Army
Capt. Joseph M. Lapoint, second from right, executive officer for
Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, is congratulated
for his Combat Infantryman Badge awarded by Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A.
Sinclair, left, Deputy Commanding General, 82nd Airborne Division, at
Forward Operating Base Lagman, in Zabul province, Afghanistan. Sinclair,
who served five combat tours, is headed to trial following a spate of
highly publicized military sex scandals involving high-ranking officers
that has triggered a review of ethics training across the service
branches.
FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) — With a single star studded on
each shoulder of his immaculate dress blues, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A.
Sinclair waited his turn to go through the metal detectors at the
federal courthouse at Fort Bragg, just like everyone else.
He smiled broadly at one of the armed military
police officers posted at the door and asked: "How many jumps do you
have?" The young soldier, wearing the wings of a paratrooper with the
elite 82nd Airborne, stood a little straighter as he confidently
answered 28. Sinclair nodded in approval, not mentioning the 217 jumps
listed in his own log. After a few more pleasantries, Sinclair put his
arm around the man and smiled again as another MP snapped a cellphone
photo.
The exchange last summer would be routine for a general building
rapport with enlisted troops — but for the fact that Sinclair is
believed to be the highest-ranking U.S. Army officer ever charged with
sexual assault.
Sinclair, 51, has pleaded not guilty to eight
criminal charges including forcible sodomy, indecent acts, violating
orders and conduct unbecoming an officer. He faces a maximum sentence of
life in prison at a court-martial scheduled to begin March 3.
While he denies the most serious allegation that he
physically forced a female captain under his command to perform oral
sex, the married father of two concedes he carried on a three-year
extramarital affair with the junior officer. That admission alone will
almost certainly end his 28-year Army career, as adultery is a crime
under military law.
The female captain who made the initial complaint
admits to having consensual sex with Sinclair on numerous occasions,
both before and after the alleged assaults. Prosecutors also allege the
general had inappropriate contact with other women, including female
officers expected to testify that he asked them to provide nude photos
of themselves.
The case against Sinclair comes as the Pentagon is
already grappling with a string of embarrassing revelations involving
sexual misconduct within the ranks. Prosecutions over such charges are
on the rise even as the military's own data suggests only about 1-in-8
sexual assaults are reported or prosecuted. Influential members of
Congress are now pushing to remove decisions about the prosecution of
sex crimes from the military chain of command.
Anu Bhagwati, executive director of the advocacy
group Service Women's Action Network, said Sinclair's court-martial will
be closely followed. "The military has always had a problem with sexual
assault, but they have never experienced this sort of political
pressure and public scrutiny," said Bhagwati, a former Marine captain.
Prosecutors portray Sinclair as a sexual predator
who abused his position of authority to prey on a subordinate trained to
follow his orders, threatening to kill her and her family if she told
anyone of their relationship.
Sinclair's defense lawyers have suggested he is the
victim, both of a jealous ex-lover and overzealous prosecutors facing
intense pressure from top military and political leaders to send a
message that sexual misconduct will not be tolerated. They say the
evidence against him is weak — a case that in the past might have been
resolved with a quiet reprimand and early retirement.
It is extremely rare for such a high-ranking
military officer to face a jury. Under the military justice system,
members of the panel must be senior in rank to the person charged —
ensuring that Sinclair will be judged by a jury of generals.
Fred Borch, the regimental historian for the Army
Judge Advocate General's Corps, said only about a dozen generals have
been court-martialed since World War II. "Obviously, men and women don't
reach flag rank unless they're pretty special," said Borch, a retired
colonel who prosecuted sexual assault cases as an Army lawyer. "So, by
its very nature, you're going to have very, very few generals that get
in trouble."
While he awaits his fate, Sinclair has been
assigned to desk duty at Fort Bragg, a sprawling Army base in the piney
Sandhills of southeastern North Carolina. It has been a steep fall for a
man once considered a rising star among the Army's cadre of trusted
battlefield generals. As deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne, Sinclair
oversaw 22,000 troops until he was abruptly sent home from Afghanistan
last year and criminally charged.
Steely eyed and well over six feet tall, Sinclair
still cuts the figure of the prototypical paratrooper. He is a veteran
of five overseas combat deployments and winner of four Bronze Star
medals. In battle, Sinclair enjoyed the confidence of his superiors and
elicited fear and awe from subordinates.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Sinclair was decorated
for helping smash Iraq's vaunted Republican Guard. In 2003, he helped
command the first airborne combat brigade deployed to Kandahar,
Afghanistan, a stronghold of the Taliban.
As a battalion commander in Iraq in 2004, Sinclair
was tasked with stabilizing Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. He
returned to Iraq three years later to command the bulk of U.S. troops in
the volatile southern half of the country, and is credited with
stabilizing the region despite steep losses from armor-piercing roadside
bombs.
Copies of Sinclair's military performance
evaluations obtained by The Associated Press show his superiors
consistently rated him highly and put him on the fast track for
advancement. In a July 2011 evaluation, then-82nd Airborne commander
Maj. Gen. James L. Huggins enthusiastically endorsed Sinclair for
promotion to the higher rank of major general.
