The SCIF host L. Todd Wood (USAFA ’86) interviews Major General (Ret.) Bentley Rayburn (USAFA ’75), Chairman of STARRS, about the controversial incident at the US Air Force Academy during a 50th anniversary women’s reunion, where a political sign appeared on the terrazzo challenging Secretary of War Hegseth — which was seen as insubordinate, politically inappropriate, and damaging to the institution.
General Rayburn also provides an update on STARRS’ ongoing work to combat DEI ideology in the military and to correct the service records of personnel harmed by the COVID vaccine mandate, while also highlighting the organization’s new educational initiative, The American Creed, and outreach efforts.
Watch:
Video transcript below. See the article reference:
Air Force Academy Female Insubordination Threatens Secretary Of War During Global Conflict
and STARRS press release:
STARRS Calls For a Review Over Ideological Incident at U.S. Air Force Academy
AI TRANSCRIPTION:
L Todd Wood
Welcome back to The SCIF. Thanks for joining us today. We’ve got a lot to talk about. Got a hell of a show going on right now. We’re going to bring to you today. We have a lot going on. In the second segment, we’re going to have Major General Retired, US Air Force, Bentley Rayburn, who is the CEO of STARRS, Standing Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, an organization I helped found several years ago. And has been fighting hard to get the DEI out of the services and any radical ideology out of the services, primarily focused on the US Air Force Academy. And we had an event yesterday, or an incident yesterday, actually that happened Friday over the weekend, and we reported on it. This is it, a sign, USAFA went, there was a woman’s, a 50-year woman’s reunion affinity groups, women only at the academy. and this sign showed up on the terrazzo. USAFA women, you belong here. Of course, that’s true, but below it says, no matter what Secretary of Defense Hegseth says. So very political. This caused a consternation. I received all kind of phone calls, and I perceived this as a threat.
L Todd Wood
You had Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated, who was on the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors. You’ve had an assassination attempt over the weekend with President Trump, the third one. You’ve had lots of death threats. I’ve received death threats. We’ve had our storage locker burned, firebombed. We’ve had a lot of stuff happen to us, and there’s definitely a threatening climate. So I’m not going to back down. I’ve received some feedback that that was too, too aggressive on the article, but I’m not backing down, saying no matter what to the Secretary of War in a time of conflict globally for the United States, in my opinion, is a threat. So we’ll discuss that later. We’re going to have General Rayburn on here shortly. All right, let’s talk about a few stories. We’ve got Pete Blaber in the second hour that’s going to come on on Ukraine sitrep, and we’ll talk about what’s happening there. But this I want to bring back up. There was a women’s event at the Academy. We’re going to talk to the general about this specific issue when he comes in. , I wrote this article that USAFA women were insubordinate.
L Todd Wood
That’s definitely for sure. First of all, they, they called— these are graduates, , of the academy who came on the middle of the Academy terrazzo to discuss or to celebrate 50 years of women in the Air Force Academy. So this is obviously a big event. You can debate whether affinity groups, groups that single out certain identities or genders or race are good or bad, but they did this anyway. It was there, and then a group of them got very political on the trottoir right in front of the cadets. They put the cadets in jeopardy of insubordination. They put former grads in jeopardy of insubordination. And I am told by many women emailing that it really tarnished the event, and not all of them felt that way. The Air Force Academy put out a statement which we put at the bottom of this article that essentially, you know, this was not our event. This was, you know, something else. And, you know, we had nothing to do with this and it was just a small group of women. That all may be true, but I felt that the lack of urgency, the lack of anger, the lack of concern about this happening on the grounds of the academy during the day, during the school year when people, cadets were all around.
L Todd Wood
I mean, first of all, this shows incredible insubordination. You don’t show that to young cadets, and I just felt it was horrible. So we were pretty strong in this article, and it went viral, well over, you know, 10,000 hits at this point, I believe. So it definitely got attention in the Pentagon and in the Air Force itself and in the— at the Air Force Academy, and we also are waiting back to hear from the Association of Graduates. So We’re waiting for all that. General Bentley, I see him, or General Rayburn is coming in shortly. Let me take that down. So we’re going to talk about that with the general. Looks like he’s up and running now. General Rayburn, how you doing, sir?
MGen Bentley Rayburn
I’m great. Can you hear me, Todd?
