"She said that she was upset that they had taken this process . . . and that she would take it all back if she knew that it was going to start this realm of situation," Tatum said.
Finally, Abodeely asked Tatum about his nickname: "Two Bits."
Tatum explained that he won the moniker one night in 1982, when he was celebrating a promotion.
"I was getting promoted and somebody throwed two quarters out on the table and said, 'Can you knock those off with your thing?'"
"Do you mean penile organ?" Abodeely queried.
"Yeah, my penile organ," Tatum responded. "I said, 'I can do that,' and I stood up and did it. . . . It wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done."
There are two types of people in the National Guard: "weekend warriors" and technicians.
Though the Guard may be best-known for its weekend warriors, it's the technicians who really make it work. They work full-time. They are experts. They guide the weekenders and clean up after them. They are the mentors. Many of them have been in one position for decades, giving the Guard a skill level unmatched by the regular military, where personnel often resign or rotate on to new assignments just as they are becoming proficient at their jobs.
Randy Setzer was a full-timer, also known as a federal technician. But to maintain technician status, full-timers must also serve their one weekend a month, as well as two weeks of annual training.
Weekenders and full-timers have two separate yet parallel chains of command. At the hearing, both of Setzer's immediate supervisors--his weekender supervisor and his full-time supervisor--testified they had been excluded from the investigation from the outset.
Colonel Dennis T. Brimhall, Setzer's full-time supervisor, testified that he had felt uncomfortable firing Setzer. Brimhall testified that he believed the allegations against Setzer should have been investigated more thoroughly.
He said that although his signature appeared on the order, the letter had been handed to him by Colonel John Kablitz, the deputy chief of staff for logistics.
Setzer believes that like Tatum, Kablitz wanted him out of the Guard.
Brimhall testified that Kablitz was worried about what to do with Setzer, whom Kablitz believed had been promoted to lieutenant colonel too soon.
"So Randy posed a problem for Kablitz by virtue of the fact that Randy was going to get promoted to lieutenant colonel?" Abodeely asked.
"Could, yes," Brimhall answered.
"There are only so many lieutenant colonel slots, I assume?" Abodeely said.
"That's right," Brimhall answered.
"And downsizing, can I safely say, has had its trickle-down effect to the National Guard?" Abodeely continued.
"That's right, it sure has," Brimhall agreed.
Both Setzer and Abodeely point out that Brimhall had nothing to gain by speaking out against Kablitz. In fact, Brimhall was coming up for retention at the time he gave his testimony.
Colonel Alberto Rodriguez, Setzer's part-time, or military, supervisor, testified that he was also uncomfortable with the way the investigation was handled. Like Brimhall, he says, he was never provided a copy of Lieutenant Colonel Gary Lindberg's report. And like Brimhall, he says, he had reason to believe that Kablitz was concerned about Setzer's rise in the ranks.
Shortly before Setzer was dismissed, Rodriguez made Setzer his battalion's chief logistics officer--a plum job usually reserved for a lieutenant colonel.
Rodriguez acknowledged that Kablitz had been irked by Setzer's pending promotion, and that Kablitz was jealous of the closeness between him and Setzer.
". . . there seemed to be a problem with loyalty, Randy's loyalty to me as opposed to him not being loyal to Colonel Kablitz," Rodriguez testified.
In his testimony, Kablitz denied any conflict with Setzer, characterizing their relationship as "professional."
But in his December 16, 1996, ruling, McCabe found that Kablitz, the officer who ultimately made the decision to fire Setzer and who ordered the investigation, had prejudged Setzer from the outset. McCabe ruled that this may have warped the investigation, but added that Setzer had been given a fair chance to plead his case during the hearing.
Still, McCabe felt compelled to tack a rather bizarre caveat to his ruling:
"My finding does not mean that reviewing court of law may [sic] disagree and conclude that the failure of the deciding official [Kablitz] to act in accordance with the [regulations] could constitute a 'harmful error.'"
It would seem that McCabe intended to write that a reviewing court may not disagree. No such statement would have been necessary otherwise.
After McCabe handed down his final ruling, Abodeely loosed a flurry of letters, asking the Guard to reconsider. He wrote to the Guard Bureau in Washington, D.C., to request an Inspector General, or IG, investigation into the Setzer case.
Abodeely has argued from the outset that Setzer's case should have been handled with an IG investigation, which is more concerned with impartial fact-finding than with making a case against the accused.
The Guard declined.
Then, on January 8, Abodeely wrote to Major General Glen W. Van Dyke, commander of the National Guard in Arizona, asking him to reconsider the Guard's decision to fire Setzer.
Van Dyke refused.
Abodeely exercised the last avenue available to Setzer within the Guard's prescribed processes: He filed an EEO complaint with Patton, claiming that Setzer had been sexually discriminated against by Candice Medina, and that the Guard, through its flawed investigation, had aided and abetted her.
Patton decided the complaint lacked merit.
And without apparent irony, Patton noted that Setzer had failed to make his complaint within 45 days of the final ruling in his case. The Guard did not apply its time limit for filing sexual harassment cases to the women who accused Setzer.
