Editor’s note: “Guard commander’s wings clipped after secret rendezvous” is the second in a series of stories about allegations that male officials have mistreated women, have abused alcohol and have been given preferential treatment by superiors. Read Part 1 here.
On Jan. 4, 2014, a blue flag adorned with the image of an eagle was passed from the outgoing commander of the 158th Fighter Wing, Col. David Baczewski, to the new leader of the Vermont Air National Guard, Col. Thomas Jackman.
Hundreds of airmen looked on as Jackman, a veteran of three tours in Iraq, saluted Maj. Gen. Steven Cray, Vermont’s adjutant general. Throughout the ceremony, Jackman, well-built with closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair, stood ramrod straight.
In a Guard video commemorating the event, Jackman said his focus as wing commander would be to improve operational readiness, boost morale and prepare for the basing of the F-35 fighter jet in Burlington.
Still, Jackman signaled to the airmen there would be time for fun, too. “Plan on playing hard as well as working hard,” he said in the video.
In more than three decades as a pilot for the 158th Fighter Wing, the new wing commander had earned intense loyalty from the Vermont airmen.
But just a year after taking command, he fell from grace and lost his coveted leadership position. Jackman was ushered out of the organization after he took an F-16 flight to Washington, D.C., for a work trip that doubled as a romantic rendezvous with a female Army colonel who worked at the Pentagon, according to three former Guard members with knowledge of the incident. They spoke with VTDigger on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
In December 2014 and January 2015, Jackman swapped flirtatious emails during work with the woman, which indicated that they had met up before. The trip that sealed Jackman’s fate was on Jan. 27, 2015. Even as a winter storm barreled toward Burlington that day, Jackman pushed ahead with plans for a get-together with the woman in the nation’s capital.
VTDigger is not identifying the woman involved because it could not be determined whether she violated any military regulations. She did not reply to a request for comment.
For weeks, the two officers had shared gushy messages. They corresponded frequently over email, and also spoke on the phone. The woman sent a series of photos of herself to Jackman and he replied, “you look beautiful” and “(I) can’t help but notice every part of you.” After the woman received an email from Jackman on Jan. 7, she wrote, “Fun seeing your name pop up in the inbox. Always makes me smile. (and tingle…).”
As the flirtation intensified, Jackman, married, made plans for a “reunion” — even though the woman worked more than 500 miles from Burlington. At first, the earliest opportunity to get together was in March, when Jackman was scheduled to attend an Antiterrorism Executive Training at the Booz Allen Hamilton McLean Campus, just outside of Washington.
After Jackman informed his paramour of his March plans, she wrote, “You just made my day!!!!!!!!!!!!” before advising him to stay in a hotel in Tysons Corner, Virginia.
“A little further for me to get there but not too far,” she wrote.
The two also talked about both attending a National Guard Association of the United States conference in Nashville in September 2015.
But then an opportunity to get together arose much sooner, in January 2015, according to emails between the two.
Jackman was scheduled to attend a conference at Andrews Air Force Base, located just outside Washington, D.C. While the Guard says pilots do not typically use their planes to attend conferences, Jackman as wing commander had ultimate authority.
Conference attendees were to fly down the morning of the conference, stay on Joint Base Andrews for one night, then return home at the end of the second day, thus limiting expenses. While Jackman apparently stayed at Andrews for one night, he purchased off-base hotel rooms for two other nights, on the 27th and 29th of January.
“Look forward to seeing the real deal in person soon!” Jackman emailed the woman shortly before his trip.
Jackman was scheduled to fly to Washington at around 9 a.m. on Jan. 27, but his plan hit a snag. At about 9:45 a.m., Jackman told the woman in an email that his jet had broken down. A source said the Guard ground crew had to prepare a new plane for him to use. Meanwhile, an impending snowstorm threatened to complicate flight conditions.
“Don’t know if I am going to get out today. Urrrrr,” Jackman emailed the woman that morning. “I haven’t given up yet.”
Despite the storm, according to three former Air Guard officials, Jackman made the journey south that day. Retired Lt. Col. Terry Moultroup, who the officials said was the supervisor of flying that day and was authorized to deny Jackman’s ability to fly, declined to comment.
The storm battered Vermont and much of the East Coast. Jackman’s plan to fly into Joint Base Andrews in Maryland was interrupted when the base shut down the runway because of the weather.
“Runway at Andrews is closed for snow,” Jackman wrote the woman on the morning of the 27th. “Not sure if it will open at all today but will keep trying. Looks like worse case is to fly to Langley this afternoon and rent a car from there and drive up tonight.”
The woman responded telling Jackman to “be safe” and that if he didn’t fly out on Tuesday they could still meet up later in the week.
“Or—we make THURS that much better and save this black dress for MAR!” she wrote. “But let me know.”
Although Jackman made the trip south, it’s unclear if he landed at Andrews or at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, a 200-mile drive to the capital.
Documents obtained by VTDigger show that Jackman booked a room at The Morrison House in Alexandria, Virginia, for the night of the 27th and also reserved a hotel room at the JW Marriott on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., for the night of the 29th.
In emails, the woman directly discussed plans to meet with Jackman on the 29th; she also discussed meeting on the 27th, when Jackman planned to fly down. (“Get the 27th here soon,” she wrote on Jan. 5. “I am going to the mall today to check dresses.”)
