Step into the captivating world of Annie Morgan, a trailblazing former Air Force JAG officer whose journey from rural Pennsylvania to representing high-value detainees at Guantanamo Bay will leave you inspired. In this episode of Dog Tag Diaries, Annie shares her unique perspective on balancing her passion for justice and her roles as a twin mom and adjunct professor. Join Captain Kim as she explores Annie's experiences defending airmen and navigating the intricacies of criminal justice. Hear her powerful stories, and uncover the profound impact her military upbringing and commitment to community have had on her life and career. Don't miss this insightful episode that sheds light on the resilience and dedication required for military service.

Annie Morgan Twin Mom, Adjunct Professor and a Senior Military Defense Attorney at the Law Offices of David P. Sheldon, PLLC, bringing over fourteen years of expertise in military and national security law. Her distinguished career spans roles at the Department of Defense, Department of Treasury, and most notably as a Defense Attorney within the Military Commissions Defense Organization, where she represented the alleged USS Cole bombing mastermind and made history with her examination of the CIA's torture program architect. A former U.S. Air Force JAG Corps officer, Ms. Morgan has shaped military law through several landmark cases and currently serves as a non-resident expert at the Eisenhower Institute and an adjunct professor at Gettysburg College. She holds an LL.M. in National Security Law from Georgetown University Law Center and a J.D. from George Washington University School of Law. Learn more: Law Offices of David P. Sheldon PLLC

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What's it like to defend high value detainees at Guantanamo Bay, represent airmen in criminal cases, and balance it all as a twin mom and adjunct professor? Annie Morgan's incredible journey through military service and her passion for justice will leave you inspired and wanting more. Tune in for an unforgettable conversation. Welcome to Dog Tag Diaries, where military women share true stories. We are your hosts, captain Kim

And captain Dakota. The stories you are about to hear are powerful. We appreciate that you have joined us and are eager to learn more about these experiences and connect with the military women who are willing to share their stories in order to foster community and understanding.

Military women are providing valuable insight into their experiences, struggles, and triumphs. By speaking their truth, they contribute to a deeper understanding of the challenges they face and the resilience they demonstrate.

We appreciate your decision to join us today to gain insights and knowledge from the experiences of these courageous military women. Thank you for being here.

Meet Annie Morgan, a former Air Force JAG officer and current senior military defense attorney. Annie's career has been a testament to her unwavering belief in the constitution and her commitment to justice. With experience defending airmen and representing high value detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Annie brings a unique perspective to military service and the legal system. She's also a twin mom, an adjunct professor of national security, and recently took up sailing at the age of 39. Oh my goodness. You are such an interesting woman, Annie, and thank you for being on Dog Tag Diaries.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah. I am so curious about you. You are such an accomplished woman, and I love to learn about, like, who you were as a little girl. So let's start there in your childhood and those early influences.

Yeah. So I grew up in rural Pennsylvania. I come from a military family. My two big brothers, who are 16 and 15 years older than me, my earliest memories are them going to boot camp. And, you know, there's an embarrassing vignette because I'm learning how to send letters for the first time. Right? Because my brothers are at boot camp. And so for far too many years, I thought there was a state of misery because my big brothers were in boot camp in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

Leonard Wood, Missouri. Me too.

So I didn't, you know, four years old understand the humor behind State of Missouri. So I grew up with that in the background, and I come from a family that was heavily involved in the church. My dad preached. I was surrounded essentially by people who were living embodiments of community service. I was raised in an environment where there was a moral obligation to make your community better. And I think it was really those two influences that shaped me from the youngest age. I grew up knowing I wanted to eventually be part of the military. I wanted to do what my big brothers were doing, and I've taken that sense of community service really seriously through the choices I've made in my life.

It is important, and I hope I'm raising my children that way, that you have a moral obligation to make where you are better.

I love that you've had that foundation as a child because not everyone gets that. So what were some of the experiences that you had as that you remember? Or how about some of your most memorable ones as a community and serving?

The beauty is in the everyday. Right? It's Yes. The things that stick out to me are going with my mom to renovate the church parsonage Mhmm. Or taking up a collection because somebody's family had a health emergency. Right? And this is before the Affordable Care Act and things like that. And so understanding that misfortune befell people and what you do when there's misfortune is you come together. Whether it was, you know, from a young age getting sent out with my family snowblower to, like, take care of all of the elderly sidewalk elderly resident neighbors' sidewalks or just sort of being there as part of that community. Like, it was an expectation of who I would be.

