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Criticizing maintenance got airman ousted

By all accounts, Adam Lucero was a hard-charging airman. When he didn’t make it into a summer camp for the Air Force Academy, he enlisted at age 17 through the Delayed Entry Program and had his staff sergeant rocker by the time he was 21.

But Lucero, now 24, dreamed of going to Officer Training School and earning his pilot wings, so he poured himself into his work and studies, hoping he could one day fly the fighter jets he maintained at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska.

That same passion, drive and singleness of purpose may have led to his downfall. When he discovered what he considered to be unsafe maintenance practices by his squadron co-workers, and was unable to get the support he sought from his superiors, he started going directly to pilots to tell them the planes they were flying were unsafe. For 18 months, he pushed his complaints despite his leaders’ opposition. Finally, in July 2006, he was forced out of the Air Force.

The 11th Air Force Inspector General’s Office and Defense Department IG have concluded Lucero’s commanders engaged in reprisals against him. What remains unclear is whether another, ongoing investigation will clear his name and let him rejoin the service.

In the meantime, he’s selling trucks in Fairbanks.

Lucero’s troubles began in January 2005 when he transferred to Eielson’s 355th Aircraft Maintenance Unit to become an A-10 crew chief. There he met Staff Sgt. Dusty Surber, a fellow enlisted airman with designs on becoming a pilot. The 354th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, the 355th’s parent unit, would seem to be the perfect place for two ambitious airmen: Winner of the 2004 Air Force Maintenance Effectiveness Award, the unit had earned all “outstanding” and “excellent” ratings in its most recent Pacific Air Forces inspections.

But in interviews with Air Force Times, Surber and Lucero said the drive for high sortie numbers there meant serious safety issues were overlooked to keep planes flying.

“I didn’t like what I saw — a lot of people were taking shortcuts, not following the [technical orders], letting aircraft fly that should [have been] grounded until they got repaired,” Lucero said.

He said he once had an airman first class suggest to him that they replace a lost screw with epoxy.

With such high expectations for producing sortie numbers, Surber said, maintenance holdups were unwelcome.

“If you wrote up something you thought was bad, they thought ... ‘You’re just doing this to try and screw us,’” Surber said. “These are training missions we’re flying here, you know? What’s the point of risking someone’s life over a training mission? “Everybody was gunning for that next stripe or ... that next rank,” Surber said. “Whenever you start affecting ... those numbers and those sorties ... you’re really messing with fire, because that’s somebody’s potential promotion.”

Disillusioned, Surber asked to be transferred to the base maintenance operations control center. At first, he said, his request was denied because the 355th didn’t want to lose a 7-level crew chief; but after he started talking to the squadron’s pilots about how unsafe he thought their aircraft were, “I was gone within a week,” he said.

Surber had a parting message for his friend Lucero, which he recalled for Air Force Times: “If you stick to your guns, and you’re not a ‘yes’ man, I guarantee you’re gonna find a whole world of trouble.” Lucero found it.

According to the report of a Defense Department-directed investigation into Lucero’s removal from the Air Force, Lucero identified a migrated wedding band — a bearing that fits around a steering pin — on an A-10 he was inspecting June 9, 2005. While that bearing was not specifically on his inspection checklist, he recognized the problem because of his previous work in the Aero Repair shop, and wrote it up as a Red X — the most serious indicator of a maintenance issue. A Red X grounds a plane.

The proper procedure, Lucero knew, was to remove the part and fix it — time-consuming, but it was in “black and white” on the technical order, Lucero said. When a specialist arrived, however, he climbed “on top of the jet, without a TO or anything, took a pry bar and popped it back into place,” Lucero said. The specialist then overwrote the Red X, clearing the plane to fly.

Lucero informed several flight-line supervisors of the incident, but each time was rebuffed. The specialist, his superiors told him, knew better than he how to handle the problem, and Lucero should trust the specialist’s judgment.

Dismayed, Lucero took his case up the chain — and for his troubles, he got harsh rater-directed feedback, a reprimand indicating the need for specific performance improvement. “Our section will not tolerate you being irresponsible,” the feedback reads. Any problems outside his specialty must be put “on a dash [indicating a nongrounding maintenance issue] ... let that shop determine what the symbol needs to be.”

According to the investigation report and unbeknownst to Lucero, the specialist who had “fixed” the wedding band was punished with a letter of reprimand July 6 for his actions. Lucero didn’t find that out until Sept. 12 — after months of being told he should know better than to correct a specialist.

Lucero said he quickly became persona non grata within the squadron. His supervisor said it was Lucero’s brashness and lack of respect that rubbed leadership the wrong way.

“It’s not what he had found, it was the way he was going about doing his work,” said Tech. Sgt. Donald Wayne McKee, Lucero’s former direct supervisor and now retired. “When he would up-channel something, he wasn’t doing it like he was supposed to.”

When a crew chief finds a problem, he is supposed to notify an expeditor, who alerts an appropriate specialist for an evaluation, according to AFI 21-101, the authority on aircraft maintenance. McKee said Lucero would often alert the specialist himself, or just Red-X the plane based on his prior training.

Documents in the investigation report show several other base leaders counseled Lucero on his failure to use correct reporting methods.

“It was causing jets not to make their flights,” McKee said. “I kept counseling him on that, telling him, listen, you need to make sure that people know.”

The battle escalated quickly: Lucero kept taking his story of bad maintenance to higher powers, and his leadership countered with increasingly stern discipline.

