THE NEWS

On Spring Break in 2022, five West Point cadets overdosed on cocaine laced with fentanyl. This news was widely circulated, bringing great disrepute upon the Academy and the Corps of Cadets.  Even worse, contrary to Crisis Management Best Practices, West Point never disclosed the fate of the offending cadets.  Worse still, in violation of federal law, the Academy slow-walked my legitimate Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to determine the fate, but not the names, of the cadets involved in this sordid episode.

By law, federal entities, including West Point, must respond to a FOIA filing within 30 working days; mine was intentionally stuck in limbo for more than a year. The Army’s “Initial Denial Office” in Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, then arbitrarily and illegally dismissed my FOIA filing without explanation.  Many other FOIA requests involving West Point have been treated with equal disdain.

Why is this important?

• A West Point education now costs an estimated $250,000 per cadet, funded by our federal tax dollars;
• Drug abuse is a disqualifying factor for military personnel, especially officers;
• Taxpayers are entitled to know whether the offending cadets were permitted to graduate and serve as military officers;
• The U.S. military, by law and tradition, is subordinate to civilian control and therefore should be especially diligent when it comes to transparency and following federal law.

But West Point, under its current “leadership,” apparently believes otherwise.  Superintendent Lieutenant General Steven Gilland and his public affairs officer have repeatedly stated or implied that taxpayers and graduates are not entitled to know the fate of the overdose cadets.  Moreover, they have said that fulfilling my FOIA request would violate the cadets’ privacy, even though they know good and well that I explicitly did not ask for the names of the cadets involved, only their punishment.  Such duplicitous behavior, called “quibbling,” is prohibited by the Cadet Honor Code and cause for separation from the Academy.  But apparently setting such a bad example for cadets is now permissible by West Point’s leadership.  (By the way, this is the same public affairs department that, in a blatant political move, attempted to derail Pete Hegseth’s nomination as Secretary of Defense by falsely claiming he had never been accepted to attend the U.S. Military Academy as a cadet.)

For much of my career, military and civilian, I’ve been responsible for Crisis Management.  As such, I have successfully resolved many potentially costly, reputation-undermining events, including:

• Demonstrations over concerns that laser rangefinder testing and use might damage the eyesight of West German citizens;
• Saving my company’s nuclear power program after the Three Mile Island accident;
• Explosions, fires, oil spills and toxic gas releases, employee deaths and injuries, workplace violence and civilian evacuations.

In addition, I’ve trained hundreds of field employees, executives and CEOs on crisis management and communications.  So, I know whereof I speak.

West Point has failed miserably in handling the cadet overdoses, especially with respect to reputation management.  After initially acknowledging that cadets were involved in the Spring Break overdoses, West Point closed ranks and shut down any further public discussion of the incident, including the cadets’ punishment, if any.  I am told, but cannot verify, that Academy leadership selectively informed cadets and officer cadre as to the overdosers’ final disposition.  But taxpayers and graduates continue to be shut out.

This is not only wrong and unprofessional but also illegal.

To set things right, I recommend that the Secretary of Defense order the immediate public disclosure of all relevant documents related to this case, particularly those revealing:

• The fate of the overdose cadets, including whether they were permitted to graduate and serve as commissioned officers;
• If separated from the Academy, whether and how any were required to repay their educational tuition and boarding costs;
• Whether, how and why cadets and cadre—but not taxpayers and graduates–were selectively informed of the offending cadets’ final disposition; and
• Why West Point failed to follow federal FOIA law.

If serious deficiencies are identified, the Superintendent and others involved in the Academy’s Public Affairs and FOIA departments should be removed from office.

It is high time West Point stopped playing political games, adheres to federal law, and gets back on track in educating and training warrior-officers dedicated to the principles of Duty, Honor, Country.

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Tony Lentini is a 1971 graduate of West Point.  He served five years in the Army, attaining the rank of Captain, and spent his civilian career in public affairs and crisis management in the energy industry, eventually as vice president of two independent oil and gas exploration and production companies.  He writes on military affairs and energy issues.