Yeah. Did you feel, like, a warm sense of love and acceptance growing up?

Yeah. I grew up in a family that was really committed to community. And then also, I was really fortunate from a young age. I really believe kids are who you tell them they are. And from a young age, you know, I had this incredible group of educators who saw something in me and took me aside and spent special attention on me and told me I was good and I was smart. I don't think that I was any more special than any other child. I was just really fortunate to have people around me who believed in me, and that, I think, allowed me to really believe in myself.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. What a true gift, Annie. At such a young age, what a true gift to have that instilled in you. And so you said one of the influences for going into the military were your two brothers. Were they both in the army?

They were both in the army. They both joined the Pennsylvania National Guard and then eventually took billet as AGRs with the Pennsylvania National Guard. And so my whole life and they're still AGR. My oldest brother is getting ready to retire this year. And so my whole life, I saw them. And whether that was going into combat in Iraq or whether that was going to work on engineering projects within the state or responding to hurricane Katrina, the background was always watching them. And, you know, and I thought they were so cool. I, you know, I wanted to be like them.

I wanted to do what they were doing. And, also, like, the running joke is that I was smarter than my brother, so I joined the air force. So and I actually got my offer for my I you know, I was a a direct appointee through the I became in as a JAG, so I was a direct appointment. And I got my offer for direct appointment when my brothers were actually serving at Camp Taji in Iraq. You know? And I can still remember, you know, my mom was not keen on the idea of sending a third kid into the military while two of her children were in a war zone. And I can remember them actually having to call my mom from Iraq and tell her, like, it's okay. It's the air force, and she's a lawyer. So and it I don't think I've ever appreciated that phone call until I became a parent and was like, of course, she didn't want three babies in the military.

Of course. I always say it's, well, not more tough, but the unknown. Like, when you're in the military, you know what you're there. You know what's going on. You know your mission. But when you're back home, that person waiting for the phone calls and wondering what the heck is happening every day, that had to be so tough on your mom.

I can only imagine. Yeah. And then ultimately, you know, they talked her down. I joined, and I'm so glad I did.

Yeah. Where did you go to college?

So I did my undergraduate at Gettysburg College, which is a small liberal arts school in Pennsylvania. It's actually where I teach, which is such a cool experience to go back and teach where you went to school. I did my JD through the George Washington University School of Law, and then I did my, masters of law in national security through Georgetown University Law Center.

Wow. What an accomplishment. Let's talk about that. You served as a uniformed officer in JAG and later as a department of defense civilian attorney.

Mhmm.

And you also specialize in criminal justice. This is the interesting part, representing airmen in trouble and high value detainees at Guantanamo Bay. I need to ask you. Okay. So first of all, please fact check me on inaccuracies because I had to do some research on this. But on Guantanamo Bay, it's in Cuba and on the naval station of Guantanamo Bay.

That's correct.

And it was established under the Bush administration?

The detention facility was established under the Bush administration. And there had previously been a detention facility there during the Haitian refugee crisis in the nineties. So there had actually been existing infrastructure. And then during the Bush administration, the idea was to make the persons that we detained sort of outside the bounds of any kind of US criminal jurisdiction. So these could be expeditionary legal proceedings. Right? The thought was we would get this wrapped up in about a year, and that hasn't happened. You know, you still have we had quite a few detainees repatriated last week, which was a pretty huge accomplishment for the Biden administration. But you still have over a dozen gentlemen who are detained in Guantanamo Bay and have been, by and large, since 02/2006.

Wow. Can you describe for me and the viewers what it was like the first time your boots hit the ground in that military prison?

Look. I am a defense attorney at heart. I do this because and it sounds corny. I do this because I believe in the constitution. I believe in in the sense of right and wrong. But we are all prone to our biases. Right? And so I was a junior in high school during nine eleven. I am the generation that joined because of nine eleven.

