By Lt. Gen Rod Bishop, USAF ret., USAFA ’74
STARRS Chairman
A retired 4-star I respect greatly asked me for more information on the anthrax vaccine mandate being declared illegal in 2003 (like the covid vaccine mandate was in 2022).
What follows is my reply–the illegal activities our government took part in with regards to the anthrax vaccine mandate were repeated in their actions with regards to the covid vaccine mandate.
DOD didn’t learn their lesson.
My response covers both instances of illegal activity by our government. Sharing widely here as perhaps some of you don’t understand the illegal activities our government participated in.
I also want to make the point with all of you that there are still many service members who have not received the appropriate “remedies” they deserve.
I also want to highlight how easy it is to fall prey to a media that is not intent on delivering the truth to the American people.
I am not sure any of us have written this history below–we might want to share–same for everyone else:
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“Sir–thank for your question on the anthrax vaccine–below is from the internet, but if you want to know more, I can put you in touch with Lou Michaels–the ’77 grad lawyer who won the case. (Or Lou’s assistant in the case, former USAF Jag, retired judge Bruce Smith.) We stumbled across Lou in September of 2021 I think it was.
What follows is probably more than you want to know but I am passionate about this issue and our government doing the right thing….
Background: Sep of 2021 was one month after SECDEF Austin’s order–a number of active duty folks had contacted us through a secure app an ’86 grad had set up.
These active duty folks loved what we were doing in our stance against DEI and asked us to strap on the vaccine mandate issue and help them there as well.
Scott Sturman, a USAFA 1972 DG and member of our Board of Advisors strongly recommended that course of action too as he was following the issue closely and saw how much the government was covering up/censoring (international studies and harmful side effects of the vaccine never coming to light of the American public) in their zeal to get everyone to take the shot.
STARRS debated the issue for two months with some VERY internal robust (heated) discussions. We finally took a vote of the STARRS Board of Directors in November with the Board voting 8 to 1 to take the issue on.
What was the turning point for me was running across Lou and hearing him explain how our government was breaking the laws of our land once again–just like they had in the Anthrax case–
#1 ignoring the laws put in place to keep us from becoming Nazi Germany (laws that require the government to give “informed consent” and “the right to refuse”) if a drug/medicine/vaccine is EUA only (essentially every covid shot Americans took was EUA) and
#2 the Religious Freedom Restoration Act–and by extension, the 1st Amendment.
Only this time it was worse–the Biden Administration was completely ignoring, according to Lou (and he was certainly right), the laws Congress and DOD put together, working together, after Lou (and his assistant Judge Bruce Smith with whom STARRS is extensively working with) won his/their case in 2003/04.
DOD said to Congress in 2004 or so (after the decision went against them) that they needed an “out”–they opined, a disease may come along that is so serious DOD would need EVERYONE in the military to be vaccinated–even if the vaccine was still experimental/and still in EUA status. (COVID was NOT that disease as the data would never had supported it–chances of dying from covid as a military aged person was .004% if I remember the stat correctly.)
I do know that 95 military members died of COVID since the time the pandemic hit the USA in Jan/Feb of 2020 until the mandate to get the shot in Aug of 2021.
In only one year of that same timeframe, nearly 600 military members died of suicide. See what the media can do to with its fear mongering and obfuscation of facts?
So in 2004 or so, DOD worked with Congress to create a statute that allows DOD to go down that road (vaccinate everyone even with a vaccine in EUA status) if necessary–all they have to do is get the President to sign a waiver.
DOD never went down that road wrt to the covid mandate as you know. “Why not?” is a valid question.
As is “where was the Judge Advocate community articulating all of this to leadership” and
“where was the Surgeon General community in articulating the potentiality of harmful side effects and all the international studies that articulated the vaccine was not protecting people from either getting or spreading covid, long before the CDC admitted the same?”
And again regarding the covid mandate for a minute: I shared all of this with our then USAFA Superintendent–but he proceeded with his mandatory shot program, ignoring our input. Fact.
Another Fact, Cadet Hunter Brown died after being vaccinated. Coroner said “it is my opinion that Hunter Brown, a 21-year-old white male, died as a result of pulmonary thromboembolism due to deep vein thrombosis resulting from Lisfranc injury of the left lower extremity.”
Since a number of docs and nurses have told me it is VERY unlikely for someone to die from “thrombosis” from what was a foot injury, part of me wonders if Cadet Hunter Brown might still be alive today if the Supt had listened–we will never know.
What we do know is heart attacks are rare in young male adults (USAFA cadets experienced three AFTER the mandate as best as we can tell according to parents we maintain a close relationship with)–and we all have witnessed a large number of “abnormal” myocarditis and heart related incidents across our society (Damar Hamlin for example and others–hard to prove–but…) after the shot was pushed so hard upon us. (My wife Mary experienced extreme afib after her last shot which required a 6 hour long ablation.)
