KILLED - Episode 10: The Cadet

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

Men's Journal ditches a deep dive into the Air Force Academy's flimsy rape case against Lt. Douglas Meester. Featuring Max Potter.To submit your KILLED story, visit www.KILLEDStories.com.

I had been a senior staff writer at GQ Magazine, which then was under the editor ship of Art Cooper, who was something of a legend. He had been there for close to 20 years. In the movie version, that guy would have been played by Sean Connery, you know, black turtle neck, black pants. They had a Balagre goose vodka on the desk. I was there for a little over two years and in February 2002, Art Cooper retired. I think really he was retired. There was competition coming at GQ at that time for magazines like Max and FHM and to oversimplify the perception they needed new blood in there to run the book. And it didn't involve me.

I was in my late 20s. Our first son had just been born and we were pregnant with our second child. And you know I was suddenly unemployed and I didn't know what I was going to do. suddenly unemployed. And I didn't know what I was going to do. I sent a handful of story ideas to Bob Wallace, the top editor at Men's Journal. Men's Journal at the time, it was similar to GQ, but with like an outdoorsy bent. I would say they had a fair amount of, you know,

journalism with a capital J. And I go in, you know in to Bob's office. I was like ready for my first day of school with my little notebook and my printout of my story ideas and I'm ready to discuss them. And I forget how he did it, but essentially he's like, yeah, we're not interested in any of those. And I was like, okay, what am I doing here?

He said something to the effect of like what we'd really like to have is a piece on the Air Force Academy scandal. And I was like, yeah, who wouldn't, right? Like that was 2003. That was a huge deal. The past five months have been the most tumultuous in the history of the US Air Force Academy of our four separate investigations

into the conduct of male cadets toward women at the Academy. Rape is acceptable, and don't say anything about it. I remember walking out of there and saying to a friend, like, yeah, he wants a piece on the Air Force Academy. It's like, great, you know, it's like, Warren Peaks, you know, like,

can I give me a little more, like, what do you want? And he's like, you know, you know, like, can I give me a little more, like, what do you want? And he's like, you know, you can find something, you'll find it. And I was like, okay. the podcast that brings dead stories back to life. Season 2 Episode 10 The Cadet Sorry, I made the mistake of letting my dog in and he was acting up by grinding my socks off it nevermind. Okay, I'm back.

Please welcome back to Killed, a man who needs no introduction, but is gonna get one anyway. My name is Max Potter. I'm a contributing editor to Vanity Fair magazine. Last season, Max and his former writing partner, Alex French, told us about their trials and tribulations, reporting on a powerful Hollywood director for Esquire. They laid out what they believed to be a matrix of how they perceived this culture. They literally did a diagram, like a chart.

Brian Singer was at the center of that chart. We talked about the singer piece last time. Yes, that means I've been killed more than your average bear. Nothing since Singer, so I'll keep my fingers crossed. That may be Max's most recently killed story, but it was hardly his first. Let's wind the clock back to the early aughts. Shall we? Hello, I'm a Mac and I'm a PC.

Are you now in the radio, Shack Hubello, we're new from Sketchers? I flag! Max's then wife is pregnant with their second son. And let's just say that Max is on the wrong side of employment. I was looking for work. You know, I needed to make some money. And I was really anxious. When men's journal editor, Bob Wallace

suggests a meaty topic, rape at the Air Force Academy. topic, rape at the Air Force Academy. In a decade, there was like something north of a hundred and forty reported cases of sexual assault or rape from cadets at the Air Force Academy. And a lot of the well-founded criticism was that not a single male cadet had faced any disciplinary uniform code of military justice charges related to this. Just as I was reading sort of getting up to speed on the data points and the metrics of it all, it was announced that this kid Douglas Meister was going to be the first ever cadet tried in the military court system for rape and I thought well wouldn't it be great if I could do the story and get the relevant parties to cooperate and so I just started trying to get the story of that alleged crime. And that's how I started. And I reached out to Doug Meister's father.

We talked for weeks. It could have been longer. And ultimately it was Doug Meister's father who encouraged him to speak with me. And I flew down the Florida and found myself sitting across from this kid. There was a lot riding on this for the Department of Defense, the Air Force, the Air Force Academy. I mean this was the case and this was the kit. And it was a big deal. At the time it was a big deal. 20-year-old Douglas Meester was set to be the first Air Force cadet ever prosecuted for cadet on cadet rape. It found guilty, he faced a possible sentence of life in prison.

