The National Guard’s top human resources officer has been removed from his role after the Army’s watchdog uncovered troubling actions.
Maj. Gen. Eric Little, now the former director of manpower and personnel official for the National Guard, was fired after an Army Inspector General investigation, Army spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith confirmed to The Hill on Wednesday.
The Inspector General “has concluded its investigations into allegations against Maj. Gen. Eric K. Little with several substantiated findings,” Smith said in a statement. “Maj. Gen. Little received appropriate administrative action and is now currently serving as the Special Assistant to the Chief, National Guard Bureau. We consider this matter closed.”
Smith declined to say what the findings were or the exact administrative action the Army took against Little and when.
But Don Christensen, a former chief prosecutor for the Air Force now at the Solomon law firm, told The Hill the Inspector General found that Little “failed to uphold Army ethics and model the core leader competencies by demonstrating counterproductive leadership.”
General officers who lose their jobs are typically delegated to a special assistant role until their retirement.
Little, who had been head of manpower and personnel since October 2020, was found to have led an office that was “a toxic cacophony of misconduct,” with one of the complaints filed against him just days before he was promoted to two-star general, USA Today first reported.
He was removed from the role, which oversees the Guard’s sexual assault prevention and equal opportunity programs, after the Inspector General substantiated allegations that included “outright sexism” that go back several years, according to USA Today.
What’s more, a second investigation was opened against Little by the Inspector General while looking into the first complaints against him, according to Christensen.
The military has long struggled with sexual assault among service members, with Congress imposing several major reforms in the past year.
Among those changes is using independent lawyers to review and prosecute sexual assault cases in the military as opposed to unit commanders. President Biden late last month signed an executive order that was the final step to pulling such authority away from commanders.
Congress had long pressed for such a shift, arguing that commanders could be biased in deciding whether to prosecute or punish their troops for sexual assault, though top military brass resisted, arguing it could lead to a breakdown in unit cohesion.
It remains to be seen whether the new law will curtail such violence in the ranks, with reported incidents climbing by about 1 percent from last year, according to the Pentagon’s annual account on the issue, released in April.