• Report: Missile Defense Agency chief Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly bullied staff

    Alex Wong / Getty Images, file

    Director of the Missile Defense Agency Army Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly testifies during a hearing before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on September 24, 2009. He is described as a bullying manager in a report dated May 2, 2012.

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    WASHINGTON - The U.S. Missile Defense Agency's chief routinely bullied his senior staff, chilling discussion of thorny issues in the multibillion-dollar program he runs, the Defense Department's inspector general said in a report made public on Tuesday.

    Army Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly, who has headed the Pentagon arm since November 2008, demeaned and belittled subordinates, making them reluctant "to speak up and raise issues during meetings with him," said the 19-page report dated May 2.

    The agency is developing, testing and fielding a layered shield against ballistic missiles that could be fired by countries like Iran and North Korea.

    It manages research, development, testing, purchases and stitching together complex systems on land, at sea and sensors in space.

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    The $10 billion-a-year effort has a long record of flight-test failures and successes as well as the biggest research budget of any Pentagon program. Some critics have derided it as a boondoggle for contractors including Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co, Raytheon Co and Northrop Grumman Corp.


    The inspector general interviewed O'Reilly and 33 other witnesses with knowledge of the matters at issue for a preliminary report. Another four were added at O'Reilly's request, but they were not in a position to comment on certain events at issue, the report said.

    Several witnesses testified that fear of O'Reilly's reactions "impeded the flow of information," the investigation found. It was first reported by The Cable, a Web-based newsletter of Foreign Policy magazine.

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    A spokeswoman for the inspector general, Bridget Serchak, said such reports typically were made public only after receipt of at least three requests for them under the Freedom of Information Act.

    'Dirt beneath his feet'
    The report said five witnesses told inspectors that O'Reilly's leadership, described by the investigators as marked by yelling and screaming, was either the main factor or a contributing factor in their decision to leave the agency.

    "We received consistent testimony that as a result of his management style, even senior officials stopped communicating" with O'Reilly, the report said.

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    The inspector general recommended the secretary of the army consider "appropriate corrective action" with regard to O'Reilly. Army representatives did not return phones calls seeking comment.

    The Cable quoted some descriptions of O'Reilly's leadership style highlighted in the report, including:

    • The worst manager I've worked for in 26 years of public service
    • As a leader, as a director, whatever, he's the worst
    • In terms of leadership, bottom
    • Absolutely last, out of all the generals I've served under
    • Without a doubt ... the worst leader I've worked for, the worst
    • He has probably been 100 degrees out from everything I've learned about leadership
    • How not to act
    • What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
    • Not the command climate I would have set

    One witness described his personality as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," The Cable said.

    "LTG O'Reilly would 'berate you, make you feel like you're the dirt beneath his feet,' then pay a compliment to rebuild the employee and later repeat that cycle," the report said.

    Highly intelligent
    O'Reilly, in a response summarized in the final report, questioned the accuracy of witness testimony and denied engaging in many of the alleged brow-beating practices.

    He stated that he had initiated weekly meetings with top aides to make sure that effective lines of communication stayed open. Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, had no comment on the report.

    A majority of the witnesses testified that O'Reilly was highly intelligent, "even brilliant," and possessed a high degree of expertise in managing purchases, the report said.

    Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • Military: Fetus not among 17 Afghan massacre victims

    Kari Bales, the wife of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the soldier who stands accused of murdering 17 Afghan civilians, talks exclusively to TODAY's Matt Lauer about the "devastating" accusations against her husband, saying "this is not him."

    By Miranda Leitsinger, Staff Writer, NBC News

    The Army said Monday that an unborn child was not among the 17 victims in the shooting massacre of civilians in two villages in Afghanistan allegedly perpetrated by Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, contradicting an Afghan official who spoke to The New York Times.

    Kandahar Province Police Chief Brig. Gen. Abdul Raziq told The New York Times that one of the slain females was pregnant and Americans were counting her unborn fetus as a victim. But Army Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings, Jr., told msnbc.com a fetus was not among the victims of the March 11 attacks in which Bales, 38, is charged with premeditated murder.

    “The information that we have collected up to now, this is not true,” Cummings, a spokesman for NATO's ISAF & U.S. Forces - Afghanistan, wrote in an email to msnbc.com. “The 17th is not from a pregnant female or any of the wounded passing away. At this time, the evidence available to the prosecution team indicates 17 victims of premeditated murder and 6 victims of assault and attempted premeditated murder.” 

    The death toll breaks down to four men and women each, and nine children, Cummings wrote. One man and one woman, plus four more children, were wounded.

    “I think one of the things you can assume is that it was difficult to collect evidence in this case and it was difficult for them to necessarily identify every victim right away,” said Michael Navarre, a director of the National Institute of Military Justice and a former Navy prosecutor and defense counsel.

    New details emerged over the weekend in the case. Military prosecutors told NBC News that the attacks came in two waves, with Bales allegedly returning to his base after the first attack and then slipping out again.

    Military prosecutors allege that Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of a deadly rampage which left 17 Afghan civilians dead, came in two waves, with Bales returning to his base after the first attack and then slipping out again. NBC's John Yang reports.

    The father of two from Bellevue, Wash., was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, six counts of attempted murder and six counts of assault. He is being held at a U.S. military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

    His wife, Karilyn Bales, said she did not believe her husband had done this.

    “I don't think anything will really change my mind in believing that he did not do this,’’ she told TODAY’s Matt Lauer in an exclusive interview that aired Monday. “This is not what it appears to be.’’

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    “I just don't think he was involved,’’ she said. “I don't know enough information. This is not him. It's not him."

    The timeline of the killings remains unclear. One Afghan guard working from midnight to 2 a.m. saw a U.S. soldier return at 1:30 a.m., and the guard’s replacement saw a U.S. soldier leaving the base at 2:30 a.m., but it was unclear whether it was the same soldier.

    There are reports that there is surveillance video, and that Bales allegedly walked back to the base and turned himself in.

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    Karilyn Bales said her husband was fit for a fourth deployment and that she was not aware of any obvious signs of post-traumatic stress disorder or the traumatic brain injury that he allegedly suffered on one of his tours. 

    Bales was on his fourth tour in a war zone since signing up for the Army after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. He had spent three years in Iraq on his previous tours, during which time he lost part of a foot and suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) due to a vehicle rollover, media reports say. Two days before he allegedly attacked the Afghan villagers, he saw the aftermath of a bombing in which a fellow soldier had his leg blown off, The Associated Press reported.

    Some military law experts interviewed by msnbc.com said they expect the defense to mount a legal pincer attack, in which Bales’ attorneys may try to win acquittal by attacking the evidence but have a fallback position aimed at winning a lesser sentence than the death penalty -- which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said could be sought in this case.

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    Gary Solis, former head of the Marine Corps’ Military Law Branch and current adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law School, said the fact that the crime occurred in a combat zone in a distant country complicates the task for prosecutors given the possibility of numerous crime scene complications. But they agreed that pursuing an insanity defense based on PTSD would be a difficult case to make, too.

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