Max remembers that the Meesters seemed like they'd been shouting into a void when he'd reached out. Surely, they'd been advised by lawyers not to speak to the press, but they also couldn't wait till after a trial to do so. That would be too late for Douglas, who also happens to be gossip girl actor, late in Mester's older brother. The Mester family didn't have a lot of faith in the military justice system at that time, and I think their suspicions were very well-founded. If you just looked at the general mix of what the Air Force Academy could have taken action on, it really just was odd that this was the one they picked. And he knew this, the Measters knew this, and even the alleged victims' family knew this. I remember talking to her mother and she felt like the Air Force Academy and

the Air Force itself specifically picked this case because they wanted to eviscerate the alleged victim. Their strategy was if we can eviscerate her credibility, if we can show that this was in quotes, you know, a false accusation. That then thereby undermines potentially the case of 140 plus others. Like this was pretty insidious. I think the Mesters knew this. I think they felt like they were headed toward, you know, basically being thrown into the woodchipper.

And they were looking for anything that could help get the truth out. They weren't afraid of getting into the details. I think what they were afraid of was not getting into the details, I think what they were afraid of was not getting into the details and being scapegoated. It was really bizarre that that same sentiment was shared by the alleged victims family. Like it was almost like neither side wanted this case to move into a military court.

That in and of itself is compelling. In other words, it was too late for the alleged victim to bow out. That ship had sailed. You know, Jacqueline, the alias of the alleged victim, she didn't have control. Nobody had control except for the Air Force brass. She had filed a complaint and it had triggered the process. And she would have been called as a witness. She would have been put on the stand and based upon the documents, internal documents that

I got a hold of at the time that were not public. She herself gave, quote, that more or less indicated, you know, he kissed me. I kissed him back. She said, quote, I know for a fact that he probably thought what we were doing was consensual because I know that I was responding to what he was doing. I.e. if he would kiss me, I would kiss him back." End quote. The whole thing was just bizarre. And if you looked at the internal documents,

the Air Force's own investigators on the case, they recommended that no court martial be applied to Douglas Meester. And the guy who was in charge of the Air Force Academy at the time, he overrode the recommendation and he decided to push this case forward on his own, unilaterally. You know, it's one of those stories where the more

you get into it, it becomes like an x-ray of what's really happening. Yet you're sort of like checking yourself like, wait, am I am I a crazy conspiracy theorist? something's not right here. This is Killed, the podcast that brings dead stories back to life. The more Max reported, the more the thrust of his story became clear. The whole thing was a sham. Orchistrated theater intended to exonerate the US Air Force Academy while annihilating two of its own. When I embarked on this, I thought this dude is cooked, right? Like, if under these circumstances,

this is the first cadet. The Air Force is gonna put on trial. He's got to be like so clearly unequivocally without question. There must be like polaroids like this guy is going down And it was the opposite My working hypothesis going in was Boy oh boy, you know Here's gonna be a story about the Air Force Academy finally doing the right thing and putting somebody on trial who should be on trial with an alleged victim who really wants this to go. And it was none of that. It was a show. Max was going deep. Behind every door was a new

shadow element to a story that had so recently felt just like words on a page and now felt like this living breathing ecosystem. In the course of my reporting, I talked to someone who was a volunteer for essentially a rape crisis center, the sexual assault crisis center and this is in Colorado Springs and his name was Richard Stites. I meet Richard on the auspices of reporting, you know, this Air Force Academy story. He was probably at the time in his late 50s. There was a sadness to this guy.

Just exuded sweetness and a broken heart. I mean, it was obvious. When you meet somebody like that, at least I do, you can't help but wonder like, what makes a heart like that tick? And we end up back at his family's home. And he had a stack of documents on the dining room table. And he starts to talk about his son, Nolan Stites, who in 2000 had started bootcamp for the United States Army at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. And his son was like the poster boy for the kind of kid you would want to go into the army.