When Jackman’s superiors found out about his assignation with the Army colonel, they were quick to take action, according to a former Guard member with knowledge of the investigation that followed. All documents and information concerning Jackman’s excursion to Washington were personally handed to Brig. Gen. Joel Clark, the Guard’s chief of staff, while Jackman was in Washington.
Jackman was ordered to fly home on a commercial flight, three former members said. Moultroup then traveled from Burlington to Washington to pick up Jackman’s F-16 and fly it home.
When Jackman returned to Burlington, he was removed from his position as wing commander and replaced by Col. Patrick “Pig” Guinee, now retired. The demotion was announced in an email to Guard staff from Maj. Gen. Cray, but did not explain why Jackman had lost his position. Cray, however, made clear to the rank and file in that memo that he had lost confidence in Jackman as the leader of the Vermont Air National Guard. While Jackman’s rise to wing commander was chronicled and disseminated by the Guard in a high-quality video and photos, there was no Guard announcement regarding Guinee’s appointment. (When Guinee was replaced by Col. David Smith, in 2017, the transition was widely covered after the Guard released a news statement to the press.)
Former officials said that Guard leadership gave Jackman a heads-up about his impending punishment, which allowed him to submit his resignation paperwork and pre-empt the loss of his retirement pay and benefits. In a recorded conversation obtained by VTDigger, Rick Brehm, the labor relations specialist for the Vermont National Guard, recalls that, “[Jackman] called me hourly — ‘Rick, you’re going to tell me that I need to resign the day before?’”
Jackman was allowed to retire with full active duty benefits, no derogatory remarks were made on his civil service resignation paperwork, and he was allowed to keep his top secret security clearance, according to former Guard members familiar with the investigation. According to LinkedIn, Jackman currently works as the postmaster of Waterbury and sits on the board of the Green Mountain Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
In a brief telephone interview, Jackman, 55, denied that he had been involved with the female Army colonel. Asked if he had been forced to retire by Guard leaders because of his trip to Washington, Jackman answered “no comment.”
Vermont Air Guard officials declined to be interviewed for this story and would not respond to specific questions about why Jackman was replaced.
However, in a statement 1st Lt. Mikel R. Arcovitch, the Guard’s press representative, said it is “not common practice” for pilots to fly fighter jets to work conferences.
“When it has occurred, pilots conduct training and complete annual requirements to and from the conference location,” he said.
As wing commander, Jackman had a government credit card that he could use for travel expenses without pre-authorization. (As for the flight, the hourly operating cost of the F-16 is around $8,000.) It is not known whether taxpayers covered his personal expenses on the trip.
While details of what prompted Jackman’s resignation were not publicly disclosed to Guard members, word of his secret D.C. meet-up quickly spread through the base.
The story did not come as a complete surprise, according to current and former members who spoke with VTDigger. Jackman, whose call sign was “Snatch,” had a reputation as a ladies man. In an email to Jackman and two other high-ranking officials, the female Army colonel he planned to meet with in D.C. playfully objected to his nickname. “Stop calling him Snatch. It’s as bad as Pussy! OMG!”
Jackman’s behavior was tolerated by Guard leadership for years — seven former Guard members said they witnessed Jackman openly and routinely flirt with women on the job.
“I saw [Jackman] with tons of women, he was a ladies man,” a former male Guard member said. “But when we were deployed, every single one of us was a ladies man.”
While the demotion of Jackman might seem swift and harsh, three former members say Jackman’s close friendship with Guard leaders, including Cray, resulted in a more lenient punishment than would have been meted out to lower ranking airmen who weren’t friends with higher-ups. Jackman and Cray frequently socialized together outside of work, and live near each other in an Essex Junction neighborhood nicknamed “Officer’s Row,” according to former Guard members. Meanwhile, others in the Guard have lost retirement benefits as a result of alleged improprieties.
Today, one of Jackman’s old combat aircraft, nicknamed “The Lethal Lady,” is prominently displayed at the entrance to the base. The plane — not the one he took to D.C. but one he often flew on tours during the early years of the Iraq war — includes on its nose an artful depiction of a buxom brunette wielding a spear.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who co-chairs the Senate’s National Guard Caucus, petitioned to save the plane from the “Bone Yard,” the Air Force’s aviation graveyard, in 2008 and display it at the Vermont Air Guard base in South Burlington. At the time, it was the nation’s longest flying F-16.
“This aircraft and the aircrew and maintainers who helped keep it flying and capable stand as a symbol of the dedication, endurance and values of the Air National Guard and the entire Air Force,” Leahy wrote in a letter to the Air Force.
Jackman shared a similar sense of gratification in the Guard’s mission, and the plane, in a 2008 interview with the Associated Press.
“This jet belongs to the taxpayers, the crew chiefs take care of it, they take the pride,” Jackman said. “I just have the privilege of having my name on this airplane.”
Help us investigate: Do you know what’s going on at the Vermont Army or Air National Guard? Contact Jasper Craven at 802-274-0365 or jclarkcraven@gmail.com
Read the story on VTDigger here: The flying fraternity: Guard commander’s wings clipped after secret rendezvous.