Before Wes Moore deployed to Afghanistan in 2005, his Army career had not followed a normal officer track.
Moore had been commissioned into the Army Reserve in 1998, but records reviewed bySpotlight on Marylandshow he failed to complete — within 36 months — his required initial officer training, finally finishing it more than seven years later in June 2005. That course, the Military Police Basic Officer Leader Course, provided Moore’s only Army credentials of qualification, finally making him eligible to deploy overseas after many years of being non-deployable. Two months later, he was in Afghanistan.
Spotlight could find no evidence that he was qualified in any other Army branch before he finished Military Police schooling.
But he did not deploy into the kind of first assignment expected of a newly qualified military police lieutenant. Records released thus far by the Army show he did not lead a platoon, serve as a company executive officer, or work his way through the lower-level assignments where young officers learn the fundamentals of their Army branch. Those assignments typically comprise the first three to five years of an officer’s career. We asked Governor Moore to provide any evidence that he held an operational assignment as a Military Police officer, refuting Army records. Thus far, he’s refused.
Instead, those records show Moore’s first operational assignment was a headquarters staff position with the 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, one of the Army’s most storied conventional units. An 82nd Airborne Division assignment for officers is both coveted and highly competitive.
Retired Army officers in the ranks of major through brigadier general consulted by Spotlight said Moore’s assignment was highly unusual. His records, they said, did not show the experience normally expected of an officer placed in a brigade-level staff role during an operational deployment. These retired officers asked to remain anonymous out of concern that they might be doxed or attacked on social media for providing their professional opinions on an elected official’s military record.
The question is how he got there, a topic Moore has refused to discuss despite multiple attempts by Spotlight. Since November, the governor has not answered any direct questions asked about his Army service.
But as past statements by Moore and Army records indicate, the answer involves then-Lt. Col. Michael R. Fenzel, the brigade’s deputy commander. Fenzel was not merely a senior officer in the unit Moore joined. He was Moore’s mentor, close friend and, by Moore’s own public accounts, someone who had pressed him to consider how military service might shape his viability for future political office.
That relationship, and the assignment that followed, raise questions about favoritism, military judgment and the way Moore’s Afghanistan deployment later became part of his public biography.
None of those questions erase the fact that Moore served in Afghanistan. He did. But the records reviewed bySpotlightsuggest the story of how he got there is more complicated than the misleading public narrative has indicated.
For civilians, the Army’s early officer jobs, which Moore didn’t appear to have had, can be similar to those of a new doctor going through their residency.
A newly qualified military police lieutenant normally begins as a platoon leader, responsible for roughly 30 soldiers and guided by a platoon sergeant who often has a decade or more of experience. The lieutenant learns how to lead soldiers, maintain equipment, plan missions, enforce standards and make decisions in the field.
Those jobs are not ceremonial. They are where closely supervised junior officers make mistakes, learn from them and build the judgment expected later in more complex assignments.
Moore’s Army records obtained by Spotlight through a public records request show no such developmental experience. We asked Moore for specific records to explain why he never held positions as a qualified platoon leader or company executive officer, and to date, he has refused to answer.
After seven years, Moore finally became branch qualified as a Military Police officer; Spotlight has thus far found no evidence that he ever served in a documented military police assignment. Instead, he went directly to a deployed brigade-level staff position associated with more senior and experienced officers. Brigade staffs are not where lieutenants with no experience learn the basics of their craft; they are always staffed by senior captains, majors and lieutenant colonels with years of operational experience advising commanders, coordinating units and managing complex operations.
Then there was the unusual timing.
The 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division deployed to Afghanistan in May 2005. Moore could not deploy with the brigade when it left Fort Bragg, North Carolina, because he was still attending Military Police School in Missouri and had not yet completed the basic officer training that would finally make him eligible to deploy.
Moore never speaks of the required Military Police training that was mandatory for him to complete. He does, however, talk often and dramatically about airborne infantry training he claims to have participated in to prepare him for his deployment, which raises questions. Training, and particularly training for airborne forces, has been central to the story Moore tells about his military service.
Spotlight has been unable to verify through Army records that Moore participated in such training, and Moore has refused to answer questions about it.
In his 2015 book,”The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters,” Moore describes pre-deployment training in vivid, combat-ready terms. He writes that “my paratroopers worked over and over again on perfecting ‘reaction to contact’ missions” — although react to contact is a drill, not a mission. He also writes: “Even in training our weapons were loaded. In airborne training, we leaped out of planes in full ‘battle rattle,’ complete with a rucksack packed with gear and an M-4 rifle, as if engagement with the enemy could begin as soon as the balls of our feet hit the ground — or sooner.”
