantive criticism by then. Thanks again for the help in locating sources and in pushing me to wrap my brain around this--it's not really a topic I've grappled with before, at least on the legal side. I'm still ambivalent about whether Article II is truly an independent route around DOPMA, etc., but at least I understand the thrust of the arguments both ways. 131.252.137.208 (talk) 20:19, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, congratulations! I'm glad there's so much interest in this story, which does seem very timely the way you've framed it. Thanks for prompting such a fun deep dive, I really enjoyed thinking this through. Please do come back and update us as your articles move forward!

- Morinao (talk) 16:51, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'm waiting on feedback from several informal JAG reviewers before submitting the revisions (it might delay publication, but the EIC is fine with it, and I'd rather be in a later issue than be off-base). I've circulated among several JAGs already but have yet to get any substantive feedback on the Doolittle & Eaker promotion, probably because it was such an esoteric case and perhaps singular in the exact way it went down. Have already beefed up some of the article in terms of case study biographies, which was one of the conditions a reviewer requested. For example, it's interesting that Chennault was disliked by most of his contemporaries and virtually all of his superiors--even his biographer called him a deeply flawed man who was nearly a pathological liar, but that this was never an impediment to the promotion consensus. One historian speculated that his image was very much propped-up by hagiographic popular media, which is an interesting observation (and may well apply equally to Doolittle, who enjoyed quite the popular legacy as well). I also took the opportunity to look up the Doolittle / Eaker relationship, which I had not explored. Of course, the promotion was complicated by the fact that Eaker had actually been replaced by Doolittle as head of the Eighth AF in 1944, which was interpreted by virtually everyone as a loss of confidence from Hap Arnold. Doolittle wrote on it in his autobiography, saying that he was glad he had proven himself among the Army and USAAF leadership, but was also sensitive to Eaker's feelings. That dynamic apparently survived through to the promotion, which perhaps is why Doolittle insisted that Eaker be promoted first.

I was also called by the former SAF/GC yesterday. He obviously remembered the promotions, but not the mechanism (or he would've been able to explain that, I imagine). It was not very fruitful because he was not receptive to the possibility of error (foreseeable, but still unfortunate). We got hung up discussing the Pelak memo, which I brough up because it was the only proof he had touched the issue at all--I pointed out that he had signed it but that it hadn't gone through SecAF, and he claimed it must have been an oral briefing. As for validity, he said it was presumptively fully lawful because he had signed it and he wouldn't have signed it if it weren't lawful, and he was the highest AF legal authority by statute (which of course was not convincing to me). I think it's also likely that they never fully staffed it because Goldwater had preempted them a week or so earlier, and probably just misremembered or embellished the dates. Anyway, the GC didn't seem to know that there were statutes that they ran afoul of, and speculated that perhaps they were retroactively amended to grandfather this case (I doubt it, and the active status requirement has never been changed, which I told him). I told him about the Comptroller General rebuke, and he didn't seem fazed by that, saying that was their ball to run with but didn't impact the validity (which I agree with). I had sent him a copy of the Comp. Gen. ruling for advance review, so evidently he read through it. We discussed the non-judiciability briefly, and he said it could make it into court if someone disputed, say, the Eaker / Doolittle Comp. Gen. ruling in the Court of Claims. As for why they did it that precise way, he said it was the most efficient way to accomplish the promotions, and it need to be done because they were American heroes. I agree with the general motive to recognize both men, but I don't think the outcome justifies any method, which seemed to be his argument. This may be a fairly innocuous issue that had few ripple effects, but the same mechanism could be very problematic if used to bypass the House on a more substantive issue. So he gave me much material for possible quotation, but I doubt I will use it--my goal is to shed light on the history and start a discussion about information literacy in the service. Many of the recent issues have addressed misinformation/disinformation as a strategic vulnerability, both in terms of domestic politics and the radicalization of the military, as well as in information warfare with great power adversaries. It may be that the misinformation issues I've identified are attributable more to lack of fluency with legal terminology and processes than anything else, but the services do have legal and historical experts who are capable of figuring this out (presumably they simply weren't consulted). 131.252.55.20 (talk) 20:34, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Was called by a former Army prosecutor today (retired O-6 JAG) who has advised me before. He thought the article should be expanded into a military history journal, but I told him it's already accepted and my reasons for steering to the USAF. He was interested in the fact that the Army apparently didn't try to advance anyone in this precise way at that time (is that correct?), which he suggested might mean they disagreed, since they would obviously have been aware of it. He agreed that it seemed incorrect to allow Article II authority as a way to completely circumvent DOPMA. I went back and looked at the OpJAGAF opinions again, and that Sept. 1983 astronaut ruling explicitly says that they got the idea from the Navy's recent post-DOPMA appointment clause promotions (which must be a reference to ADM Hopper and possibly someone else?, based on what you wrote above). The key difference there, again, is that Hopper clearly was recalled to duty. That seems to me a very substantive difference that separates Eaker/Doolittle from virtually all of the other post-DOPMA appointment clause promotions of that period. It worked for the astronauts, of course, since they were on duty. But it's still a very expansive reading (and the citation of Corwin is, frankly, pretty mischaracterized--Corwin in no way says that there is no limitation whatsoever on appointment authority, at least not how they're reading it). The mere absence of a Constitutional limitation doesn't mean that no regulation of appointment authority is possible, and I think that's a clear misunderstanding.

I pulled a few of the other promotees and would-be-promotees--Hopper, Kimmel, and Short. Hopper's advancement papers are in there, at least the oath of office she took upon promotion to Commodore in 1983, dated 8 Nov 1983, which doesn't align with the date on Wikipedia (and Wikipedia also says she was promoted by bill of relief, I think?). She took it again with RADM as the rank in 1986. Wikipedia even links to the alleged bill, which clearly did not pass.

