usavr - California

Fake 'Generals' volunteer for honors
Paramilitary awards stars

(This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press on Friday, May 21, 2004.)
By DENNIS ANDERSON and WILLIAM P. WARFORD, Valley Press Staff Writers

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PALMDALE - Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Ryan White believed he was seated at the
VIP table, in the company of a brigadier general from the Marine Corps and a lieutenant general from the Army.
The occasion was this past weekend's "Pride of the Nation," a salute to all U.S. armed forces put on by hundreds of Lancaster High School students who provided hundreds more guests with a spectacular display of patriotism and national unity at Air Force Plant 42.
Staff Sgt. White, the guest of honor, spoke to all assembled, delivering a vivid, first-hand account of the Marines' assault on Baghdad and the night last year when he took a round through the boot and his foot that earned him a righteous Purple Heart along with a trip to the field hospital.
He proferred his salute and courtesies to Brig. Gen. Ollie M. McCaulley, who was wearing resplendent dress blues and a white dress cap replete with "scrambled eggs." The wounded veteran also saluted the senior officer at the table, Lt. Gen. Allen A. Baumann, a Vietnam Green Beret and infantry commander with the famed 101st Airborne Division.
White, a Los Angeles police officer in the Marine Corps Reserve, said he believed he was in the presence of people who attained their generals' stars in the service.
"I felt honored to sit at their table," White recalled. "I was under the impression I was seated with a lieutenant general and a Marine Corps brigadier."
Later, he learned that the ranks Baumann and McCaulley honored themselves with were not conferred by the Army or Marine Corps, by the Reserve, or National Guard.
Their collar rank flows from the civilian paramilitary volunteer organization founded by Baumann, who serves as its "commanding general."
McCaulley served in the Marine Corps, but never as an officer. He was honorably discharged at the rank of E-5 "buck" sergeant in the late 1970s. His active service was a generation ago.
Baumann was a decorated officer with special operations and extensive Aiborne paratrooper background. In his early 60s, he is trim, fit and cuts a dashing figure.
But his last rank in the Army was lieutenant colonel. It's a respectable rank, but nowhere near the three stars worn by the likes of Ulysses S. Grant, George S. Patton, or more recently Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commands forces in Iraq, or, for that matter, Lt. Gen. Richard V. Reynolds, who went on from Edwards Air Force Base to the Air Force Materiel Command.
Baumann and McCaulley say the stars they wear on their collars and epaulets is the legitimate rank they hold with a group called the U.S. Volunteer Reserve, which Baumann founded some years ago.
The organization has no affiliation with the Army or Marines or any branch of active service, and also has no connection to the National Guard, the Reserves, or the state component, the California State Military Reserve.
The nonprofit paramilitary civilian outfit, Baumann maintains, serves to provide "full military honors" funerals to deceased veterans.
Baumann appears frequently at military and patriotic gatherings, wearing the three-star rank, and contends he has the right to do so because of a small pin, "USV," affixed atop his right breast pocket, and because of a USV shoulder patch he wears on his left shoulder below a "Special Forces" flash.
"It's supposed to look like a regular uniform," Baumann said, explaining that USV should wear something very like regulation uniforms in order to honor deceased veterans and give grieving relatives the sense that they are attending a military honors funeral.
An Army spokesman reached Wednesday at Headquarters, Department of the Army, at the Pentagon, examined photographs of Baumann in his regalia and concluded that wearing such rank violated propriety.
Maj. Steve Stover acknowledged Baumann's service as an officer and in special operations before his retirement. Then he said what the retired lieutenant colonel was doing was wrong.
"While I respect (Lt.) Col. Baumann's service, both to the Army and his nation, I think it does deceive the public," Stover said in a telephone interview from HQDA in Virginia.
Stover added, "the rank of lieutenant general is unearned because it is not a rank he attained in service to his country."
Lt. Col. Drew Crane, acting as senior officer for the Marine Corps aviation unit at Edwards Air Force Base, drew the same conclusion about McCaulley's dress blues with a star on the collar.
"If you're a sergeant, or a corporal or a lieutenant, or whatever, you don't put a star on your shoulder. You can't just go out and buy a uniform and appoint yourself a general."
Crane related that he had received inquiries from staff and base personnel about honors to accord to a visiting general. McCaulley and Baumann have attended recent functions at Edwards Air Force Base wearing their self-designated ranks and uniforms. Crane researched the matter.
