CNN Interviews Walz’s Former National Guard Command Sergeant Major Over Service Disputes

COATES: First Sergeant, thank you so much for joining us this evening. I think everyone is really noticing the nuances of this issue. So I want to get your take on this. You said in an interview with The Washington Post, “Nobody wants to go to war. I didn’t want to go, but I did. My biggest complaint is that he let his unit down.” Now, he had the right to retire after 20 years of service. I think he served 24 years. Why do you say he let his unit down by exercising his option to retire?

JURIN: Well, there’s a lot going on, and I think we have time tonight, Laura, to walk you through this whole sequence of events, because there’s a lot going on, and people don’t really understand the sequence of events.

So I want to start back in the fall of 2004, when the commander of the 1st Brigade, 34th Infantry Division, Brigade Combat Team and I received what’s called a procurement notice, or NOS, that we were being alerted to go to Iraq within the next year or so, so let’s start preparing our teams, forming our teams, starting the process.

We then met with one of the guys from the 125th Field Artillery, introduced ourselves, talked to them, and told them what was going on, I don’t know the details, but we’ll get to it shortly.

Around February of 2005, my supervisor, commander, colonel, and command team scheduled a meeting at Camp Ripley, Minnesota, where the battalion sergeant major, battalion commander, and staff all got together to begin a team building event with that concept.

Governor Tim Walz, or the Chief Petty Officer at the time, was in that meeting. After the meeting, he wanted to talk to me, and we sat down and we had a one-on-one. And he said to me, “I just want to let you all know, I’m running for Congress. I haven’t been elected or appointed yet, but I just want to let you all know.” And he issued me a warning order. That’s what we call a warning order.

COATES: Hmmm.

JULLIN: The next month, I think it was March or April of 2005, about a month or so after that, we had another meeting at Camp Ripley. Tim Waltz was there this time. We had a meeting. We all discussed what we were going to do, when, where, what we were going to do, what the upcoming missions were, how we were going to handle it, how we needed to build our team. Again, throughout this entire period, we were doing what we called team building to move forward into Iraq.

After the meeting, Tim Waltz came in and sat down with me because I had spoken to him before and I said I needed to know his answer. He came in and we sat down and talked. He told me I wasn’t nominated but I would be moving forward with the battalion. I said, okay, let’s go. We’ve built a team, and we’re starting to build a team there.

A month or so later, we had another meeting at Camp Ripley in June. I walked into the team meeting hall and Tom Behrens was there.

COATES: Hmmm.

JURIN: I asked Tim what he was doing, and he told me he was quitting. The question that arises from this is, first of all, why did Tim Waltz quit without consulting me, even though I was his next level leader.

Coates: Excuse me, but you use the word “quit.”

JULIN: Or a person in charge or a supervisor.

COATES: I don’t want to interrupt you, but excuse me, Sergeant, I want to be precise. You use the word “resign.” So he still chose to retire, right? He didn’t go abscond or get unfairly fired in any way. He chose to retire. Okay.

JURIN: Well, the words that come to my mind are, he quit and went from there. Yes, he chose to retire. Let’s go back two seconds. He chose to retire, and I didn’t find out until June.

COATES: Hmmm.

JURIN: That’s where it went.

When I learned this in that meeting, my focus was on building the team, moving forward, we have to do this.

Coates: Absolutely.

Julin: The other problem is that the guy who approved this was two levels above me in the NCO corps, and he should have had Tim Waltz call me back to discuss why we were moving forward now, or not, even though he had already told me we were moving forward.

COATES: Okay, Sergeant. Now, when I think about that timeline, I think the way you explain it is important, because it certainly sounds like he had a right to resign. You’re saying there was a procedure where he should have gone to you for approval, but he went to somebody else, not you, which created a degree of confusion.

But given the circumstances that led to his decision to retire, how do you feel about politicians and others saying that he was, in the first place, a thief, or that retiring was an abdication of duty? How do you feel about the experience that you’re telling us now being politicized?

JURIN: The fact is, the rank that he held at the time was either a sergeant first class or a conditionally promoted rank to master sergeant, so he was very familiar with the rules, the policies, the procedures and how to deal with any problems that were coming up.

If this had been a low-ranking early enlisted individual, it would have been a different story. We would have understood that he did not understand the procedures and procedures. Tim Walz knew the procedures and procedures. He moved around me, beyond me, to basically get somebody to back him up, to get out of there. It was just him doing a back door procedure against me and the battalion there. The real focus was…

COATES: Your concern is… Oh, go ahead. I want to keep this question short, Sergeant, thank you for your time. But your…

Julin: Please.

COATES: What concerns you most is his failure to speak to you or, as we discussed, his decision to retire, which he had every right to do, because that’s the question that a lot of people have as to whether he did anything wrong in his job or did anything to upset you personally.

JURIN: No, as I said before, he did something wrong during the mission. He knew the policies and procedures and how we contacted higher-ups to address issues or discuss issues and concerns. Again, going back, he told me, “No, I’m going to move forward, we’re going to move forward with the battalion, and we’ll go from there.” So, I believed what he told me he was going to move forward. I believed he was going to move forward. He bypassed me, but he should have addressed that issue with me. That way, he could have helped me with some issues on the outside.

COATES: Sergeant, this is really — I’m sorry, I don’t want to interrupt you. Sergeant, please finish your point.

JURIN: He bypassed me. In fact, he probably noticed. I probably would have said, “No, it’s too late, go ahead,” because we had already been notified of the procurement. And the other little thing people say is, he hadn’t been notified yet. Yes, he had been notified.

Now, there’s one more step, and that’s something called a stop loss. 90 days before the actual deployment, we received an order, and at that point there’s something called a stop loss, and if you’re in that position, unless there’s something really big or a process, you’re going to move forward regardless.

COATES: Hmm, okay.

JURIN: — so that you don’t have to go on the deployment itself. So there’s a window of opportunity there. People say he didn’t know he was going to be deployed. Well, he knew he was going to be deployed. Did he already get his orders? No, he didn’t at the time. COATES: Hmmm.

JURIN: Shortly after he retired as a master sergeant — I want to use the word retired — he retired and was eligible for full retirement after 20 years, but he withdrew from the military academy at that point.

COATES: Well, Sergeant Major, I want to hear your opinion. Sergeant Major, I want to be considerate of your time and the audio is starting to cut off a little bit, but I want to thank you, because I think you’ve clarified a lot of things for people and provided more information. The question is, how are the voters going to evaluate that? Thank you very much, Sergeant Major Doug Julin.

Julin: Yes, thank you.

COATES: We reached out to the Harris Waltz campaign for comment and did not hear back. I want to continue the conversation with the panelists here now. We’ve heard a lot from Master Sergeant. This is a topic that people are talking about a lot.