And what I had grown up as just knowing as fact was that the persons detained in Guantanamo Bay were the most dangerous individuals on Earth. You know, I don't I don't mean to sound ridiculous when I say that, but, like, but this was idea that I was gonna walk into this room and this individual who I didn't know very much about, who I was gonna represent. You know, I don't have a background in Islamic studies. I don't know a ton about my client was from Yemen. I didn't know a ton about Yemen. And my fear is that, like, I'm gonna walk in this room and this guy is gonna be ten feet tall and bulletproof because what had been bred into me my whole life was fear. And I don't think I'm unique, and I think that anyone who's grown up in a post September 11 world has a certain amount of fear around particularly men from certain countries, particularly in The Middle East. And so I walk in, and my client is and I only know this in hindsight because of some of the litigation I did.

My client is an inch and a half shorter than me and weighs about a hundred and thirty five pounds. I mean, we're literally the exact same size, and that's not what I was told. And the first thing he does is gives me this giant hug. And so that doesn't square with sort of a fundamentalist who wants to kill me. His first reaction to me walking in the room was to hug me. You know? And it was a really good teaching moment for me to realize that, like, humans are humans. When I had taken this job, and there's sort of a whole backstory of how I end up in this job, but, like, I didn't know what the expectations were on me. I was going to be, you know, a small blonde white woman going in to represent a September eleventh associated terrorist.

I actually represented Abdul Rahim Al Mashiri, who was alleged to be the mastermind behind the USS Cole bombing. So a little bit force.

Yes. Which we'll talk about as well because that was a suicide attempt against them, and that was October. Right? 10/12/2000, and the USS Cole was just they were stopping to refuel.

And then the suicide attack. Yeah. And so you have two gentlemen laid in, you know, in a speedboat essentially go across the harbor. And it's a Saturday morning, and they are refueling. And they're taking the you know, the trash boats are out, so it's a little bit of a chaotic scene. And you have this boat come across and it connects, and it where it connects is essentially the mess. And so the enlisted mess. And so the reason that the casualty count is so high on the USS Cole, and it's a small miracle that ship doesn't sink.

Right? But the reason the casualty count is so high is because it hit during the lunch hour. So you had all the enlisted members on the ship lined up for chow. So you had that, and it was a sucker punch. Right? You know?

And just to give some reference of the USS Cole, it's actually a guided missile destroyer of the United States Navy.

The sort of the interesting part about it is that the security situation in Yemen, because we were trying to forge diplomatic relationships with them at the time, the security situation, the threat assessment was so low. And so that's something that, like, modern day I don't think any of us that are grown up or served to modern day could imagine going into Yemen and it being at a diminished threat assessment or diminished threat condition. Right? It's sort of hard to imagine even considering Yemen to be an ally or a stable country. And so my client is alleged to have masterminded that, right, which is the what I think a lot of people don't understand is, particularly my generation, is we think of September 11 as being this isolated incident. We don't actually think about the fact that there had previously been the suicide attacks in Kenya and Tanzania. We don't think about the USS Cole bombing. We don't put it sort of in the larger context of what had happened for the decade before September 11 that it wasn't this exactly this kind of surprise attack that we've maybe been made to believe it was. And it's even interesting now because when I came on to the USS Cole case, my earnest answer is I didn't remember it happening.

I was 15 years old when the USS Cole was bombed. In what universe does a crime that occurs when you're 15 years old in what universe do you end up as a defense attorney on that case twenty years later? Right? You know, I didn't know what happened when I was 15, and then I have this sort of glancing interaction. After I graduated law school, I had an internship with the US embassy in Athens in Greece. And the first time I hear about the USS Cole is actually because the ship was on its first deployment back to the Middle East since the bombing, and it pulled into the Port Of Piraeus. And so the ship's captain invited embassy staff to come and take a tour of the ship. And so, you know, here I am at the end of college. Of course, I said yes. Right? Like, that's a great opportunity.

It's a really cool thing. But that's how I learned the story of the USS coal bombing. There's no, again, things that are never gonna happen. There's no universe where I learned that story as a 21 year old, and then someday it becomes very relevant because I get hired to represent that individual. And so then it goes back into the, like, you know, you had asked about, like, meeting him for the first time and sort of realizing I had my own biases that I was bringing to the table because of the constellation of circumstances that had brought me up. Instead, what I found was this remarkably kind, generous soul. And it's a challenge. Right? Because here I am.

