ARLINGTON, Va. — Gen. Frank Grass, chief of the National Guard Bureau (NGB), abruptly announced his resignation this week amidst claims of hazing and abuse from his fellow Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to sources.
Guardsmen at all levels report they are often bullied by their slimmer, active-duty counterparts, but sources say this is the first time the bullying has occurred at such a high level, with the situation worsening in 2012, when Grass was given a seat at the table with the Joint Chiefs.
Grass went on the record following his resignation, speaking to reporters outside the Pentagon, flanked by his attorney Gloria Allred and his wife, Sally.
“At first the vibe was just weird,” Grass said. “Odierno would always walk around naked in the locker room so that I would ‘know who the bigger man was.'”
“But like the Stanford Prison Experiment, shit got real in a hurry,” he recalled. “In 2013 they made me teleconference into a meeting from a kiddie table at a local Chuck E. Cheese.”
Other Joint Chiefs, including recently retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey, have confirmed some of the allegations.
“I had to preserve my independence, since he was Army too,” said Dempsey. “So his first year on the job I made a rule that he was only allowed to speak in meetings one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.”
Dempsey also acknowledged locking Grass in a conference room and forcing him to re-record his personal voicemail greeting with a rendition of “Citizen Soldier” by 3 Doors Down.
The Department of Defense Inspector General opened an investigation into the worst claim of misconduct, which occurred in 2012 on a business trip to Las Vegas. The other Chiefs allegedly made Grass pound shot after shot of vodka while “repeatedly calling him ‘Pledge’ and ‘Boot.’”
At some point, Grass allegedly drunk-dialed NGB’s advertising agency and ordered them to spend millions of dollars on NASCAR sponsorships. The Inspector General confirmed that Grass must have been “miles beyond black-out drunk,” reasoning that “no jackass in their right mind would blow half of his ad budget’ on a ‘sport’ that is just cars making left turns for two hours.”
New Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford declined to comment through a spokesman, who noted, “The Chairman has no idea who or what a Gen. Grass is.”
Meanwhile Grass’s replacement, Lt. Gen. Joseph Lengyel, has assumed full duties and responsibilities, pending Senate confirmation.
“It’s a real tragedy about ol’ Frank,” Lengyel said while hastily covering up copies of Game of Thrones and the Art of War on his desk. “Never saw it coming.”