Moore also told Baltimore’s WNST radio, in a 2019 interview, that he spent months training at Fort Bragg preparing for the deployment. He decided to do this after a phone call with his mentor, Fenzel, that would have occurred in November 2004: “I joined back up with the 82nd Airborne Division, went down to Fort Bragg, trained up, went to Fort Benning, deployed from Fort Benning.” Moore claimed he spent months training at Fort Bragg before deploying.
Army records refute Moore’s story, suggesting the governor’s version is a complete fabrication. We have asked Governor Moore for any evidence that any training at Fort Bragg actually occurred, and to date, he has refused to provide any.
Moore’s Army records do not show he was ever stationed either on “temporary duty,” called in Army jargon “TDY,” or active duty at Fort Bragg — home of the 82nd Airborne Division. At the time, Moore was a reservist, and his résumé places him working for Deutsche Bank in London until February 2005, when he reported to the Military Police Basic Officer Leaders Course at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, where he would spend the next four and a half months.
Based on Moore’s own timeline, his Army records, and the officers consulted bySpotlight, the training at Fort Leonard Wood was actually required to make him qualified to deploy.
To be eligible to attend pre-mobilization training at Fort Bragg, he would have had to have been qualified in at least one Army branch. He was not, and was therefore not deployable. The Army Reserve would have had to place Moore, as an unqualified officer, on military orders for training with an active-duty infantry brigade, something the reserves wouldn’t likely do for liability reasons and because he was not yet duty qualified in any Army job.
There should also have been concerns about the unqualified Moore training with an operational brigade at Fort Bragg, preparing for an overseas deployment that risked running afoul of federal law (10 U.S.C. 671). By law, members of the Armed Forces are not to be assigned outside of the United States until they are duty qualified at the basic level in at least one military skill.
Moore had been in the Army for seven years and had still not completed the training required to become qualified in any officer career field. Had he made himself available sooner in 2005, the logical next step would have been to attend a Military Police course earlier in the year — not pre-deployment training with the 82nd Airborne. But records indicate that Moore neither participated in pre-deployment training with the 82nd Airborne nor reported sooner than scheduled to his officer basic course.
The records released by the Army thus far do confirm that Moore spent most of the months leading up to his deployment at Fort Leonard Wood in Military Police training, and by the time he graduated in June 2005, the 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division had already departed for Afghanistan — without him.
When Moore arrived in Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2005, the brigade, known during the deployment as Combined Task Force Devil, had been operating in the eastern part of the country along the Pakistan border for nearly three months. It was commanded by Col. Patrick J. Donahue and oversaw about 5,000 soldiers and Marines.
For an untested reservist with no operational experience, who had only just completed his basic-level officer training, to be brought into a deployed brigade headquarters months after the unit arrived in Afghanistan required the intervention of someone well-placed, as Fenzel was in making the request, according to retired officers consulted bySpotlight.
Moore, as a reservist, was not moving within the active Army’s assignment pipeline. He was not assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg as a permanent member of the unit, despite his public claims suggesting otherwise. He was a mobilized Army Reserve officer attached to the brigade only for the Afghanistan mission and nothing more. He was, essentially, on loan to the 82nd Airborne Division from the Army Reserve, a not uncommon practice in the armed forces called being “attached” to a unit.
Moore earned the right to say he served with the 82nd Airborne Division because of his “attached” status, but he was not an organic member of the 82nd Airborne. He was not a paratrooper in the truest meaning of the word in Army lingo, which is something Spotlight will cover in future stories.
Fenzel, the deputy brigade commander, was no ordinary officer.
At the time of Moore’s deployment, he was the brigade’s deputy commander. He had already experienced combat in the Persian Gulf War, had been among the first American soldiers sent to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 to help end the civil war there, had served as a White House Fellow during the George W. Bush administration, and had been sent by the Army to Harvard for graduate school. He would later become a lieutenant general.
He was also quite close to Moore.
The two had been introduced years earlier by Jim Margraff, the head football coach at Johns Hopkins University, and their relationship grew well beyond a passing professional connection. Fenzel later served as a groomsman in Moore’s 2007 wedding.Spotlightwas told by a member of Moore’s communications team that their relationship is exceptionally close.
That personal connection matters because Fenzel made the formal request that arranged Moore’s deployment.
According to published accounts, Moore and Fenzel discussed Moore’s future before the Afghanistan deployment. A 2006article published in The Baltimore Sun after Moore returned from Afghanistan described the deployment in the context of Moore’s future public service and political ambitions. The article reported that Moore dreamed of becoming governor of Maryland.
Fenzel’s challenge to Moore, according to that account, was blunt: what had Moore done to serve people in a way that would make him a compelling candidate?
A 2024article in The New York Times recounted the same basic story, describing Fenzel as telling Moore that his academic credentials alone would not be enough to win public office.
That context suggests political considerations played at least as much of a role in arranging Moore’s deployment as any personal motivation he had.
