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Questions about McCalister’s military record entangle Hasner, LeMieux

Posted Aug 18, 2011 by William March

Updated Aug 18, 2011 at 02:38 PM

In the tangled, four-way Republican U.S. Senate primary, questions about Mike McCalister’s military record have turned into a source of conflict between Adam Hasner and George LeMieux.

The questions come from Chuck Winn, a Martin County GOP activist and military retiree, who’s part of a group of veterans that aims to expose false claims of military service. Winn says he’s not involved in any Senate campaign, but some McCalister backers have sought to link him to LeMieux or Hasner; McCalister has blamed “supporters of my opponents” for the criticism.

Tea party support has made McCalister, a comparative political unknown, the suprise leader in one recent GOP primary poll. Most GOP primary voters were still undecided, however—McCalister led the field with only 15 percent, and still looks like a dark horse in the race.

LeMieux, in second place in that poll, would probably rather face McCalister as his main opponent rather than Hasner, and has responded to the controversy with a news release condemining “baseless attacks on Colonel McCalister’s service.”

Winn says McCalister has exaggerrated his career on his resume, web site and in political speeches.

He says McCalister has frequently said in speeches that he was involved in “black ops” in the war on terror, which isn’t true; that McCalister claimed in the bio on his web site to have testified before Congress as a national security expert; that he referred to himself as a “special operations colonel”; and that McCalister’s resume and web site give the incorrect impression that he served in numerous overseas assignments.

The “special operations colonel” reference wasn’t written by McCalister, but by a blogger, whose blog item McCalister posted on his web site. It has been removed.

McCalister’s resume on his Facebook page says, under the heading “Expert Testimony,” that he “served as Subject Matter Expert at U.S. Congressional Hearing Testimony on issue of U.S. National Security,” and in another placed that he “appeared before US Congress as Subject Matter Expert (SME) on military readiness issue and strategic impact on U.S. National Security.”

Winn says McCalister’s campaign web site has now been revised to say McCalister accompanied a general who actually gave the testimony.

McCalister claims a 33-year military career, but his resume doesn’t make clear how much was active duty and how much in the reserves. In a response to Winn’s criticisms, he specifies he served about 3 1/2 years active duty.

McCalister’s resume says he worked at the Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, at MacDill Air Force Base which supervises military special operations worldwide.

It says he was “Assistant/Deputy Chief, Training, Doctrine, and Education Division, Center for Operations, Plans, and Policy” at SOCOM, and had “responsibilities involved in both overt and covert Special Forces operations worldwide,” including “development, analysis, evaluation, implementation, and managing key aspects of national and worldwide special operation missions and supporting tasks.” It doesn’t say he went overseas.