In the 1980’s it was still Standard Operating Procedure, straight out of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), to railroad whistleblowers out of the ranks with a psychiatric discharge. In fact, absent a benefactor in Congress, that’s still the case.
Indeed, my US Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) told me in the spring of 1998 that “… the Army will not investigate your appeal unless there is a formal Act of Congress.” So you don’t just need a Congressman on your side, but the entire Congress!
The Backstory
In the spring of 1982, I turned in a dozen senior NCOs at White Sands Missile Range for using hard drugs on the job. My CO messed it up, and they found me out. I was threatened. My motorcycle was blown up (with me on it). A used car I bought blew the engine a mile off the lot. And so forth. (I complained, and my CO was relieved of duty.)
According to the UCMJ, I should have been transferred immediately to another post at least a 24-hour drive away. The senior brass would not do that. I asked for assistance from my congressman, Jake Pickle (D-Texas) back home in Austin.
When I was transferred to Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, on EYES ONLY orders direct from the Pentagon (arranged by Congressman Pickle’s office), my 401K file with my DD214 (all links on his page are PDFs) and work history did not accompany me.
I wrote a detailed statement of all that had happened at White Sands and submitted it to the FBI office in Austin. They said this was not their jurisdiction. I should contact the Army Inspector General. I submitted the same document to the IG at Ft. Sam Houston, LTC Gillooly.
When I was called into the First Sergeant’s office a few weeks later, I fully expected that my new orders to Chaplain’s School at Ft. Ord in California had arrived. Hah! I was zipped into a straitjacket and hauled off the Chambers Pavilion.
When I told the Chief of Psychiatry at BAMC, Dr. Durand-Hollis, that I had gone to the US Naval Academy, graduated with honors from the University of Texas with a BS in mechanical engineering, then worked as an exploration drilling engineer for Exxon, wrote a manuscript on the Unified Field Theory well received by NASA, which I presented at a two-hour seminar to the Post Commander and lead scientists at the $1 trillion “Star Wars” High Energy Laser Project at White Sands Missile Range; well, he immediately resolved that I was – in the words of the Chief of Chaplains COL Saunders at my Medical Evaluation Board hearing – “the sickest of the sick.”
(I was at this time working at the Main Post Chapel as a Chaplain’s Assistant.)
Even after Dr. Durand-Hollis discovered all of these facts, including a letter of recommendation to Officer Candidate School by my CO in Army tech school, an Army Medal of Commendation (the highest peacetime award in the Army) at White Sands, and even a clean bill of health by the Psychology Clinic at White Sands a few months previous – he was resolved to get rid of me.
The psych doctors at BAMC did some tests and wrote up my case. My appeals to their bizarre, irrelevant – wrong! – evaluations were lengthy, detailed, and comprehensive. While all this was working its way through the bureaucracy, I worked at BAMC in the Occupational Therapy Clinic. They gave me a nice letter of recommendation.
In all of this, the doctor’s main “evidence” against me was the NASA letter on the Unified Field Theory. This was clearly a grandiose delusion. I spent six months gathering evidence for my JAG attorney, Capt. Paul Franco, on the veracity of my research. Ultimately, the tribunal decided it was not evidence of schizophrenic delusions.
It was too late. As soon as I was discharged, I destroyed everything – my notes, my computer analyses – everything. I was so depressed, having spent the last five years on that project that consumed my every spare minute of free time; I attempted suicide.
When I was at Rusk State Hospital, I missed a VA disability review, and they bumped my disability rating to 0%. I got nothing. Zero. Nil.
Six months later, I was booted off a dairy farm in Vermont – where I’d worked 24/7 for four months and had given the owners my SSDI benefits to allow me to work, no less – and swallowed a bottle of Norpramin, antidepressants – well over a lethal amount. The doctors at Burlington Medical Center did not pump my stomach or anything. Good riddance.
Honestly? The Rusk and Burlington psych evaluations are as irrelevant and wrong as the Army’s. No matter what I said, once they discovered I was schizophrenic, they cast my every last statement in their own warped, evil framework to confirm their diabolical diagnosis.
Read The Official Transcript
Here’s the official Medical Evaluation Board transcript. Would you convict this man who spent three hours being grilled, without faltering a second? The two medical doctors on the Board gave me a thumbs-down. The one line officer said I should remain in the service.
Read the Book
Read the PDF book here. It was published by First Books in 1999. The back cover has a good review. The book was serialized in a sci-fi magazine at the time. There are excerpts from the official transcript of my tribunal. This was my first effort to confront what happened at White Sands. You can read excerpts at my old Texas X Files website, back online as it was circa 2002. (Best viewed with a desktop PC).
It’s a dark, convoluted story. The black pit that lurks at the bottom of your soul after going through that kind of trauma.
Book Review
by Dr. Jeffrey A. Katt
Behold Leviathan, an ambitious first novel by WH Clark, is both original and intriguing. Certain chapters are loosely autobiographical, bringing a realism to the tale and making the story even more interesting. The novel begins with SP4 Cleary, an army specialist formerly stationed at the White Sands Missile Range, testifying before Congress, and shortly thereafter developing a love interest with Nikki, who is much more than she initially appears. After that, well, you would have to read the book yourself to appreciate all the twists and turns that the author supplies. Like the proverbial onion, each chapter reveals another layer of the intricate tale, until the reader descends into a world steeped in international intrigue, politics, religion, corruption, humor, love, and the darkly supernatural.
Clark uses his personal knowledge of politics, engineering, and the military to lend credibility to the story, and he takes the reader on a fast-paced ride into a world most of us have not imagined — except, perhaps, in stress-induced nightmares. Just when the reader thinks he knows where the story is going it turns in an entirely new direction. Only after finishing the book can the reader look back and clearly sort out which portions were pure fiction, and which are chillingly familiar — and true. Additionally, the chapters are not strictly in chronological order, a technique I usually find to be quite annoying, but here it serves to make the story evolve in a more logical manner.
Behold Leviathan is one of the most unique and original books I have read in quite some time. From the sharply satirical to the forcefully blunt, the novel holds the reader’s interest and forces him to reconsider the world around him. I look forward to future offerings from Mr. Clark.