An inspector general’s report has determined that an Army officer faced command retaliation for sharing information with Congress about the Navy’s jet-fuel tainted tap water in Hawaii in 2021.
According to the report, Maj. Amanda Feindt was restricted from lawfully communicating with congressional members or the Defense Department Inspector General.
The major lived in military housing on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, Oahu, with her husband and two children when a spill from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility leaked into a nearby aquifer, contaminating the Navy’s water distribution system.
Thousands of residents near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam were relocated as the Navy flushed the water system.
Feindt and her family relocated to mainland Hawaii at that time. She filed a reprisal complaint with the inspector general’s office in February 2022, which advocated for residents by contacting military and elected officials.
In her complaint, Feindt alleged that Air Force Col. Kenneth McAdams, chief of staff for the Special Operations Command Pacific at Camp H.M. Smith, where she was assigned, began to retaliate against her after she spoke out.
“He made my life a living hell,” Feindt told Stars and Stripes in a text message Monday. “He berated me, denied me access to my attorney during behind closed door conversations, wrote terrible performance evaluations ahead of my [lieutenant colonel] Board, launched a security clearance violation against me, and denied me a [permanent change of station] award when I left the unit on a medical compassion reassignment after my family was sickened at Red Hill,” she wrote.
Feindt took leave in late January 2022 through February spending some of that time calling and meeting with members of Congress about the water contamination problems.
McAdams pressured her to end her leave and advocacy.
Feindt asked McAdams what he would do if he were in her position.
“I would drop my kids off at a daycare and I would get my ass back to work,” he said, according to the IG report.
McAdams has retired from the Air Force. He declined to provide testimony or participate in the inspector general’s investigation. According to the report, investigators were unable to reach him for his input on their conclusion.
Feindt’s husband and two children were the lead plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit seeking damages from the water contamination. In May a federal judge awarded the family an estimated $61,000.
Feindt is part of a separate lawsuit filed on behalf of active-duty service members that has not yet gone to trial.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
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