Pablo: I am curious about one thing, though: It would appear that the Major was USAR and not RA (Regular Army) because you mention termination from a civilian job.

Being former Army myself, the situation plays out somewhat differently if an officer is RA, versus Army Reserve or National Guard. When I was in, there were even differences in Army Reserve status (i.e. IRR or Individual Ready Reserve, which was an awful lot like the National Guard, only you didn’t even muster out once a month but were on this weird “standby” status. IRR was definitely a product of the Cold War, in that IRR members would probably only get called up if a big war broke out with the Russkies).

I guess my two points would be: First, if the Major was RA, I sincerely doubt that this shit would have gone this far, because a stunt like this is a career ender and, second, volunteering for a force like SOCOM isn’t for the faint hearted and, God forbid he volunteers under false pretenses and winds up there and brother officers and members of his command find out. That’s the kind of situation where you go out on night patrol and don’t happen to come back. Or, as we used to say, you get “Neidermeyered”.