Sadly,he is not the first one guilty of this petty crap.
There was a Colonel King in the 80's that was a world-class asshat. Former police chief from a northeastern city that came back on active duty with his reserve rank of Lt.Colonel after he retired from the police,and ran SFTG like it was his personal kingdom. I was working there at the time as a civilian consultant,and he was a disaster. He was from the northeast and hated guns,and put the word out that any of "his men" caught in possession of a personal firearm would be courtmartialed,even if they had a CCW permit from the state. One of his Master Sgts was arrested one night for drunk driving off-base,and King took his SGM with him to the man's house on base and personally confiscated all his privately-owned weapons and dumped them in Mott Lake before going to sign the man out of the Fayetteville jail. This happened after I quit working there in disgust. SOB tried to run his mouth at me at a meeting,and I tried to go on his ass. Several people grabbed me before I could get to him,but you can bet he heard a lot of things he wasn't used to hearing.
Anyhow,King's move ended up being the best thing that happened to the MSG,because he threatened to fill out an arrest warrant on King for felony theft,breaking and entering,etc,etc,etc. As a result of this,he was allowed to retire immediately with his current rank and rate of pay,and King was quietly sent off to serve in Thailand for a year.
Unfortunately,he came back a year later as a full Colonel and I heard he was assigned as a group commander. He had political influence from being a cop in the northeast,and he couldn't be fired. Any NORMAL LTC would have been given the boot after the gun confiscation thing.
He wasn't the first problem SF had with retired police chiefs coming back on active duty with political connections that wanted to become "Green Beret Leaders". The first was Colonel Kelly,from Boston. He was sent to Okinawa to take command of the 1st SFG around 1964 or so,and only had 5 parachute jumps when he got there. He got them by taking the special "senior officers jump school" course. He knew when he got to Okinawa that he would be there for a year and then take command of the 5th SF Group in VN,so he wanted " master blaster" wings to wear on his chest so he would look like a old-time paratrooper while giving press conferences to the press. He took one look at Yomitan Jump Zone,and decided he was a water jumper. The 1st SFG had the PT Boat John Kennedy used to cruise around on when he was president,and they had named it the "Green Beret". It was mostly used for training by the Scuba Committee,but it was also used to pick up the group guys making water jumps into the South China Sea due to wounds they had received while on TDY to VN,or any other injury they might have received. The South China Sea around Okie was full of sharks,so they had guys on the PT boat armed with Scoped sniper rifles to take out any sharks cruising around where the jumpers landed. I never made a water jump,but had friends on the Scuba Committee,and they told me they picked up the jumpers using rubber boats with outboards.
Anyhow,Colonel Kelly suddenly became a name on every water jump made so he could get his master blaster wings in less than a year. That's how he earned the nickname "Splash".
He WAS a total bleep,but he wasn't as bad as King. Kelly pretty much let the NCO's run things unless you did something to attract his personal attention,but King ran around looking for things to get mad about because above all,the thing he loved the most was using his rank to scream at and punish people that in "real life" would have crushed him like a bug.
Unfortunately,it is the nature of things to have ego-maniacs with political power seek out duty commanding "glamor units" like SF,and I am guessing,Force Recon,SEALS,and USAF Pararescue units. They know and care nothing about the reason those units exist or what they are supposed to be doing. All they care about is their personal glory.
And there is not a damn thing the "regulars" can do about it other than wait for them to screw up in pubic and go into hiding to avoid embarrassment.
