Army Secretary Christine Wormuth has fired a four-star general — one of just 12 in the entire service — following an investigation into accusations that he attempted to use his position to push a subordinate officer’s promotion forward, Task & Purpose has confirmed.
Gen. Charles Hamilton was relieved as the commander of Army Materiel Command, a position he had been suspended from during the investigation. The probe focused on whether Hamilton tried to pressure Army officials into promoting a lieutenant colonel that he mentored. Task & Purpose is not identifying the lieutenant colonel because there is no evidence she violated any Army policies.
“Based on the findings of a Department of the Army Inspector General investigation, the Secretary of the Army has relieved General Charles Hamilton of command,” the Army said in a statement.
Both Hamilton and the female junior officer are Black, a fact that Hamilton has said in the past was a factor in his mentoring the officer. However, he has maintained that he did not interfere in the promotion process, and he claimed in a letter to Wormuth that the selection process for battalion commanders “fails to account for the psychological effects that systemic bias, discrimination, and overt racism can have on prospective officers.”
“Although the investigation found that the Command Assessment Program withstood an attempt to interfere with its process, Secretary Wormuth will be issuing a directive that formally establishes CAP as an enduring Army program in order to reinforce the integrity of CAP and increase transparency,” the Army statement says.
Army Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan, the acting commander of Army Materiel Command, will continue to serve in his current role until a permanent replacement has been nominated, according to the Army.
“It was my greatest honor to serve our nation and I’ve been blessed beyond what I’ve deserved to lead our troops for the past 43 years,” Hamilton said in a statement to Task & Purpose on Tuesday. “Today, that service comes to a close. And, as the song tells us, the Army keeps rolling along. While I wish I was able to complete my command, we all take the uniform off and we don’t always control the timing. I look forward to continuing to serve our nation in new ways.”
Joe Buccino, a retired Army colonel familiar with the case, also issued a statement that praised Hamilton for his years of service.
“General Hamilton remains revered for fully investing in his troops and offering meaning to all those around him,” Buccino told Task & Purpose. “For more than four decades, he’s contributed to our Nation’s greatest institution. The officers he’s mentored will serve as his legacy.”
“An overly familiar relationship”
The Army Inspector General’s office concluded that Hamilton had “improperly advocated” for the lieutenant colonel to be selected for command, according to a redacted copy of the investigation obtained by Task & Purpose.
“The net effect of adding [the lieutenant colonel,] an officer not certified ready for command, to the order of merit list ultimately caused concern in the force,” the investigation found. “This deviation from an established process, at the behest of Gen. Hamilton, uprooted trust in the program from not just the affected population, but across the Army.”
The Army Inspector General Office’s investigation came after it received an anonymous complaint in December 2023 alleging that Hamilton and the lieutenant colonel were having an “inappropriate, fraternizing, and likely sexual relationship,” the investigation says. Investigators subsequently found that although Hamilton and the lieutenant colonel had an “overly familiar relationship,” there was no “definitive evidence” that the two had a sexual relationship.
At first, the matter was referred to the Defense Department Inspector General’s Office, which closed the case in January after finding “insufficient evidence in the complaint to warrant further investigation.”
But the day after Military.com first reported in March that Hamilton allegedly pressured Army officials to select the lieutenant colonel for command, the DOD Inspector General’s Office referred the matter to the Army Inspector General’s Office for investigation.
On March 22, Wormuth suspended Hamilton and removed the lieutenant colonel’s name from the command selection list, according to the investigation.
Investigators found that Hamilton and the lieutenant colonel had communicated via personal email; Hamilton masked her name in his contacts; the two of them had attended an event together in St. Louis, Missouri, but their travel was not officially documented; and the investigation uncovered an email that implied an “inappropriate and prohibited” relationship between them.
“The investigation did not find definitive evidence of a sexual relationship between Gen. Hamilton and [the lieutenant colonel], however, we found several indicators of an overly familiar relationship between them,” investigators determined. “While the available evidence could not prove a sexual relationship, the preponderance of evidence led us to conclude there was a prohibited relationship and that [the lieutenant colonel] received preferential treatment as a result.”
For example, Hamilton awarded her the Legion of Merit when she was a major, according to the investigation. Such awards are usually presented to retiring colonels or one-star officers after they complete assignments with significant responsibilities.
“Gen. Hamilton’s direct actions to assist [the lieutenant colonel] began with awarding her an impact Legion of Merit and culminated with his request for an exception to policy to certify her ready for command to the Chief of Staff of the Army,” the investigation found. “Gen. Hamilton provided [the lieutenant colonel with several advantages he did not provide to other officers.”
Undue influence
The investigation determined that Hamilton had “used his position as a senior Army officer” to influence the Battalion Commander Assessment Program, or BCAP, in order to get the lieutenant colonel selected for command. BCAP evaluates an officer’s readiness for command.
“The evidence did not support Gen. Hamilton’s explanation that he advocated for [the lieutenant colonel] to illustrate his concerns with systemic bias and unfairness in the BCAP process,” according to the investigation.
Investigators found that Hamilton asked to sit in on the lieutenant colonel’s Army Comprehensive Talent Interview as part of the BCAP process. Ultimately, he didn’t observe any of the other candidates’ interviews “that would have assisted him in making observations to Army senior leaders as he had previously stated was the purpose of his visit,” according to the investigation.
Hamilton also asked to receive the lieutenant colonel’s peer and subordinate reviews before the interview, the investigation found. When he visited Fort Knox, Kentucky, for the lieutenant colonel’s BCAP, Hamilton expressed that he was concerned that her peer reviews were “50/50 positive negative,” and added that she had a difficult experience at Fort Cavazos, Texas, and he “had to get involved to get her moved out of there.” Hamilton added that he was concerned that “she’s being held accountable for actions that weren’t hers.”