Short is interesting because of the protracted dispute to posthumously promote him from his son, who was also an Army officer. He initiated a BCMR case that recommended advancing him to LTG, but then the deputy assistant secretary over the review board declined to act on it (evidently leading to the later effort to promote by bill of relief). DAJA-AL did a legal opinion on the proposed promotion in 1990, and it says very clearly that only the tombstone promotion act of 1947 could be used to advance him--they said "there currently exists no legal basis for advancement on the retired list other than the authorities cited by COL Short," meaning the 1947 act. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 05:01, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh, the confusion also contaminated at least one of the recent books on Hopper. This author claimed that she was promoted by virtue of a bill only passed by the House, in conjunction with a "special appointment." This is just bonkers. Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Grace_Hopper_and_the_Invention_of_the_In/dr34DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=commodore Foxtrot5151 (talk) 16:39, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Among the millions of people who saw the 60 Minutes interview was U.S. Representative Philip Crane (R-Illinois). He promptly initiated a bill to have the contributions of this extraordinary woman properly recognized. The bill, passed by the House of Representatives, promoted Captain Grace Hopper by special appointment to the lofty rank of Commodore." Foxtrot5151 (talk) 17:08, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I just wrote to the author, who is a USNA grad with a PhD--he teaches at UC Berkeley's school of business. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 17:19, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that the Army did not use the Appointments Clause for honorary promotions in the Doolittle/Eaker timeframe was probably more about a lack of candidates than any opinion about the validity of the Appointments Clause for this purpose. Ridgway and Van Fleet had already won their fourth stars in the Korean War, every other Army lieutenant general with the stature of Doolittle/Eaker got an honorary fourth star in 1954, and Bradley even had a fifth star. Who was left to promote? Groves? Gavin? The Army did use the Appointments Clause to evade DOPMA for other promotions: astronauts Stewart (1984) and Spring (1986); 207 Army Reserve colonels (1985); posthumous promotion for Nicholson (1985), two months after the major was shot by Soviets in Germany; posthumous promotions for five of the 248 Army personnel killed in the crash of Arrow Air Flight 1285R (1985). The Appointments Clause seems to have been the "break glass in case of emergency" authority for promotions not otherwise covered by DOPMA.

It's not surprising that all of the Appointments Clause promotion precedents originate in the Navy, rather than the Army or Air Force. Before DOPMA, the Army and Air Force had less incentive to innovate than the Navy, since the Officer Personnel Act gave them much broader promotion authority. Whereas the Army could use temporary grades to appoint any officer, active or retired, to three or four stars, the Navy could only appoint officers on the active list to those grades, which is why they had to invoke the Appointments Clause to accommodate LBJ's desire to promote White House physician Burkley (retired officer on active duty) to vice admiral. The distinction between being on the active list or retired list (Burkley) seems at least as significant as being on active duty or not (Hopper/Doolittle/Eaker). In both cases, there was an eligibility requirement that was evaded by invoking the Appointments Clause.

The Hopper case really does line up with Doolittle/Eaker remarkably well, right down to the misunderstandings about her promotion in all her book-length biographies. If SAF GC staff used Hopper as a precedent for Doolittle/Eaker, that could explain how it was able to move through their office so quickly, since they could just refer to her package. Although it does seem like these offices didn't really talk -- Hopper should have been the obvious precedent for Doolittle/Eaker, but that was in the Navy; Doolittle/Eaker should have been the obvious precedent for Short, but that was in the Air Force. I do think that successive administrations just didn't want to promote Short and Kimmel, and the legal issue was only an excuse. If they really wanted to promote Short, they could have used the Appointments Clause like for Lavelle in 2010. Then again, Lavelle's nomination did fail, so it would be interesting to know if the Appointments Clause was an issue in his case, or if SASC had other reasons not to promote him.

It does seem like there might be an interesting story about why the Appointments Clause was invoked for Hopper at all. The 60 Minutes interview first aired in March 1983, and Crane presumably saw it on rerun since his joint resolution wasn't introduced until August 2. Lehman announced he was recommending her for promotion on August 29, preempting the legislation and triggering her Appointments Clause nomination on October 21, which was confirmed by the Senate on November 4. Then she had a promotion ceremony in the White House on December 15. So why did Lehman intervene? Did Crane's bill get stuck in the House, like Doolittle/Eaker? Or, after finally managing to fire Rickover, was Lehman wary of letting another retired naval officer on active duty receive promotions directly from Congress?

- Morinao (talk) 11:03, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, yes, you may be right about the China background with Chennault, which hadn't occurred to me. Perhaps that was another thumb on the scale.

I assumed the Army had used the authority for astronaut promotions, but wasn't sure. Using it for all of the posthumous promotions is a little more surprising. I thought there was already some authority for posthumous promotion at the secretary's discretion, but perhaps that's only in cases where they're already in a promotable status?

In re: eligibility requirement that was waived, I'm reading 10 USC 601 as only requiring "serving on active duty" in any grade above O-6. In my view, whether recalled/retired, regular active, active reserve, etc., the duty status isn't being waived if they are in fact on duty. I'm seeing that as discernible from the binary construct of active/retired list, because Hopper and Burkley were clearly in an active status in spite of nominal retirement, correct?

Yes, in re: Short/Kimmel, agreed, they just didn't want to do it, which is probably why an appointment or bill of relief was never suggested even if they knew about it. I read the entire BCMR case for Short, and the Army was recommending to his son that it go to the BCMR, probably because they expected it to be an obvious denial that they could just rubber stamp (meaning, in bad faith). Then, when the BCMR unexpectedly recommended approval, it put the Army in a bad position (that overturned recommendation was cited in the law that later passed authorizing the promotions). I called a former DoD GC (actual) and SECNAV last year about the Army forcing a case I was helping with to the BCMR (another military award), which the Army kept claiming was the proper place for it to go (it wasn't--the Army had never sent the case to SecArmy, which was the sole approval authority, and that meant they had never exhausted administrative remedies). He advised me to never let it get there because "it's a graveyard where cases are sent to die." But, of course, the BCMR is a secretarial board, so they can claim it acts for the Secretary, but with the caveat that it doesn't have professionally trained staffers, and they won't conduct a thorough investigation into the merits of a case like, say, one that's routed up from an assistant secretary's office. So, we filed complaints to the IG and the armed services committee, and both came back rebuking the Army, including two defense bill directives, so G-1 retracted their "offer" to send the case to the BCMR, and sent it directly to SecArmy, who approved it. I think they knew the whole time that the BCMR would just reject the case automatically. If interested, DAJA-AL opinion on Short is here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/st-louis/rg-319/299741/Mixed01/299741_006/299741_006_0010.jpg

