This monograph documents the Department of Defense (DoD) and service policies and practices surrounding the identification and consideration of adverse and reportable information on senior military officials being considered for personnel actions requiring approval of the President or confirmation by the Senate. This work identifies several potential gaps: areas where actual practice differs from the required practice, or where current practice—or the supporting data—may be inadequate to consider adverse information appropriately and completely. The personnel actions of interest consist of promotions to one- and two-star ranks (pay grades O-7 and O-8), nominations for three- and four-star (pay grades...

Before describing and evaluating current adverse information practices, it is useful to describe the background of events that contributed to the current policies and the requirements for general and flag officer personnel processes.

The current set of DoD and service policies surrounding the consideration of adverse information attendant to personnel actions on general and flag officers can be traced to a specific situation with an Army general officer in 1988. At that time, the regulation governing officer actions requiring approval of the President, the Secretary of Defense, or confirmation by the Senate, DoDI 1320.4, dated October 29, 1981, made no...

Figure 3.1 shows the process preceding the selection board for promotion to O-7 and O-8. The discussion below describes that process.

The process for promotion to O-7 and O-8 begins for all services with a determination of the promotion zone and thus a determination of the officers eligible for promotion. Under the Fiscal Year 2006 National Defense Authorization Act and a July 2006 memorandum signed by USD P&R, there has been a requirement “that adverse information of a credible nature, including any substantiated adverse finding or conclusion from an officially documented investigation or inquiry, be provided to general and flag...

Chapter Two described the services’ processes that consider and evaluate possible adverse and reportable information in personnel processes for general and flag officers. This chapter discusses selected aspects of these processes further and identifies where our analysis indicates some gaps between requirements and actual practice.

There are several issues of concern with the DoD and Joint Staff documentation that describes the required processes. The first issue is that the DoD guidance requires formal update. DoDI 1320.4 is dated March 1995 and is supplemented by memoranda, including the February 27, 2002, memorandum that changes the requirement from DoD IG checks from...

This chapter provides the recommendations that emerge from this research and the observations discussed in the prior chapter.

OSD and the Joint Staff should update DoD and Joint Staff guidance. Given the finding that DoD and Joint Staff guidance are outdated, lack a clear definition of reportable information, are inconsistent with one another, and convey guidance through a set of instructions and memoranda, this study recommends the updating of these guidance documents. This is especially necessary given that key aspects of the DoD guidance are included in memoranda (e.g., February 27, 2002, and July 19, 2006) that do not appear...