[T]wo retired Air Force officials have called on federal watchdogs to investigate the Vermont Air National Guard over what they allege is unethical and, perhaps, illegal conduct.
Air Force Col. Rosanne Greco, the leader of an activist group that opposes the F-35 fighter jet, and retired Air Force Lt. Col. Roger Bourassa, submitted letters to the inspectors general of the Air Force, Department of Defense and Air National Guard demanding investigations into “unprofessional, inappropriate, and possibly illegal conduct of some senior military officers of the Vermont Air National Guard” that appear “to violate military ethics and regulations.”
The request is based on extensive documentation of alleged collusion of Vermont military officials with U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., interference with an Air Force environmental study, and misleading statements about the adverse health impacts of the planes. Greco and Bourassa also claim that Vermont Air National Guard officials violated numerous military regulations, including the Department of Defense’s Directive 1344.10 and the Air Force’s Instruction 51-902, both of which prohibit politicking in uniform.
The letters call on federal investigators to review the actions of 10 Vermont Air Guard officials, including Vermont’s Adjutant General Steven A. Cray.
“The Vermont Air National Guard tried to game the system and get things changed to benefit Burlington,” Greco said.
In a separate interview, Bourassa echoed Greco’s frustration. “There should not have been any pressure from military members,” he said.
In response to the allegations, 1st Lt. Mikel R. Arcovitch, a spokesperson for the Vermont Air National Guard, said the Burlington basing process was “transparent, repeatable and defendable.” The basing he said was “affirmed at multiple levels in the court system, including the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.”
“We are confident that the Vermont Air National Guard acted properly when participating and providing information to the Air Force’s basing process,” Arcovitch added. “We are also confident we acted properly in our engagements with the public.”
Neither Arcovitch nor Leahy’s office would comment on specific allegations made in the complaint, except to say it would be improper to discuss matters that could become part of an investigation. It is unclear whether a review would interfere in the Air Force’s current plans to base 18 F-35 fighter jets at Burlington International Airport in September 2019.
Political influence and misleading statements
Opponents of the F-35 basing, Save our Skies, sued the federal government in 2014 and lost in 2016. While the group also lost an appeal in 2017, the judge ordered the release of thousands of pages of administrative records to opponents.
The allegations made by Greco and Bourassa come from the administrative records. The documents show that Air Guard officials attempted to manipulate the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process and improperly engaged in political activities as part of an effort to undermine opponents of the F-35 basing.
In October 2013, both Cray and Lt. Col. Chris Caputo testified in uniform against a resolution before the Burlington City Council that called on the city to reject the F-35 basing. The resolution failed.
Earlier this year, as Burlington residents prepared to vote on another resolution that called on the Air Force to withdraw the F-35 basing, Guard officials held press conferences and issued statements urging voters to reject the ballot resolution. They said the language was “disingenuous” and “misleading.”
Brig. Gen. Joel Clark told Vermont Public Radio shortly before the Town Meeting Day vote that the resolution was “inaccurate, and to us, a vote of ‘no’ is support of this Vermont Air National Guard.”
“But I am not telling anybody how to vote,” Clark said. “That is their right to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as they choose.”
Military regulations specifically prohibit Guard members from using their status and influence to “interfere with an election, affect the course or outcome of an election [or] solicit votes for a particular candidate or issue.”
Court records show that officials gave misleading statements regarding the F-35 basing. For example, the Vermont National Air Guard insisted that if the F-35 wasn’t based in Burlington, it would no longer have a mission and would likely be shut down. That assertion, which has been made repeatedly, contradicts the Air Force’s Environmental Impact Statement. The Vermont air base would remain open even if the fighter jet isn’t based at the Burlington airport, documents show.
Air Force officials said in correspondence obtained by VTDigger that they were frustrated with the involvement of Leahy and Vermont Air National Guard officials during the basing process.
Noise modeling software in question
Leahy’s office and Air Guard officials aggressively pushed the Air Force to alter noise modeling software, documents show, in an apparent attempt to reduce the projected scope of noise pollution in the communities surrounding Burlington International Airport. The Guard and Leahy’s office consulted with the plane’s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, on the noise modeling.
The shift from one modeling software – Karnes 2 — to new software – Karnes 3 – was in direct conflict with orders from the Air Force’s national headquarters. It also greatly complicated the Air Force’s efforts to accurately complete the Environmental Impact Statement for Burlington. In emails, Lynn Engelman, an Air Force noise/encroachment manager, complained that Vermont Guard officials had “hijacked” the environmental scoping process and were providing “inconsistent answers.”
A Pentagon official who was involved in the entire basing process, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said Vermont Air Guard officials became concerned when initial Karnes 2 estimates showed significant noise pollution around the airport. He said there was a concerted push by the Air Guard to adopt the newer Karnes 3 profile and tweak inputs to reduce noise estimates.
“Burlington’s operational folks wanted to be in the analysis room every step of the way,” the official said. “They were changing the data and they wanted to see draft data before it got too far along. If they saw that a certain flight operation with a certain thrust level and angle was going to increase noise they would say ‘Oh, we won’t fly that way, we’ll do it this way, which will produce less noise.’”
Air Force officials suspected that Air Guard officials had leaked information to Leahy, who took an outsize role in the basing decision, as reported previously by VTDigger.
Engelman and other Air Force officials expressed reservations about switching noise modeling methodologies, as Karnes 3 was brand new and potentially unreliable. Officials were also hoping to preserve a level of continuity, as previous F-35 basing processes had used the older Karnes 2 flight modeling.