In re: Hopper, yes, it looks like this could be an entire book. I cannot fit it into this article, unfortunately, but it's still interesting to trace where this all came from. I think the legal piggybacking may also explain why the USAF didn't fully comprehend the methodology, because borrowing that framework apparently meant that they didn't see fit to conduct much due diligence. I imagine that the issue with Hopper was probably failure to be recommended by a promotion board--I don't know the complexities of the Navy's promotion system, but her status was unusual enough that it may have precluded regular consideration for promotion. Being subordinated to a promotion board recommendation is precisely the same issue that the Attorney Gen. weighed-in on in 1956--whether or not the President can be forced to have his choice of nominee subordinated to a lesser official in the executive. So that falls under executive discretion, which is why they were permitted to go around the statute. But the caveat is that this was only permitted because the officer was already eligible for promotion, and Congress was still deemed to have the final authority to define who was eligible, but not to determine who was the selectee. That seems to be the common thread in most of these advancements--officers who are otherwise eligible, but not through the regular promotion boards. Interestingly, in the case of Hopper, it doesn't seem that her resolution really went anywhere--I found it once in the Congressional Record when introduced, but it never left committee, received a report, etc. Crane died some years ago, unfortunately, and I don't see any papers he left behind. I was disappointed that Hopper's OMPF didn't have any of that paperwork. One point is that Hopper was not retiring contemporaneously (she continued in that role through 1986, I think), which meant that her unscheduled promotion probably counted against the number of flag officers the Navy was capped at, right? Perhaps that explains the resistance? Foxtrot5151 (talk) 16:25, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also curious about the Army's posthumous promotions, since they would apparently run afoul of some of the same statutory restrictions. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 17:45, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like 10 USC 1521 covers posthumous promotions where the appointment or recommendation for appointment was issued prior to death. So apparently the Army was trying to honor folks that fell outside of those parameters, but without the work of passing a bill of relief. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 23:20, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am also reading the Corwin text that the AFJAG cited in the 1983 astronaut opinion. Think I have a slightly later version because the pagination is slightly different. It seems a mischaracterization to me. Yes, Corwin says that the Constitution only has a textual limitation on appointment in the form of the ineligibility clause. But two pages later he says "By far the most important limitation on presidential autonomy in this field of power is, however, that which results from the fact that, in creating an office, Congress may stipulate the qualifications of appointees thereto. First and last, legislation of this sort has laid down a vast variety of qualifications, depending on citizenship, residence, professional attainments, occupational experience, age, race, property, sound habits, political, industrial, or religious affiliations, and so on and so forth. It has even confined the President's selection to a small number of persons to be named by others. Indeed, it has contrived at times, by particularity of description, to designate a definite eligible, thereby, to all intents and purposes, usurping the appointing power. For the proposition is universally conceded that some choice, however small, must be left the appointing authority . . . .

Corwin also has entire pages of citations of examples under that paragraph, most apparently from Justice Brandeis's dissent in Myers v. United States, 272 US, 52, 264-74. From all of this it appears that Corwin has only concluded that Congress cannot limit executive discretion in appointment to the point of forcing appointment of a given eligible. He doesn't seem to be arguing at all that other statutory restrictions on the appointment qualifications are invalid simply by narrowing the field of eligibles, which is what the OpJAGAF opinion clearly said. So it seems they were either mischaracterizing that work, or otherwise failed to read it. They said that "Any attempt to constrict the President's judgment would be constitutionally impermissible." I mean, that may be true in this context, but can't really be attributed to Corwin. 131.252.143.28 (talk) 20:49, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to find more documentation of the astronaut policy. Here is a memo in Alan Shepard's OMPF, saying that they only did it up to O-6 (why stop there?). https://catalog.archives.gov/catalogmedia/lz/st-louis/rg-024/299693/300_Shepard_Alan_B_Page_400.jpg Foxtrot5151 (talk) 03:26, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting that under that policy Shephard apparently went through a board for RADM selection: https://catalog.archives.gov/catalogmedia/lz/st-louis/rg-024/299693/300_Shepard_Alan_B_Page_402.jpg Foxtrot5151 (talk) 03:28, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Folks trying to force the promotion anyway: https://catalog.archives.gov/catalogmedia/lz/st-louis/rg-024/299693/300_Shepard_Alan_B_Page_396.jpg Foxtrot5151 (talk) 03:32, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Another Navy pushback: https://catalog.archives.gov/catalogmedia/lz/st-louis/rg-024/299693/300_Shepard_Alan_B_Page_394.jpg Foxtrot5151 (talk) 03:33, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So it appears a private citizen wrote to his Senator as a constituent, asking him to appeal for Shepard's promotion despite no standing to do so? That's just a waste of time--do they really have nothing better to do? https://catalog.archives.gov/catalogmedia/lz/st-louis/rg-024/299693/300_Shepard_Alan_B_Page_393.jpg Foxtrot5151 (talk) 03:35, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, this almost got out of hand. A Medal of Honor? https://catalog.archives.gov/catalogmedia/lz/st-louis/rg-024/299693/300_Shepard_Alan_B_Page_376.jpg Foxtrot5151 (talk) 03:39, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I still don't think active-duty status is any more or less significant than the other eligibility criteria in the various promotion statutes. For example, under DOPMA, Title 10 promotions up to O-8 require selection by a promotion board. Officers not selected by a promotion board are not authorized to be promoted by that statute, so promoting astronauts without a board requires the Appointments Clause. That is just as legitimate or illegitimate as invoking the Appointments Clause to promote an officer not on active duty to O-10 because he can't qualify for a Title 10 promotion under DOPMA. Narrowing the field of eligibles just tells you when a particular statute is in play. It doesn't rule out alternate promotion authorities.

The astronaut promotion policy was instituted by NASA and DoD in 1965:

The matter of meritorious promotions for astronauts after successful space flights came to a head when President Johnson, in the course of a speech at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), Houston, Texas, in July 1965 and without prior mention to the Secretary of Defense nor the Administrator, announced that he was promoting Astronauts James A. McDivitt, USAF, and Edward H. White, II, USAF, for their successful flight in Gemini IV. Shortly thereafter, the President arranged accelerated promotions for Astronauts Virgil I. Grissom, USAF, and John W. Young, USN, who had flown in Gemini III and who were then on promotion lists awaiting actual promotions under normal procedures....I discussed this matter with the Deputies for Personnel in Navy and Air Force Headquarters, and we agreed that it would be preferable that meritorious promotions be awarded in accordance with an established policy rather than on a spur-of-the-moment basis....Each military astronaut would receive a one-grade promotion as a direct result of a successful space flight, but not beyond the grade of Colonel in the Air Force and Marine Corps or Captain in the Navy. (There was to be only one meritorious promotion given to any individual military astronaut.)

This is a pattern with Appointments Clause promotions: the President makes a decision, and the bureaucracy finds a way to rationalize it. In the 1970s, there seems to have been a general sense, both in Congress and the services, that the President could legitimately direct out-of-process promotions, even if people were fuzzy on the mechanism:

Mrs. HOLT: The President can remove the name of an officer from a promotion list. Can he add a name? Has this been done? There is nothing in DOPMA about it.

Admiral WATKINS: I don't believe that he can, no.

Mr. McCULLEN: We could check that.

Mr. FORD: Would you check that and put it in the record later? I believe that he can. The President has the right to nominate an officer subject to the advice of the Senate. I think that President Roosevelt did on one or two occasions.

[Response provided for the record states that the President cannot add a name to a promotion list, but can invoke the Appointments Clause, as for astronaut promotions.]

General McLENNAN: We have an indication that the President can direct a promotion. I am not able to cite the specific authority.

