“there is some shit I will not eat" e.e. cummings
I am an independent journalist who in late 2018 was made aware that the Coast Guard and other U.S. Armed Forces were improperly separating tenured junior enlisted personnel involuntarily with Uncharacterized Discharges. The separation of an enlisted member of the military with an Uncharacterized Discharge - despite from one to eight years of active duty service - amounts to extrajudicial punishment as when used in this manner, the Uncharacterized Discharge is purposefully “punitive”, voiding all VA Benefits, comparable only to a Dishonorable Discharge given to those convicted via Courts Martial of the most heinous crimes. Further, I learned that the Coast Guard was also separating junior enlisted personnel with “Misconduct” and other defamatory “justifications” without a legal standard of proof and in the absence of any UCMJ-sanctioned due process (i.e. Non-Judicial Punishment or Court-Martial).
After three years of research, largely through a plethora of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests (inordinately and illegally delayed at every opportunity by USCG/DHS obfuscation), I was able to document the Coast Guard’s lead role in the military as the most prolific abuser of the Uncharacterized Discharge, and their routine skirting of both the law and their own regulations to separate junior personnel on the basis of accusations alone, many of them wholly false, and typically initiated by a Chief Petty Officer, who in the well-documented absence of a competent officer corps effectively run the Coast Guard.
In 2020, I expanded my efforts, exposing the Coast Guard’s fraudulent Discharge Review Board, and in 2023, the Department of Homeland Security’s criminal Board for the Correction of Military Records. Neither panel functions independent of Coast Guard flag officer influence, nor are they properly or suitably manned. They routinely misrepresent or falsify “evidence” that justifies the USCG position while ignoring valid exculpartory evidence in order to “decide” as Coast Guard flag officers dictate. They have literally weaponized incompetence.
Over the past five years, I have communicated with the most senior leadership of both the Coast Guard and DHS, only to be met with lies, deceitfulness, dismissiveness, and a corporate inability to admit an error. Frustrated, I have now turned to the Press and the Internet to expose this recurring mistreatment of former military members that the Department of Veterans Affairs defines as legitimate veterans.
If I was misrepresenting the facts of the Coast Guard’s criminal, improper, and unethical activities, surely they would have taken me to court for defamation and to negate the negative effect on Coast Guard recruiting, which is currently miserable. But they can’t - because that would allow the truth as detailed on this site to be made public in an legal setting… and they are unwilling to swing a bat at that piñata full of lies and criminality. They are caught in their own sticky web of deceit.
I will update this page frequently to highlight further USCG separation abuses, unprincipled conduct, or the dramatic leadership void that tolerates these contemptible behaviors. Please come back often. I am carrying this burden for all of us.
“There ought not to be a twilight zone between innocence and guilt.”
Senator Edwin C. Johnson, October 29, 1945
On noting that an Uncharacterized Discharge meant a veteran had not been convicted, but had been punished without being allowed to defend himself.
In 1916, during World War One, the U.S. Armed Services initiated the use of an administrative discharge known by the color of paper on which it was printed - The “Blue Discharge”. Like today’s Uncharacterized Discharge, the Blue Discharge was neither honorable nor dishonorable but those so discharged were denied the GI Bill and some other Veterans’ benefits.
However, the Blue Discharge was inordinately used to discharge Black and homosexual service members. Following World War Two, The Pittsburgh Courier, the American Legion, the NAACP and others joined a crusade against the misuse of the Blue Discharge. A year later, after Congressional attention, on 01 July, 1947, the Blue Discharge was discontinued and two new discharges - “Under Honorable Conditions” (General) and “Other than Honorable”, took its place.
Today, the Coast Guard and most other Armed Forces are actively and knowingly misusing the Uncharacterized Discharge as simply a nouveau Blue Discharge.
“Sometimes you have to make some noise to be heard. I’m gonna make some noise.” Representative John Lewis