McSally, Wilson — Hyten Innocent, Falsely Accused of Sexual Assault - SpacePolicyOnline.com

Posted: 30 Jul 2019 03:26 PM PDT

Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) and former Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson told the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) today that, after reviewing the evidence, they are convinced Gen. John Hyten is innocent of charges of sexual assault and was falsely accused. SASC held a hearing today on Hyten's nomination to be Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A former subordinate, Army Col. Kathryn Spletstoser, leveled the charges against him a few months ago. Not all SASC members appeared as certain as McSally, but overall Hyten seems on track to be approved by the committee.

Hyten is currently Commander of U.S. Strategic Command in charge of the U.S. nuclear deterrent — missiles, aircraft and submarines equipped with nuclear weapons. Previously he was Commander of Air Force Space Command and is very well known in the space community.

His nomination was headed toward easy approval until Spletstoser accused him of repeated instances of sexual harassment and, on December 2, 2017, assault. She says she did not report it at the time, but when he was nominated for this new position decided it was her moral responsibility to file charges.

Wilson was Secretary of the Air Force at the time and directed the Office of Special Investigations to investigate. She resigned from the government at the end of May and is now President of the University of Texas-El Paso. Today, however, she appeared at the witness table seated next to Hyten to open the hearing with a summary of that investigation: a team of 53 investigators interviewed 63 people, reviewed 196,000 emails, 4,000 page of documents, 152 travel records and portions of phone records dating back to 2015, resulting in a 1,400 page final report. From all of that, she concluded Hyten was falsely accused.

Former Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson testifying to Senate Armed Services Committee, July 30, 2019. Screengrab.

"I believe the Senate will come to the same conclusion that I did. Gen. Hyten was falsely accused and this matter should be set aside as you consider his nomination.

"I accept that it is entirely possible that his accuser is a wounded soldier who believes what she is saying is true, even if it is not. That possibility makes this whole situation very sad."

SASC has been reviewing the matter for the past three weeks. It held five closed executive sessions last week, hearing from Hyten, Spletstoser and others. Today, two Republican Senators, including SASC chairman Jim Inhofe (R-OK), yielded all or most of their time to McSally because she had spent almost full time looking into these allegations.

McSally, a retired Air Force Colonel, was the first American woman to fly in combat (an A-10 Warthog). Earlier this year during a SASC hearing on sexual assault in the military, she revealed that she had been raped by a superior officer while at the Air Force Academy. She has become a voice for victims of sexual assault in the military ever since.

Today she said she never imagined she would be in this position. Saying she "will always support working out these issues through due process and not in the court of public opinion," she asserted that she has full confidence in Hyten and he is innocent of the charges.

Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) speaking at Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, July 30, 2019.

"To be clear, this wasn't a jump ball. This wasn't a he-said, she-said. Not a situation where we just couldn't prove what allegedly happened. I, too, believe that truth still matters in this country and the full truth was revealed in this process.

The truth is that Gen. Hyten is innocent of these charges. Sexual assault happens in the military. It just didn't happen in this case."

Not everyone sounded as convinced as McSally. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), a combat-disabled retired Army Lt. Col., pointed to the fact that not all of Hyten's text messages, or Spletstoser's, could be reviewed because their phones had been wiped at one point in an upgrade process. Hyten said he had not been aware of that until he read the investigative report last week. Spletstoser is one of Duckworth's constituents.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) commented that "while we have not been presented with any corroborating evidence, the lack of it does not necessarily mean the accusations aren't true."

Spletstoser has been giving interviews to the media since Friday to present her case and allowing them to use her name. She told the New York Times that while she and Hyten were attending a conference in December 2017, he came to her hotel room, pressed himself against her, kissed her, "then ejaculated, getting semen on his sweatpants and on her yoga pants."

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) asked Hyten about "physical evidence" that might have been subject to DNA testing by investigators. Hyten said he had to give them a DNA sample "and I know there was nothing found." He also told Hawley that "I've never been to her room. … Never, Sir. .. On any trip, ever…"

Defense One reports that Spletstoser attended today's hearing, sitting in the front row, and told reporters afterwards that Hyten lied to the committee.

There was no disagreement during the hearing about the "scourge" of sexual assault in the military. Several members wanted to know what Hyten would do about it if he is confirmed. He insisted it must be dealt with by the services and he does not have the answers. Despite the many efforts that have been tried, the number of reported assaults keeps going up, but he committed to working to find the right people to find solutions.

About half of the hearing dealt with the sexual assault issue, but there were also many questions about Hyten's views on the National Defense Strategy, the greatest threats to the United States today, and other topics for which he will be responsible if confirmed. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) asked about the Space Force. Hyten agreed that the Space Force must be under the Air Force, not a separate department, and "we're in a very good place" with the legislation currently working its way through Congress.

Last Updated: Jul 30, 2019 9:00 pm ET

It's Time To Pressure Central American Elites To End The Border Crisis - The Federalist

Posted: 31 Jul 2019 03:43 AM PDT

The most important thing about the "safe third country" agreement the Trump administration signed with Guatemala last week isn't the pact itself, but how it got signed in the first place.