"Jeff Sinclair is clearly the brightest and most
multi-talented officer I have ever served with," Huggins wrote.
"Whenever the division is challenged with critically tough tasks, Jeff
finds a solution and the results are quick, efficient, and superb. ...
If I could choose my successor, it would be Jeff."
Many subordinates described him in similarly
glowing terms, even the woman accusing him of sex crimes. "Everybody in
the brigade spoke about Gen. Sinclair as if he was a God," she testified
at an evidentiary hearing. "I heard from all of the male soldiers that I
worked with what a hardened killer he was. I mean, they would tell
stories about when he was a battalion commander, how everybody was like
hunkered down behind vehicles and scared to death because the firing was
just nonstop and ... (Sinclair) would get out in the street and ...
walk through as if there was no one shooting at him."
The AP generally does not identify those who say
they were sexually assaulted. But the same man who would share cigars
relaxing around a campfire with his junior officers or be quick to pat
an enlisted paratrooper on the back also had a reputation as tough
taskmaster. He could also be prone to arrogance, according to sworn
testimony.
According to prosecutors, when Sinclair was
confronted by a subordinate about using inappropriate language to
describe female soldiers, he responded: "I'm a general, I'll say
whatever the (expletive) I want."
Relieved of his command, Sinclair now spends many
of his days at home in the leafy heart of the base reserved as quarters
for those of high rank. Heeding the advice of his lawyers, Sinclair
declined comment for this article. But he was present, dressed casually
in a button-down oxford and jeans on a weekday last summer when an AP
reporter visited his home to interview his wife.
Rebecca Sinclair, 47, has emerged as her husband's
most ardent public defender, appearing in nationally televised
interviews to call attention to the strain placed on military marriages
by repeated yearlong war deployments since 9/11. While she says she
can't condone her husband's infidelity, Rebecca Sinclair is steadfast
that the sexual assault accusations don't square with the man she has
known for 30 years.
"My husband has made mistakes. He knows that, and
he has admitted those mistakes to me," she said. "But do I understand
how these things happen? Of course I do. We're not the only people in
the military this has happened to. When you have the separations year
after year, the marriage that you started out with isn't the marriage
you have in the end."
The couple met on a blind date at West Virginia
University, where the future general was an ROTC cadet. He came from
modest means, the son of a factory worker who worked in a coal mine to
help pay for college. But she liked that he was tall and says she could
tell he was going places.
If there is any silver lining to their situation,
Rebecca Sinclair said it is that her husband has been home to focus on
being a dad. They have two school-aged sons. "It has been a year for
rebuilding," she said. "Whenever your husband says those words to you
that no wife wants to hear, it's painful. But we make our choices and
decide what is most important to us. We're working on our marriage and
trying to get through this."
The couple are investing significant financial
resources in the effort to keep Sinclair out of prison and fight a
potential reduction in rank that could cost him in retirement benefits.
Sinclair replaced his court-appointed military lawyers and retained a
team of civilian attorneys specializing in white-collar defense.
They have also hired a New York City public
relations firm to orchestrate a media strategy that includes a website
touting Sinclair's military accomplishments while proclaiming his
innocence and revealing information about his primary accuser intended
to undercut her credibility.
Rebecca Sinclair chose not to attend the lengthy
pretrial hearings that included intimate details of her husband's
relationship with the young captain. The woman, who served under
Sinclair's direct command during combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan,
says the general twice settled arguments with her by grabbing her head
and forcing her to perform oral sex as she sobbed. She also says
Sinclair threatened to kill her and her parents if she told anyone about
their frequent sexual liaisons in hotels, headquarters and war zones.
"I was not to say anything to anyone or he would
kill me. And then he said he would kill my family and that he could do
it in a way that nobody knew it was him," the woman tearfully testified
at a pretrial hearing. "Because I know he killed people in combat ... I
didn't think he would say that unless he really meant it."
In court, the defense team has tried to paint
Sinclair's accuser as a scorned lover, willing to lie to destroy him
because he refused to leave his wife. They note that the woman didn't
make the accusations until she saw emails the general had exchanged with
other women and tearfully told Huggins, Sinclair's mentor.
By revealing the adulterous affair, the captain
potentially jeopardized her own career. Prosecutors later granted her
immunity in exchange for her testimony at Sinclair's court-martial. At a
pretrial hearing, the woman admitted she enjoyed sex with her commander
on numerous occasions, even though she says he was sometimes physically
domineering and emotionally abusive. She also introduced Sinclair to
her parents after she says he threatened to kill them. Among the
evidence likely to be presented in the case are thousands of often
sexually explicit text messages in which the general and the captain
profess their love for one another.
Even as Sinclair faces a lengthy prison sentence,
the woman tearfully acknowledged on the witness stand she has mixed
feelings about seeing him charged with crimes. "In a (expletive) up way I
still love him," she said, avoiding Sinclair's gaze as he sat nearby at
the defense table. "I don't want him to be upset with me."
Follow Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker at Twitter.com/mbieseck.
