John’s original Air Force Cross would have remained just that, the nation’s second-highest award for selfless action and heroism, had it not been for chance. Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James strolled across her office, enjoying a few free moments in an otherwise busy daily schedule that was blocked out in ten-minute increments, controlled more by her handlers than herself. The fifteenth of May 2015 was a beautiful spring morning, and the windows of her office on the fourth floor of the Pentagon’s desirable E wing afforded million-dollar views of the nation’s capital and monuments. She liked to joke that the Air Force sat above the secretary of defense’s office, directly below on the third floor.
Dressed in a vibrant red business suit (she felt a bit of color added to the muted tones of most Pentagon staffers), she chanced to pick up a copy of the Air Force Times, the service’s weekly newspaper, and sat down to check the voice of “her people.” “The press is a great source of information and gauge of what people are thinking,” she reminded those who viewed journalists as the enemy. Savoring the momentary respite, she leafed through the pages, and an article caught her eye. Titled “He saved 80 lives: Why not the Medal of Honor?” it recounted the story of two Combat Controllers. The first was Senior Airman Dustin Temple, who delivered eighty Americans and Afghans from death the previous September while exposing himself repeatedly to direct enemy fire as he killed eighteen enemy combatants. The other was Staff Sergeant Robert Gutierrez, who saved the life of his wounded Green Beret team leader during an ambush, only to be shot in the chest himself. His lungs collapsed, yet he refused to get off the radio and stop calling airstrikes, some within thirty feet of his location, thereby saving his entire Special Forces team. Instead, a Green Beret medic jammed a syringe into his chest to reinflate his lungs…twice. The article asked a valid but pointed question: What does it take for an airman to get the Medal of Honor?
Looking up from the article, Secretary James was struck by the sentiment. That’s a damn good point, she thought. As her next meeting swept into her office, she tore out the page, scribbled in the margin “What does it take?” and gave the paper to her aide, an Air Force colonel, instructing him to have her staff look into the matter. Thus began the three-year journey of the most thoroughly investigated and documented Medal of Honor in history.
When the secretary of the Air Force asks a question, an army of staffers activates immediately. With a bit more guidance from the SECAF, the task morphed into a review of all Air Force Silver Stars and Air Force Crosses awarded since 9/11 to see if any might be worthy of upgrade based on new information. After months of investigation across the entire force, her query was answered. Late that summer she received a call from Lieutenant General Brad Heithold, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). He had one case, the only one in the Air Force that met her criteria for reinvestigation. “There may be some injustice here,” he told the Air Force’s most senior civilian leader. “He was alive and we have technical proof that he was.”
“Great,” she told him. “Let’s do this.”
At Heithold’s direction, AFSOC’s 24th Special Operations Wing (responsible for all Special Tactics squadrons and Combat Control) established a dedicated team to investigate the Air Force’s first potential Medal of Honor since Vietnam. The team consulted Air Force targeting (including the Air Force’s chief targeter on duty during the battle) and intelligence analysts and submitted their video assessment to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the nation’s foremost imagery experts, who validated the team’s findings. They also pulled from Anaconda after-action reports, JSOC’s official investigation into the events of 3–4 March 2002, witness statements, John’s autopsy (consulting the doctor who conducted the original autopsy in addition to a forensic pathologist), and new interviews with surviving AFO members. It provided Lieutenant General Heithold an airtight case—John had earned the nation’s highest award. Concurrently, JSOC held a special awards board and also endorsed an upgrade for John’s medal, starting a separate but equally important chain of decisions within the special operations community that would end with US Special Operations Command’s endorsement of his upgrade. Throughout the year that followed her tasking, “I kept asking about progress on John.” When AFSOC’s recommendation finally arrived on Secretary James’s desk on 9 June 2016, she signed it and forwarded her recommendation to the secretary of defense the same day.
Still, for the next two years, AFSOC and the Air Force continued investigating and validating their findings while simultaneously fighting with certain leaders from SEAL Team Six, who could not abide the fact they’d left a man for dead. The contestation rose to senior levels of the Navy and represented the first time in the history of the medal that one service attempted to obstruct the submission of another, according to experts on the Medal of Honor.30 For two men, the need to protect the unit’s image overrode the facts of John’s having survived after the SEALs retreated. Two officers drove the Navy’s contestation, the (at the time) current commander of ST6, a man known by the initials JW, and Admiral Tim Szymanski, now head of all naval special warfare. Szymanski was the man both Pete Blaber and Jimmy Reese contend was the root source of the mission’s botched planning and execution.
In the course of time and politics, Air Force Secretary James was replaced when the new administration swept into office in January 2017. Her pledge to see John’s medal come to fruition was taken up by others, among them and notably Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work. By summer 2017, it was clear that Chapman’s medal was headed for the White House. In one of his final emails as the DepSecDef, Bob Work wrote to new Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson and Chief of Staff General David Goldfein. Dated 12 July 2017 and titled “White Smoke,” it stated:
Team Air Force,
I’m happy to inform you that the Secretary has approved the upgrade of TechSgt Chapman’s AF Cross to the Medal of Honor, citing both material finding one and two. As previously agreed, material finding two will be discussed only in the classified portion of the award; the citation will make mention that Chappie fought on until he succumbed to his wounds.
After extensive analysis, the FBI concluded that a firefight continued on the top of the hill for an hour after the Team exfiled down the mountain. Although they could not conclusively determine whether it was blue on red or a red on red engagement, the Secretary concluded it was blue on red based on the following factors:
We are working the package now. Thanks for your patience and perseverance. May TechSgt Chapman and his family rest more peacefully once they are told. Aim High!
Best, Bob
He retired two days later, a stalwart for John’s full actions to the end.
On 24 October 2017, the Office of the Secretary of Defense informed the chief of staff and secretary of the Air Force that John’s Medal of Honor had been forwarded to the president of the United States. Finally, on 26 March 2018, President Trump called Valerie with the news. It was her birthday.