For example, President Reagan directed the posthumous promotion of Nicholson in part to keep pressure on the Soviets for an apology and compensation for his family:

The [Appointments Clause nomination], submitted Friday, is highly unusual because Nicholson's name did not appear on the Army's promotion list. It marks only the second time in history a president has asked for the promotion of an officer not on the list, an Army spokeswoman said. In the first instance, Lt. Col. Charles Ray, a defense attache at the U.S. Embassy in Paris killed by a terrorist in 1982, was promoted posthumously to colonel, she said.

For Hopper, Lehman is the best source, if he still remembers, since he was the one who decided to intervene, especially if it really was the kind of power play he was notorious for. Crane's bill was racking up more cosponsors every week, until it was preempted by Lehman's announcement on October 29. The flag officer grade caps did apply to all active-duty officers including Hopper, but don't seem to have driven resistance to her promotion from the Navy, since SecNav chose to endorse it. But I imagine they were a factor in the eventual decision to take her off active duty.

Lehman invoked the Appointments Clause again a few years later to recall legendary fighter pilot Joe Satrapa to active duty as a Top Gun instructor with the promotion to full commander that Satrapa demanded. Satrapa had retired after being passed over by a promotion board, and helped inspire Tom Cruise's character in the original Top Gun movie. People wonder how Maverick could possibly still be on active duty as a captain in the new movie -- well, maybe Iceman finagled a secretarial Appointments Clause promotion for him, too.

- Morinao (talk) 08:16, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You make a compelling case, and you have solid evidence, so obviously I cannot argue with the actual practice--your statement that "the President makes a decision, and the bureaucracy finds a way to rationalize it" seems correct. I guess it just comes down to the strength of the particular rationalization, since they're not all equally compelling. I still think it's most problematic to use this pathway as a way to circumvent the legislature (Eaker/Doolittle), and obviously less problematic when nobody would or did object to the practice, such as with a deceased soldier. In the latter case, it's curious that it needed to happen this way with deceased servicemembers, since one would think that the legislature could easily expand one of the existing statutory authorizations to encompass more subjective situations.

The astronaut promotions are interesting and yet rub me the wrong way--having been around several folks who were selected or mulling selection, and having met a few active duty astronauts still in the military, I think wearing the blue flight suit is its own reward. In one sense, it probably is impractical to have them going through a promotion board--their evaluation reports are basically written by civilians not even in DoD, and they are essentially on extended loan from DoD themselves (with DoD footing the bill). The astronaut program has this lend-lease policy where you are detailed to try out for the program on a probationary basis after passing through test pilot school, but after that they should probably make these guys resign their commissions and just pay them out of NASA's budget. I mean, they really don't do anything for the service any longer unless they somehow leave the program and then go out to a regular command again (and that seems unlikely for most of them--their career path is about as narrow as one can get).

Any idea why the Army promoted those several hundred reserve colonels via the appointment clause? I ran some of this by a retired JAG who was one of the only people who published a detailed article in Military Law Review that focused on promotions. He speculated that they might have used the appointment clause to allow promotions of reservists who were overlooked for promotion, which led them to establish a BCMR led "RELOOK" process to attempt to cure the defect. That made me wonder if those promotions were attributable to this board process. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 15:55, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In re: the board justification, I was focusing on that one because of the 1956 Op Atty Gen and 1983 Op JAG AF opinions both saying that the board requirement basically interfered with executive discretion, but they still claimed Congress can set the parameters of the office's qualifications. On the other hand, if all they were doing was finding a colorable justification for the promotions in those particular cases, then all of the efforts to draw an internal line are mostly meaningless, because they're not really enforceable the next time around, when they'll just find another justification upon presentation of a case that's non-conforming.

I do think, if looking to draw a distinction between the various appointment clause rationalizations, that the non-duty status (for honorary purposes) and particularly deceased officer promotions are particularly problematic. From an originalist perspective, there's really no argument that this practice never even entered the minds of the framers--obviously this appointment pathway was never intended to confirm nominees for the sake of not actually holding the office. So while you can also rationalize the practice on the grounds that there's no tangible harm in most cases other than perhaps the cost of the government having to process the nominal appointments (which is probably why it's gone on), it's pretty obviously not what this provision was intended to accomplish. If we're talking about qualifications for actual serving officers intended to fill actual positions, then that's squarely within the intent of the provision, and I think more debatable because the exact parameters of the legislature and executive's authority aren't set in stone. 131.252.57.70 (talk) 17:44, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, found contact info. for Lehman, so I'll see if he can explain it. I cannot include it in the article at this point, but it might be helpful to pass to the author of Hopper's book, in the event he ever issues an updated version. 131.252.57.70 (talk) 17:55, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In re: Hopper, her file actually says she requested her own voluntary retirement, although I guess it might have been suggested as an alternative to forcing it. She eventually passed in 1992 (at age 85), only some 6 years later. 131.252.57.70 (talk) 19:59, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In re: Satrapa, that's interesting. They really should've used that as the explanation for 60-year-old Tom Cruise being brought out of mothballs for Top Gun in the recent sequel--the appointment clause would be a better explanation than the implication that he just kept being busted down like he was junior enlisted or something (I mean, it's an up or out system, isn't it?). But on Satrapa, it's interesting how he was able to dictate the conditions of his own employment in a way that's virtually unheard of within the military. Anecdotally, the only case I ever ran into that seems similar was a pilot who was nominally under my administrative command (and I do mean nominally). He had previously retired as a military pilot and taken a job at a major airline, and then got furloughed, so he somehow struck a sweetheart deal to come back as a limited-duty officer for a specified period (I don't really know what to call it because nobody ever used a technical term--he still wore the uniform, but was somehow exempted from most everything, or so I was told). The deal forbade the service from giving him a PT test, or deploying him, and I don't think he even went up for promotions or had evaluation reports. I actually asked my CO if these restrictions were real, because I didn't believe it at first, and sometimes really lazy officers would just exempt themselves from those sorts of requirements (without authority) if they could get away with it. Evidently it was all real, and apparently he just went back to the airline after this contractual period of service ended. 131.252.57.70 (talk) 20:17, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also in re: Satrapa, apparently the toe-to-hand transplant is real. Sorry, I had to verify this! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4536818/#:~:text=The%20toe%20to%20hand%20transplantation,accepted%20option%20for%20the%20thumb. 131.252.57.70 (talk) 20:34, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In re: astronauts, thanks for the NASA link. I see I was wrong, and that NASA actually reimburses their pay. That's as it should be. I still don't see this continued fiction that they are actually in the military in any functional way as necessary--they should just resign from the military after acceptance into the space program. I previously pulled Grissom's OMPF and noted that at least one of his promotions looked funky (very few on people on the order, special promotion order, etc.) but didn't see any obvious signs of external influence documented. Curious if the "meritorious promotions" have continued in the present-day reality of either riding a Russian rocket or using Musk's reusable spacecraft to get into orbit--after all, either way they'd just be a passenger, so does that really deserve the same type of treatment? 131.252.183.149 (talk) 22:47, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Already received a reply on the Lehman query: "Unfortunately, Dr. Lehman does not recall the details regarding Grace Hopper’s promotion to Commodore in 1983." They suggested checking with the Naval History Command. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 17:18, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, it's great that you were able to get a response from Lehman so quickly, although I guess it was a long shot that he would remember that kind of detail four decades later.

