Sunday Interview with Brig. Gen. Tammy Smith: ‘I did my work on Army installations, but my life occurred off of the installation’

Brig. Gen. Tammy Smith has risen through the Army Reserve ranks since graduating from the University of Oregon in 1986.

A career Army officer, she spent most of the last year at Fort Benning commanding the 98^th Training Division. She is now with the Eighth Army in Korea directing the relocation of its headquarters. With that reassignment, she was confirmed by Congress on Wednesday for promotion to two-star general.

Recently, she sat down with Ledger-Enquirer senior reporter Chuck Williams and photographer Mike Haskey to talk about her career — and her personal life.

She has spent 30 years in the Army, the majority of it living a double life concealing the fact that she was gay. Since the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in 2012, Smith and her spouse, Tracey Hepner, have lived their life in the open.

Here are excerpts of that interview, edited for length and clarity:

Q: First of all, congratulations on your new assignment. Where are you going?

A: I am on my way to be in Eighth Army. I’ll be the deputy commanding general for sustainment.

Q: And the Eighth Army is, for those who don’t know ...

A: It’s currently in Yongsan, Korea. My responsibility when I arrive there is going to be helping with the transformation in Korea of moving the headquarters to Camp Humphreys, Korea.

Q: Which brings us to the next question. You are a logistical expert, right?

A: I’m at least a logistical officer. ... My basic branch is as a Quartermaster and I’ve had previous assignments as a logistics officer, but the thing about being a reserve officer is that you’re not always one-tracked. I have bounced around a little bit because of my reserve duty, so I’ve been a logistician, I’ve been a regular straight-up operations officer, and I have actually spent quite a bit of time as an HR officer. ...

Q: What do you know about logistics that you wished everybody else in the Army knew?

A: Teach the maneuver guys that it doesn’t happen magically. ... There’s a tendency to just forget about the planning for logistics. The better that the maneuver commander is at planning for logistics, the more responsive that logistics commander can be and the more successful, of course, the outcome of the combat engagement is going to be.

Q: You’re a reserve officer. Many people don’t realize there’s a pretty significant reserve component on Fort Benning, correct?

A: There is. We have the reserve center that is out at Harmony Church and in that we’ve got my headquarters — or my former headquarters. It’s the one-star division headquarters that’s responsible for providing drill sergeants to the Army training center, and we’re all up and down the East Coast. But we’ve also got an engineer unit in there. There’s some National Guard that is in that particular reserve center, and some of the full-time support for one of our brigades is in that center.

Q: Does it make sense for such a large reserve component to be located somewhere like Fort Benning?

A: There’s a lot of benefits to being co-located at an active Army installation. ... Inside the wire, we have some force protection advantages that some of the units don’t have outside the wire.

Q: What’s the difference in Army Reserve and National Guard?

A: ... The Army Reserve is Title 10, falls under the law Title 10 just like the regular Army so they’re a federal force. The National Guard is a state force under Title 32, but can be federalized when needed for federal operations.

Q: So reservist and guard are not the same thing?

A: ... Well, they’re the same in that they are — the members are — citizen soldiers. ... The Commander-in-Chief for the National Guard is the governor until such time as a particular unit or person is federalized. For the Army Reserve, we are always federalized. We do not have an association with the state.

Q: You were ROTC at The University of Oregon in the early ’80s. Why go the ROTC route?

A: It was completely accidental. I didn’t have any money for school. I was reading my Future Farmer’s of America magazine and they had this little insert in there that said, “No money for college? Let the Army show you how. Send for free information.” That free information was an ROTC scholarship application.

... When I think back about that now, it dawns on me that I was reading the Future Farmer’s of America magazine, which was a boy’s magazine, essentially, and I should never have known about the opportunity for ROTC.

Q: How many women were ROTC in your class?

A: ... I’m recalling there was only about one or two other women in my commissioning class, but it wasn’t a huge commissioning class. We had maybe 22 cadets.

Q: When you were going through ROTC, the University of Oregon was talking about eliminating the program, right?

A: That’s correct. About the time that I came into ROTC, and I started in about 1982, because the Department of Defense had put into place a policy that prohibited people who identify as gay from joining the military, the military became out of sync with the university’s non-discrimination policy. The University of Oregon had a non-discrimination policy that included sexual orientation. ...

Q: You wrote a letter trying to keep ROTC on campus, didn’t you?

A: I did. The professor of military science asked me to write that letter because I was a freshman and I was one of the scholarship recipients.

Q: You were the first openly gay general officer in the United States Army. You talked eloquently at an LGBT event at Fort Benning about your struggle and I want to get into a little bit of that. Let’s talk about the Army’s policy in the ’80s and even early ’90s. What was the Army’s policy on homosexuality?

