Politico: Pentagon takes Round One in sex-assault fight
Politico reports:
The country’s most senior military commanders filed into a Capitol Hill hearing room in June, sat in front of TV cameras and promised to stamp out military sexual assault — a problem Army chief of staff Gen. Ray Odierno called “a cancer.”
“We can and will do better,” Odierno told the senators.
But privately, Pentagon lawyers and advisers were trying to limit just how much they’d have to do.
Over the past three months, Pentagon lawyers and legislative officials met with senior lawmakers and aides, including the Senate Armed Services Committee staff director and its top lawyer, to persuade them to shut down a movement led by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) to take the chain of command out of sexual assault cases.