"He is not a general," Crane said of McCaulley.
In researching McCaulley's wearing of the uniform, Crane found a Web site from when McCaulley ran for state Assembly a few years ago. The Web site displays a Marine dress blue uniform with sergeant's stripes and a picture of McCaulley. While McCaulley did attain sergeant's rank, "use of Marine Corps paraphernalia in a political endorsement is prohibited," Crane said.
McCaulley said he had researched the matter and believed it was legal.
McCaulley and Baumann enjoy high-profile political and civic positions within the Antelope Valley. Both serve on Palmdale's city commission for aerospace, and Baumann serves in leadership positions on the Joint Military Affairs Committees of the Palmdale and the Antelope Valley Chambers of Commerce. Both have run for City Council and McCaulley is active in Republican Party activities.
"Allen should know better than this," said Steve Malicott, president-CEO of the Antelope Valley Chambers of Commerce (Lancaster-Rosamond). Malicott is also a former Air Force chief master sergeant with 26 years' service. "Ollie should know better, too. I think this is atrocious. It embarrasses me as a military retiree."
On Thursday, McCaulley responded to queries raised by the Antelope Valley Press by writing to the U.S. Marine Corps Judge Advocate Division at the Pentagon. The correspondence, copied to the Valley Press, was not directed to a specific individual at Marine Corps HQ.
Noting the questions raised about his rank by the Valley Press, as well as community and military leaders such as Malicott and Crane, McCaulley said in his letter to "Good Sir" that he was seeking guidance about the legality of wearing a Marine dress uniform with general's rank, as permitted by the U.S. Volunteers organization founded by Baumann.
Responding to the queries, McCaulley wrote in his letter to USMC's legal division: "I asked all the members of my command regardless of branch to stand down."
McCaulley wrote that before the membership of USV under his "command" perform another final military honors funeral, "we must ensure that the USMC VR (volunteer reserve) are not breaking any laws." He said about 40 Marine veterans are in his "command."
McCaulley noted that Baumann directed him to "stand up" the Marine Corps element of U.S. Volunteers last year. That mission, he said, propelled him from the rank of USV lieutenant colonel late last year to brigadier general more recently.
"It is the belief of our members that we were following the guidelines of Chapters 1, 7 and 11 of the Marine Corps Uniform Regulations. My group will be informing all of the cemeteries including Riverside National that we can no longer perform any (military funeral) honors until it is explained to us how we can wear our uniforms or even if we have a legal right to wear
them," McCaulley wrote.
Scott White, a former Palmdale Chamber of Commerce president, observed, "He was a colonel at Christmas."
McCaulley, a neighbor, and Baumann, a chamber colleague, recruited Gulf War veteran White for USV, but he said he went to one meeting "at a rec room in a trailer park," and concluded, "It wasn't for me."
Baumann said he has no intention of shedding his rank as "Commanding General, U.S. Volunteers-Joint Services Command."
Proud of his Vietnam service, and proud of his accomplishments during his active service career, he said that he is confident the accoutrements he wears on his uniform put him in the clear.
"I am appalled that people would stand here today when we need volunteers, that they would be opposed to veterans being buried by an organization that is legal in every respect.
Nothing we are doing is illegal. We have been investigated by the FBI and everybody else. No one has said we are illegal. We have broken no laws."
Rather, Baumann said the U.S. Volunteers' quest to get official recognition by the government or by the military is so his organization can become "a force multiplier" for helping out at military funerals.
"We are attempting to get official status." To do that, Baumann traveled to Washington, D.C., last year, visiting, according to his itinerary, with a number of congressional representatives and Department of Defense officials.
In an interview on Wednesday, he asserted that Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, is fielding legislation to gain official standing and support for groups like his.
Bob Cochran, chief of staff for McKeon, said a meeting set for May 14, 2003, between the congressman and Baumann never happened. He said nothing has been done since, and no legislation is in the works.
Baumann acknowledges his group has no official status with any branch of the armed services, the Reserves or with any element of the California Military Department, which includes the National Guard and CSMR.
But Baumann emphasizes that it's crucial to his organization to wear uniforms barely distinguishable from active duty uniforms so mourners will appreciate an authentic military funeral. And he hopes the snappy appearance of his organization will gain it the official sanction he is seeking.
