Two words can change everything: “national security.” Former FBI Special Agent Emily Fertitta describes what can happen when those words put extraordinary power beyond ordinary scrutiny, and why the people willing to speak up may be the ones most vulnerable to it.

What happens when your military command starts pushing you out before your medical board is finished? For service members caught between disability processing and administrative separation, the answer is more complicated than many realize, and the rules aren't the same across DoD/W and the Coast Guard. This week's DoD Times (Redacted) breaks down what the regulations actually say, where the protections and gaps are, and what you can do if both processes are moving at the same time.

Most people playing the BCM/NR game only know one move: file the board application and hope. "Before You File a BCMR or BCNR" breaks down a sequence that makes better sense: petition the right commander, build your evidence file, exhaust your remedies, and only then take your case to the board, before you burn a move you can't take back.

The U.S. Department of War leadership cadre has exhibited much difficulty squaring this corner: they say they want to improve the organization, but the first step to real improvement is admitting something is wrong… So, if they can’t get past Step 1, is Step 2 really happening anymore?

Two Air National Guard colonels, two very different outcomes. In 2022, the Air Force Inspector General reversed all four substantiated misconduct findings against Col. Lisa Nemeth of the California Guard, intervening unprompted. Col. Leslie Zyzda-Martin, cleared four separate times by investigators in Wisconsin, has spent years being told the Air Force has no purview over Guard matters. The disparity undercuts that claim: the same office that reached in to reverse a finding of misconduct cannot credibly say it lacks authority to examine a case where no misconduct was found at all.

Col. Leslie Zyzda-Martin was removed from command of Wisconsin's Volk Field Air National Guard Base in 2021 after four investigations that all found the allegations against her unsubstantiated. Behind the removal sits a web of unexamined connections, including correspondence between the deciding general and the National Guard Bureau's Inspector General, who is married to an officer Zyzda-Martin had once testified against. Nearly five years on, with her Article 138 complaint and reprisal claims all dead-ended, the open question remains whether anyone with the authority to check the process ever actually did.

Six years passed between the first protected communications alleging toxic culture within the Defense Attaché Service and the DIA Inspector General's final reports — a two-stage evaluation that took over three years to produce eight recommendations on vetting and communication, without ever publicly addressing the most serious allegations: interference with the 2021 Kabul evacuation, chain-of-command circumvention, and potential E.O. 12333 violations. The institutional response amounted to a one-page congressional letter citing "counseling and remedial training," with no findings on the specific allegations and no public accounting of what, if anything, was substantiated.