Bottom line here for me is even our corrupt CDC finally admitted myocarditis and blood clotting were known side effects of the vaccine.
And so–back to the anthrax mandate–even though it was DOD that broke the law, there are STILL former military members today that don’t have their records cleared from an action they took (legally as it turns out) 20-25 or more years ago.
Hence our call for DOD to set up a review board of sorts–“the collective we” are calling it COMCAP–the Commission on Military Covid 19 and Anthrax Policies–that will have as a primary goal of figuring out why the JAG communities were so silent in 2021-2022 (again) and making sure a similar situation doesn’t happen again. And of course fast tracking the appropriate remedies for those harmed by the mandate in any way.
Anyway–I worked the issue of the illegal covid mandate harder than any other issue in my life–best phone call I ever got was from Senator Cotton’s head staffer (who I first spoke with in Jan of 2022 about Austin’s vaccine order and getting Congress to overturn it). His exact words then were “I love your passion on this issue, General, but this issue has absolutely no legs on the Hill.” In Nov of 2022 he called me and said “I don’t know how you guys did it, but you are going to get what you have been hammering us to do–Congress is going to lift the mandate.”
It clearly wasn’t just STARRS–there were a whole lot of VERY brave active duty people who were also making noise and filing lawsuits as well. I like to call all of those (us) behind the effort, “the collective we” (as you can see from above).
We helped a number of law firms in those lawsuits and had one or two lawsuits of our own. At least 6 Federal Court decisions came our way, ending up with “the collective we” getting injunctions against all the Services (except the Coast Guard–the judge that had that case never made a decision until after Congress overturned DOD’s mandate–so his decision was the case is “moot). His “decision,” if you can call it that, however, was also not made in time to “save” 7 US Coast Guard Academy cadets from expulsion (less than 24 hours notice.)
Two retired USCG retired Admirals helped us extensively here–and in the end 5 of the cadets were admitted back in to the USCGA. We all have been invited to the last two graduations–we all went last year–I couldn’t this year as I had a conflicting graduation with a granddaughter. But such a rewarding experience!

STARRS VP/General Counsel Mike Rose (L) and STARRS Chairman Lt. General Rod Bishop (R) pin one of the Coast Guard Academy cadets who refused the vax. Photo is from the Coast Guard Academy’s Facebook page.
I do think all of us who participated in putting our country on the right track here and getting the mandate overturned, count our efforts as among, if not THE, most important and rewarding efforts of our lifetimes.
These efforts certainly helped “save” 10s of thousands of careers. Picked up a lot of friends (and made some enemies) along the way.
One friend I made is a 2019 USAFA DG who was grounded for over a year from F-16 training for refusal to take the shot. As a Lieutenant, he led a group of 970 pilots from all services who were ready to punch if the mandate had not been overturned. (Most were AF and as you know the AF is already nearly 2000 pilots short.).
A significant problem was, though, that DOD had already kicked out over 8000 patriots–most of them young airman, soldiers, sailors, marines, guardians, and coast guardsmen who didn’t rate any kind of discharge board. Over 50% were kicked out under “less than honorable conditions” I have been told, which keeps them from getting the GI Bill and other VA benefits .
Some real heroes identified themselves in our efforts–our GC, Mike Rose (’69), worked tirelessly with cadets (from all FIVE service academies), parents and other law firms. Doc Scott Sturman (’72) wrote extensively on the topic, getting extensive national coverage.
And another “friend”, JM Phelps who writes for the Epoch Times, the Gateway Pundit, American Family News and one other media outlet, wrote over 100 articles for us (the collective we) exposing DOD’s illegal activity and driving home the human tragedies that were occurring because of the tyrannical order.
Tyrannical order?
Well, one AF lawyer friend serving at a USAF base level who saw all of this happening from the inside out, told me “General–this is nothing but a ‘Hitlerian Loyalty Oath.'”
Many believe the purpose of the mandate was to drive conservative, faith-filled people from the military. That one, I will leave up to the reader to decide. (See Biden admin’s military vaccine mandate damaged force levels and denied religious freedom by William Barr)
More than you wanted–sorry–but I am still passionate about the issue as I love my country and the DOD and my Air Force and I hated to see them all go so far astray from doing the right thing!
Obeying the laws of our land one would think are part and parcel of the oath of office all of us who served in the military took and should have taken with great commitment–just seems like many ignored that oath.
VR, Rod
From the internet:
In his Dec. 22, 2003, order, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan sided with six plaintiffs who had sued the Pentagon and FDA challenging the legality of the anthrax vaccine. The plaintiffs argued that the vaccine was still investigational for protection against inhalation anthrax. US judge halts compulsory anthrax vaccination for soldiers – PMC
ROD BISHOP
Lt Gen USAF (Ret)
Chairman of the Board
Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, Inc
STARRS.US
314 articles on STARRS regarding the vax
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