This is completely normal:
The Army has placed Alexander Vindman, an expert on Ukraine and a central figure in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, and his family under 24-hour security monitoring after Trump targeted Vindman in tweets accusing Vindman of being politically opposed to Trump.
Vindman was one of the people who listened in on Trump’s calls with the Ukrainian president, in which Trump asked for a favor, now understood to be a request that Ukraine investigate Joe Biden and his son for corruption. Vindman expressed his concern over the call with National Security Counsel lawyers, and spoke to the House Intelligence Committee about the call in a closed-door hearing several weeks ago.
U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal that the Army has in recent weeks conducted a security assessment of Vindman and his family’s home and internet presence, and said they are prepared to move the Vindman’s to a military base if there are any threats to their safety.
This is why his family fled the Ukraine, and now Putin’s bitch has done it here.
dmsilev
Here’s a depressing thought: Now that this has made the news, Trump will probably order the military to do nothing even if there is a clear threat to the Col and his family.
Mary G
I hope they’re taking care of his brothers, too, especially the identical twin.
Adam L Silverman
It’s actually worse, they sent out talking points stating he was an insider threat so that the GOP on the committee, other GOP members of congress, and the conservative media surrogates could trash him.
Mike in NC
Republicans in Congress are A-OK with harassing career military and Foreign Service professionals with many years of dedicated service in order to protect their racist, draft dodging, former reality TV game show host who pays for sex with porn stars. Utter scum.
Omnes Omnibus
@dmsilev: Patently illegal order. Obligation to disobey.
NotMax
And came to the America. *sigh
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: They seem nice. //
pinacacci
The way he has been treated makes me fucking sick. If there is a way to let him know that he’s got support, please do let us know
Adam L Silverman
As I’ve been saying:
debbie
@Mary G:
And his father. He was the one who was worried about testifying.
mrmoshpotato
Fucking awesome. So so proud of everyone who couldn’t soil their voting record with a vote for Hillary, because “Eww Hillary.”
Here’s a Pelosi clap for you.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Stephen Miller was handed a new portfolio? //
Mary G
I also worry that an Army base won’t actually be safe. Plenty of MAGAts with guns there.
Changerous
The LTC has more integrity than all the Republican House elves combined.
Jay
And keep in mind that the Pentagon has his back, security wise.
Now think of all the transgendered youths, DACA recipients, etc that Dolt 45 has villified and threatened, along with a willing Nazi ReThug cabal, who don’t have the loxury of GoFundMe’s or Corporate Security.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: There are even worse takes. That shitbird lieutenant the President just pardoned, the shitbird SEAL O’Neill who claims he shot bin Laden (he didn’t), one of the Benghazi survivors, and former US Army Special Forces and current MMA fighter Tim Kennedy have all come out to trash Vindman.
smike
@Mike in NC: Well, when you put it that way…
NotMax
@Mary G
Adam is better suited to elucidate but my understanding is the carrying of weapons on base is very tightly proscribed.
ghost cat
@Adam L Silverman:
Is a military base the safest place for him and his family?
laura
I’ve been thinking about Congresswoman Speier and her real life experience with cult members that almost cost her her life. What inferences she draws from the proceedings and the president’s actions in response would be worth hearing at some point. The president’s demand for absolute loyalty and the willingness to obey without question echo Jim Jones and his response to legislative oversight as stories leaked out of Jonestown and State-side family members grew increasingly concerned.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: A lot of this stuff does come from Miller, but it is coming via Julia Hahn who is Bannon’s cutout to Miller and from there to the President to continue the appearance that Bannon is persona non grata with the President and not advising him in anyway. Whether these talking points came this way, I cannot say. But I’d be willing to wager good money that Bannon got a copy of them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mary G: Do you have any idea of the amount of security surrounding firearms (including personally owned firearms) on a military base? Do you have any idea how hard the army would come down on someone who kills a senior officer on a base?
