By Jake Smith | The Daily Caller News Foundation
Lawmakers scolded an Army official on Thursday for suggesting a garrison training instructor who held a class calling pro-life organizations “terrorist groups” has not been fired.
It was recently discovered that a training class at Fort Liberty had held a counter-terrorism training course that included a slideshow labeling several pro-life organizations as “terrorists,” which was shown to over 9,000 soldiers over a seven-year period.
Though the Army confirmed that the slides were unauthorized and created by a rogue training instructor, Army Deputy Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Patrick Matlock dodged questions during a congressional hearing about why the training class wasn’t stopped earlier and suggested the trainer hadn’t been ousted.
“Has anyone been held accountable for it? This is the United States Army. This is a training that went on since 2017… any accountability? At all?” Republican Indiana Rep. Jim Banks asked Matlock.
“How about the soldier who created the training to begin with? Has he been held accountable?”
“The individual who created the training has received corrective training, has been retrained as a trainer and continues to perform,” Whitlock told Banks.
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Banks pressed for further answers on what accountability actions may have been taken against anyone else possibly involved, which Whitlock refused to answer.
“You admit that something went wrong, but yet today, even at this hearing, no one has ever been held accountable for it. This is embarrassing,” Banks told Whitlock and the other witness, Assistant Secretary of the Army Agnes Schaefer.
“And it makes me wonder what other mistakes the United States Army is making.”
Following Banks’ remarks, Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz pressed further as to whether anyone involved in the incident had been fired.
“The chain of command is the responsible agent for adverse actions or personnel actions, and I’m not going to comment on what they’ve done or not done. That resides with the chain of command.” Whitlock responded.
“Don’t you think that has failed? Wasn’t the obligation to stop this nonsense also with the chain of command?” Gaetz asked Whitlock.
Whitlock responded that as soon as the chain of command was made aware of the slideshow, it “took immediate action.”
“I’ll tell you, in the United States Army, eight years might be immediate, but it doesn’t seem all that immediate to me,” Gaetz said. “We’ll dispense with immediate then. You’re kind of playing games… Did anyone get fired, suspended, demoted?”
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Whitlock answered the question by saying that the “training materials were very poorly prepared.”
“We don’t believe your chain of command approach is going to be sufficient to deal with this if you play hide-the-ball on what the consequence was. And it sort of seems to be a [Department of Defense]-wide problem,” Gaetz said. “[Rep. Banks], I’m at a loss because they won’t even tell us what they’ve done… I think we’re owed answers to these questions.”
The revelations that Fort Liberty was holding the relative training course first broke out in July, when an image of a slide from the training circulated throughout social media. The slide described a number of pro-life organizations as “terrorist groups” and alleged they engage in activities to promote their message such as protesting, mass demonstrations, picketing and attempts at “counseling” outside crisis pregnancy centers.
Banks’ office pressed the Army for further answers on the incident in July and was told that the slides were created in 2017 and had been shown to over 9,100 soldiers since then. The Army condemned the slides as soon as they were discovered.
The Army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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