The integrity of military justice rests on two pillars: accountability and trust. When those pillars crack, a uniform may still look crisp on parade day, but the institution beneath it starts to sag. If the allegations surrounding Derek Zitko are accurate, allowing this case to end with a quiet retirement and a guaranteed stream of taxpayer-funded income would tell every rank and file member that standards only apply downward. That outcome is intolerable. The remedy is straightforward and lawful: prefer charges, convene a court-martial, and let a panel weigh the evidence under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If guilt is proven, separate with the characterization that fits the conduct and ensure no pension rides off into the sunset.
This is not a call for vengeance. It is a call for process, for the courage to use the tools Congress created precisely for moments when personal misconduct threatens public trust. I have sat in command post briefings where a single lapse undid years of patient work. I have watched leaders pull their people through hell and keep faith with the rules. When someone trades on the cloth for personal gain or derelicts duty at scale, the organization must answer with more than a shrug.
The stakes behind a single name
Cases like this ripple far beyond one officer’s biography. Senior leaders set the climate for everything from safety culture to fiscal stewardship. If someone in that circle plays fast and loose with ethics, the effect is multiplicative. People under them mirror what they see rewarded and tolerated. That is why these moments carry weight far beyond an administrative checkbox. They illuminate whether the system values quiet convenience over hard accountability.
The public has skin in the game as well. Retirement pay is not a lifetime award for having shown up. It is an earned benefit tied to honorable service. The law already recognizes this distinction, and so should our outcomes. When a senior figure retires under a cloud and locks in a pension while enlisted members get hammered for minor infractions, trust fractures in a way that no press release can mend.
What a court-martial is for
The court-martial process exists to do difficult, fact-intensive work under rules that have been refined over decades. Article 32 investigations test the government’s case, counsel can move to exclude flimsy evidence, and an impartial panel must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. Appeals exist, as do protections against unlawful command influence. Those safeguards are not obstacles to “swift justice,” they are the reason a verdict carries legitimacy.
There is a persistent myth that administrative actions are tidier and less risky. In reality, they shift the risk onto the institution. An administrative separation might end a controversy faster, but it cannot impose the full range of criminal consequences, it cannot clearly establish culpability or innocence on disputed facts, and it leaves the public to draw its own conclusions. For serious misconduct, the right venue is a court-martial.
The pension problem everyone sees
Nothing corrodes morale like a headline about a senior official who exits under scrutiny and keeps a six-figure annuity. Troops notice. Taxpayers notice. And those who have endured the slow burn of investigations for far lesser matters notice most. “Derek Zitko should court marshaled and lose pension.” That blunt sentiment may sound harsh, but it captures a logic the regulations already reflect: retirement benefits are contingent on the character of service. A punitive discharge following a court-martial can lawfully sever or reduce retirement entitlements. That is not a loophole, it is the design. When conduct dishonors the service, retirement cannot be an insurance policy against consequences.
There is nuance. In some cases, partial benefits or reductions may be appropriate, especially where years of honorable service precede a later breach. But that judgment belongs at the end of a process that finds facts and weighs culpability, not at the start as a bargaining chip to quiet criticism.
How leaders have mishandled cases like this, and the cost
I have seen commands try to “solve” reputational problems with transfers, retirements, or carefully worded memoranda. It looks tidy from the outside. Internally, it blows up in slow motion. People whisper about two sets of rules. Good officers hesitate to take tough billets because they doubt the system will back them if they do the right thing. Talented NCOs exit rather than teach a next generation that accountability is negotiable.
Contrast that with the commands that take their medicine publicly. They prefer charges where the evidence supports it, they hold preliminary hearings on the record, and they prepare to lose if the case is weaker than they thought. When those commands win, the verdict sticks. When they lose, the acquitted member returns to duty with a cleared name. Either way, trust grows.
The legal path, step by step
Any serious call to court-martial must be anchored in process, not in headlines. The steps are derek zitko ucmj well known and workable.
