Bigamy, Forgery, Lies: Accused Colonel’s Epic Flameout -- By Spencer Ackerman, Danger Room, Wired

(Army Col. James Johnson, now facing a court-martial for charges including fraud and bigamy, passes out gifts at a ceremony in Afghanistan, October 2010. Photo: DVIDS)

 

Once, Col. James H. Johnson was an honor graduate of West Point, on his way to a storied career capped by his command of the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. While leading the brigade, he had an affair with an Iraqi Kurdish woman that cost him his command, his career, and his honor.

Next week, Johnson will face a court-martial in Germany. He pleads not guilty to a host of charges ranging from bigamy to making false statements to financial misconduct. He is one of the most senior officers to be charged with misconduct during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

It all started in 2005, when Johnson, a married man, met a woman in northern Iraq — also married — while in battalion command. Allegedly, to win her over he used thousands of dollars in government money over the years to pay for a variety of favors for her family, and falsified receipts to cover his tracks, as Nancy Montgomery recounts in Stars and Stripes.

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