It’s unclear how the older and newer Karnes models differ exactly. The Air Force declined to speak about the difference between the two profiles, or say whether Karnes 3 was now being used as the preferred noise modeling map for all current and future basing assessments. But internal emails suggest that the Karnes 3 modeling, among other things, uses lower-throttle data, which can reduce noise projections.
In a 2010 email, Vermont Air Guard Lt. Col. Christopher “Pooter” Caputo said that if the Guard was able to secure use of Karnes 3 for the environmental assessment, “I’m confident [noise] numbers will decrease even more. My guess is they would probably be cut in half again if not even more! This just strengthens our argument that much more.”
Air Force Col. Lowell Nelson appeared to be nervous about using the Karnes 3 model for noise assessments in the Burlington area.
“The potential concern is using this potentially unreliable area of data could significantly understate the noise contours,” Nelson wrote in a 2011 email. “It would look ‘better,’ but maybe not appropriately so.”
Air Guard officials and Leahy’s office strong-armed Air Force officials who eventually complied. They subsequently delayed the release of draft environmental data and adopted the Karnes 3 model.
It appears that Vermont Air Guard officials also tweaked the data to lessen the apparent impact of noise on the Burlington airport area.
Vermont Air Guard officials, for instance, told the Air Force that 17 percent of total F-35 airfield operations would be conducted elsewhere, but didn’t submit any plans indicating where those operations would occur, according to court records.
In addition, while other bases estimated using loud afterburner takeoffs roughly 60 percent of the time, Vermont officials contend that F-35s from the Burlington airport would take off in afterburner mode just 1 percent of the time.
“While it is [Burlington’s] belief that they will not need to take off in [afterburner] at all, it would not reflect reality,” one contractor in the environmental process noted in an email.
David Carle, a spokesperson for Leahy, said all three members of Vermont’s congressional delegation sent a letter to the secretary of the Air Force requesting a study on whether a new noise model would be more accurate.
The secretary said, “the Air Force’s own subject matter experts agreed that it should be investigated.” All of the bases under consideration for the F-35 basing, including Burlington, ended up using Karnes 3 data. Subsequent basings have used a version of Karnes 3 for noise modeling.
“An EIS that did not accurately model the likely operational use by the Guard would not be a proper study,” Carle said in an email. “Vermonters, and those making these decisions with the Air Force, should be informed by the best available data.”
Air Force officials said in internal correspondence that modeling would not be adequate. The real noise impact of the F-35 basing would not be known until the planes were deployed in Burlington, officials said.
On Sept. 30, 2010, then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations Kathleen Ferguson and others met with Leahy staffers to discuss the F-35 noise modeling. In a follow-up email, Ferguson said that the Karnes 2 modeling was using the “latest available information about noise admissions.” Accurate noise data would not be available until the planes landed in Burlington, she said.
“After consultation with our experts here at the Pentagon, they confirmed that there is no near term expectation of additional data on the F-35A, and there would be no reason to delay the Draft EIS,” Ferguson wrote. “It should be noted that the noise contours to be released in the EIS are projections, based on information about an aircraft still in development, to facilitate informed decision-making. The actual noise contours at a selected beddown location would not be realistically available until the production F-35A aircraft are operating at a location and local flight rules are finalized and in
use.”
Internal records also show that Air Guard officials sought to keep certain basing details from the public.
In a 2013 email, Caputo acknowledged concerns with “emergency landing immediately after take-off on a wet runway.” He went on to say such a scenario could be easily mitigated through fuel dumping or emergency landing in Plattsburgh before adding “Not information we need to share with the public at this time.”
Earlier in 2013, Caputo wrote it was not in the best interest of the Vermont Air National Guard to release new noise projections to the public before the official record of decision was announced.
“It will only add to the confusion of the ignorant SOBs that are fighting the F-35 beddown,” Caputo wrote to five fellow Air Guard officials.
In their inquiry, Greco and Bourassa said this correspondence by the Vermont Air National Guard officials was “rude and coarse.”
“We are proud that society holds military members in high esteem, and we want that good reputation to remain untarnished,” the inquiry reads. “Therefore, when members of the military, especially high-ranking officers, behave inappropriately, it reflects poorly on other military members and on the military in general.”
An enormous volunteer effort
While the request for investigation was signed by two people, the allegations were the result of hundreds of hours of research conducted by a small group of women in Chittenden County, led by Greco. The activists met on nights and weekends, often over chips and other snacks, to read over and mark the thousands of pages of administrative files released as part of an unsuccessful federal lawsuit brought by F-35 opponents and the city of Winooski in 2016.
The document review process was often tedious, Greco said. The women assigned each other nicknames — similar to the ones military officials used in correspondence, such as Torch, Shark, and Pooter. Greco’s moniker, for instance, was Peeps.
Some of the women have been fighting the F-35 for years, while others are new to the issue.
Michele Palardy of Winooski was one of the three original members of the main oppositional group to the F-35s, called “Save Our Skies.” While Palardy left the group a few years ago, she was re-energized when three communities — South Burlington, Burlington and Winooski — recently rejected the F-35 basing.
Palardy has attended many of the document parties. “There were things we had suspicion of but getting them confirmed in the documents was a real rush,” she said.
Julie Macuga, a recent graduate of the University of Vermont’s environmental studies program, has pored over administrative records for many hours, and believes she and the other women found evidence worthy of further investigation.
“It became this sisterhood,” Macuga said. “We gathered around this kitchen table, staring at documents for hours and hours. We’d eat food, crack jokes. And every once in a great while we would alert Rosanne to something that didn’t look right.”
Afters months of reviewing documents, Palardy, Macuga, Greco and others homed in on Air Force correspondence that could be used as evidence for the formal complaint letters against the Vermont Air National Guard, which were filed last week.
The women said fulfilling that mission was worth the effort.