In a country that may feel increasingly divided, there is still at least one issue we all can stand behind together: Washington shouldn’t be raising anyone’s taxes. Keeping more of the money you work hard for is key to preserving the American Dream, especially for Hispanic families in Pennsylvania.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) provided tax cuts that increased the standard deduction for families, lowered the tax burden on small businesses, and put more money back in the hands of Pennsylvanians. With 1 in 4 new businesses being Latino-owned and Latinos contributing $53.2 billion in economic growth to Pennsylvania, the TCJA was vital to many Hispanic families in the commonwealth. With the TCJA in effect, we saw the lowest overall unemployment rate as a whole in 50 years with the Hispanic unemployment rate reaching historic lows too.

But the TCJA tax cuts are set to expire at the end of this year. We are in for a whirlwind of economic hurt if that happens. If those tax cuts expire, Americans can expect a massive raise in their tax bills, lost jobs, and slowed economic growth. While we still reel from the destructive power of Bidenomics and record inflation, a giant tax hike is the last thing Pennsylvania needs.

Without the TCJA tax cuts, the average Pennsylvania family will see their taxes increase by over $2,300. That’s on top of the more than $28,000 of extra spending the average family is paying due to inflation since January 2021.

How are Pennsylvania families, who are already struggling to pay our rent, fill our gas tanks, and keep food on the table supposed to work with thousands less in our take home pay?

And the hardship won’t stop there. Our individual paychecks will look smaller and tax bills bigger, but we could stand to see our jobs or job prospects eliminated as well. With expiration of the TCJA tax cuts comes an expiration of tax cuts on small business owners as well.

Companies around the country announced job creation, bonuses, higher wages, investment in domestic production and more with the tax cuts in 2017. More than 8,600 jobs were added in Pennsylvania in 2018 alone, and Keystone State businesses cite the TCJA as the driver of job creation and employee raises. We can expect the inverse of that if taxes go back up.

Raising businesses’ taxes will cost the commonwealth over 33,000 jobs and lead to a tax hike for nearly 72% of Latino businesses. That includes businesses like my own small marketing firm and the small, Hispanic owned businesses in your own neighborhood. Prices will likely go up too to cover the increase in taxes.

If Congress doesn’t act, the TCJA tax cuts will expire at the end of the year and tax rates will go back to pre-2017 levels. Taxes will increase. Americans will have less money in their pockets. Unemployment could rise. Hispanic families will feel the squeeze of higher taxes on top of already sky-high prices.

Letting the TCJA lapse will be the largest tax hike in American history. But the solution is easy – pass an extension or make the tax cuts permanent. This is an easy win for Congress and has wide bipartisan support from the American people.

Recent polling shows a whopping 90% of voters believe tax rates should stay at current levels. The vast majority of Americans across the political spectrum believe that allowing the tax cuts to expire counts as a tax increase, which it is. 76% of voters say now is not the time to increase taxes. Amongst Hispanics, 80% believe they are paying too much in taxes, and 92% would keep rates where they are.

Members of Congress would be wise to listen to what Americans want, keep our taxes from going up, and seek our reforms that are pro-growth and pro-business in the future. By keeping taxes low, Washington lawmakers will make it easier for Pennsylvania families to enjoy increased opportunity and prosperity.

Last week marked 17 months since, under the cover of thousands of rockets it rained down on civilian communities in southern Israel, Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza launched a savage invasion of the Jewish state. On Oct. 7, 2023, the jihadists killed some 1,200 persons, mostly civilians, among them more than 30 Americans, and kidnapped 251 persons, mostly civilians, among them as many as 12 Americans.

By means of its surprise attack, Hamas’ Gaza branch sought to draw Hamas in Judea and Samaria and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon into a multi-front war aimed at crippling and ultimately destroying the Jewish state. Instead, by November 2024 Israel had inflicted heavy losses on both Hamas and Hezbollah and, with precision air strikes, had severely degraded Iran’s air defenses and destroyed Tehran’s ability to produce ballistic missiles.