By all accounts had the personality of a boy scout, was an added hunter. He was an army of one this kid, but he also had a code of ethics and a sense of gentleness. The kind of kid you want to be in the army. Nolan Stites goes in like July of 2000, and he suffers a breakdown. And the abridged version is in word, and indeed this kid Nolan Stites begged, and I mean begged for mental health assistance. And instead, what he got was essentially

this sort of code red. His drill instructors basically encouraged his fellow trainees to help Nolan get his ass in gear. And it got to the point where the drill instructor said, Private Stites, Nolan's drill sergeant shouted, according to three people who were present that day. The men are losing sleep. I'm not going to have a tired soldier get hurt while training,

because he's been up watching you. If you're going to kill yourself, get it over with. We'll even open the window for you. Like that, that's a quote. They had agreed that this kid should be sent home, like he needs help. But meanwhile, because of like red tape and bullshit, he was there for at least another 10 to 11 days. And the whole time he was basically being mentally harassed and ridiculed,

and having drill instructors save this kind of stuff to him, any kill themselves. Then in there, Max made Richard Stites a promise. I turn him and I said, hey, I'm here to report this story on the Air Force Academy scandal. You know, that's how I found my way to you. But I promise you, if it's remotely possible, I'm gonna do this piece. I'm pretty sure I first sent it to Tom Foster who was then my editor at Men's Journal on this Air Force piece.

And he's like, yeah, for whatever reason, like this isn't right for us, but let me send this to Wildena at Rolling Stone, you know, like down the hall. And shortly thereafter, it was assigned by Rolling Stone. So now I have the two pieces going. The Air Force Academy story was completed first, I turned in a draft. It definitely went through an edit, maybe two. What happened was that Bob Wallace was replaced and a new editor comes in. So I remember calling Tom and saying,

hey man, what does this mean for the Air Force piece? And I remember him saying something like, get your suit and tie ready because when this drops, you're gonna be on the cable news networks. And I was like, great. I've been basically unemployed at this point for close to a year. And this was why I got out of bed in the morning. Like to report this story, like it gave me purpose.

And I'm like, okay, great. So this thing's gonna run. Cool. And then shortly thereafter, I get a call from Tom. And he tells me the piece has been killed. Kill, kill, kill. And I was told that it's not a reflection at all on the piece. It's just new editor-in-chief.

He wants to do his own thing. So it was like nothing personal. And it's always personal. As I'm looking around for a home for it, essentially there was a change in Rolling Stone and I wasn't nearly as far along on the private states piece, but then that one's killed. Holy shit. And I'm like, okay. Ha. I had been canned from GQ.

I have a one-year-old son, another child on the way. I have spent the better part of a full year reporting these two stories. You know, my lovely wife at the time had taken a part-time job at Home Depot like to help us cover the rent and the bills. And there were one or two occasions where she reasonably, and I need to emphasize that. Like, reasonably said to me, like, what are you doing?

Like, there's these two stories, you know, even if they get published, it's not enough money. What are you doing? And I really didn't have a logical rational explanation for her. It's just like, I got to do these stories. And I think I was put in that moment on these stories for a reason that I wasn't going to let it go. This is Killed, the podcast that brings dead stories back to life. Max Potter had not won, but two dead stories.

And by God, if he wasn't going to do everything in his power to resurrect them. I knocked on all the typical New York magazine doors. I remember I went to Esquire. I didn't even get a response. This was during the time Media B-Strow was a thing. And oh, by the way, I was also looking for a job and they had like a killer jobs board. And I saw this one posting for if memory serves, it was for a writer at a city magazine in Denver called 5280. Max first sent the listing to a buddy, but then he had an idea. Wait a tick. Both of these stories are based in Colorado. Maybe this guy or the editor who ever

was running this fucking thing would be interested in these pieces. And so I sent him to this guy, Dan Brogan, and I know that he read conduct on becoming. The story about Douglas Meester. And he said yes to that on the spot, pretty much. And Stites was maybe in a first draft, but essentially he'd said, well, publish both. And it was amazing. I had just been just a casualty of sort of this revolving

door of top editors. And here was a guy, Dan Brogan, he recognized, in my opinion, what these pieces were, which was journalism. And pretty much without blinking, dude says, I'd be proud to run these stories. And so then I said to him, hey, you know, more or less, this isn't why I reached out to you,

but I see you have a posting for a senior writer. And basically, I thought like, if this 5280 that he's running is committed to this sort of journalism, hey, fuck New York, I'm gonna go where you can do good work. And that's how that started. Max would eventually move to Denver

and become the executive editor of 5280, where he worked for nearly a decade. But the Measters and Richard Stites, they weren't exactly thrilled by the change in publication. You said, what magazine was it now? I wasn't going to bullshit them. If the Air Force Academy story had run in Men's journal, it's inherently on a larger platform, you know, particularly in like 2004, when magazines still carry a great amount of weight. And come on, Rolling Stone for private sites, Rolling Stone's a BFD.