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: My guess is they’ve moved him onto Ft. McNair, which is where all the general officers and flag officers (admirals) live in the National Capitol Region, with the exception of the CG at Ft. Meyer. As for lots of MAGAts with guns, the only people armed on domestic bases are the Military Police/Shore Patrol officers, DOD and Service police officers, and the various service criminal investigators (Army Criminal Investigative Division/CID, Naval Criminal Investigative Service/NCIS, Air Force Office of Special Investigations/AFOSI, Coast Guard Investigative Service/CGIS). The same is true for all foreign bases except for those in active combat zones (Iraq and Afghanistan). No one else is armed in garrison on post, though some bases now allow uniformed personnel and DOD and Service civilians to conceal carry, but that is up to each garrison commander and done on a case by case request. All unit weapons are secured in an armory. If you live on post and have personal weapons for sport shooting or hunting, they have to be registered with the base Provost Marshal or Service equivalent, and those weapons too must be stored in the armory unless checked out for specific use off base (shooting range, hunting, shooting competition). US military bases are, for all intents and purposes, gun free zones.
Adam L Silverman
@ghost cat: Yes. Please see my response at #23.
Mnemosyne
@Mary G:
Given what commenters here who have actually been in the military say, it does sound as though he’ll be much safer there than he would be off-base. No non-military person should be able to get onto the base, and any current military person would know that s/he would probably get the first death sentence since WWII if they murdered a senior officer for political reasons on a military base.
sdhays
@NotMax: John himself has written about it many times.
Uncle Jeffy
Wondering where Devin Nunes will find his balls after LTCol Vindman slapped them off…
Also: let’s set up a GoFundMe for Gym Jordan to buy him a sports coat or something. I’m thinking something in sackcloth and ashes, or one of those spiffy corduroy numbers with the fake suede elbow patches.
Pond scum, the whole Rethuglikkkan party.
Adam L Silverman
Just a general comment on LTC Vindman’s safety if you can excuse the use of “general”. I don’t really know GEN Milley, the new and current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One of the retired general officers I have worked for extensively is a classmate of his from the Point and thinks very highly of him. I don’t know the new and current Chief of Staff of the Army either. But I do know, and have served/worked with the new and current Vice Chief of Staff of the Army when he was a colonel. He is an excellent officer and will do everything he can to take care of the Soldiers in his command. And since LTC Vindman is detailed from the Department of the Army to the National Security Staff at the White House and that’s where he’s going when his detail on the National Security Staff ends, he ultimately belongs to Headquarters Department of the Army until he’s assigned to his next posting. Which means that his military chain of command runs up to the Vice and the Chief of Staff. They’re not going to let anything happen to him.
Mary G
@Adam L Silverman: If you have time, why is taking away Gallegher’s trident such a BFD?
SFAW
@Mike in NC:
It will be interesting to see if jag-off Graham piles on. I would hope he retained at least an iota of dignity and patriotism, but his recent (i.e., past two years) would seem to indicate he hasn’t.
Jay
SFAW
@Uncle Jeffy:
Fuck that. Buy him a one-way ticket to either Russia or Somalia.
Or maybe buy him his own blanket, so he can have a blanket party with all those wrestlers he coached, but forgot to protect.
Gremcat
I think the military is fighting Plump as best they can. The Navy is re-investigating the Seal that took the picture with the corpse. He was demoted by the Navy but president* reversed the demotion. But the Navy is saying that just because he has his rank back doesn’t mean he should be a Seal, so they are going to have a hearing to see if he should be let back in. The Ex Seals lawyer wants the Navy officer courtmartialed for disobeying the CIC.
rekoob
@Adam L Silverman: McNair makes a lot of sense, if they’ve been able to move. For his brother and others, I’d suggest considering Richmond, while a bit far away (110 miles), has a tradition of standing up to totalitarianism, at least in this regard: as a teen-ager in the 70s, I remember distinctly the banners that exhorted all of us to demand the freedom of the Jews unable to worship in their faith in the Soviet Union.
Jay
@Mary G:
Chief is a Navy Rank, sort of the equivalent of Sargeant Major, that is acquired through experience and respect. It is the “bridge” between Officers and Ranks in the Navy, and while a Chief is outranked on paper, only a moron of an officer does not pay attention to a Chief’s input.
an E-7 is just a pay scale.
Chetan Murthy
@Gremcat: You’d think that since acceptance of a pardon equals admission of guilt, that the Navy would have an open-and-shut case for ejecting him posthaste.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: Gallagher and his supporters believe he was being selectively and maliciously prosecuted. This was, somewhat, substantiated when the NCIS investigators working on the case pulled a stupid stunt that violated his privilege with his attorneys. So from his and his supporters perspective he did nothing wrong, should never have been charged and prosecuted, should never been reduced in rank, and now the Navy leadership, especially within Naval Special Warfare, are out to get him to save face.
