Joint Chiefs pick was whistle-blower

Gen. Richard B. Myers

From Jamie McIntyre
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The man who administration sources say is President Bush's pick to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff once blew the whistle on a powerful three-star general for violating military rules governing promotions.

Gen. Richard Myers, currently the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was one of three Air Force generals who in the early 1990s came forward to reveal that Lt. Gen. Buster Glosson had attempted to exert undue influence to kill the promotion of a general who was disliked by the then-Air Force chief of staff.

The allegations were serious enough to sink Glosson's rising star.

In the military it is illegal for commanders to try to influence the boards in charge of selecting officers for promotion.

Glosson was a favorite of then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak and was known as the architect of the air campaign during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Glosson, who was in line to get his fourth star and assume a major command, was instead forced to retire as a three-star general.

At the time, Myers was a two-star major general, and, by reporting the wrongdoing, he put his own career in jeopardy, according to retired Air Force officers familiar with the case.

"He did it at great risk to his own career," said one retired officer, who added that Myers demonstrated enormous integrity by bucking the Air Force chief and one of his key deputies.

But after McPeak retired in 1994, Myers' career took off, as did the career of another of the whistle-blowers, Gen. Mike Ryan, who went on to become Air Force chief of staff.