Hopper's retirement was not as voluntary as the record implies. According to this biography (p. 191):

Early press reports in August 1986 reported Hopper's retirement as involuntary. The Navy Times, however, quoted a spokesman for navy secretary John Lehman as saying that Hopper was not being forced out. "It was her choice. She sent in a letter requesting voluntary retirement." Hopper herself denied that, telling the Navy Times that she had not planned on retirement. "I would have loved to stay in the navy and I wasn't ready to leave," she said. "But it's all about numbers and I guess they needed mine."

The rest of the story is in this PhD thesis (which has some priceless anecdotes from her Navy aide: "[Hopper's boss, Admiral] Sutherland wanted someone with Hopper in case something happened to her on one of these trips. And, one time I really thought she had died. I came to get her to take her to dinner or something and knocked on her door. I got no response and I kept knocking harder, and thought, 'Please don't die on my watch.' Finally, I heard her say, 'Just a minute, just a minute.'...And it hits you this little old lady should be at home and not doing all this travelling, but that is what she lived for."):

By this time, Hopper was seventy-nine years old and beginning to travel less frequently. She had fallen in Dulles Airport, breaking her arm, and the Navy, which had allowed Hopper to remain past retirement age by annual review, decided Hopper should retire again.

Admiral Paul Sutherland, still the commanding officer of the Naval Data Automation Command, recalled that when the time came for Hopper to be retired, "people didn't have the courage to tell her." He said that someone of Hopper's status and notoriety should have been asked to retire by the Secretary of the Navy or the Chief of Naval Personnel, and "then she would have accepted it." However, Sutherland was given the duty of telling Hopper that the Navy thought she was too old again. "I knew that she was not going to be happy to hear this and would want to talk to the Chief of Naval Personnel and the Secretary. Well, I made all her appointments for her, and she finally accepted the fact of her retirement. But she was like Rickover, she was certain that the Navy couldn't really do without her."

I haven't been able to track down the story behind the 207 reserve colonel promotions, but it's probably something along the lines of what your retired JAG friend suggests. One-off defect cures pending permanent legislative fixes are a good theory for some of the other Appointments Clause promotions from this decade, especially after DOPMA consolidated so many of the previous promotion authorities. For example, Moon and Knowlton (1989) appear to be Navy staff corps officers who were on a selection list but not promoted due to terminal illness; perhaps DOPMA had unintentionally left a gap in Title 10 that let line officers be promoted under these circumstances but not staff corps officers.

The meritorious astronaut promotion policy ended after Challenger, but Appointments Clause promotions continued into the 1990s for astronauts already in the pipeline. Interestingly, Kevin Chilton, the only four-star astronaut, was one of the first military astronauts not to receive a promotion for his first spaceflight on STS-49 in 1992, while the Air Force astronaut on the shuttle flight before, Brian Duffy, was one of the last to receive one; Duffy was in NASA Astronaut Group 11 but Chilton was in NASA Astronaut Group 12. (Susan Helms and Ron Sega were in NASA Astronaut Group 13.) According to Duffy:

There used to be a policy that when you flew the first time, you got what we called a flight promotion, where you would, say, if you launched as a lieutenant colonel, you would land as a colonel, essentially, that kind of thing; you’d get a one-rank promotion....After Challenger, the DoD [U.S. Department of Defense] had cancelled the policy. My group, because we had been selected prior to Challenger, was grandfathered. So we were going to be the last of the group where a military member would get a one-rank promotion, one-grade promotion, when you flew....So I ended up, I guess, being the last person to get a flight promotion, because I was the last person in my group to fly.

It's true that most military astronauts never return to their services, and those that do return typically remain siloed within their service's space program, and the height of that silo limits their military careers. For example, the Army reserves its major space command (Strategic Defense Command) for an air defense artillery three-star, so astronaut Robert L. Stewart got stuck at one-star deputy commander, whereas Stafford and Helms had a much higher ceiling in the Air Force's space and systems commands. Chilton and Charles Bolden are the exceptions that prove the rule, since they immediately jumped back into mainstream jobs.

(The Johnson Space Center has some great stories in its oral history collection, including some interesting anecdotes about military career management. SuperWIKI, you might be interested in Bolden's story about his withdrawn nomination to be deputy NASA administrator as an active-duty Marine lieutenant general.)

- Morinao (talk) 07:52, 12 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Under what law would the President be appointing Bolden as NASA deputy administrator? If there was a law in 2002 that explicitly forbade a military officer from being nominated as NASA deputy administrator (let alone as a lieutenant general, which requires Senate confirmation on its own), President Bush could have appointed Bolden under the Appointments Clause; aside from controversy in the Senate (like Senator Levin), I see little reason why the President couldn't do so. We've discussed at length about whether the Appointments Clause as a constitutional provision can override in totality other federal statutes; it can in theory but almost always steps on the heads of Congress who could swiftly deny confirmation. The nomination itself gives no clue under which law Bolden is being promoted under.

51 U.S.C. § 20111, instituted in 2010 (though I'm unsure if it existed in a similar form before), states that the deputy NASA administrator "is appointed from civilian life". Could this have been codified in response to the nomination of Bolden as an active-duty officer, assuming it didn't exist in some form before? More sources on the Bolden affair might add some clarity to both questions.

I guess we have Senator Rockefeller to partially thank that Bolden got the top job at NASA from 2009 to 2017. SuperWIKI (talk) 14:35, 12 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Here's Hopper's retirement request (voluntold, apparently?): https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/media/57288961/content/st-louis/military/rg-024/299693/300_Hopper_Grace_01_Page_162.jpg

Her file has many of those one year extension requests, for obvious reasons.