The reality is that Sailors under his command/supervision are the ones who turned him in and there was plenty of evidence regardless of the NCIS stupidity and shenanigans. What we don’t have is an untainted jury pool because the President got involved in the case on social media early, followed up by adjusting Gallagher’s pretrial confinement, which is actually undue command influence in the case and taints the case. I’m just now getting to the NY Times article from earlier today that the Navy is now seeking to force him out of the Service. I haven’t read the article yet, it’s next up to read, but I suspect that the Navy has plenty of evidence to justify a non-judicial separation for cause.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: The trident is the badge of a SEAL. It has nothing to do with rank or pay grade.
Mary G
He sounds charming:
Adam L Silverman
@rekoob: Carlisle Barracks would be better if there’s available housing on post. They were just getting around to redoing Smurf VIllage* when my assignment there ended. It’s 90 minutes by car to the Capitol and much less by rotary wing.
* Smurf Village was the semi-affectionate name given for some of the oldest base housing on post. The houses were tiny, hence the Smurf appellation.
Jay
Aleta
@Mary G: (NYT)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/us/navy-seals-edward-gallagher-trident.html
Adam L Silverman
@rekoob: Every Jewish person I know within ten years (younger) of myself knows at least one family like the Vindmans. We all had them as members of our congregations, Jewish day schools, afternoon Jewish school, bar/bat mitzvah classes, and/or Jewish youth groups.
As an adult, with almost forty more years of life experience behind me, including traveling all over the world and serving in a war zone, I have a far better appreciation for what they went through than I did as a 10 year old. As a ten year old all I knew was that the Soviet Jewish emigres I knew sounded strange, behaved weird, and didn’t quite fit in, though they were clearly trying. I’d dearly love to be able to send a message to 10 year old me about cutting them some slack, but all I can do is remember and recognize that, fortunately, one’s life is really not defined by what they were like at the age of 10. I certainly could’ve done better.
Mike in NC
@Uncle Jeffy: We’ve seen some really horrific sportcoats owned by Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort. They can’t wear them in jail.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
@Uncle Jeffy: Devin Nunes balls have been slapped off so many times, they are basically mummified and attached with Velcro. After some furtive rummaging under the chairs, I’m sure Nunes will pop up again like a bad case of Herpes on the foreskin of the case of someone with a terminal case of satyrism.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: He’s trying to get court martialed again or an administrative bad conduct discharge in the hope that it will set the President off and get the Commanding Admiral of Navy Special Warfare and the Chief of Naval Operations fired and then quickly shuffled into retirement. Gallagher is no longer in it for the honor and privilege of serving, he’s in it to cause chaos and mayhem and exact his revenge on those he believes maliciously and wrongfully prosecuted him.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
mixed up which pardoned war criminal was being referenced, there are so many, and which diss the assorted war criminals are playing the victim card about,
thought it was Gallagher whining about being restored to E-7 but not Chief.
tomtofa
@Adam L Silverman:
A certain kind of jock hates nerds. A certain kind of white man hates Jews. Each of these assholes may be a certain kind of white jock.
rekoob
@Adam L Silverman: Exactly. We all could have done better, but we did the best we could under the circumstances, I suppose. Carlisle Barracks makes a whole lot of sense, especially because it’s small and remote. My father was a graduate of the Army War College, and we spent time in and around there over the years.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Mom was UNRRA in post war Europe, later a Regional Director in Canada, and the child of WWI Refugees. She made sure we had a grounding and awareness.
FlipYrWhig
@Adam L Silverman:
BTW I am reasonably confident that this is what the people who wrote the Constitution envisioned for the Second Amendment. It would be entirely consistent with the 2A if the militia kept its weapons in storage and the federal government was being warned in the text that it must not impede militia members from retrieving them.
FlipYrWhig
@FlipYrWhig: Had to refresh multiple times to see my post, then when it came through, no edit function or ticking clock. Sigh.
ETA: Clock and edit function appeared after this followup post posted.
Adam L Silverman
@rekoob: I’m partial to Carlisle for obvious reasons and despite recognizing USAWC has flaws and isn’t perfect.
As for how we did: there are nuances and subtleties that we only learn the hard way through experience, which means over time and through aging. If we’re fortunate we get to learn these things. We saw a lot of unfortunate people today on the GOP side of the committee room. More’s the pity.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Could you explain how someone in the navy can be an E-7 but not a Chief Petty Officer?