With such "Approved Provider" status conferred, the group then could seek reimbursement of expenses from military departments for costs incurred in providing military honors funerals according to Page 3 of the USV-Joint Services Command Directive. Such benefits could include permissions to shop in military clothing stores, the acquisition of rifles and obtaining military transport and reimbursement for overnight travel "in the rare case," as well as reimbursement for meals and "other related expenditures."
Baumann insists there is a need for his kind of auxiliary. He said veterans organizations who wear apparel easily distinguishable from the active military are "various and sundry." He speaks disparagingly of military funeral honors rendered "by the French Foreign Legion."
"I have no intention of forming another American Legion or VFW," Baumann said during a 90-minute interview at the offices of the Valley Press. "What we are doing is honorable and patriotic."
It may be patriotic, but a field of what Baumann calls "naysayers and elitists" take issue with the honor of wearing barely distinguishable dress uniforms with top ranks never conferred by a U.S. military service.
Retired Navy Capt. Tom Craft said he openly wondered about Baumann's rank last summer during a "Vietnam Veteran Stand Down" weekend gathering to help homeless veterans. At that time, Baumann was wearing the two stars of a major general. A third star soon followed, along with an honorary certificate signed by Congressman Xavier Becerra, D-Calif. The "promotion" Baumann said in a USV news release was "a major step" to "give the USV commander equal footing with top DoD commanders -- a leveling of the playing field."
The legality Baumann cites is questioned by veterans, active military and Pentagon officials. Section 702 of Title 18, U.S. Code states "Whoever ...without authority, wears the uniform or a distinctive part thereof or anything similar to a distinctive part of the uniform of the armed forces of the United States ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both."
Baumann responded that his apparel is legal and his critics "don't know the rules."
In April, Lt. Col. Ronnie Long of the Mortuary and Casualty Support division responded to queries fielded by retired Lt. Col. Craig H. Mandeville. Mandeville has pursued queries about Baumann's organization and apparel and rank claims for the last couple of years.
Over the years Baumann sought congressional approval or Department of Defense support.
The group seeks "Authorized Provider" status, which authorizes installation commanders to train and recognize nongovernment organizations to perform military funeral honors. The group already has done thousands such ceremonies, working with local officials, but Long wrote it has not achieved Authorized Provider standing. On April 6, 2004, Long wrote: "To this date, this office is unaware of the USAVR receiving this formal training."
McCaulley said "his command" attended training recently at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. He said they had not as yet received any correspondence or certification that he could produce.
Long, writing on behalf of the Department of the Army, remarked: "All recognized providers, to include other veterans service organizations, must wear a uniform that clearly distinguishes their organization as a separate entitity from that of the United States Army when performing military funeral honors."
Long continued: "We are concerned that members of the USAVR are performing military funeral honors, or any other volunteer service, while wearing a United States Army uniform with inappropriate rank, which gives the appearance that they represent the Army; not a veteran service organization."
The Pentagon officer concluded, "We have referred this matter to the Office of the Secretary of Defense through the General Counsel, who will advise us of any appropriate action."
Brig. Gen. Richard Pierce, retired, of the California State Military Reserve, said Baumann joined the State Military Reserve after he left the regular Army. Years went by after Baumann resigned from CSMR and Pierce had no contact with him until Baumann turned up as leader of the USV. He was a brigadier general, then suddenly he was a major general and then a lieutenant general.
Pierce said there are five legitimate military organizations in California -- the California National Guard, which includes the Army and Air Force; the U.S. Army Reserve; the California State Military Reserve; the Naval Militia; and the California National Guard.
"All I can tell you is he is not a member of a legitimate military organization in any sense of the word."
Baumann said the state Reserve is a "do-nothing" group that "stands around and drinks coffee." His group, Baumann said, "is bold. There's no question we're on the cutting edge."
Pierce said all authorized organizations have distinct differences between their uniforms and active duty Army, so there can be no confusion. For example, in the state Military Reserve, the name patch on the left breast is blue and says "California."
Pierce said the USAVR Web site includes commendations they award themselves and these include a "Legion of Merit" so similar to the authentic military Legion of Merit that "I defy you to tell the difference," he said.
Mandeville, director of the Orange County Chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America, became suspicious of USAVR when Baumann and colleagues started showing up at funerals and events such as the Vietnamese community's Tet Parade in Westminster.