L Todd Wood
I can. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate your time. And first of all, how is it you’re running STARRS now? So tell me Tell me how that’s going, then we can get into other issues, please.
MGen Bentley Rayburn
Well, STARRS is continuing to do a lot of great work. Rod Bishop, Lieutenant General Bishop, had been the chairman of the board for many years from its inception, and he’s still on the board, but for a lot of important reasons, he needed to step down for a little bit, and they asked me to fill in his place. They’re big shoes to fill, and I’m not sure I’m filling them completely, but we’re trying as best we can. And of course, we’ve got Colonel Ron Scott, who is amazing and just really working hard to— for us to stay on top of the issues and make sure that we’re paying attention to these divisive ideologies that are working their way around not only our country as a whole, but certainly within the department. But Department of Defense, particularly in the last administration where they were all kind of planted and watered. And now with this current administration trying to do the right thing and get rid of them. But you know, it’s like a lot of things, they dig their tentacles in into the deep state or dark state, whatever you want to call it, and they’re hard to root out completely.
L Todd Wood
So the question I have for you, do you write as long as in his emails as General Bishop? I mean, are you up to that level yet?
MGen Bentley Rayburn
No, I don’t think anybody could get that expertise.
L Todd Wood
He is pretty talented in that area, let me just say and he’s effective in Congress. He knows how to work it. So, sir, what what are the main issues you’re worried about in the Department of War at this point? with these—
MGen Bentley Rayburn
Well, obvious— obviously we’re still very concerned about DEI. The pronouncements were to get rid of it, and officially it’s gone. But you know, the— all the people who believe in it down to their core, there’s a lot of them still left. And you’re never really sure whether they’re just keeping their head down until a time when they can resurrect this terrible ideology or, or not. So we are continuing to look forever where we can to find it and root it out. We are also going to working with our Congressional contacts to make sure that the legislation is there, et cetera, et cetera. That is certainly top on our list or near the top. We have got a lot of things that are top on our list. The other of course, is this vaccine mandate. That was kind of the second big project we took on. And while again the vaccines have been removed from the requirement for military personnel, even the flu vaccine, the results of those are still going on. Both medically for people who had to take the shots and also for those who didn’t want to take the shots for valid, extremely valid reasons and were harmed in terms of their career and so on.
MGen Bentley Rayburn
And we’re trying to help as best we can through our general counsel, , former Senator Mike Rose, who’s doing a tremendous job trying to help not only get those who would like to be back on active duty, but very importantly for a lot of them who decided that they left the military, to make sure that their records are corrected so that if there was something in their records that was, you know, maybe other than honorable discharge or something like that because of the COVID vaccine, that we’re correcting those. Unfortunately, that is a very long and tedious process. We’ve had a little more success in the Coast Guard, interestingly enough, because they’re not part of the Department of War, they’re Department of Homeland Security. And so they’ve— while they’ve got a long ways to go like all of us, they’ve done a little bit better job than the services writ large.
L Todd Wood
Why do you think that is? Because I, and I know each service is different, it has different roadblocks. Is it people, as you said, in the bureaucracy that just don’t want this to happen, or is it a procedural issue that the process needs to get better? What do you think the reasons are for that?
MGen Bentley Rayburn
Well, Todd, I’m sure there’s a combination of reasons in different places. Number one is the bureaucracy. I mean, long before COVID when people were just trying to get their military records reviewed at the Board of Military Records, we all understood and knew that it was a long and laborious bureaucratic process. So I’m sure that hasn’t changed. And then you add on the controversies with the vaccines and individual stories about how people were either not allowed a religious exemption, which they should have been certainly, or whether they had other reasons. And, and their records show a more confusing picture painted probably by the former supervisors, former commanders who signed it, etc. And so all of those add in to making this a very difficult process for people, and it shouldn’t be. I mean, they should take these cases, streamline the bureaucracy for these particular cases, and get them through, because obviously they’re impacting people’s lives, and particularly those who want to get back on, on active duty, etc.
L Todd Wood
Are you getting are people listening? Is the Secretary’s Office or the congressional leaders, are they listening to your requests, your involvement?
MGen Bentley Rayburn
Well, it’s hard, you know, it’s really hard to say. We have our contacts, we’re trying to push our contacts where we can and raise the issue, , but we’re not sitting in the next door to the Secretary of War’s office, right? You know, so this— he’s got a lot on his plate right now. And while this is an important issue to him, I know this is not something that day-to-day— he’s got so many other critical things with regard to our overall national security that he’s put this on his staff, and hopefully his staff has picked up on his urgency.
