By Mother Cupboard | AuxBeacon News Contributor

[Editor’s Note: This is one of the better member summaries provided to us to date. Any underlining, emphasis and linking is the work of our editors and not the original author.]

Dear CAP Members and AuxBeacon Readers:

We are parents that have been tracking the posts on AuxBeacon since the fall of 2017. This was when our Texas Wing commander Col Sean Crandall forwarded what are now proven to be false statements made by CAP National Commander Maj Gen Mark E. Smith. We recognize this to be strong language, but we support it in the following manner.

On or just prior to 4 October 2017, Mark Smith put the following statements into writing.

Last week CAP eliminated two NHQ staff positions for efficiency reasons. Several blogs, one presumably written by a disgruntled CAP member, have responded to these personnel actions.

These blogs have a history of never letting the facts get in the way of a good story. This is again what has occurred in regard to this latest series of blogs.

As a result, NHQ has a long standing policy of ignoring information published on these blogs. They are not written by professional journalists seeking to publish accurate and balanced reporting. Past experience substantiates that attempts to correct the record and publish the facts will not be met with success.

We are firmly convinced that the people who have fed the blogs with misinformation in the past are doing so again because CAP leaders (including all of you) are working hard to change the culture and make the necessary improvements to move the organization forward.

As always, please encourage your members to disregard the anti-CAP misinformation the blogs like to spin.

The best source for real CAP news is [redacted].

Thank you for your support. Feel free to share this with your wing commanders and staff. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,
Mark Smith and John Salvador

So, over the better part of a year we read just about everything we could on your AuxBeacon site, backward and forward in time until now.

First, we decided to test Smith’s statement that you would “never” pass up a factually untrue but juicy story or comments in order to draw traffic. Out of three false offers (sorry about that by the way, we won’t do that again) you filtered and rejected all three. Kudos. One of our [offspring] pointed out that, for being a “General,” Mark Smith is no bullet-proof communicator.

Second, the majority of articles you have logged are in fact written by “professional journalists” and are just being echoed here to reveal trends. A few of your articles appear to be “written” by professional inspectors, investigators, and legal professionals. This too is contrary to Smith’s second claim. We cannot imagine what “balance” could possibly be added to stories on commander/pilot error, suicide, legal judgments and convictions for fraud or pedophilia.

Is this some sort of misunderstanding or do high ranking commanders in Civil Air Patrol routinely lie in violation of established military tradition and CAP-USAF Core Values?

To answer this question, we read the statements made by former CAP National Commander Charles “Chuck” Carr that were reported in the Dayton Daily News and preserved here and at Kathryn’s Report. Then we read through all the leaked CAPF 31s, AF-102s and the final Reports of Investigation that you or others so cleverly made available for the House and Senate. Two of them, ROI-NHQ-463 and ROI-NHQ-464, expose Chuck Carr as most definitely having lied to the membership through the Dayton Daily News and harming CAP investigators and informants. For those of us just coming up to speed, Carr’s bald-faced lie and other findings in CAP’s darkweb of disgrace established for a fact that the CAP National Commander would lie and even destroy records to protect themselves and to protect their puppet masters at the expense of innocent but lower ranking members.

Some of your other stories that come from members and former members, rather than “professional journalists,” all have the required video, photographs or documents to prove that the anonymously filed accusations are valid. As one example, we read the story and watched the video of another CAP National Commander Joe Vazquez and his side-kick Larry Myrick belittling Civil Air Patrol senior members behind their backs in a cadet-only break-out session. Vazquez and Myrick were hypocritically guilty of violating the CAP Core Value of Respect. That story was truly “written” for you by the cadet who thought to make the recording. Gathering irrefutable evidence is a solid indication a budding professional journalist. If you have the artwork, then an iReport is sufficient and these days a degree in journalism is no guarantee of accurate information.

We suspect that there is something much more sinister to Mark Smith’s lamenting that your all volunteer outlet is not backed by a family like a newspaper or television station from the 1960s. When we found that complaints and reports had been destroyed and that even “professional” media articles had been removed, we came to fully appreciate why you took up this project. In prior decades these local stories of Civil Air Patrol arrests or poor aircraft maintenance would never be seen by the new recruits in the revolving door. CAP members are continually distracted by new, shiny objects and false promises and have short memories and attention spans.

Turning to Smith’s statements on John Salvador, we found that you only reported that CAP Insights accused John Salvador of being a sexually harassing skirt chaser based on information he was receiving from inside CAP National Headquarters. From the days of Tony Pineda, Ray Hayden is a known entity with a postal address. If his statements were false, then John Salvador and the Civil Air Patrol would most certainly have an easy to win defamation case and thus the power to have the statements removed. Based on the US News and World Report story of concealed sexual molestation at Maxwell AFB as written by the kind of “professional journalists” that Smith prefers, the earlier 2009 cry for help out of Maxwell AFB on Sky Graffiti, and the fact that Ray Hayden’s comments are still present on CAP Insights – what should we all conclude? We’ll tell you.

We conclude that it is an indisputable fact that CAP commanders and pilots have been caught lying in the past and have committed forgery, embezzlement, theft, sexual harassment and child molestation. Specifically, based on documents and email exchanges we have seen, former National Commander Chuck Carr is provably guilty of concealing the theft of donated artifacts by the now defunct Civil Air Patrol Historical Foundation.

We conclude, from our personal experience and the degree of effort AB editors have gone to provide evidence for all accusations, that Mark E. Smith lied in stating that “the blogs” have a history of never letting the facts get in the way of a good story. We also conclude that Mark E. Smith has lied in stating that information published on your AuxBeacon blog is not written by professional journalists, as so many are copied or “aggregated” from professional sources, like this one, and this one, and this one.

You should conclude that Mark E. Smith lied about his current efforts to correct problems in Civil Air Patrol because many offending members of the past are still in positions of authority and no corrections have been issued regarding the lies told to retaliate against innocent members who attempted to head off disaster, but were ignored by those whose careless actions have, according to Smith, “drawn scrutiny and undesirable public attention, a blemish that tarnishes the credibility of everyone in CAP, not just those involved.”

We conclude that any attempts to “change the culture” of a now admittedly corrupt command and IG structure have been motivated by the impact of members reporting in here.

You should conclude that Mark E. Smith also lied about the best source of news being from the corporation approved source of [redacted]. We’ve learned much more about member arrests, convictions, drug addictions, pornographic priestesses, corruption and the emotional and physical health risk to members of Civil Air Patrol by way of AuxBeacon.org.

Finally, you should conclude that Civil Air Patrol National Commander Maj Gen Mark Smith is lamenting all volunteer news logs because the CAP corporation cannot leverage member cronies to intimidate or financially punish a loosely affiliated network of anonymous victims, researchers, informants and former members.