"Having said all that, we, the Vietnam Veterans of America, have contacted the Department of the Defense, and they have turned it over to the General Counsel to figure out what to do."
Officials at Long's office said this week that they had not yet heard back from the General Counsel regarding the investigation.
"To all appearances, unless you're a trained person, you'd think (Baumann) was a general," Mandeville said. "And the irritating thing about Baumann is he ought to be satisfied with the rank he achieved."
Lt. Col. Stanley Heath, spokesman for the Army Human Resources Command, said
the USAVR is working with the local casualty assistance office to provide support for burials, but the issue is the uniforms.
Heath said it bothers him when people try to represent themselves as something they're not. He has written articles for army publications about posers and impostors. "Veterans who have served their country wear their 'own' uniform with honor and pride," he said. "They don't wear medals they didn't earn and they certainly don't wear insignia they didn't obtain while on active duty," he said.
Lancaster's retired Navy Capt. Craft questions the group's role and the need for it.
"Sometimes the cause doesn't justify the means," he said.
Such people are "naysayers" and "elitists," Baumann responded.

City pulls rank, dumps appointees

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press on Friday, July 2, 2004.
By BOB WILSON
Valley Press Staff Writer

PALMDALE - The wearing of general officers' stars and uniforms at public functions as part of an organization called the U.S. Volunteer Reserve spurred the City Council to act to remove two members from its appointed Palmdale Aviation and Aerospace Commission. One member, Allen Baumann, submitted his resignation from the commission before the council could vote on the matter. The other member, Ollie McCaulley, was not present for the deliberations, with a friend speaking on his behalf.
McCaulley's friend and former City Council running mate, Steve Buteyn, asked the panel to delay its decision until McCaulley was present to defend himself at a time he did not have to meet the requirements of his employ.
"There's really no defense. The members of any commission or any board serve solely at the pleasure of the council. No reason for removal is necessary, and none is being given," Mayor Jim Ledford said.
Ultimately, the council voted unanimously to accept Baumann's resignation and, in a second unanimous vote, to remove McCaulley from the commission's ranks.
Councilman Richard Loa decided to relate an explanation to Baumann. "It's the sense of this council … that when the issue was brought up about the (wearing of military) uniforms at public appearances by yourself and Mr. McCaulley, it created a controversy," Loa said.
Those appointed to represent the city "are always called upon to act in the highest possible manner," the councilman said.
Valley Press news stories cited military officials who concluded it was inappropriate for Baumann to wear the uniform of an Army lieutenant general and McCaulley to wear the uniform of a Marine Corps brigadier general at public functions.
Both men made a number of appearances in uniform at public functions in the Valley, including a POW-MIA remembrance and a "Pride of the Nation" salute to troops gala at Lancaster High School.
Readers who saw photographs of the pair in uniform called the newspaper, questioning whether Baumann and McCaulley were entitled to wear general officer rank on uniforms that are virtually indistinguishable from uniforms of the active duty armed services.
In serving their obligation to the city, "as far as I am concerned - and I'm looking at you here, one on one, as well as at Mr. McCaulley -- I think that was betrayed," Loa said. "That's what I thought it was: the newspaper articles," Baumann responded.
"No, sir, it was not the newspaper articles," Loa said. "It was the actions of putting on the uniforms and making a representation regarding military status … that put the commission of the city of Palmdale in a bad light," Loa said.
Baumann and McCaulley were among seven people selected to form the Aviation and Aerospace Commission in November 2002. The commission was created under legislation authored by the late state Sen. William J. "Pete" Knight. That law allows cities to establish boards to oversee the destiny of military bases within their borders that may face closure.
The volunteer panel was responsible primarily for serving to protect the interests of operations at U.S. Air Force Plant 42, promotion of commercial passenger and cargo service at Palmdale Regional Airport and supporting development of the city's Heritage Airpark aircraft museum.
Still listed as voting members by the City Clerk are Vauneld Adams and Robert Riedenauer and nonvoting members Larry Chimbole and Chuck Medicus. A third voting member, Richard Jimmink, resigned in December.
Baumann, who was honorably discharged after the Vietnam War from the Army as a lieutenant colonel, defended his right to continue wearing an Army uniform that denotes his position as a lieutenant general in the group he participated in founding, the Volunteer Reserve. Variants of the organization's name include the United States Army Volunteer Reserve and, in McCaulley's case, the United States Marine Corps Volunteer Reserve.