On July 15, 2005, Lucero met with investigators at the 354th Fighter Wing’s IG office, complaining of bad maintenance and reprisals against him. Within a week, he was ordered to get a mental health evaluation, and was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

Two further military evaluators gave Lucero the same diagnosis, one suggesting Lucero be kicked out of the service. A civilian psychologist later rejected the diagnosis.

Lucero’s paper trail kept growing. He had begun secretly using a voice recorder in conversations with his superiors, legal under federal and Alaska state law. But when McKee found out, he confiscated the recorder, leading to a heated confrontation with Lucero and squadron officers. Afterward, Lucero got a letter of reprimand for using the recorder and an Article 15 for disobeying direct orders not to use it. He was also taken off the flight line and assigned janitorial duties.

Lucero successfully rebutted the official reprimand and declined his Article 15. His squadron commander, Lt. Col. Rick Petito, brought court-martial charges but later dismissed them, instead issuing another letter of reprimand for the recorder.

Petito, who declined to comment for this report, later learned Lucero was telling pilots in the 354th Fighter Squadron their aircraft were not safe, the investigation report said. Petito slapped Lucero with no-contact orders, saying he could not speak with the pilots or the maintenance group commander.

Petito then gave Lucero a letter of admonishment on Sept. 23, 2005, officially for violating the no-contact order with the 354th Maintenance Group commander.

Then, on Oct. 11, 2005, McKee gave Lucero a referral enlisted performance report with the lowest possible rating. A referral EPR typically means an airman screwed up, is not likely to get promoted in the next cycle and could be forced out of the service. Lucero’s referral EPR included this statement: “You still find it necessary to try to undermined [sic] the moral [sic] of the section and the squadron.”

In August 2006, the 354th Fighter Wing’s Investigator General’s Office ruled against Lucero in his reprisal allegations. But Lucero took his complaint up the chain to the 11th Air Force IG, which told him that without new evidence, there were no grounds to investigate.

Letter To The Editor:

As an avid reader and 27-year subscriber to the Air Force Times, I was shocked and appalled at the article, “Whistleblower’s woes” [Jan. 14].

Your article seemed to rely on the opinions of those who had an ax to grind and discounted the army of supervisors, section chiefs, flight chiefs, officers in charge, first sergeants, chiefs and commanders (in two squadrons) who were behind disciplinary actions against [Staff Sgt. Adam] Lucero. It also discounts all of the lawyers who scrutinized those legal actions, the wing commander who reviewed all of the history and investigator general reviewers all the way from the wing through the 11th Air Force who agreed that Lucero was handled appropriately.

Here are some actual facts that should have been included in the article:
Lucero wasn’t “thrown” out of the Air Force. He ended his career with an honorable discharge at the end of his enlistment. He had been denied re-enlistment because of his disciplinary issues and recommendations from medical evaluators.

Lucero did not get an Article 15 for disobeying orders not to use the recorder. When the recorder was discovered and disagreement ensued, a senior master sergeant and a captain intervened and tried to defuse the situation by telling Lucero to leave the room. Lucero disobeyed both of them. Thus, the Article 15 was offered because he refused to obey the direct orders of a senior noncommissioned officer and an officer, not for his attempt to record a conversation. He subsequently declined the Article 15 and elected trial by court-martial.

The article suggests the squadron kept Lucero in the dark about disciplinary action taken against the technician that repaired the wedding band. What the article neglects to mention is that the 7-level technician was assigned to another squadron. It’s a stretch to insinuate that a squadron commander needs to answer to a 5-level for disciplinary action taken against a 7-level in another squadron.As far as Lt. Col. [Anthony] Buck is concerned, I find it curious that everyone involved in this case has been advised to withhold comment and respect the IG investigation currently underway. The guy appointed as an IG in this case is not only venting his opinions about the case to the press, but is also stating his opinions on disciplinary actions he thinks should be taken.

This says a lot about Buck’s lack of professionalism and respect for IG investigations (or at least investigations conducted by someone other than himself), and his comments in the article clearly bring his objectivity into question.

The issue was never faulty maintenance. People recommend improvements to maintenance all the time, and believe it or not, those improvements are implemented because our No. 1 priority is safe, reliable aircraft. Maintainers are keenly aware that training lost because of system malfunctions today means more work tomorrow.

The problem in this case was that rather than being part of the solution and helping to fix problems, Lucero disobeyed lawful orders, was disrespectful and threatening to superiors, and attempted to sow seeds of distrust with pilots; a significant negative impact on good order and discipline.
In this case, Air Force Times was so eager to use an “Officers Gone Wild” story to sell papers that it threw its journalistic integrity out the window.

In my opinion, that classifies you as a tabloid no longer worthy of my longstanding subscription. Shame on you.

Col. Ron Crosby (ret.)

The only time I remember the \"Red Dash\" was for \"Inspections\", TCTO' inspections like \"NDI\", etc.....

The only time I remember the "Red Dash" was for "Inspections", TCTO' inspections like "NDI", etc.....
You either put it on a / or a X ,MAC use to put Engine intake inspection on a -- until a "Major Mal- F-UP Happened" then they went to a RED X.
Tire Pressure use to be on a Red Dash wasn't it until the "Rec-cap" disaster" wasn't it.?
Been too long ago, you just fixed it and went on if you could.

Too long ago hell you guys don't even have AFTO Forms do you now?

Goose