Lt. Gen: Fort Hood ‘in a very good place’
FORT HOOD — More than two years since the Army revealed the findings of a panel's investigation into how Fort Hood failed Spc. Vanessa Guillén — before and after her disappearance — the post's top general said he believes they learned from mistakes that cost 14 leaders their jobs.
Lt. Gen. Sean C. Bernabe, who took command of Fort Hood last October — well after Guillén's death rocked the Pentagon — said he instituted six principles after coming here that stress the importance of caring for soldiers and Army civilians and their families. The Army removed or suspended leaders at Fort Hood from the corps command to squad level a few weeks before Christmas 2020 after an outside investigation found a “deficient climate” that raised risks for female soldiers at the post.
Bernabe said his predecessor, Lt. Gen. Pat White, worked through nine findings and 70 recommendations made by the Fort Hood Independent Review Committee “pretty quickly and pretty comprehensively, and so as I took command felt pretty confident that those things had been addressed, at least in terms of immediate action.
“Our task now is to sustain that going forward, and I feel like we are in a very good place,” Bernabe said.
Those relieved at Fort Hood included Maj. Gen. Scott Efflandt, the post's acting commander at the time Guillén, 20, of Houston, disappeared in April 2020. Killed by a fellow soldier, her disappearance ignited an international firestorm over the conditions female soldiers faced at the post, home to the 1st Cavalry Division.
Efforts to find her became a national cause, prompting actress Salma Hayek to post a photo of the GI in civilian clothing with the message “Bring Us Back Vanessa” in English and Spanish. Despite searches that covered the post and a sprawling part of Central Texas, Lupe Guillén told reporters nine days after Guillén disappeared that she no longer trusted the Army and thought her sister had been sexually harassed.
“My sister is not the first or the last victim. This is going to keep coming for other young women that are just trying to serve and protect the country, so I want justice and I want answers,” she said, sobbing.
Guillén's body was found two months later.
The Fort Hood Independent Review Committee's chairman, Chris Swecker, said the fivemember panel “determined that, during the time period covered by our review, there was a permissive environment for sexual assault and sexual harassment at Fort Hood.” He called assaults and harassment of soldiers “contrary to Army values” and told reporters in Washington it “requires a dramatic
change in culture.”
Bernabe led Fort Bliss at the time the committee's report was issued and said his command had taken some measures prior to its release but took action immediately to “combat things like sexual harassment, sexual assault, to combat and prevent racism and extremism, to eliminate or certainly reduce suicides.” One of his first orders was for troops to read the report and assume that some of the issues at Fort Hood also existed at Bliss, a sprawling installation adjacent to El Paso International Airport.
Saying he felt “we probably all have something to learn” from that report, Bernabe said
he told those in the command chain to “read it assuming that everything in that report applied at Fort Bliss, Texas. Talking to my peers at other installations, I think many folks across the Army took the same approach and said, ‘You know what, we probably all have something to learn from that report and from what we were watching from a distance.' ”
A brigade commander with the 1st Cavalry Division in 2014, Bernabe calls his principles the “Phantom Six,” a play on his call sign. They include the importance of caring for soldiers and Army civilians and their families; developing proficient, engaged and empathetic leaders;
building cohesive, inclusive and disciplined teams; mastering fundamentals; training crews, staff and units to be proficient and lethal; and being ready.
The 1st Cavalry Division rotated three times to Iraq during the height of the insurgency, while III Corps' headquarters deployed overseas through the years as well.
“The Phantom Six provided a pretty good road map,” he said. “And as I tell leaders, if you're not sure exactly what to do on a daily basis, go back to the Phantom Six and do those six things.”