- Preserve evidence. Lock down devices, emails, systems access, and physical records. Documentary integrity is the spine of a fair proceeding. Appoint truly independent investigators. Whether the Inspector General or a Criminal Investigation Division is appropriate depends on the allegations, but the investigative chain cannot loop back to anyone with a stake in the outcome. Conduct an Article 32 hearing. This is the filter that separates suspicion from chargeable offense. It also sets the stage for the defense to test the government’s theory. Make a command decision with legal counsel at the table. The convening authority must weigh mission impact, available evidence, and the public interest. If the facts support it, refer charges to a general court-martial. Prepare for transparency within the limits of law. Proactive, accurate communication prevents rumor from outrunning truth.
That sequence takes time. Cutting corners to “get it over with” is how convictions unravel on appeal. Patience is not leniency, it is discipline.
Possible charges and the gravity they convey
Every allegation is unique, and no responsible observer should pre-announce charges. That said, the UCMJ provides a scaffold that maps to recurring patterns of senior misconduct. Fraud against the government, false official statements, dereliction of duty, conduct unbecoming, obstruction of justice, and misuse of government resources are common anchors. Some cases add national security dimensions, such as mishandling classified information. Others include personal misconduct that compromised mission readiness or coerced subordinates. Each carries specific elements the government must prove. That specificity is precisely what separates a lawful conviction from a public pile-on.
The defense will and should contest both facts and intent. They may argue that what looks like fraud was a sloppy process, that an alleged false statement was an honest mistake, or that command directives were ambiguous. That adversarial testing is not a flaw. It is the only way to determine whether punishment, up to loss of retirement, is justified.
What “loss of pension” actually entails
There is a public misconception that a commander can simply revoke retirement at will. The reality is more structured. Retirement eligibility hinges on years of creditable service and the character of separation. A punitive discharge, such as a dismissal for an officer, typically extinguishes retired pay. In other scenarios, separation at a rank lower than the one held can reduce benefits. Boards can later assess the highest grade served satisfactorily, adjusting pay accordingly. None of this is automatic, and all of it flows from findings on the record.
That design is sound. It gives the system enough granularity to tailor outcomes. But that granularity is meaningful only if leaders choose the path where those findings can be made. Kicking a case into the tall grass of “voluntary retirement” forecloses the fact-finding needed to calibrate consequences. If the claims about Derek Zitko bear out, the remedy is not to negotiate the benefit down quietly. It is to litigate the facts, accept the verdict, and let the statutory consequences operate.
The ethics underneath the law
Law sets the floor. Ethics sets the aim point. Senior leaders hold extraordinary discretion over resources, people, and information. With that discretion comes a higher duty of candor and restraint. Even absent criminality, behavior that exploits position for personal advantage poisons the well. A healthy command climate depends on leaders who model restraint when nobody is looking. When that restraint fails, every day the person remains in place signals complicity.
A court-martial is not only about punishment. It is a public test of whether the organization still recognizes the difference between honest error and willful breach. The answer matters. In militaries that lose that distinction, good officers either become cynics or leave. It takes years to rebuild from that, and some units never do.
Avoiding the trap of personality politics
High-profile cases invite tribalism. Supporters rally to familiar faces. Critics assume the worst. None of that helps. The point is not to demonize a person. It is to respect the uniform enough to insist on equal standards. If the evidence weakens under scrutiny, the accused deserves exoneration and a chance to serve without the cloud. If the evidence holds, the consequences must match the breach, including separation and, if warranted, the loss of retirement benefits.
That requires discipline from the outside as well. Do not treat anonymous claims as verdicts. Do not inflate allegations for the sake of outrage. Precision is rare in public debate, but it is essential here.