Thanks for the info on the termination of the NASA flight promotions--I wasn't aware of that, but it makes sense. Why was Challenger the impetus--did any of those astronauts get it? I took a look at a few of their bios, and it looks like they were posthumously awarded the Space Medal of Honor and/or Defense Distinguished Service Medal, but that's all I'm seeing. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 16:49, 12 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking about the Catch-22 that the Challenger disaster posed--technically they hadn't completed a space flight, but of course had sacrificed much more than most astronauts, so I imagine that this paradox was obvious to officials. An added problem was that the entire crew wasn't military. That same problem of living/posthumous recognition plagued the early MoH--except for some cases where awards were already put in channels, the Army had an unofficial and then official policy against awarding the MoH posthumously. Later in the nineteenth century (1890s?), in reaction to the hundreds of former soldiers petitioning for their own medals, the TJAG opined dubiously that the statute contemplated a personal presentation and therefore couldn't be awarded posthumously, but this ran afoul of the award's evolution toward altruistic sacrifice by the end of the nineteenth century (because, of course, dying for altruistic reasons was even more of a sacrifice than doing something that simply risked death). The policy was finally repealed in 1918 when the president expanded the award system by executive order.

Interestingly, it appears that at least some of the Challenger astronauts were promoted posthumously by bills of relief. I didn't search exhaustively, but LTC Onizuka was promoted here: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-100/pdf/STATUTE-100-Pg3350.pdf. Not sure about the others, but I couldn't find a bill for Scobee. Very interesting timing here, because this was the same session of Congress as the Doolittle/Eaker promotions, and they chose to do the waiver rather than the appointment clause (which had already been used on astronauts and evidently deceased soldiers). Foxtrot5151 (talk) 18:37, 12 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The NASA administrator and deputy administrator have always been required to be "appointed from civilian life" (72 Stat. 429), but a supplemental appropriations bill (115 Stat. 2301) waived this requirement during FY2002 to let an active-duty officer be appointed deputy NASA administrator under the same terms as the director or deputy director of central intelligence -- pay reimbursed by the non-DoD agency, and exempt from grade caps. A previous military astronaut, Richard Truly, received a Congressional waiver (103 Stat. 136) to serve as NASA administrator as an active-duty rear admiral pending retirement, and a separate Appointments Clause promotion to vice admiral on the retired list. Bolden already had his Congressional waiver and presumably could have received a separate Appointments Clause promotion to lieutenant general, following the Truly precedent, but it sounds like O'Keefe, a former SecNav, cleared Bolden's appointment with the Senate but not Rumsfeld.

Bolden would have needed another Congressional waiver to be appointed NASA administrator in 2009, even as a retired officer, but Rockefeller solicited legal opinions from CRS and OLC eliminating this requirement, despite several precedents of Congress having to waive the "civilian life" clause to let a retired officer serve as NASA or FAA administrator (McKee, Engen, Busey, Truly, Curry, Richards). Elwood Quesada, a retired lieutenant general, even had to resign his Air Force commission to serve as the first FAA administrator, with the promise that when he left office he would be reappointed to his former grade on the Air Force retired list. Another retired Air Force general, William McKee, was not as wealthy as Quesada and could not afford to give up his retired pay in order to be FAA administrator, so Congress passed a waiver modeled after the one that let Marshall serve as secretary of defense, which was meant to be a one-off but set a precedent for future military appointments.

Not sure why the Challenger incident stopped astronaut promotions, but the policy had been in abeyance from 1974 until Reagan revived it in February 1984, so shuttle astronauts had only been eligible for two years. Maybe its repeal just happened to coincide with Challenger.

Only two of the Challenger astronauts were active-duty military (Onizuka and Smith), since Scobee had retired from the Air Force as a major before the flight. Scobee's tombstone lists his rank as lieutenant colonel, but I can't find a nomination or legislation for that promotion, and the Air Force disavowed it in at least one contemporary news article: "Although the tombstone listed his rank as lieutenant colonel, the Air Force said its records listed him one rank lower as a retired major." Smith received his posthumous spaceflight promotion to captain via the Appointments Clause, but Onizuka had already received his spaceflight promotion the year before (I can't find it now, but I could have sworn I saw a White House memo telling Reagan to promote Smith after Challenger but not Onizuka, for this reason).

There is something funny going on with Onizuka's promotions. When he flew his first spaceflight in 1985 as an Air Force major on STS-51-C (January 24-27), he had already been selected for a Title 10 promotion to lieutenant colonel (nominated February 5, confirmed February 23). Then all four first-time military astronauts on STS-51-C were nominated for an Appointments Clause promotion to colonel (nominated February 19, confirmed February 28) even though two of them were still majors when they flew: Onizuka and Payton. But Onizuka was a lieutenant colonel for the Challenger flight a year later, and Payton was nominated for a Title 10 promotion to colonel in 1987, suggesting that regardless of the grade listed in their nomination on congress.gov, their spaceflight promotion was construed as a one-grade advance to lieutenant colonel -- which Onizuka was about to receive anyway. If so, this was bad luck for Onizuka, and perhaps explains why Duffy was willing to manipulate his own flight schedule to collect his free promotion.

It was to my advantage, actually, not to fly too early, because of the way things were working....I happened to know the way my promotions were falling in time, and so I had talked to Dan [Brandenstein, chief of the Astronaut Office] just to tell him, “Much as I want to fly right away, if it fits in your plan, it’s to my advantage to fly a little later.”

Duffy received his Title 10 promotion to lieutenant colonel in 1990 (nominated March 8, confirmed April 27) and his Appointments Clause promotion to colonel for his first spaceflight on STS-45 in 1992. The month before Duffy was nominated for lieutenant colonel, Pierre Thuot became the first member of his astronaut group to fly, receiving an Appointments Clause promotion for STS-36 (nominated May 10, confirmed May 25). If Duffy had flown on STS-36 in February/March 1990, the timing of his promotions would have put him in the same boat as Onizuka in 1985.

- Morinao (talk) 03:30, 14 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Quesada example is reminiscent of Eisenhower--I recall reading that he resigned his commission when elected President, and then requested reinstatement after he left office. Reportedly he preferred being called general over president, and I guess that makes sense given that his military accolades were his path to the WH.

Wrote to NASA history office and received a reply. They sent me a grouping on Brian Duffy (misidentified as Duff?) along with LBJ's original promotion policy from Aug. 1965. Here's the substantive portion: "Each military astronaut will receive a one grade promotion as a direct result of the first successful space flight, but not beyond the grade of Colonel in the Air Force and Marine Corps or Captain in the Navy. Promotions to General Officer rank will be accomplished through usual military selection board process."

I went through Scobee's OMPF, and it appears you're correct about his rank. How bizarre, they appear to have misidentified him on the tombstone--ANC has clear vetting requirements for that sort of thing, but it appears to be a mistake. Curious how that happened--seems very unlikely that his widow didn't know his correct rank (military spouses are very, very aware of this, because this own status among wives sort of vicariously flows from the rank of their husbands). Maybe that was the same period where ANC lost track of where the actual graves were located, and started randomly recording the incorrect locations? I just reported it on the ANC website, and called and reported it verbally also. They said they would refer it to the appropriate department.

