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July 01, 2006

Hamdan Backlash

I see a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is suggesting that the officer who defended Hamdan and won a rather significant victory for his client is being punished for his vigorous defense of his client. Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift was passed over for promotion to full Commander last year, and he is waiting to see if he will be picked up by this year's board. If he is not picked up this year, he will have to leave the service, as military officers work under an up-or-out system.

Was Swift punished for his service? That seems to be the position of the Post-Intelligencer. I'm not so sure. While the Navy and Army are different in many ways, but the promotion systems are pretty similar. The move from Lieutenant Commander to Commander is equivalent to the move from Major to Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. That's a pretty big step. ILooking at naval selection rates for staff ratings in 2005, JAG officers (Designation 2500) saw 25 of 40 officers in the primary zone, as Swift was last year, selected for promotion. That's a selection rate of 62.5%, or not a lot better than flipping a coin.

The makeup of promotion boards, make it less likely Swift was singled out for punishment for defending Hamdan. Each promotion board is made up of a group of senior officers from across their service. Each board member assesses each file individually. Because there are a large number of officers being considered, there is rarely any discussion among the board members. Instead, each member rates each file, then the top files are selected for promotion. To suggest that Swift was singled out, either each member would have to have recognized Swift's name and decided to punish him by giving him a poor rating, or one of the members would have had to broken protocol and recommended to the other members that they not promote him based on his defense of Hamdan, and the members would have had to agree that those actions merited passing him over for promotion. That seems unlikely to me.

What seems more likely is what is mentioned late in the article. Because the members of a promotion board are drawn from across the service, each of them is familiar with the normal career path of officers in their field. Each member of the board briefs the others on the standard career path before they begin examining the records. This allows members to judge the files fairly. The flip side to this is that officers whose career path is different often end up being passed over, because the board members aren't sure how to assess a career path that varies so much from the norm. And LCDR Swift has just such a career path.

There is no way to be sure why LCDR Swift wasn't picked up for Commander. But to claim that it was some kind of retribution for his defense of Hamdan is questionable at best. The Post-Intelligencer may be a fine paper, but to suggest that the government is somehow lashing out at Swift for his actions in Hamdan is an extreme claim that requires more evidence than the only facts we have: that Swift defended Hamdan, and that he was not selected for promotion. There were fourteen other JAG officers who didn't defend Hamdan who weren't picked up for promotion, either. The Post-Intelligencer should have done a little more research before advancing that kind of hypothesis.

Update: Meanwhile, some people are convinced they know the real story behind Swift being passed over. As I said before, I can't tell you what the truth is behind LCDR Swift being passed over. But a review of the facts suggests that the wild-eyed conspiracy theories might just be wrong on this one.