A whistleblower terminated by the Vermont Air National Guard has found a new ally and new signs of hope in his effort to clear his name and retain his benefits.
Lt. Col. Jeff Rector has been fighting his dismissal for more than three years through various channels, albeit to mixed results. Yet a series of recent developments, including reinstatement of his top security clearance, have given Rector optimism — even if the fight takes years.
“One day, I hope to have justice, but at this pace, it may be more than a decade away,” he said in a written statement.
In a VTDigger report last year, Rector alleged that National Guard officials retaliated against him after he reported wrongdoing by members of the Guard’s tightly knit leadership, including an incident in which a wing commander who used an F-16 for a secret rendezvous.
Rector was escorted off the base by an armed guard on March 18, 2016, and was later issued an other-than-honorable discharge. The revocation of his top security clearance, he and others argue, have cost him several jobs.
The Guard leveled three official charges against Rector: threatening an official, impeding an internal investigation and being in dereliction of duty. Rector’s alleged threat was a text suggesting that if he wasn’t treated fairly, he would alert congressional offices or the media.
Rector believes he lost two potential jobs because he had been stripped of his security clearance as part of his discharge. A federal government official familiar with Rector’s application, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss the matter, said Rector was “fully qualified” for one of the jobs he applied for, and that “people wanted to hire him.”
Last month, the Department of Defense Consolidated Adjudication Facility reinstated Rector’s eligibility for a top secret clearance. Rector’s appeal packet included hundreds of pages of documents detailing his own alleged retaliation as well as information on the alleged malfeasance he reported.
Moreover, while Rector initially faced a dishonorable discharge — which threatened his pension, health benefits and children’s educational benefits — an outside board later softened that recommendation. These decisions, Rector contends, show his treatment by the Guard was unfair.
Capt. Mikel Arcovitch, a Guard spokesperson, said he was prohibited from discussing Rector’s case unless Rector signed a disclosure form, which he declined to do out of fear the information would be misused by the Guard. As part of his overall effort to achieve the best possible outcome, Rector would only agree to provide responses to questions from VTDigger.
Rector said he hoped reinstatement of his security clearance would allow him to take part in weekend trainings, known as “drill.” But Arcovitch said it was not that simple. “A security clearance by itself does not grant an individual the ability to drill with the Vermont National Guard,” he wrote in an email.
Other elements of Rector’s case also remain active. He’s currently fighting his termination through federal channels, but the next arena for this appeal, the Merit Systems Protection Board, has been hamstrung by the Trump Administration, which has moved slowly to fill key vacancies on the panel.
Separately, the National Guard Bureau still hasn’t finalized the status of Rector’s discharge. He said his first military separation board — which is composed of Guard leaders from New England — was broken up in August 2017 after he and his lawyer contended it was unfairly stacked with three Vermont Guard members. A second board was assembled, which, in January 2018, recommended a less severe punishment called “a general under honorable discharge.” This status would entitle Rector to some additional military benefits.
This recommendation then went before the adjutant general — at the time Steven Cray — for concurrence. Cray did not act on it before he left office last year.
Rector had hoped the new adjutant general, Greg Knight, might intervene once in office, and has repeatedly and unsuccessfully sought a meeting with Knight to present his side of the story. Rector hoped Knight would simply let him retire, which would make the prolonged fight over his discharge status moot.
These hopes were dashed on Nov. 1, when Knight denied Rector reserve retirement status, according to a letter obtained by VTDigger.
As he prepared to launch a campaign to be adjutant general in 2018, Knight repeatedly spoke with Rector and appeared sympathetic to his case, assuring him he would help. That August, for instance, after Knight reviewed personnel documents provided by Rector, he responded: “Wtf. Will catch up with you this weekend.” In a subsequent email, Knight advised Rector to “keep up the fight.”
The state’s political leadership, including Gov. Phil Scott, has also declined to intervene in Rector’s case.
“The sole person who can grant me due process rights is the governor,” Rector said in a statement. “I keep waiting in hopes that the governor will want to assure justice to a person who dedicated and served this state and country for over thirty years and also give those current members of the Vermont National Guard the reassurance that they will be protected if similar situations arise.”
In a statement, Scott spokesman Rebecca Kelley said “the Governor’s office has acted to support due process in [Rector’s] case” but meeting with Rector while his case remains active “is not appropriate.”
Rector, however, may have a new ally in Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, who recently visited with Knight in his office at Camp Johnson. The reasons for the meeting were twofold: to get a sense of Knight’s vision for the organization and to discuss the Rector case.
“I expressed what I had learned from Jeff and that I was concerned, especially in this national movement, about whistleblowers being treated fairly,” Zuckerman said in an interview, referring to government employees who had provided information related to the impeachment charges against President Trump. “This is especially important when the subjects of complaints outrank those making them.”
Zuckerman was generally positive about Knight and said Rector’s case “seems complicated.” The lieutenant governor said the Guard wouldn’t discuss details because Rector wouldn’t sign a form allowing the organization to publicly share any and all personnel records. Rector said his lawyer had advised him not to sign the form amid ongoing fights in multiple arenas, and believes the Guard would selectively leak details in order to tarnish his reputation further.
Despite these limitations, Zuckerman said that “given the information I have, it still appears that the retribution for Lt. Col Rector is beyond what seems reasonable.”
