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On Nov. 7, 2009, in Afghanistan, a PowerPoint slide appeared in the daily battle update briefing of a battalion from the 82nd Airborne Division. The slide was meant as a joke, but it set off a firestorm.
The slide, among those emailed throughout the battalion, bore the photo of a black college basketball player crying in victory with a basketball net around his neck; draped over his shoulders is the arm of his white coach. The text beneath it reads, "Slavery Reinstated," and "Catch yourself a strong one."
The picture, found online, sparked a formal equal-opportunity complaint and a division-level investigation. Five months into a yearlong deployment, two rising stars, Lt. Col. Frank Jenio and Command Sgt. Maj. Herbert Puckett, were fired from their positions leading 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team.
An Army investigation over the course of two weeks took 32 sworn statements from soldiers in Afghanistan and compiled the 47 slides used in the briefings.
The slides, which had appeared in the morning briefings for about two months, showed scantily clad women in provocative poses, a cartoon of a man kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach, and on the day after the racially charged slide, a man was shown hitting a woman in a slide above the words, "Slap a bitch."
Aware that the hourlong briefings, which included grim casualty updates, could be depressing, Jenio had his battalion operations shop insert one humorous slide each day. His staff, who created the briefings at night for the following day, used ironic "demotivational" posters that they found on the Internet without vetting them with Jenio.
On Sept. 27, 2009, the first of the slides displayed at Forward Operating Base Walton depicted a male and female soldier in camouflage; the male soldier points into the distance. The text below reads, "You see that?? It means get the f--- back in the kitchen."
Jenio later said in an email to the brigade commander that he was aware such slides were being included since the start of the deployment, that they were intended to "humor ourselves" and that he took responsibility for them.
Earlier this month, the Army released portions of a 224-page investigative report into the incident in response to an Army Times Freedom of Information Act request filed in January 2010.
The investigating officer, whose name was redacted, found 22 slides to have been in "poor taste." Of those, he said 11 were sexist, three depicted domestic violence and one was deemed racist.
Six others were deemed culturally insensitive, potentially offensive to Afghan culture, multiple sources close to the investigation said. Those slides were redacted from the report on the grounds that they "could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of individuals."
No women, Afghans or children were present in the command center when the slides appeared.
The battalion equal-opportunity leader, chaplain, legal adviser and other battalion leaders were present, and they did not object, the report notes.
The battalion command group and staff told investigators that only the racially sensitive slide was inappropriate.
The investigator found the perception within the command group that "inappropriate material can be viewed in the workplace as part of an official briefing" to be an indication of a poor command climate.
The investigator's report said that FOB Walton was, on the surface, a "disciplined headquarters compound," but its leadership climate was "based not on dignity and respect but one that picks and chooses moral content."
"The net effect was battalion leadership became desensitized to negative images in the 'demotivational' slides, losing its ethical foundation, and moral base, to the point that the unit norm degraded below the Army Standard," he writes.
Lt. Gen. Curtis "Mike" Scaparrotti, then-commander of 82nd Airborne Division and Regional Command-East in Afghanistan, and now commander of I Corps at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., fired the two men.
He said in a recent statement to Army Times, "The investigation speaks for itself; the leadership permitted an atmosphere contrary to our Army values.
"We require our leaders to be the standard-bearers for those values," he said. "Based on the investigation's findings, it was and is my opinion that removal was appropriate."
Adding 'levity'
In August 2009, the 2-508 PIR — "2 Fury" — began to deploy to International Security Assistance Force's Regional Command-South in Afghanistan.
As the fighting season drew to a close that fall, the battalion was spread across Helmand and Kandahar provinces. From its headquarters in Kandahar, commanders delivered daily battle update briefs to widely dispersed battalion officers and noncommissioned officers.
The slides would be distributed throughout the battalion via email and briefed at FOB Walton, where the battalion command team was present. The briefing was simultaneously broadcast via teleconference to the company commanders.
On Sept. 20, 2009, a week before the first of the slides in question appeared, a Humvee loaded with paratroopers overturned on a rough road in Zabul province, leaving two dead and three injured.
Jenio's guidance to his operations shop had been to counterbalance the casualty updates and "add levity" to the daily briefs, according to a source close to the investigation. Neither he nor Puckett would see the slides until they were shown.
In early October, Puckett and the battalion executive officer warned Jenio to rein in the slides after the appearance of a picture that looked like female genitalia, above the words, "Relax it's just my armpit."
Jenio was alarmed by the armpit slide but ultimately did not intervene, several sources said.