L Todd Wood
Well, thank you for that. Well, let’s talk about what happened over the weekend, and I’ll just say I put the article up we wrote earlier, and there’s some feedback that that was too strong of a title. Battle. But, you know, my thoughts are we’re in the middle of a really a Marxist revolution in this country, and especially in the Department of Defense at some levels. There was this— Charlie Kirk was assassinated. He was on the Air Force Academy AOG board of directors. You’ve had another assassination attempt, the third one, over the weekend with the president. You’ve had a lot of threats, a lot of violence. So when I see a sign that says ‘no matter what’ and it references the Secretary of War, That’s why I wrote that title. But what’s a— what happened here? You probably have a lot more knowledge than me.
MGen Bentley Rayburn
Well, I’m not sure that I do, but I will say that number one, we’ve had a lot of great female graduates from the Academy. So this is not 100% of all of the female graduates. It’s a vocal, vocal, hopefully small minority, but nevertheless a very vocal minority. Group. And you know, if we learned anything at the Academy, we probably learned— one of the things we learned was what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate, particularly on a military base, particularly at your alma mater who has a reputation and so on and so forth. And I’m wondering whether these ladies who are involved in this learned any of that at all. Either here at the Academy or in their career. Clearly, it was way out of bounds. It was politicizing an event and getting feedback from other ladies who were there who clearly— some of them didn’t see the banner until later and were very disappointed that it all happened because it credit upon the institution for sure.
L Todd Wood
What got me, and we posted the response from the Academy, which, you know, we want to give them their say, but I found it, I found the silence deafening. There was no outrage, there was no like, this is really inappropriate. It was more like, well, it’s a small group, we’re not part of it, we didn’t see it.
MGen Bentley Rayburn
Let’s move on. Typically bureaucratic response.
L Todd Wood
Yeah.
MGen Bentley Rayburn
And that’s unfortunate. It’s also unfortunate that in a group like that, there, there, you’d assume that there were some active duty folks, younger graduates that, that probably were aware of what was going on and should have, should have taken some action. But, but the picture was taken. And, , and post it. It clearly says what that group of people are, are thinking.
L Todd Wood
Yeah. , that’s another issue. There were cadets there in active duty, and they could have been tarnished with insubordination. And there’s a lot of things to think through on that. Well, thank you for your time. Is there anything else you want to get out about STARRS, or any way people can help the organization?
MGen Bentley Rayburn
Well, you know, we’re just trying to, along with you and so many of our fellow patriots, combat these terribly evil and destructive ideologies that are not only in our military, for sure, that’s our focus, but are around the country and in our country. And so we’re trying to not only focus on some of these key issues, but also understand how important education is. So we’re trying to get— we put together a very good production called The American Creed and just trying to help educate people about our founders, the main philosophies and principles of our Constitution, and get that out. Starting with groups like the American Legion and VFW and so on and so forth. But we’ve got a Medal of Honor winner, a wonderful man called Drew Dix, who has a real special heart for Junior ROTC and these high school kids. That’s going to be one of our other focuses to make sure that where we can, we can reach down and talk to young kids because we’ve, as you well know, we’ve got a problem in this country with our education system. And so we’re going to try to do as best we can as in our organization.
MGen Bentley Rayburn
But people can look us up, STARRS, that’s with two R’s, STARRS.us. , visit the link and sign up for our newsletter.
L Todd Wood
Well, Drew is fantastic. I’ve interviewed him and he is— he’s got a— it’s not a museum, it’s some kind of activity center in Colorado where he brings in young people. I forget what it’s called, but he’s very good at that for sure.
MGen Bentley Rayburn
Yeah, he is. And it’s the Center for American Values. It’s down in Pueblo. It’s amazing. Pueblo is a fairly small town, and yet they have— they’ve probably got the most Medal of Honor winners per capita of any little town in any town, city in America. So it’s a wonderful place and it’s a great organization that Drew is obviously very involved with.
L Todd Wood
General Rayburn, thank you very much. I’d love to have you back down the road as things progress, but I really appreciate your time today. Great to meet you finally in person. Take care.
MGen Bentley Rayburn
Yeah, it’s great to have time with you, Todd. Thank you.
L Todd Wood
All right, take care, sir.
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