A: Prior to about 1993 before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which was a law, there was only policy from the Department of Defense. The policy was pretty clear that if you were someone who identified as a homosexual or had committed a homosexual act, then your life was simply incompatible with military service. The policy required a soldier who enlisted to literally state their sexual orientation. ...

Q: How did you deal with that question on your form?

A: I never got that question on my form because I was an ROTC cadet. The paperwork that we filled out to contract as cadets was different than an enlistment form and so there was no questionnaire going through there. So, I was never asked the question about whether or not I was a homosexual.

Q: You never had to declare. You’ve talked to a lot of people who did have to declare. How hard was it for them to not accurately answer the question?

A: I think a lot of it has to do with time and when that person got asked the question. If they got asked that question in the ’80s — you think about what was occurring in our nation during the ’80s, that you weren’t welcome to be a homosexual anywhere in America, we’re moving into the beginning of the AIDS crisis — I think that a lot of people simply were comfortable with saying no when the answer was yes because they knew that there weren’t a lot of places in America where they would be welcome. The desire to serve, or in some cases the economic advantages for joining the military, proved greater than what someone felt to be a personal lie to have checked no on that box.

Q: How did 1993 and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” change your military life?

A: For me personally it made it better, because what changed significantly between what was the policy before, and then what became law because Congress put it into place, was that it acknowledged that there were people who identified as homosexuals who were in the military and who would join the military. What it took away, though, was — because there was an acknowledgment that we existed — it took away the don’t pursue, don’t harass part of what the policy allowed.

Prior to the law, the Criminal Investigation Division almost had a mission to make sure you identify those homosexuals and make sure that you get them out of the military. They would have sting operations. They’d go to gay clubs and pose as gay. They’d go to the officer’s club and pose as gay to try and entrap people. It was perfectly OK for commanders during health and welfare to read people’s diaries and to pull things in that might be incriminating. They would do that because, like I said, you were committing a criminal act in a way — you were violating the (Uniform Code of Military Justice). ... After “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was put into law, that pursuit part was dropped.

Q: So, from the time you joined up until “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” did you know other gay soldiers?

A: Yeah, the whole time I was in the military, we were able to find each other just as it is anywhere in the world. We had this underground network and we had our life off the grid. So, you had a group of friends who identified as LGBT and you formed these strong friendships in that particular group.

Q: You talk about a life off the grid. That meant you had to live, essentially, a double life.

A: You had to live a completely double life. There were choices that you made to hide your life. For example, I have never lived on an Army installation until the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” with the exception of everybody who has to do it when they go to (Officer’s Basic Course), to the basic course. I always lived off Army installations. I never socialized on Army installations. I did my work on Army installations, but my life occurred off of the installation.

Q: How good at compartmentalization do you have to be to pull that off?

A: You have to become an expert at it. You have to be really good. The fear was always in the crossing of these two worlds is that you would end up putting yourself in a position where somebody would ask an innocent question that you might accidentally answer that leads to a follow-on question. ...

Q: If on Monday morning someone said, “Captain Smith, how was your weekend?” what would you say?

A: I would deflect. ... I’d say, “Well, you know, I read my field manuals. What’d you do?” Just try and flip it around. You become really kind of a master at deflection and changing the subject and moving the conversation to a different way because you never wanted the conversation to penetrate the personal web that you had built around yourself.

Q: Let’s go through “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” You pretty much maintain the same compartmentalization in your life, it’s just you knew they weren’t going to be snooping into your ...

A: ... They would still discharge you, even without the snooping if somebody had what was credible evidence that they thought that you were gay. The definition of credible might vary from commander to commander. Credible to one commander might be, “Wow, she sure has short hair. I wonder if she’s gay?” ... Where another commander will go, “That’s a personal choice how they wear their hair.” We still had over 18,000 people discharged after “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was put into place. I think when you run down the numbers, too, that there was a disproportionate number of women who were discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” when you compare that to the percentage of women who are actually in the service.

Q: You, for 25 years, have been living this double life. In 2008, what’d you decide to do?

A: In about 2008, 2009, it became too hard for me to deal with anymore and I decided to retire. ...

I loved the Army so much, but I no longer felt like my values were aligned with the Army.

Q: What was your rank and your job at that time?

A: I was a colonel and I was working as the deputy of human capital for the Army Reserve. I was assigned to the Pentagon.

Q: You and Tracey had met each other by that time, right?

A: We had. We met in 2004.

Q: So you were in a committed relationship at that time as well.

A: Absolutely, yes.

Q: When you turned in your papers, what was your internal justification for it?

A: My internal justification was that I no longer had this alignment of integrity. ...