Jenio and Puckett were at Marine combat outpost Payne in southern Helmand when the racially charged slide was shown. Out of communications range, they did not see the slide or learn of the controversy until they retrieved their email at an Army outpost days later.
In an email to Col. Brian Drinkwine, his brigade commander, Jenio apologized for the slide and requested an outside investigation.
At the time, the two commanders' wives were in the midst of a feud back home that has since become public.
After the investigation concluded, Drinkwine sent Jenio and Puckett to Kandahar Airfield, where they were personally reprimanded by Scaparrotti, and then returned to the battalion.
Scaparrotti, in his Dec. 18, 2009, letter accepting most of the findings of the investigation, ordered the reprimands and retraining on Army values. He rejected the investigation's finding that the slides violated General Order No. 1.
But 25 days later, on Jan. 13, 2010, Jenio and Puckett were ordered once again to report to Scaparrotti in Kandahar, where he fired them and ordered them home.
Some back in the battalion were incredulous that generals were concerned with political correctness while soldiers risked their lives.
"There's only so far you can ask someone to go to be this automaton," said a source close to the investigation. "Put your kit on, put on your cool-guy sunglasses on, look like Darth Vader, but be nice, don't offend anybody."
Rising stars
Prior to their dismissal, Jenio and Puckett appeared to have had promising careers. Jenio, a graduate of West Point, was a former executive officer to then-Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal when McChrystal commanded Joint Special Operations Command.
Two months before Jenio was fired, McChrystal, by now the ISAF commander and a four-star general, visited him at his headquarters in Kandahar province.
Photos taken of the visit appear to show Jenio and his mentor smiling and laughing together.
A month before he was fired, Jenio and the 2-508 were given responsibility for operations in Kandahar province's Arghandab River Valley.
A week before he was fired, Jenio briefed a visiting congressional delegation that included Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and John McCain, R-Ariz.
Both Puckett and Jenio served in the 75th Ranger Regiment, though not at the same time. Puckett executed a combat jump onto Rio Hato airfield during 1989's Operation Just Cause in Panama and had deployed four times in recent years.
In a sworn statement a month after he was fired, Jenio linked his dismissal to now very public disputes within the brigade family readiness group at Fort Bragg, N.C. Jenio, in his statement, recounted a tempestuous hour-long conversation with Drinkwine's wife, who threatened to have her husband fire him.
Months before the racially insensitive slide appeared, problems had been building at home. Amid allegations the colonel's wife, Leslie Drinkwine, was harassing the wives of battalion commanders, her role in the FRG was reduced. In early October 2009, Jenio's and Puckett's wives resigned from 2 Fury's FRG.
Ultimately Leslie Drinkwine was barred from brigade functions by Lt. Gen. Frank Helmick, then XVIII Airborne Corps commander and now deputy commander for operations of U.S. Forces-Iraq.
A follow-up investigation conducted by U.S. Army Central concluded the disputes at home were not a factor in the decision to relieve Jenio and Puckett.
Brian Drinkwine, Jenio and Puckett all declined to comment for this article.
Warrior culture
One officer in the brigade with multiple deployments defended the slides, which he said "weren't anything new."
The officer, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said he considers edgy humor part of the warrior culture and a way for soldiers to bond with each other and vent tension during tough deployments.
"The reason people didn't find it offensive is that we were above that," he said. "There was no separation of ethnicity or anything like that because we were a band of brothers, and that was misinterpreted by the investigating officer as a bad climate in the organization."
He said the perception within the battalion was that strife between the families influenced the decision to remove Jenio and Puckett.
"We were just thinking it would be a letter of reprimand, nonjudicial punishment. We were taken by surprise," he said. "It was disappointing because there was nothing professional about it, it was all personal, a personal vendetta."
Richard Flowers, then 4th Brigade's command sergeant major, now retired, said he believes that although Jenio and Puckett are "great Americans," their removal was justified by the offensive slides.
Flowers said that amid the Army's efforts to stamp out domestic violence, sexual harassment and cultural insensitivity, the slides sent troopers a mixed message.
"No battalion commander should need to be reminded about maturity, especially about women, especially about Afghanis," Flowers said. "And racial stuff, we don't need that."
Though he refused to say what the culturally insensitive slides depicted, Flowers said such images might have fueled violent reprisals against troops.
"Every soldier knew, if you disrespect these people, you will pay the price," Flowers said. "You don't give ammunition to the enemy."
Staff writer Sean Naylor contributed to this story.