I'm another American. This is an individual who has been in US custody since 02/2002. He was the second person that was captured by the CIA when the CIA stood up the rendition of detention and interrogation program. He spent four years being shuttled through a series of CIA black sites around the world, being subjected to quite literally the worst forms of torture known to mankind. These are techniques that go back to the days of Agamemnon, and we know they don't work, and we know they don't really re result in reliable intelligence. And yet he spent four years being subjected to just this brutal torture. And then comes to Guantanamo Bay, which is arguably better. However, he is now in long term detention without any kind of meaningful trial, without any kind of meaningful due process.

And yet, you know, he gets assigned these American attorneys, and he's supposed to just blindly trust them. And so that's a huge challenge walking into that room of, how do I make this person realize that I'm on his side that I'm gonna do right by him? And it would took a lot of really careful and deliberate forging of that relationship, and we got to a great place. The story that I love to tell because I think it sort of illustrates the humanity that exists in my client in particular, he loves American pop music. And so when I walk in the room, he had a particular affinity for Michael Jackson. When I would walk in the room, he would say, Annie, are you okay? Are you okay, Annie?

That's one of my favorite songs. That's so cute that he correlated that. Oh my goodness.

Yeah. And that's when you sort of realize that, like, humans are humans. Right? We if any one of us was judged for the worst decision we made on the worst day of our life, we would all be under the jail. Aren't we all entitled to someone being willing to stick up for us? And that was a really powerful lesson for me.

Oh my goodness. That so that must have been yeah. One, such a great lesson. Two, like, how in the world, after all the trauma and suffering that that man went through, what were some of the things that you did to allow that trust barrier to start forming or to start breaking down?

And part of it, you know, I would be remiss if I didn't credit the attorneys who came before me. One of the challenges at Guantanamo Bay is that there's a huge amount of turnover in defense counsel. So whereas in a normal criminal proceeding, you would have the same attorney typically from tip to tail, in Guantanamo Bay, my client has cycled through iterations of defense teams. But a lot of why I was successful and was able to be successful was because my client because of those prior attorneys who had really broken down barriers and and revealed to my client that we were on his side. And then for me, it was revealing the, like, humanity in me. Right? Talking about my family, talking about my life back home that, like, I am a person too. And where my client and I really bonded, and I maybe that's not the appropriate, where I was really able to see him for the first time. I had the opportunity to conduct a examination of doctor Bruce Jessen, who was one of the two CIA architects behind the CIA's torture program.

I mentioned earlier I'm the same size as my client. One of the things I was able to do with doctor Justin, my client's torture had actually been videotaped, and the CIA had destroyed the tapes of it. I was the same size as my client. I was actually, during his examination, able to get doctor Justin off the stand, and he demonstrated torture techniques on me in open court. And so because how else do I explain to this judge what had happened to my client? Here I was. I had worked on the case for years. I had read these documents. I had seen the humanity in him, and I still couldn't quite grasp what it was like.

And it wasn't until I did that in court demonstration that I had this literal break moment of, oh my god. I didn't get it. And it was still I was still in a safe environment. No one was gonna keep me in a confinement box. But it was the first time that I got it, and I can remember the most powerful moment I had with my client was meeting with him immediately after that examination and sitting in a room with him and crying because I finally understood the tiniest bit of what had occurred to him. And for him, he understood that I was truly on his side. Yeah.

What a powerful moment. It sounds like you had a few of those with him.

I really did. Guantanamo Bay, it's forgotten in a lot of ways. I think if you ask the average American, they're unaware that it exists, unaware who's there, unaware that these trials have actually not occurred. It's been in the news a little more recently, so maybe that's resurged it just a tiny bit. But it really it really has forgotten, and it will always be some of the most powerful work, if not the most powerful work, I had the least to at least shape some small part of the world and to try and fix something that I think, at least I hope, most of us would acknowledge we got so wrong in the wake of September 11.

Yeah. What's your personal thoughts on because the administrations so Bush's administration implemented this, and then Obama's came in and wanted to do away with it. And then Trump's came in and was like, no. We're keeping it. And then Biden's like, nope. At the end of my administration, it's gonna be gone. So you have these back and forth. What are your thoughts on that?

I don't think anyone's gonna spend the political capital to close Guantanamo Bay. But I think there is a phenomenal New York Times reporter who covers Guantanamo Bay and has for twenty plus years now named Carol Rosenberg, who is a national treasure. She has called it the world's most expensive retirement community. And that is, in effect, what this is, your tax dollars. And my numbers may not be accurate in 25 terms, but as of a few years ago, it costs about $13,000,000 per detainee per year to keep them incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay. And I think that is money that is poorly spent. And so I think just from a, like, if we value resources, we value sort of, like, financial responsibility, then there is no excuse to keep this facility open. I think we have a moral obligation to ensure that these individuals are getting adequate medical care, which they aren't currently in under the current situation.