One witness told investigators that the lieutenant colonel’s interview was “not the greatest,” and afterward Hamilton complained that the psychologist had been “too emotional and too negative” when briefing panelists about her risks of being an ineffective leader if put in command, investigators found. He said he felt the psychologist had “dug such a hole” that the lieutenant colonel could not get a fair evaluation.
There’s a discrepancy about what happened next. Hamilton told investigators that someone suggested to him that the lieutenant colonel could appear before another panel, but an official whose name was redacted from the investigation said that the lieutenant colonel was re-paneled “based solely on Gen. Hamilton’s request,” according to the investigation.
“We found it more likely than not Gen. Hamilton leveraged his rank and his position to pressure CAP staff to re-panel [the lieutenant colonel,” the investigation found. “Gen. Hamilton testified [Redacted] introduced the idea of the re-panel; however, his testimony was inconsistent with other evidence.”
Typically, re-paneling is done for administrative or technical reasons, investigators wrote. This was the first time a candidate was re-paneled at the request of a general officer, according to the investigation. One person, whose name was redacted, told investigators that no other senior leader had asked for a candidate to re-paneled since the CAP process began in 2019.
Hamilton then reached out to several general officers who were sitting on panels about how the BCAP process worked, the investigation found.
“Gen. Hamilton improperly contacted four BCAP panel members,” according to the investigation. “General officers frequently serve on boards and panels and swear an oath to protect the integrity of the process. Gen. Hamilton’s contact with panel members to discuss their board philosophy put the integrity of the BCAP panel at risk. Gen. Hamilton testified he called them to ensure they were conducting panels with a holistic view of a candidate’s file. Two of the panel members testified Gen. Hamilton mentioned they may see someone he knew. A third testified Gen. Hamilton specifically attempted to garner support for a candidate who was being re-paneled.”
On the day of the second panel, Hamilton texted one person whose name was redacted from the investigation and asked how it went. After the lieutenant colonel was not selected for command again, Hamilton texted one panel member and said he was going to “find out what’s going on at CAP.”
He also started reaching out to Army officials about having a three- or four-star general override the panel’s decision because he believed there were “biases” that prevented some officers from “getting a fair shot,” according to the investigation. Hamilton took up the matter with the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt, who was serving as vice chief of staff at the time. Ultimately, he succeeded in getting senior Army leaders to select her for command.
“Gen. Hamilton did not disclose to Army Senior Leaders that he only observed [the lieutenant colonel’s] interview,” the investigation found. “He did not share that he had not determined nor considered important, whether [the lieutenant colonel’s] assessments were accurate. He did not tell the Chief he had contacted panel members at BCAP. He did not share that both [redacted] panel and the re-panel found her not ready for command Rather, Gen. Hamilton leveraged his position as a trusted Army senior leader to convince the Chief and the Vice he was protecting the integrity of the BCAP process by identifying a bias toward a single officer.”
Bias against minority officers
In August, Hamilton wrote a letter to Wormuth denying he had done anything improper, and he argued that the Army Command Assessment Program is biased against Black candidates, including the lieutenant colonel.
In the case of the female lieutenant colonel, Hamilton wrote that he tried to prevent her promotion from being “sabotaged” by the CAP process.
“Regardless of what decision you make regarding my fate, I implore you to investigate why the Command Assessment Program deems so few minority officers as ready for command and what barriers exist that make qualified Black officers unwilling to subject themselves to that process,” Hamilton wrote in an Aug. 16 letter to Wormuth. “Removing photographs from personnel files and providing unconscious bias training for panelists is not enough. By the time a minority officer sits before a Command Assessment Program panel, the bias and racism that exists in our Army culture is already cemented into evaluation reports, peer assessments, and opinions of decision makers.”
In his letter to Wormuth, Hamilton wrote that all his advocacy for the lieutenant colonel had been “completely transparent and above board.”
While he acknowledged that he had contacted general officers whom he believed were involved with command assessment programs about what they focus on when reviewing candidates’ files, Hamilton stressed, “I never pressured or even asked any of them to deem [the lieutenant colonel] ready for command.”
Hamilton also wrote that he had been warned by an officer that the lieutenant colonel’s peers intended to hurt her chances of being selected for command by using their CAP assessments to “light her up.”
After he received an invitation to observe the lieutenant colonel’s panel, he received her peer assessments, which confirmed what he had been warned about, Hamilton wrote.
“More shocking, I observed the psychologist unprofessionally joking and making unfair conclusions with the panel prior to her interview about what he read in [the lieutenant colonel’s] assessments,” Hamilton wrote. “Though [the lieutenant colonel] acquitted herself well, she could not overcome the weight of the unfair peer bias.”
Hamilton also wrote that he did not ask that the lieutenant colonel appear before another panel. Rather, he agreed with a suggestion from Col. Townley Hedrick, CAP’s deputy executive director, that she could appear before another panel. He later learned that at least 11 other officers in the same cycle had also been re-paneled.
Following the lieutenant colonel’s second rejection, Hamilton wrote a memo to Piatt who was also director of the Army Staff at the time, arguing that she deserved to be selected as a battalion commander and included letters of recommendation on her behalf. He also met with Piatt and George on the matter.
“I am disturbed that my service to the nation might end under the glare of adversity linked unfairly to the advocacy of a subordinate officer who happens to be a Black female,” Hamilton wrote. “Over the course of my 42 years of service, I have mentored, coached, and advocated for a plethora of officers with outstanding potential. It is newsworthy that most of these officers I have supported have been White. Yet, no complaints or reports of favoritism were ever assigned to these efforts that I considered my duty to perform.”
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