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales initially didn't want to sign the pact, which will force migrants passing through Guatemala en route to the United States to seek asylum first in Guatemala. But he agreed to it after the Trump administration threatened to impose tariffs, a travel ban, and taxes on remittances sent from the United States.

If that seems heavy-handed on Trump's part, it is. But it shows that the Trump administration has real leverage over Central American elites who run what are essentially failed states, and that putting pressure on them can get them to do things they don't want to do.

The pact, for what it's worth, stipulates that Hondurans and Salvadorans, as well as migrants from other countries, have to apply for asylum in Guatemala, and be denied, before being eligible to apply for asylum in the United States. Such agreements are not uncommon—the United States has one with Canada, for example. But Guatemala, like Honduras and El Salvador, is plagued by high levels of violence and corruption, and isn't really a safe third country for migrants. It's also unclear whether the agreement is even valid under Guatemalan law.

But if we're serious about solving the border crisis, safe third country pacts aren't nearly as important as forcing Central American elites to tackle corruption, organized crime, and drug cartels. Corruption affects almost every area of society in the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, and helps fuel the violence and poverty that migrants say is driving them to seek protection in the United States. It's long past time to stop pretending that the leaders of these countries aren't at least partly culpable for this state of affairs, or that nothing can be done to put pressure on them.

Honduras, For Example, Is More Or Less a Failed State

Consider a recent article in The New York Times that chronicles the stupefying levels of corruption in Honduras, where organized crime has infiltrated the highest levels of government.

Reporter Sonia Nazario spent a month in the country earlier this year, and gives a harrowing glimpse into conditions that are driving the crisis on the U.S.'s southwest border. "There are two main ways to get rich illegally in Honduras. One is to take money from drug cartels to help them move Colombian cocaine to the United States," she writes. "The other way is to steal from the public coffers."

Honduran officials have been endlessly creative at stealing from public coffers. As Nazario explains, this often takes the form of nonprofits that get no-bid government contracts and do the work at inflated prices or don't do anything and still get paid. Two nonprofits linked to the family of President Juan Orlando Hernández pocketed $87 million in such contracts between 2014 and 2017.

Hernández's family exemplifies the problem. His sister, Hilda, controlled two nonprofits that received $12 million in no-bid contracts from the Ministry of Agriculture between 2011 and 2013 to teach cultivation and irrigation techniques to farmers affected by climate change, but no training sessions ever occurred. Some of that money went to fund Hernández's 2013 campaign, but Hilda, who died in a helicopter crash in 2017, also used it to buy land, cattle, and apartments in Miami.

The president's brother, Tony, took a more direct approach to wealth accumulation. He was arrested last November in Miami on drug trafficking charges, accused of shipping huge amounts of cocaine stamped with his own initials. As it happens, Tony was protected by the same presidential guard as his brother.

Clearly, corruption reaches the very highest levels of the Honduran government, but it also affects nearly every other aspect of life in Honduras. Bus and taxi drivers are forced to pay as much as 40 percent of their earnings to gangs. Teachers collect paychecks but never show up to school. Government officials routinely siphon off hundreds of millions of tax dollars in brazen scams.

One of them involved the head of the Institute of Social Security, who organized a criminal ring to defraud the nation's medical system of some $300 million. Basic medicines, writes Nazario, "were vastly diluted, containing 5 percent of the active ingredient. Some were chalk dust—fakes. Others were contaminated: IV drips contained fecal matter." Between 2010 and 2014, thousands of people died because of this. A former U.S. ambassador to Honduras told Nazario, "It's not that the criminals were subverting the system; this was the system."

Same goes for the police. A 2016 purge—prompted by pressure from the United States—resulted in the firing of more than a third of the nation's 13,500 police officers, including all 40 of the highest-ranking officers, "dismissed because they were suspected of being criminals, didn't pass a polygraph or were incapable of doing the job." Gangs like MS-13 and 18thStreet Gang are sending some of their members to school to become doctors and lawyers, others to the police academy to become officers. They routinely pay off legislators, judges, and mayors.

We Can Use Our Leverage

So that's just Honduras. Things are much the same in Guatemala, El Salvador, and even in parts of Mexico. But notice that even in a place as corrupt as Honduras, pressure from the United States can get someone as compromised as President Hernández to act. What else might U.S. pressure accomplish? What if Central American elites suddenly didn't have access to U.S. properties and banks? What if they couldn't send their children to American universities?

The fact is, the border crisis is being fueled above all by poverty and corruption in Central America, and as long as those things persist, Central American families will have a powerful incentive to head north and seek a better life in the United States—by any means necessary.

Yes, we should reform our asylum laws. Yes, we should try to secure our southwest border. But those things alone won't bring about a long-term solution to the crisis if the countries to our south remain mired in chaos and ruled by a corrupt elite. As the Trump administration demonstrated last week, the United States has enormous leverage in Central America. It's time to use it.

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