Retirement request says major (effective 1980): https://catalog.archives.gov/catalogmedia/lz/st-louis/rg-342/30479766/300_Scobee_Francis_R_Page_061.jpg

Retirement order says major: https://catalog.archives.gov/catalogmedia/lz/st-louis/rg-342/30479766/300_Scobee_Francis_R_Page_064.jpg

DD214 says major: https://catalog.archives.gov/catalogmedia/lz/st-louis/rg-342/30479766/300_Scobee_Francis_R_Page_069.jpg

Statement of service says major: https://catalog.archives.gov/catalogmedia/lz/st-louis/rg-342/30479766/300_Scobee_Francis_R_Page_071.jpg

Interesting about Onizuka--evidently they didn't want to invoke the appointment clause twice to avoid setting an adverse precedent? 131.252.63.146 (talk) 18:07, 14 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Continue to be impressed at how quickly you are able to pull these really interesting records from the various history offices. I agree that the Scobee tombstone is really odd, which was even noticed at the time, since the Washington Post reporter attending his Arlington burial actually followed up with the Air Force afterward. All I can think is that since he never received a spaceflight promotion, having retired before the policy was revived in 1984, maybe the family was given informal assurances that he would receive one posthumously, like Smith, so put the anticipated rank on his tombstone? And then no one followed up with legislation (Onizuka) or Appointments Clause (Smith), but people still think Scobee is at least a lieutenant colonel -- there even appears to be a "Colonel Dick Scobee Leadership Award" for top OTS graduates.

I still don't understand Onizuka and Payton, unless the grades in their joint STS-51-C Appointments Clause nomination were transcribed incorrectly on the congress.gov website. Onizuka's Title 10 promotion to lieutenant colonel was executed, but not his simultaneously confirmed Appointments Clause promotion to colonel. Maybe the Air Force banked it for later, because of time-in-grade or years-of-service considerations, and then wound up needing legislation to do it posthumously? But that doesn't explain why Payton would be confirmed a second time for colonel via Title 10.

There were several Apollo-era precedents for a second Appointments Clause promotion after a spaceflight. In November 1969, five months after being promoted to commander, Alan Bean flew his first spaceflight on Apollo 12, qualifying him for an Appointments Clause promotion to captain. But this would jump him over the other two Apollo 12 astronauts, Conrad and Gordon, who had already received their one spaceflight promotion under the policy hammered out by NASA and DoD for LBJ. As usual, when it comes to astronaut promotion policy, the bureaucracy proposes and the President disposes.

Conrad and Bean, having been upped from lieutenant commander to commander after [Gemini 5 and Gemini 11], were ineligible for another promotion. Rookie Bean was. But should Bean be promoted over the heads of his seniors? Hang the policy, said President Nixon, and promoted all three.

Now Bean was the youngest captain on active duty. But this was unfair to Apollo 10 astronauts Cernan and Young, who had not been promoted a second time for their flight even though they had the same spaceflight promotion to commander as Conrad and Gordon. The policy was amended to provide a second promotion for a lunar or interplanetary flight, and Nixon belatedly promoted Cernan and Young to captain in 1970. Nixon even wanted to give Young a third spaceflight promotion, to rear admiral, for Apollo 16 in 1972, but the Navy finally put its foot down.

Wasn't it Eisenhower who had some quote like "I prefer 'General' to 'Mr. President' because it took me longer to earn that title"? Or am I paraphrasing someone else? Trying to think of other cases of reinstatement after resigning a commission. The precedent for Eisenhower was Grant (who had a much harder time getting reinstated). Doolittle resigned after the Air Force refused to approve his retirement so soon after commissioning him a Regular brigadier general, and was reappointed in the Reserve. Edwin Walker.

And two retired Air Force officers resigned their commissions because the law requiring the FAA administrator to be a civilian was interpreted so strictly. Quesada was reappointed by special legislation after leaving office. But Alexander Butterfield, the Nixon aide who accidentally revealed the existence of the White House tapes, had to resign his commission as a retired Air Force colonel after Congress declined to waive the civilian requirement like they had for McKee, but was informally assured that he could be reappointed afterward, like Quesada. And then the Senate voted down his reappointment by 5 votes, after which every subsequent retired officer nominated for FAA or NASA administrator understandably insisted on a McKee-style waiver as a condition of their appointment. But in 2009, OLC and CRS ruled that Bolden didn't need a waiver or resignation to be appointed NASA administrator because a retired officer counted as a civilian under that law after all, and always had! I wonder what Butterfield must have thought of that?

- Morinao (talk) 03:35, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Foxtrot5151: Would like to make a comment here. I have contacted NARA for research purposes as well, in order to source official portraits for lists similar to what Morinao has created. However, they always tell me that what I'm looking for likely hasn't been digitized yet and that I should either head to Adelphi Park myself or hire an independent researcher to do it for me. Seeing as I, one, live in Asia and two, have only just reached working age (hence no money, and I'd imagine hiring researchers is expensive), both are pretty much impossible. Here's hoping you have better luck with NARA's legislative archives. I must say, as a fellow enthusiast of military promotions myself (I work on the same kind of pages Morinao does), I'm very impressed and hopeful to see further research of yours. SuperWIKI (talk) 01:13, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's generally true (the inaccessibility of the archives), if you're talking about regular reading room content. But the legislative archives are generally not very busy, so those archivists will search a limited amount and send you scans for free (which they've done for me probably a dozen times, and have already done in this particular case). Legislative records are easy to locate because they are filed by session of congress and then under the docket for the bill/resolution you're interested in, which only takes them a few minutes even with records not yet digitized. Committee files are more difficult--the Senate nomination records are sealed for something like 60 years because of all the dirt that comes out in those hearings, and House records I think are something like 35 or 40 years. Legislative folks are sitting on their hands most of the time, because almost nobody ever makes requests there.

Most special collections will send you records for free as well, or at least they will take a look before asking to charge you something, as they know that most web queries aren't local and cannot realistically just visit the reading room. I've only incurred one $1.70 fee so far with this research thread, because the University of TX charges 10 cents per digitized page for all of the Goldwater correspondence. A lot of papers are donated and available at the Library of Congress (they also have great finding aids). While LOC archivists are government employees, they will absolutely pull and scan content for free--they did this for me just the other week and sent records from the Eaker papers. College Park and the DC Archives do have lists of researchers who work as independent contractors and post stuff in a dropbox folder for you. That's useful if you have a known location and quantity, but isn't very feasible for an open-ended record search. Presidential Libraries are also auxiliaries of NARA, but more like private/public hybrids because they rely on different funding streams. The Reagan archivists already sent me records for free, including all of the speech drafts crediting Goldwater and Ike Skelton--credited in the border as "initiators of legislation," but they eventually removed Skelton because they ran a legislative trace of the resolution and realized it had nothing to do with the promotion. A lot of the presidential libraries will post anything already scanned in a prior pull, so for an administration that's old enough you can expect to have a lot of accessible folders already available online (unlike regular collections they are all public records, so they have more of a mission to make them publicly accessible rather than to keep them under lock and key). That's the catch though--it takes a few decades for them to sort out the classified and other privacy protected records, so for a while most presidential libraries don't have their collections available at all. I tried to get some Reagan Library records in the 2008-2010 timeframe because I was pushing an amendment through the Armed Services Committee (which passed in the FY2013 NDAA) and virtually nothing was available back then.