Yet Gaza remains a battlefield and a nightmare. Despite Israel’s extraordinary military accomplishments, Hamas still stands, and the jihadists have exploited the ceasefire that went into effect on Jan. 19 to recruit, rearm, and prepare for renewed fighting. Meanwhile, Israel continues without a concrete plan for dealing with Gaza’s approximately 2 million Palestinians once major military operations end.

President Donald Trump’s radical plan is not concrete, and the administration has not offered a clue about its implementation. On Feb. 4, at a televised White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the president startled many of his own senior staff, caught Netanyahu off guard, aroused indignation among Europeans, and rattled America’s moderate Arab partners. In front of the world, the president affirmed a more extravagant version of the idea of moving 2 million Palestinians from Gaza – so that the 50,000 tons of rubble produced by the war could be removed and the territory’s infrastructure could be rebuilt – than the one he first raised in a Jan. 25 telephone conversation with Jordan’s King Abdullah II. Trump’s staff defended the proposal, Netanyahu pocketed it, Europeans scoffed at it, and America’s moderate Arab friends and partners unequivocally rejected it.

Within two weeks, despite – or because of – Trump’s grandiose plan to displace Gaza’s 2 million Palestinians and construct there a “Riviera of the Middle East,” Egypt announced that it was working on its own plan to rebuild Gaza. The Egyptian proposal takes for granted that Palestinians will stay put and that even if they wanted to leave, other moderate Arab states, starting with Jordan and Saudi Arabia and very much including Egypt, won’t take them in.

On March 4, at an Arab League summit in Cairo, “Arab leaders adopted a five-year Egyptian reconstruction plan for Gaza,” according to the Times of Israel, “that would cost $53 billion and avoid displacing Palestinians from the enclave.” The plan envisaged the eventual handover of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority but left unclear Hamas’ role. Hamas promptly welcomed the Arab proposal. On March 6, Israel and the United States rejected it.

Meanwhile, as of March 1 when the Israel-Hamas deal’s first phased ended, 33 Israeli hostages had been released, eight of them dead, in exchange for around 2000 Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands. Hamas continued to hold 59 hostages, of whom 32 Israel believes to be dead.

Discussions about the second phase, which would have included Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and the end of the war in exchange for Hamas’ release of the remaining hostages, never commenced. Israel accepted and Hamas rejected United States Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff’s proposal for Israel to extend the phase-one ceasefire through Ramadan (Feb. 28-March 29) and Passover (April 12-20) and for Hamas to release all remaining hostages. In the absence of an agreement, Israel stopped aid to Gaza and considered resuming military action “to pressure the terror group into making further concessions.”

As Israel determines whether to return to the negotiating table or the battlefield, it grapples with the anguish stemming from the nation’s bargain with the devil. Israelis will not forget – they have trouble pushing to the periphery of their hearts and minds – the ghoulish spectacle Hamas made of the hostages’ return. The jihadists paraded abductees on stages in Gaza, turned over emaciated kidnap victims, and sent back in coffins to Israel the brutalized bodies of three members of the Bibas family – mother Shiri, and sons Ariel, who was four, and Kfir, who was not quite nine months old, when Hamas ripped them from their homes.

In “The Untold Story: How We Lost in the Negotiations Despite the Military Victory in Gaza,” Eyal Tsir-Cohen acknowledges the “great happiness steeped in anxiety and sadness” with which Israelis have experienced the ceasefire and hostages’ return. He nevertheless urges his fellow citizens to look beyond the here and now, the assignment of blame for the October 7 massacres, and the imperative to return the remainder of the hostages. A former member of Israel’s hostage-negotiation team, Tsir-Cohen brings the big picture into better focus by examining where the Jewish state went wrong in the Hamas negotiations. An improved understanding of Israel’s mistakes, he argues, enhances the nation’s grasp of, and ability to counter, the looming threats.