But I don't think there's a politician alive who is willing to spend the capital to do the right thing and close this. I mean, the reason we haven't had trials in, you know, the most the most serious of these cases is because, frankly, the US government isn't willing to put in the work and is, at best, unmotivated, at worst, purposefully obstructionist in terms of Guantanamo Bay. And so I think the sad reality is that there's a certain irreducible number of individuals at Guantanamo Bay that will spend the rest of their life there, and then we will tragically close the chapter on this. And that's a very unsatisfying answer, but I also think it's a realistic one.

Yeah. Well, you have the unique experience of being able to experience what it's like inside the quarters. And despite witnessing the worst of humankind, you value the difference that you made and you continue to serve veterans through your legal practice, which I give you the utmost respect for. And thank you for serving us.

As a baby attorney, everyone who joins the military is a JAG, the air force. Every service does it a little bit differently. But everyone who joins the air force as a JAG starts as a prosecutor. And when I came out of law school, I had no anticipate I I had no interest in being a litigator, and then the air force told me what I was gonna do. Right? And the military is trying to do, thanks for your opinion, and so go do this. Yes. You know, and I fell in love with the courtroom, but I realized very quickly that I was on the wrong side of it. Serving your country means something to me.

And when you have an 18 year old kid who grew up without resources, who got themselves to boot camp, who got themselves through boot camp, and then does a boneheaded thing, as many of us have done between the ages of 18 and 22, I don't think that that person's service should be characterized in a manner that makes it worse than if they had never served. And I truly believe in that. I do believe that raising your hand and serving your country makes you fundamentally different, and you are entitled. And what I came to really love about being a defense attorney in the military was that for some of these young kids and they're all kids. Right? Like, we give them security clearances and guns, but they're children. What I loved in some cases, I was the first person that ever stuck up for them. Right? And so it was seeing, you know, there's a lot of but for the grace of god go I when you do this kind of work and realizing that someone's bad decision just got caught. Because 18, 19, 20 year old you, you don't know what your legal rights are.

You don't know how to pick an attorney. I'm a 40 year old attorney, and I don't know how to pick an attorney necessarily. You don't know if the system's fair or not. It feels really unfair, you know, when you have the whole way to the United States government against you. And so it was really important for me to fight as hard as I could for those airmen. And then I was able to go to Guantanamo Bay. I left Guantanamo Bay largely due to burnout, amazing work, but it takes a real emotional toll, and I I burned out. And so I went over to a non DOD federal agency for a while, and I instantly missed the Department of Defense.

I instantly missed the mission. I missed the people. I missed the decision matrix. And so I knew very, very quickly I had to get out and that the right community for me was this veteran was a community serving service members and veterans.

That's your calling. That was your calling. Yes. Do you have a specific situation or case that really sticks out for you?

Oh my gosh. So many of them.

Can you share one of them?

Yeah. So, you know, I'll tell you the story about my very first case I ever prosecuted because that, you know, doesn't implicate any clients' identities. The very first case I ever prosecuted was a young security forces troop who was convicted. He he's convicted of smoking pot. Cool. I don't care. Military does. But I could not begin to care less about drug use.

You know? And so I did what I was told to do. This is my first trial ever. And I went in and he plead guilty, and so he took responsibility for what he had done. It had been post deployment. So here's a combat veteran who comes back, does something boneheaded. And, you know, I went in and I argued for the sentence that my boss told me to argue for. And I tried to do a really good job because that's what you wanna do as a professional. And so the sentence comes down, and this kid gets sentenced to confinement and a bad conduct discharge.

And I hear his wife behind me break down crying. And I had such an emotional reaction to it because that's not justice. Like, I didn't go to law school and put on uniform to ruin someone's life. You know? And I know that's not every case that the military prosecutes. I also know there's a counterpoint to that of this person made their own decisions, but it was so distasteful for me. That wasn't what justice looks like. And so I very quickly, with that case, knew that what I wanted to do is go fight for that kid. And so that was a really important moment in my life.

