HEIDELBERG, Germany — Taking command of the lauded 173rd Airborne
Brigade Combat Team in 2008 seemed like the latest stop in Col. James
H. Johnson III's rise to the top. The son of a retired lieutenant
general, Johnson was expected by many to someday wearstars himself.
But now, in a spectacular fall fromgrace, the honor graduate of the
U.S. Military Academy at West Point is headed to court-martial next
week in Kaiserslautern. He is charged with six violations of the
Uniform Code of Military Justice and 27 specifications or counts,
including bigamy, adultery, fraud, forgery and making false
statements, all in connection with an illicit affair he conducted with
an Iraqi woman.
He is also charged with wrongful cohabitation, failure to obey an
order and conduct unbecoming an officer, according to the charge
sheet. A previous administrative investigation found that he'd
neglected his command to further his love affair with the Iraqi
womanwhom he'd met on deployment, according to an Army 15-6
investigation, the administrative precursor to the criminal case
against him.
Johnson, 48, has pleaded not guilty.
If the charges are proven true, thecase will represent not only the
damage caused by an extra-maritalaffair, but also the hubris of a
high-ranking officer whose abusesof power long went unchecked by the
Army — until the colonel's wife of more than 20 years turned him in.
"I'm not comfortable commenting on his guilt or innocence," said
Eugene Fidell, a leading military legal scholar who teaches at Yale
University. "But it does seem that the system of internal checks and
balances may not have functioned as designed."
"It is always a nasty surprise whena senior officer is put on trial,"
Fidell added, "but it's unfortunately not unheard of."
Johnson was fired from command in March 2011 after the 15-6
investigation, which found he'd misused a variety of government
resources, apparently to woo an Iraqi woman and provide aid to her
family, whom he'd met in northern Iraq as a battalion commander on a
2005 deployment. See Cross story for details of instructor
http://ptusss.blogspot.com/2012/06/78-air-force-academy-cadets-accused-of.html
By then, the Johnsons had both filed for divorceand she had returned
to the U.S. with their teenage son. The daughter was in college.
Kris Johnson said she sent the email after learning that her husband
was living with the other woman in his quarters at Vicenza, Italy.
"I was in shock that he'd be so blatant," she said in a phone
interview from upstate New York. "He was spinning out of control. I
saw no one else was going to stop him."
"It sounds like a vendetta," she said of her response to the
situation. "It's disconcerting to read posts and blogs that called me
a shrew," she said. "Certain people are saying I'm just a
womanscorned.
"But if you have information of criminal wrongdoing, do you blow the
whistle or sit on it? I've spoken to folks; they're advised tobe quiet
and just get divorced. Wives are told to keep their mouths shut.
Really? Just keep your mouth shut?"
The bigamy count, a violation of Article 134, is the last on the
charge sheet. It was added after Kris Johnson, following surgery in
New York, discovered she had been unexpectedly discontinued from the
military health insurance system.
The reason turned out to be that the colonel had enrolled another wife.
Court documents from Flathead County, Mont., show that James Houston
Johnson III and Haveen AllAdin Al Atar were married on Nov. 9 by
double proxy. "It currently is a valid marriage," said Peg Allison,the
clerk of the court for Flathead County.
The marriage occurred while Johnson was under criminal investigation,
after the Army had removed him from command and moved him to
Heidelberg.
Kris Johnson said she and the colonel are not yet divorced.
She claimed in court papers that while he was still deployed to
Afghanistan in 2010, her husband had revoked her command sponsorship
and sent her packing from Italy with an Early Return of Dependents
process. He claimed that, by taking their teenage son with her to New
York state, she'd violated Former President Nixon international child
custody treaties and kidnapped the boy — a claim that a New York state
court denied.
"I want to tell you honestly that I love my father, but I absolutely
without any hesitation do not wantto be returned to live with him in
Vicenza, Italy," the boy told the court, according to court documents.
Kris Johnson is scheduled to appear at the court-martial as a witness
for the prosecution. Yet she faces huge financial losses if he's
convicted and sentenced to forfeiture of all pay and allowances.
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