And so now what I'm telling them is, hey, they're gonna run at 5280. They were disappointed, they were disappointed. There's no two ways about it. But Max urged the Measters to stay the course. These were Douglas's first on the record responses to the allegations. Getting published was getting published.

Yeah, they were disappointed and I just I tried to convey to them what I believed and what I believed is having your story out in full is a good thing. There was a time pressure. If they had any shot at having the case against their son reconsidered, they'd need the story to run before prosecutors could schedule a preliminary hearing. The Meester Peace ran first because that was fully baked and that ran in February, March 2004 in 528. And Stites ran in June, July, 2004. They were like trees in the woods initially. You know, I remember Dan Brogan saying something like, you know, the tragedy here is, is that if Rolling Stone

and Men General had run these pieces, each of these subjects would have gotten the national attention that they deserve. And I remember saying to him distinctly, you know, let's give it some time here. These pieces really just haven't had time to percolate. And, you know, I still have faith that journalism matters. Three months after Max's peace was published in the March 2004 issue of 5280, the rape charge

against Douglas Meester was dismissed. In a pre-trial deal, Meester pled guilty to three lesser charges. Dare election of duty, conduct unbecoming an officer, and in decent acts. He was fined $2,000 and remained a cadet in the Air Force. I remember my phone ringing and it's Doug Meister senior, the dad. Obviously the day was dramatic, like we all knew it was going on and I stepped outside that back door into the alley. And he conveyed to me very emotionally with tears. He could barely get the words out. He said, I just wanna say thank you, they dropped all the charges against my son.

And I could be wrong, but I think that was the right decision. The pieces would each go on to be nominated for a National Magazine Award, the highest honor in journalism. This was a small mom and pop magazine. And the admissions fee is, you know, not insignificant, right? And I remember going to Dan saying, hey, are you cool if we submit these? And he's like, yeah, go ahead. I didn't think they had a snowball's chance

because they're coming from a magazine that like, no one had heard of. But winning in as me at that point doesn't really fucking matter. You know, when I die, let's hope that's a way off. I believe I had a positive impact in that reporting and that fact finding and that presentation of truth mattered in a real way. Every published story, plant seeds, in the minds of its readers.

People who walk around with them in their heads, fixating over one detail or one image. Stories circulate, and they often contain messages only a few people notice. Like another dead, whose son died during boot camp and who kept running up against closed doors due to something called the Ferris doctrine which indemnifies the government from lawsuits and about which Max only touched on in the private state's peace.

I couldn't really go under the hood on that at that time, it was almost like a distraction. I remember saying in to Richard, like, I'm gonna circle back to this. And 20 years later, that's pretty much what happened. Two summers ago, I get a LinkedIn message from a Marine, father, a former investigator for the Oxnard Police Department, a former LAPD cop, who

tells me that he lost his son, like less than two days after sending him to boot camp. The information that he's been given about the circumstances of his son's death does not add up to him as an investigator or as a human being. And the reason he's reaching out to me is because he's running up against an obstacle called the Ferris doctrine. He found me because his daughter found a piece that I wrote almost 20 years ago that mentions Ferris doctrine and near as he can tell him one of the only people that's written about it, contact me if you're interested.

And here 20 years later, you want to talk about fate right 20 years later the one fucking piece of unfinished journalism business that has stuck with me all that time I get this LinkedIn message right away I pretty much decided on the spot like, here we go. In December of 2022, Vanity Fair published Max's reporting about the Ferris doctrine, an obscure legal decision that has prevented active duty service members from suing the federal government for wrongful injury or death occurring outside of combat for over 70 years. If when Rolling Stone decided they didn't want to do

private sites and I couldn't find a home for it and I gave up, that piece never runs. 20 years later, I don't do the vanity fair piece and I don't go under the hood on the fairies doctrine. That never happens. It's that cheesy cliche in life, right? Like, you don't really have a choice of how life comes at you, but you have a choice on how you respond. And if an editor tells you your piece is killed and you accept that for whatever reasons you accept it, then it's killed. If you don't, you don't. Killed is an audio chuck production created and written by Justin Harmon, edited by

Alistair Sherman with assistance from Ian Mont, story production by Amanda Fitzsimons and Samantha Leach, with fact checking by Barbara Keane and research from Lydia Horn. You can find links to all the published stories featured on the first and second seasons of Killed at KilledStories.com. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve? you