Four “erroneous working assumptions,” maintains Tsir-Cohen, led Israel to overestimate its capabilities.

First, Israel’s political echelon and defense establishment wrongly assumed in the winter of 2024 that Israel military force would in the coming months swiftly and decisively weaken Hamas’ senior leadership. Notwithstanding Israel’s killing of Marwan Issa (deputy commander of Hamas’ military wing) in March 2024, Mohammed Deif (Hamas military chief) in July 2024, and Yahya Sinwar (top leader of Hamas in Gaza) in October 2024, much of Hamas’ core leadership fled underground – literally – and survived. This substantially diminished Israel’s ability to dictate terms at the negotiating table.

Second, Israel’s political echelon and defense establishment wrongly assumed that intensified fighting and mounting death and destruction in Gaza would open a rift between Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian population that would impel the people to drive out the jihadists. The error sprang from the belief that Gazans are Hamas’ passive victims, prisoners of a fanatical terrorist organization. Too few on the Israeli side appreciated how thoroughly Hamas’ jihadist spirit is woven into the fabric of Palestinian society and how tightly it is bound up with Gazans’ identity. Add to that massive humanitarian aid flowing to Gaza during the negotiations – some 250 trucks a day – and a population whose median age is 19.5 years, and Hamas’ replenishment of its ranks with young and willing Gazan recruits ceases to baffle. “In Gaza in 2025,” writes Tsir-Cohen, “there is truly no bottom to the barrel of terror.”

Third, Israel’s political echelon and defense establishment wrongly assumed that if military pressure compelled Hamas to come to the negotiating table, Qatari and Egyptian mediators would persuade the jihadists to compromise. But, observes Tsir-Cohen, “Already by February 2024, it had become clear that even if the mediators’ heads were in the West, their hearts remained in the Middle East.” The Qataris and Egyptians operated with a cool and calculating professionalism, taking no sides between Hamas who wished to destroy the Jewish state and the Israelis who wished to survive and thrive. Qatar’s two-facedness is well known, hosting both Hamas leadership in Doha luxury hotels and American forces at Al Udeid Air Base, “the largest US military installation in the Middle East.” But Egypt’s refusal to take Israel’s side despite Cairo’s dislike of Hamas – the Palestinian branch of Egypt’s enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood – should be a stinging reminder that unlike the logic of politics elsewhere, the enemy of one’s enemy in the Middle East is not necessarily one’s friend.

Fourth, Israel’s political echelon and defense establishment wrongly assumed that the Israeli government’s excruciating 47-minute film documenting Hamas atrocities – featuring footage shot by the jihadists’ GoPro cameras – would shock consciences worldwide, compelling nation-states around the globe to stand by Israel and encourage it to demolish Hamas. This, according to Tsir-Cohen, is the most painful error, and it derives in part from overestimating the Biden administration. From January 2024 a procession of intellectuals and diplomats, foremost among them from the United States, visited Israel, writes Tsir-Cohen, “with one question: ‘When will you Israelis withdraw from your positions and terminate the war?’” The Biden administration was hardly alone in deploring Israel’s refusal to put the cessation of hostilities ahead of defeating Hamas. “It is difficult to exaggerate the intensity, the frequency, and the urgency of the cries of pain of our allies,” reports Tsir-Cohen. Hamas heard those cries and drew the obvious conclusion. The Gaza jihadists realized that they needn’t agree to painful compromises because even Israel’s friends, despite the seven-front war that Iran was waging against the Jewish state, put the pressure for major concessions on Israel.

These grim lessons for Israel – about Hamas leadership’s elusiveness, Hamas’ power over Gazan hearts and minds, moderate Arabs’ ambivalence, and international public opinions’ cluelessness or rottenness – ought also to inform Trump administration thinking about the Jewish state’s strategy and Gaza’s future.