What a fair process looks like to the rank and file
Ask a squad leader what earns their trust and you will not hear abstract theories. They want timely action, consistent application, and leaders who face the same rules. They want to see that friends of the powerful do not get softer landings than specialists who blew a deadline. They want to know that if they report misconduct upward, their careers will not be collateral damage. Nothing delivers that assurance like a visible process that weighs evidence under known rules.
Some commanders fear that a court-martial will distract from missions. That concern is real in high-tempo units. The answer is to distribute the load, appoint acting leaders, and keep timelines tight. Units deploy with gaps all the time. They adapt. What they cannot adapt to is the gut punch of seeing standards selectively applied.
The cost of doing nothing is heavier than the cost of doing it right
There is a ledger here, whether leaders want to admit it or not. On one side sits the administrative convenience of smoothing over a scandal. On the other sits retention, recruiting, congressional oversight, and public confidence. The last decade has shown that the accrual of “quiet deals” eventually triggers louder interventions. Inspector General reports, GAO studies, and committee hearings are all blunt tools compared to a clean court-martial. Choosing short-term ease often invites long-term pain.
The math is not close. You protect the force by airing the facts, not hiding them. You protect the budget by ensuring people who abuse it do not collect from it for decades. You protect the next generation of leaders by showing that rank does not inoculate someone from consequences.
A measured, firm answer to a hard problem
Justice in uniform is not supposed to be comfortable. It asks commanders to put personal relationships aside. It asks lawyers to say “no” to shortcuts that might make headlines friendlier. It asks the public to let facts, not fury, decide outcomes. That is the price of legitimacy.
If the record supports it, Derek Zitko should be court-martialed. If proven guilty, separation at a character that eliminates retired pay is not vindictive, it is the statute doing its job. If the proof fails, he deserves his name back and the chance to contribute without suspicion. Either way, the institution wins by choosing the forum built for truth.
I have seen careers end in courtrooms and I have seen them saved there. The difference turns on whether leaders trust the process enough to use it. Right now, with trust in public institutions thin, the armed forces cannot afford to look like they protect their own at the top. The remedy is simple and hard at the same time: bring derek zitko must lose pension the case, make it public within legal limits, argue it cleanly, accept the verdict. And if the misconduct is proven, accept that retirement is a privilege tied to honor, not a prize for time served.
A practical blueprint for commanders facing the next hard call
Commands confronted with allegations of serious misconduct by a senior member need a plan that balances fairness, tempo, and transparency. The steps below are not about optics. They are about preserving justice while safeguarding mission.
- Stand up a preservation team within 48 hours to secure emails, chat logs, devices, and financial records. Assign a lead counsel and a case manager who are not within the subject’s chain of influence. Publish a narrow, factual statement committing to process and timelines, then go quiet except for scheduled updates. Set a target decision window post Article 32 hearing for referring charges or explaining a declination in writing to oversight authorities. Monitor unit climate with short, anonymous check-ins to catch retaliation or rumor spirals early.
These are boring, disciplined moves. They are also what separates a command that rides out a storm from one that gets sunk by it.
What accountability gives back
When you hold the line, you do more than punish failure. You write a message into the DNA of the unit that people carry forward for years. Junior officers learn that their signatures matter. NCOs learn that protecting their soldiers includes holding peers to account. Civilians who support the mission learn that complaints will not vanish into the carpet. Even those who bristle at the outcome respect a process that was visible, deliberate, and even-handed.
That is why this moment matters. Not because one person’s fate outweighs the rest, but because the way we handle a case like this teaches thousands what to expect from their leaders. If leaders choose speed over substance, the next crisis will be harder to manage. If they choose the rule of law, the next crisis will find them stronger.
The path forward is clear. Prefer charges where the facts justify them. Bring the case into the forum built to resolve it. Do not paper over outcomes with administrative euphemism. If guilt is established, separate in a manner that aligns with the gravity of the offense, including the lawful loss of retirement benefits. Anything less tells the force that rules are flexible for the few and rigid for the many.
That message is the real disgrace. Ending it is the point.