I thought that I could solve my values conflict problem that was causing me the distress by retiring. Then, because I was retired, I would be in a position where I could help advance the repeal conversation.

Q: What changed?

A: Admiral Mullen was called to the Senate to give his best military advice on whether or not “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” remained a law. He said just what I was feeling. He said personally that “I don’t understand how we can put our service members in a position where their personal integrity is violated in order to serve.” It was just amazing to hear a military senior leader say that out loud.

Q: Do you remember where you were and what your reaction was?

A: I was home watching it on C-SPAN. They had replayed it. Tracey had been down in the Senate chamber room and what she described to me is that, when he made that statement, she heard people around her literally start crying. I had that same reaction when I watched it on C-SPAN when he said those words.

Q: That was basically when the wheels really started turning for repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” right?

A: My personal opinion is that that statement shifted the national conversation.

Q: While “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was still in effect before 2012, Tracey met Admiral Mullen, right?

A: She did. We lived in Arlington, Va., and I was deployed to Afghanistan. Tracey went down on Memorial Day to Section 60 in Arlington Cemetery. We would do that often when I was home on Memorial Day, Veteran’s Day, to be able to interact with the families of the fallen soldiers who were buried there from Iraq and Afghanistan. ... While she was there, she saw somebody walking through wearing a white uniform. She realized that it was Admiral Mullen. ... She thanked him for what his words had meant to me and described for him ... how I had decided then to withdraw my retirement and to continue to serve because of the hope that he had given me. She had essentially outed me to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Q: What did Admiral Mullen do next?

A: What Admiral Mullen told her was, “Well, you know, whenever I meet a family member and I find out that their service member is currently deployed, if I am visiting theater and I’m able to visit with that service member, I try and catch up with them.” ... True to his word, I got a phone call from protocol at U.S. Forces Afghanistan saying, “Hey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs’ office called and they want to confirm your location that he wants to talk to you.”

Q: Is that part of this, from your perspective, that not only were you treated with dignity and respect and you can talk about your life, but now your family is also treated in the same way?

A: The most amazing thing about Chairman Mullen, his words and how he followed up with us as a family is it was the first time that a senior officer serving in uniform actually gave validation that my service was as significant and as honorable as any other service member, and that was absolutely life-changing for me to hear that.

Q: Do you consider yourself a pioneer?

A: I don’t know that I do. I know that I, because of time and place — the timing of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the timing of my promotion — that I was put at a crossroads where I had a choice to make about whether I was going to be honest about who I was or whether I was going to continue to compartmentalize because that’s what I was used to. I don’t know that I’m a pioneer because what I did was I simply fell back on and relied on Army values.

Q: Do you feel like what you did, the way you handled this from the start to now, is in accordance with Army values?

A: I believe that I do. I know that I’ve frankly gotten the question, “How could you have served while lying? Did you not violate integrity by lying all of those years?” When I look back at the original policy that was designed to make you not exist as a person ... I didn’t buy into that who I was as a person was not good enough to be in the military. I knew how my parents had raised me. I knew what my character was. I don’t believe that I violated integrity because I did not let the institution take my dignity. ... I knew that I was who I was and I was not violating service values so long as I served to the best of my ability.

Q: When you were promoted to general officer, what did you ask your spouse to do?

A: I asked her to participate in the promotion ceremony and to pin on one of the stars with my father.

Q: What did that moment mean to you?

A: First, it was absolutely amazing to think that I had been asked by the Army to be a brigadier general and all the responsibility that comes with that. But I was also terrified because I was so used to living this compartmentalized life that I knew that having Tracey pin that star on my shoulder being there as my wife was going to take me out of that compartment. At that time, I really didn’t have the skill set to know what to do with that.

Q: What skill set do you need to do that?

A: It turns out, perhaps, I did have the skill set when I look back on it. I didn’t know how to move from being compartmentalized to just being. It took some practice for me to do that and again I think that anytime a person is in a time of crisis in their life, they fall back on their values. I think I moved through that — how do I go from being completely totally closeted? — to just being. I think Tracey’s help, of course, but also the reliance on my values as I move through that.

Q: Let me ask you this: When, hopefully many, many years from now, when your obituary is written, what do you want the first paragraph of your obituary to say?

A: She was a kind person with an innate sense of fairness.

Q: Not she was a general officer? Not she was the first openly gay general officer in the United States Army?

A: No, no. I think that your character is your core. There are things that you become. I mean, there are titles that you earn along the way, but I think at the end of the day, what you die with is your character.

This story was originally published July 16, 2016 at 8:35 PM with the headline "Sunday Interview with Brig. Gen. Tammy Smith: ‘I did my work on Army installations, but my life occurred off of the installation’."