And then when I actually got over to fight, I remember not telling my first client that he was my first client because you don't wanna be anyone's first client. I know. It wasn't until after he was acquitted that you know? And my first client I represented as a defense attorney was a drug case, and he was acquitted, thankfully. And then I disclosed that it was my first case ever, and I was scared to death.

Told me

I did a great job. But I was a baby attorney and sort of growing up. And and when I think back of my clients, I honestly think of just, like, different ways they helped me grow up, whether it was some ridiculous, like, fraternization case or whether it was more serious cases like the sexual assaults, you know, that what happens when you represent somebody against criminal charges is you spend a lot of time with them. You get to know them really well. Often, you get to know their parents really well because somebody's calling you. Right? And you sort of what it taught me is that no one's beyond redemption. No one's unfixable. And often, I learned quite a bit from my clients as much as, you know, I I was working for them, I was learning from them.

Right? I got to work with senior enlisted who had years of military service under their belt and tons of mentorship that they could provide me. And that was really cool was I reaped a ton of benefits because my clients were cool people.

Yeah. Well and you are as well, and it sounds like you're a very empathetic person. So was it difficult to keep the, like, emotionality out of it?

Yeah. And I'm bad at that. If I could go back and talk to 25 year old Annie, twenty six year old Annie yeah. The one of the consistent point of feedback I got early in my career was that I cared too much, that I couldn't take it so personally. I couldn't put as much of my emotion in it. Warnings where I'd burn out, but also just like you can't fight for every client, like, your own client. What I wish I could go back and tell myself now is, yes, you can. That's your superpower.

Caring too much is a superpower, and it's what makes me good, and it's what makes me like, juries believe me, so you can't fake sincerity. And so I spent, you know, at least some portion of my early professional career trying to change. Because when people give you advice who are older than you, who have done it longer than you, you assume that advice is good advice. Right? And we're all guilty of that. And what I have learned as I've gotten older is take the good advice and disregard the rest because I do care too much, and I always will. And it's the best thing about me.

I love that you own that because it is so true. When people say that, I'm like, and I've heard that as well. And I'm like, I care too much? That sounds absurd. Yes. So I think it's just learning to yeah. We absorb a lot, but then learning how to release it in a healthy way. Do you have different activities that you do to help release that energy that you absorb?

I'm a huge proponent of therapy. I came into the military in 2010. I think there were still some real barriers to getting mental health care. I think we're getting better. We have a long way to go. I spent a a good part of my career doing adult and child sex cases. That took an enormous toll on me. And really young me, because of that pressure within the military to not be broken, to not sort of admit weakness or defeat, I bottled a lot of that up.

It came out in my interpersonal life. I probably wasn't always as tactful as I should have been because of the big emotions I was feeling. You know? And what I realized, particularly doing the Guantanamo Bay work because it was so hard, I was the torture mitigation attorney. Right? I lived and breathed torture for five years, and it took an enormous toll on me. And it taught me that I need to get therapy. It taught me that I need to surround my peep myself with people who have positive energy, who get it, who get that, like, I'm not broken. I just need a break. And I learned a lot about saying yes and saying no.

Saying yes to Guantanamo Bay was the best thing I ever did professionally. And I know that in late twenty twenty three, it damn near broke me, and I had to walk away. And it was a really hard decision to make because we're not taught to walk away. In fact, I think as a woman, we're taught not to have boundaries. Right? And I struggled with it because it felt like weakness. I have been fortunate most of my career to have phenomenal, phenomenal mentors. And what I can remember going to one of my mentors and really expressing this fear that maybe I just wasn't tough enough. Maybe I wasn't cut out for things.

And he said to me, you know what men don't think? Men don't think they're not tough enough or cut out for things. We talked about the fact there's a whole different level of pressure put on women to suppress any level of emotionality no matter how valid it is. I can look back a year and change later and say, of course, I was a mess emotionally. You know? That that's a normal human response. May I never hit a point where I'm desensitized? And realizing that it's okay to walk away, and it's okay to walk away from places that aren't good fits. And I am fortunate in the sense that, like, my gosh, I have a support network that is just untouchable. Like, the women in my life, the friends I have, the mentors I have, that's why I'm successful. Like, me as a human, I just fail forward.

I am good because of the people that love me.

