'American Spartan' Raises Questions About Author's Romance with Source by Jeff Schogol, Military Times
The book “American Spartan” is about Army Special Forces Maj. Jim Gant, who tries to get Pashtun tribes to fight against the Taliban.
But author Ann Scott Tyson’s relationship with Gant raises several ethical questions.
A former Pentagon reporter, Tyson fell in love with Gant while she was working at the Washington Post, and they eventually married. She left the newspaper to live with Gant in Afghanistan as he tried to stand up Afghan Local Police. Gant was eventually pulled out of Afghanistan, in part because he was accused of providing Tyson with classified information.
“As most would view it, I crossed over to the dark side professionally by becoming involved with Jim and he with me,” Tyson writes. “I saw it differently, particularly because he is so open about his own failings and those of the U.S. military and Special Forces. If anything, through being close to Jim, I have gained a far more unvarnished view of the military and its flaws, having seen the institution from the inside.” …
Comments
This story gets more convoluted as it is told by different individuals.
But in some aspects it goes to a story of mine from my VN SF CIDG days.
We had been getting off and on probes by a local VC BN which had linked up with a NVA BN that was trying to establish themselves in our AO.
Most of the probes were of an IDF nature followed by a light to medium ground assault with no more than usually a plt or plt plus.
We got on a Saturday resupply a visit by a 5th SFGA RC Chaplain (a CPT) and yes even in VN he was unarmed.
Early Sunday morning (approx. 0300) we started getting hit by IDF which suddenly went extremely heavy. My fighting position was firing the 4.2 heavy mortar and I was usually supported by a Cambodian CIDG member who would cut the charges for me as I fired and aimed.
Into the second hour of the IDF and having gone through the entire basic load the CIDG soldier began running to the ammo point for more rounds and I was forced to cut, aim, and fire.
As I turned around to cut a charge the SF RC Chaplain yelled for the charge and then cut it himself and he kept handing me the rounds and cutting the charges for the next two hours as the CIDG soldier kept the rounds being supplied.
My question is ---when reviewing this article was she trained on a weapon for self defense/protection in a hostile environment or was she trained to patrol? ---who trained the SF RC Chaplain especially on mortars?, why was he trained/did he need to be trained and did it pay off when it was needed?
Secondly, after Church services on the Sunday afternoon we were interviewing a VN translator for a position we had open who had also come in on Saturday and after the interview was over and we were honestly going to hire him---the Chaplain pulls out a small black book and read something from it and then informed us he had been at the previous SF camp X and had seen the same interpreter there who had been turned down for the position for the following reasons.
Did he have to tell us what he had previously learned? Was he required to tell us?
Is it in some aspects the same thing the author did in this article when she learned of something that was important for this particular individual or team.
So even though say 42 years apart are not the two separate events not the same thing just from a different viewpoint because one wore a uniform and the other did not?
What does it say about our system that seems to have forgotten the past or does one think that something similar never happened before?
Based on the GC was the Chaplain in violation of the GC as a non combatant---was I knowing the GC was violated required to file a formal complaint?
Or was he a human being assisting a team in need of help in a hostile environment and I looked the other way as he had contributed to the protection of a SF team and it was an unspoken rule to remain quiet as he was SF and I would have probably done the same thing if in his shoes.
Until one walks in the shoes of that team in that particular location at that particular time in space---the world is truly full of grey areas--still looking for than individual who can convince me that in a hostile environment the world is strictly black and white---.
I keep going back to the core question did we really "want" to win in AFG and where was the strategy---were not these two items lost somewhere in the grey zone?
Just a side comment---I have seen in my lifetime of classified work so many "classified" documents where the core of the document was being constantly mentioned in open source materials--we over classify way to much "stuff" and truly do not classify things that should be classified---just my opinion.