Anyway, I hear you, but there are ways around the regular archives when you're talking about some categories of records: in this case legislative material and files on people who were basically celebrities. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 01:40, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The best I can hope for to find official U.S. military portraits is hope that they can digitize the physical records (at least the ones I'm looking for) on their own; last I heard, the Still Pictures Branch still has years of material to scan into their digital catalogue. Looking forward to working and speaking with you further if I ever encounter a snag in my U.S. officer list research! SuperWIKI (talk) 02:30, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It says here that General Daniel James Jr. served as a special assistant to the chief of staff of the Air Force from Dec. 1977 to Feb. 1978. Do we have any confirmation that he served in the role while a four-star general, similar to Michael J. Dugan (if it is true he served as a special assistant to the secretary of the Air Force at four-star grade, per the four-star generals list)? Pertinent to List of United States Air Force four-star generals. SuperWIKI (talk) 00:43, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The second link you provided says he retired from the Air Force on 1 February 1978 due to health reasons. It stand to good reason that he was in uniform while serving. So yes, the assignment should be added to the list. Neovu79 (talk) 05:04, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Was concerned that James could've been reverted to major general upon relinquishing NORAD. SuperWIKI (talk) 05:10, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

James was serving as special assistant while awaiting retirement per congressional communication on 25 January 1978. On 1 February 1978, the day of his retirement, Congress passed a resolution to honor him. Both the House (H.Res.1053) and the Senate (S.Res.406) passed resolutions of his death. All communications use his four-star rank. Even though 10 U.S.C. § 601 did not become effective until 15 September 1981, prior to that, a four-star officer could still hold onto their rank while awaiting retirement, or up to 60 days, while in transition to their next four-star assignment. Neovu79 (talk) 06:14, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Right. Thanks! SuperWIKI (talk) 06:18, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

James wouldn't have reverted to two stars even after relief from NORAD. Before DOPMA abolished temporary grades in 1981, the Army and Air Force appointed three- and four-star officers to temporary personal grades that persisted until vacated by the President, so only their initial promotions had to be confirmed by the Senate, not subsequent reassignments within that grade, and they also didn't have to revert to a lower permanent grade while transitioning between assignments (unlike the Navy and Marine Corps, who didn't have this authority). This explains why Abrams kept his four stars for months between his relief as COMUSMACV and confirmation as CSA, Sam Walker in a do-nothing job while waiting to retire, and Chappie James when he had to give up NORAD after his heart attack.

- Morinao (talk) 06:36, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

China's 20th Politburo Standing Committee was unveiled today. I've updated the graph on the PSC Wikipedia page for you. SuperWIKI (talk) 05:40, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for updating that. It's a really interesting, and maybe not unexpected outcome, although not necessarily as permanent as it might seem. It actually reminds me of the election of Benedict XVI, when everyone assumed he would pack the College of Cardinals with enough like-minded electors to lock in conservative successors in perpetuity. And then he abdicated and they elected Francis.

It would be nice to have a timeline of the full Politburo, which has only had a couple hundred members, so on the same order as one of the four-star officer lists. I did this once for the Soviet Politburo, but it ran afowl of a since-blocked article owner who insisted on separate lists for each decade, and I didn't care enough to contest it (and the version you are working on seems richer in detail anyway). But it was possible to find published lists of all the Soviet Politburo members and tenures, and I haven't been able to find a comparable English-language source for the Chinese Politburo.

Since age is such an important criterion for PSC eligibility and above (at least until this year), it would be interesting to plot the lifetimes of each member overlaid with their tenures on the Politburo. Then the anointed successors really pop out (Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang), especially when the succession fails (Wang Hongwen, Hu Chunhua, Sun Zhengcai).

- Morinao (talk) 20:31, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Morinao, Foxtrot5151, and Neovu79: Pinging all who have some general experience with promotions, Department of Defense structuring and military experience. Due to Foxtrot's in-depth research into the promotions of General Ira C. Eaker and Jimmy Doolittle, I have almost completed watching relevant C-SPAN hearings by the Senate Armed Services Committee on the drafting of the Goldwater-Nichols Act. I have only watched the ones with Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, the service chiefs (Wickham, Watkins, Kelley, Gabriel), CJCS William J. Crowe (10 weeks into his term) and USCINCEUR/SACEUR Bernard W. Rogers. I've also begun reading the Congressional Record covering these hearings.

Some fun observations, this is the first time I've heard Senator Barry Goldwater, SASC chairman, as well as ranking member (and future chairman) Sam Nunn, speak at length. Senator Strom Thurmond often speaks first at these hearings up to the late 1990s, probably by virtue of being president pro tempore.

Mainly, I want to discuss how change-resistant the Department of Defense is being and how that mentality could still apply today, as well as some universal points:

• The immediate cause of Goldwater-Nichols, Operation Eagle Claw, was mentioned surprisingly little.
• The service chiefs are universally against a strong vice/deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and want to retain their status as rotating acting chairmen, partly for the sake of joint experience. GEN Rogers, representing the CINCs, supports a strong VJCS.
• If GEN Rogers is any indication, combatant commanders and service secretaries are diametrically opposed in that the former want to weaken or eliminate the service secretaries while the latter want to strengthen their own offices.
• Some related criticism that the OSD is peanuts compared to the Joint Staff in duplication of duties rings true, even today.

I start the discussion this way. What are your thoughts? SuperWIKI (talk) 15:15, 4 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with all of your observations and the background for Goldwater-Nichols, but don't really have much to add, unfortunately. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 17:12, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Bureaucracies resist any encroachment on their territory from new players. So the service chiefs were always going to oppose the creation of a strong vice chairman as a competing power center. Organizations also prefer incremental change as less disruptive to ongoing operations, so will naturally resist drastic overhauls on the scale of Goldwater-Nichols, which typically have to be imposed from outside. The creation of the Space Force is probably the best recent example.

There is also Miles' Law: "Where you stand depends on where you sit." Rogers may have supported a strong joint organization as a CINC, but I bet he was singing a different tune as CSA. Even in the 1980s the service chiefs were still nostalgic for the pre-1958 days when the CNO could directly order ships to sail.

- Morinao (talk) 22:20, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]