I love that phrase, fail forward. And I love the fact that you have such a beautiful supporting community and that you eventually sought therapy and not see it as a weakness. I mean, we all have such incredible, intense jobs. Even if we didn't have intense jobs, we're with ourselves all day, every day, and we can justify anything in our heads. So I think it's good for everyone to have a therapist just, you know, for them to be like, you know, maybe you don't wanna justify that. Be like, oh, okay. I think that's right.

I think the military community is cool because, you know, like, you're in an airport, you see another veteran, you don't know each other from eve, and somehow you can you still have this commonality. Right? Like, we still made the same decision. I love that about the military and veterans community. The flip side of that is we're all in this bunker together, so we don't know. It's not normal. And so when you talk to people who have never served and say, this is what I did, like, you get these looks like you're crazy. But when we're surrounded by people who are also doing the same hard things we're doing, we don't always appreciate how hard it is. And I think it's giving ourself grace to know that most military service is not that normal, and we probably all need a little bit of extra support.

Yeah. And I'm glad that we are going towards that. Yes. We do need more help in the government system with that, but I do believe we're getting there, and it's becoming more acceptable. It's almost like the cool thing to do these days. And if we could just make a campaign, like, hey. Go get therapy. It's cool.

You know,

that would be

like that. I like that.

Maybe we'll start one. But I do have a question for you, and it's one of our closing questions. Now I know you're a mom to two twin girls. So you have experienced being in the military. What would you tell your girls or any military woman now who is in the military or thinking of going into the military? What advice?

Well, I hope my daughters don't. Right? What's the one things I love about the military is it's the great equalizer. It's why I get to own a home. It's why, you know, my student loans are paid off. It is the great equalizer. I hope that the next generation of my family doesn't have to do it for those reasons. But when you ask my kids, what does mom do? They'll tell you mom stops bullies. Oh.

And I love that. You know, that's how six year olds understand Yeah. The law. And what I would tell them and what I do tell my kids goes back to my childhood. You have a moral obligation. My kids are growing up with a ton of privilege and good fortune, and they have an obligation to throw that privilege and good fortune around others. When they see something unjust, when they see something unfair, they have an obligation to step in and do everything in their power to make it better. That said, as much as I love my military service, it is not without flaw.

It is a sexist organization. It's getting better. It's not there. One of the things I love is that I came up with a cohort of really strong women. A lot of those women are still in the military, which lets me know it's getting better, but it's not there. The misogyny is real. The racism is real. The any other ism is real.

You're not crazy for feeling it, but I hope that that doesn't deter women from serving because the only thing that's going to change it is more good women staying in and getting into those senior roles and providing, you know, the example of, like, see it to be it. Amen. And so the hard is valid, but don't quit and don't chain and and it goes back to that, like, not all advice is good advice. Take the good advice, know your gut, and disregard the rest.

That's very powerful advice. Very powerful. And, Annie, thank you so much for being on Dog Tag Diaries. You are such an accomplished, wonderful, empathetic, loving woman, and I am so happy we got to have this conversation. And can you just remind me and the viewers of the name of the book that the lady wrote about the Guantanamo Bay?

It's a reporter. So she A reporter. Name is Carol yeah. Carol Rosenberg. She's with the New York Times, and she's been covering Guantanamo Bay since the literal day the first detainees arrived in 02/2002. For anyone who's interested in learning more about Guantanamo Bay, I would commend both Carol's articles and also her her x feed. She is very prolific, but it it's a great way to learn about Guantanamo Bay. And if I could just put in a for anyone if there are veterans listening or military members listening, whoever needed legal counsel, I'm with the law offices of David p Sheldon in DC, and we are always, always, always happy to advise and assist.

Okay. And we will have that on the show notes in the show notes as well. So well, thank you so much for being on.

Thank you.

Thank you for tuning in to dog tag diaries. We appreciate your willingness to listen and engage with these stories as we understand the challenge that comes with sharing and hearing them. Your support in witnessing provide meaning, and we hope they can help you find your own voice as well.

If you or anyone you know are in need of immediate help, call the crisis line by dialing 988, then press 1. There are resources available to help and provide guidance during difficult times. Please visit our website, www.reveilleandretreatproject.org to learn more about the Reveille and Retreat project, including upcoming retreats for military women and resources. The link is in the show notes. We'll be here again next Wednesday. Keep finding the hope, the healing, and the power in community.