The organization has no official sanction or affiliation with any of the armed services, the Department of Defense, the National Guard or Reserves. The purpose of the group, Baumann has said, is to provide military honors at funerals. He contends the military is unable to meet its obligations to provide such service and that his group is volunteering to fill that need.
McCaulley, honorably discharged from the Marine Corps in 1979 at the rank of sergeant, had been wearing a Marine uniform indicating his position as a lieutenant colonel in the Volunteer Reserve. Later, after the organization announced his "promotion" to brigadier general, he exchanged the oak leaf for a general's star.
Baumann said members of the council were basing their decision on emotions instead of facts and asked why similar criticism was not being leveled at L.A. County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich.
"The California State Military Reserve just recently appointed Supervisor Antonovich as a lieutenant colonel. The man has served not one day in active service," Baumann said.
Buteyn also questioned the lack of criticism of Antonovich, presenting a newspaper photo of Antonovich in an Army uniform during a swearing-in ceremony in December.
The supervisor was sworn in at a ceremony attended by Maj. Gen. John Bianchi, commander of the state Military Reserve, and Maj. Gen. Paul D. Monroe, then adjutant, commander of the California National Guard.
Tony Bell, Antonovich's spokesman, said the supervisor served six months' active duty in the Army between 1957 and 1963, which preceded his appointment to the California State Military Reserve, part of the California Army National Guard.
A message requesting comment on the council's action from McCaulley drew no immediate response Wednesday or Thursday.
Baumann told the council he and several other "publicly spirited people" properly established the U.S. Volunteers Joint Services Command as a corporation. From the podium, Baumann displayed papers he said verified the charitable-corporation status granted by the Internal Revenue Service.
Reached Wednesday, Baumann declined to provide the Valley Press with copies of those documents and refused to provide information on where his documents were obtained.
Previous attempts by the Valley Press to locate such documents through the federal, state and private agencies that track the financial activities of nonprofit entities were unsuccessful.
"There is no law against my wearing the uniform," Baumann said, adding that a specific regulation allows a member of a military society to don a military uniform "provided it includes distinctive insignia prescribed and is distinguishable from the U.S. Army uniform. We do that."
Baumann contends a breast pin and change in buttons meet the law. Federal law actually forbids wearing uniforms, or any part of the uniform. Civilians may wear distinctive clothing, but it must be clearly distinguishable from military wear.
Marine Corps and Army officials who examined photographs of the men wearing the general's uniforms concluded that wearing the uniforms with the general rank was, in fact, indistinguishable from active service uniforms and that the wearing of flag rank was inappropriate in the case of either man.
Among those who were consulted on the issue were Maj. Steve Stover, a Department of the Army spokesman at the Pentagon, and Lt. Col. Drew Crane, the officer in charge at the Marine Corps aviation unit at Edwards Air Force Base.
In May 2003, the secretary of defense assigned an "action officer, who is working with us on making us … a separate entity - along with the (National) Guard, the (Army) Reserve and the active Army -- a stand-alone entity under the Department of Defense," Baumann said.
That process, however, has moved "at the speed of an iceberg," he said. "To bottom-line it … one, we are legal; two, I have every right to wear this uniform; and three, the U.S. Army just recently recognized us as members of the AP3 program, that's a DOD-sponsored program. That standard is the same standard as the active Army."
Despite Baumann's contentions, "When a controversy or distraction occurs in the community, it takes away from the commission's ability to do its business. That has, in fact, occurred," Ledford said. "Our interest as a city is to maintain the direction of the commission."
Councilman Steve Hofbauer said the issue was making it difficult for the city to engage in aviation-and aerospace-related talks "without this working its way into the conversation."
"We've got too many critical items going on with aerospace and aviation right now. And with this advisory board, we need to keep that focus and not have these distractions," Hofbauer said.
Mayor Pro Tem Jim Root called Baumann's military service "exceptional" and said he appreciated Baumann's resignation because it was "the right thing" for the commission.
Baumann served with distinction during the Vietnam War, in Special Forces with the Green Berets, and as an officer with the 101st Airborne Division.
Councilman Mike Dispenza offered no comment before casting separate affirming votes for the removal of Baumann and McCaulley.