Adam L Silverman
@FlipYrWhig: Actually the first Federal mandate was issued by President Washington. It mandated that every militia member maintain a set amount of powder, flint, wadding, and shot; including specifying equipment. There were also state mandates dictating the materials for which the militia’s armories, arms rooms, and magazines must be constructed out of and how they must be built in order to prevent accidental explosions and fires. Wood was not permitted as a building material. Stone, brick, and metal only.
Kay
@Adam L Silverman:
Trump sure can pick em. It’s like he diligently searches for the absolute worst people in the country and makes them famous. They’re all, in one way or another, “exacting revenge”.
Adam L Silverman
@Kay: Unfortunately.
Aleta
My impression is that many of the shootings that have happened on bases in the last 20-25
years have been attributed to war trauma or other mental illness. Although gun regulations make bases safer than many other communities, shootings by irrational people still occur. A better answer is Adam’s, that base command will be sure he is very well protected. One more tragic fact about our state of affairs. It’s shameful that he must be protected even on a US military base.
Raoul
@laura: I’ve thought back to Jim Jones several times in the past couple of weeks.
We have a doomsday cult surrounding Trump. Pence and Pompeo are fkd up true believers. And I think about how Congressman Ryan was assassinated.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
JaySinWA
@Omnes Omnibus: According to Stonekettle
I note that the navy rank explainer does not recognize the distinction. https://www.navy.mil/navydata/ranks/rates/rates.html
ghost cat
@Adam L Silverman:
The news that I’ve read today about the plans to provide security to Lt Col Vindman and his family say little to nothing about the source(s) of those threats. Based on the Mueller investigation and the impeachment hearings, I can’t help feeling like our current knowledge of the political rot is just the edges of a giant cesspool. I also wonder whether the witnesses who have been deposed and testified in open session know a lot more about the rot than what has been revealed publicly so far. Can you offer some insight as to who/what the sources of the threats to the Vindman family and possibly other witnesses are, domestic & foreign? Are they possible targets because of information that hasn’t yet been made public? What’s behind the curtain?
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Not responsive to the question.
@JaySinWA: Stonekettle is talking about something different than formal rank here. An E-7 in the navy is a Chief Patty Officer. On the other hand, the shorthand “chief” conveys something different. In terms more familiar to me, it works out this way: the senior NCO in an artillery platoon is usually an E-7 as well. The rank is called Sergeant First Class, and the job is formally known as Platoon Sergeant. There is an old name for that job – Chief of Smoke or Smoke for sort. Smoke is a term of respect that goes with a particular job. There would be nothing wrong with calling him by his actual rank or by his job title, but Smoke says something more.
J R in WV
@Mary G:
Nope. Maybe MAGAts, but they won’t legally have any guns. On military installations only specific security people are authorized to carry weapons ever.
john fremont
@Omnes Omnibus: That reminds me of the Marine Corps and infantry weapons officers. The rank is a Chief Warrant Officer 5, the occupational field is Infantry, and serve in infantry battalions . These CWO’s are formally addressed as Gunner, a title going back to the early 1900’s for this position. As the Wikipedia entry says, some other non infantry Marine units , usually aviation, will address Chief Warrant Officers as Gunners incorrectly according to official Marine Corps customs and courtesies. However, when personnel in these units do such it is to informally convey a respect towards certain individual CWO’s who have achieved that rank.
Uncle Cosmo
Straitjacket. Ball gag optional.
Uncle Cosmo
@Jay: (sigh) Once again you get things mostly wrong. A Chief Petty Officer (E-7 pay grade) is the Navy equivalent of an Army Master Sergeant (note proper spelling), not “Sergeant Major,” which “refers to both a military rank and a personnel slot, or position title. It is the highest enlisted rank, just above first sergeant and master sergeant, with a pay grade of E–9.”
You could’ve looked all this up. Instead, as usual, you shot from the lip & missed. I honestly wonder why anyone here pays attention to you any more. (Other than for C&Ps from Twitter, which are occasionally interesting & saves the non-tweeting amongst us the trouble.)
Mary Ellen Sandahl
@Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]: satyriasis. (pronounced, I believe, satter-EYE-asis. A basically cool sort of word; it rolls and rumbles from the lips).