Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, in full-dress Army uniform and with a Purple Heart pinned to his chest, ended his opening statement during the impeachment hearings on President Trump last fall by addressing his father. “Dad, my sitting here today in the U.S. Capitol, talking to our elected officials, is proof that you made the right decision, forty years ago, to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America, in search of a better life for our family,” he said. “Do not worry—I will be fine for telling the truth.” It was one of the most memorable moments in the historic hearings. With only the family’s suitcases and seven hundred and fifty dollars to his name, Vindman’s father had brought his three young sons and their grandmother to the United States in 1979, shortly after his wife died. All three Vindman boys ended up serving in the U.S. military, out of a “deep sense of gratitude,” as Vindman testified. Over the next four decades, Vindman amassed impeccable credentials: a Harvard degree, a dozen medals for military valor, diplomatic posts at the U.S. Embassies in Russia and Ukraine, and positions as a Russia specialist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and at the National Security Council. Vindman and his twin brother, Yevgeny, were even featured in a PBS documentary by Ken Burns.
“He was the whole package, just the right kind of person to have at the N.S.C.—under normal circumstances,” Fiona Hill, his former boss at the National Security Council, who also testified during the impeachment hearings, told me this week. Vindman had “unique” experience and expertise. “He was an obvious choice to bring on board,” she said. But the timing of Vindman’s arrival at the White House, in July, 2018, on assignment from the Pentagon, was to prove fatal professionally. It was a “quirk” of fate, Hill said. Vindman was initially assigned to work on Russia defense issues—one of the priorities of H. R. McMaster, Trump’s second national-security adviser. But Trump fired McMaster in March, 2018. His successor, John Bolton, reorganized President Trump’s inner circle on foreign policy. Because he also spoke Ukrainian, Vindman was switched to the Ukraine portfolio.
Vindman was not prepared, however, for the intense domestic politics inside the Trump Administration, Hill said: “I wasn’t, either. Alex had no clue. He’s a distinguished soldier and was not involved in politics. He was prepared to deal with the enemy outside, but not when the enemy was within. He was pretty shocked as it played out.”
Vindman’s bad luck was to be party to Trump’s call with the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, on July 25, 2019. Vindman had compiled the talking points for the conversation. As the White House transcript later disclosed, Trump asked for a “favor” and urged the newly elected Ukrainian leader to launch a public investigation of the former Vice-President Joe Biden and his son Hunter— basically, to smear his political rival. None of it was in Vindman’s original memo. He testified that he viewed the request as “inappropriate,” and that it had “nothing to do with national security.” “I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen,” he said. An investigation by Ukraine would be interpreted as “a partisan play” that could cost the besieged country bipartisan American support and ultimately hurt U.S. national-security interests in containing Russia. He reported his concern to three officials—one in the intelligence community, another at the State Department, and the National Security Council’s lawyer.
Over the summer, Vindman was alarmed by White House moves to freeze almost four hundred million dollars in military aid to Ukraine, the front line of the West’s showdown with Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin had seized Crimea, a strategic peninsula, from Ukraine in 2014, and was arming and supporting separatists trying to grab other parts of the former Soviet republic. Vindman wrote a memo—later approved by Bolton—recommending that the White House release the military aid. Trump balked. He wanted Ukraine to announce the Biden investigation first.
Throughout that period, Vindman was trapped “in a toxic situation,” Hill said. “When Alex was in Moscow, he monitored the Kremlin. He never thought he would have to monitor the White House for politics,” she told me. After the call, Vindman went on vacation, in August. When he got back, he was increasingly marginalized at the National Security Council. After news broke of the President’s Ukraine dealings, Vindman was subpoenaed to testify to Congress. In his testimony, on November 19th, he expressed confidence that the fundamentals of American democracy would prevail. “In Russia, my act of expressing my concerns to the chain of command in an official and private channel would have severe personal and professional repercussions, and offering public testimony involving the President would surely cost me my life,” he said. Vindman expressed gratitude for the “privilege” of being an American citizen and a public servant “where I can live free of fear for mine and my family’s safety.”
It was an illusion. After Vindman’s testimony, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist promised that the Department would protect Vindman from retaliation. That proved untrue. Two days after the Senate voted, on February 5th, to acquit Trump, the President fired Vindman. Trump also fired Vindman’s twin brother, Yevgeny, who worked as an ethics lawyer at the White House and held the same military rank. They were abruptly and unceremoniously escorted from the White House grounds.
The Vindman twins returned to the Pentagon, where they awaited new assignments and the promotions to colonel which had been recommended by their superiors. “Everyone acknowledged that the reality for Alex would forever be different in the Army,” a person familiar with Vindman’s thinking told me. “They articulated that reality in different ways. If Trump won reëlection, his career would go nowhere.” One superior quipped that Vindman would be manning a radar station in Alaska.
Vindman expected to go to the National War College this fall—a low-profile assignment—then take another foreign posting. But, in a final act of revenge, the White House recently made clear that Trump opposed Vindman’s promotion. Senior Administration officials told Esper and Ryan McCarthy, the Secretary of the Army, to dig for misconduct that would justify blocking Vindman’s promotion. They couldn’t find anything, multiple sources told me. Others in the military chain of command began to warn Vindman that he would never be deployable overseas again—despite his language skills and regional expertise.
Vindman’s fate then got caught up in the future of the more than twelve hundred officers awaiting promotions. The Pentagon explored options, such as putting forward all the other nominations, but keeping Vindman’s name on a separate list to submit after the Presidential election. After reports about the White House retaliation circulated in Washington, Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, announced last week that she would block the pending promotions until Esper confirmed in writing that the Pentagon did not, or would not, hinder Vindman’s “expected and deserved” promotion. Duckworth is a combat veteran and a double amputee, after a helicopter that she was co-piloting in Iraq, in 2004, was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
In the face of an increasingly dark future, Vindman tweeted on Wednesday that he was retiring, after more than two decades of service to the United States. “Today I officially requested retirement from the US Army, an organization I love,” he wrote. In a statement, David Pressman, Vindman’s lawyer and a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for Special Political Affairs, was more candid. “Through a campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation, the President of the United States attempted to force LTC Vindman to choose: Between adhering to the law or pleasing a President. Between honoring his oath or protecting his career. Between protecting his promotion or the promotion of his fellow soldiers,” Pressman wrote. Vindman did “what the law compelled him to do; and for that he was bullied by the President and his proxies.” In short, his patriotism cost him his career.
In Washington, the reaction in foreign-policy and military circles was outrage. “Alex is a decorated combat veteran and has served his country well and honorably,” Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, who was abruptly pulled out of Kyiv by Trump, told me. She was also a key witness at the impeachment hearings. She, too, was marginalized until she ended her career prematurely earlier this year. “Alex should have received the honor and thanks and recognition of the nation,” she said. “He deserved better than this. Our country deserved better than this.”