Moore was not the typical junior officer being sent to a standard first assignment and deployment. He was a newly qualified military police officer with no documented developmental experience in his branch and was brought into a deployed brigade headquarters through the intervention of a senior officer, who was also a close personal friend.
This is the kind of relationship Army regulations say senior officers should avoid.
Moore and Fenzel have not responded to dozens of questions sent by Spotlight.
Fenzel was in a position to make Moore’s deployment and plum assignment happen.
As the brigade’s deputy commander, he was senior enough to identify personnel needs, advocate for officers and influence who filled positions inside the headquarters. Retired officers consulted bySpotlightsaid a lieutenant colonel in that role would have had significant influence over the staff structure and the officers brought into the brigade.
That influence is a central concern.
Fenzel was not making a detached personnel decision about an unknown officer. He was helping Moore, a junior officer, who was his friend and protégé. And Moore lacked the rank and developmental experience expected before one is selected to serve in a brigade-level headquarters assignment.
Army command policy, outlined in Army Regulation 600-20, prohibits relationships that compromise, or appear to compromise, supervisory integrity. It also warns against relationships that create actual or perceived partiality or involve the improper use of rank or position.
The issue is not whether senior officers may mentor junior officers. They do and should. It’s a fundamental tenet of Army leadership.
The issue is whether a senior officer may use his position to create an unusual opportunity for a personal friend when that friend lacks the rank and job experience normally associated with the assignment.
Retired officers who reviewed Moore’s records forSpotlightsaid the arrangement raises precisely the kind of appearance problem Army policy is meant to prevent. They also point out that Fenzel’s questionable judgment could have put his career at risk had something happened that had resulted in any kind of Army investigation.
A retired brigadier general described the opportunity Fenzel provided to Moore as a “golden ticket” deployment — meaning an unearned, résumé-burnishing assignment that gave him credentials his Army experience level did not justify.
The description is informal. The concern is not. Military assignments are not supposed to be personal favors. They are supposed to serve the needs of the Army and place qualified officers into appropriate positions commensurate with their skill and experience level.
In Moore’s case, the record suggests Fenzel blurred those lines considerably and likely in violation of the Army’s command policy.
Spotlightasked Fenzel to explain his decision.
An email to Fenzel on Oct. 30, 2005, asked about “the circumstances that led to a junior officer in the Army Reserve Military Police Corps, who was fresh out of his Basic Officer Leader’s Course (BOLC), was not in an active drilling status and had no troop time in his career, becoming the Information Operations chief for a brigade staff in perhaps the Army’s most prestigious combat division.He did not appear to have any experience with Information Operations or was Functional Area 30 qualified for the job.Yet, Moore says he was a ‘by name request’ for this job.This begs the question that the 82nd Airborne Division didn’t have access to a better qualified more seasoned officer?If 1LT/CPT Moore was a replacement officer, who did he replace and why did that officer rotate out?”
Fenzel declined to answer questions about Moore’s military career unlessSpotlightfirst obtained Moore’s permission to discuss it. Moore has never provided permission despite repeated requests.
Given these unanswered questions, the silence on Moore’s and Fenzel’s part raises questions about why Moore was there and what his true motivation was for deploying.
Yet there may have been a position Moore was qualified to serve in and didn’t, though it would have exposed him to more personal risk than a brigade-level staff position.
The brigade’s commander, Donahue, confirmed to Spotlight last November that a combat support Military Police company was attached to the brigade for the deployment, raising the obvious question of why Moore was not placed in an entry-level job aligned with the Military Police corps he was assigned and only Army branch he was qualified to serve in at that time.
Moore has refused to answer questions fromSpotlightabout the circumstances of his deployment, Fenzel’s role in arranging it, or why his first operational assignment as a newly qualified officer was at the brigade-level rather than the entry-level in his basic branch.
That silence leaves the released records to tell the story.
Also, the records show an unusual sequence: a seven-year delay in completing required officer training; branch qualification in June 2005; mobilization soon afterward; arrival in Afghanistan nearly three months after the brigade had deployed; placement into a brigade headquarters role for which records show Moore wasn’t qualified; and a close personal friend serving as the deputy commander of the unit guiding Moore every step of the way.
Each part of that sequence might be explainable on its own. Together, they warrant scrutiny.
Moore and Fenzel have refused to answer dozens of questions asked by Spotlight.
There is no dispute that Moore deployed to Afghanistan.
Questions about the circumstances of his assignment shouldn’t diminish the service of soldiers who deploy in nontraditional ways, fill unexpected roles or serve outside the usual career path. Wartime personnel systems are imperfect. Units need soldiers. Officers are sometimes placed where the Army needs them, not where a textbook career model says they should go.
But Moore’s case is different because of the personal relationship at the center of it.
Not every inexperienced officer has a personal friend in a senior leadership position within a deployed brigade headquarters. Not every newly qualified officer is brought into one of the Army’s most prominent units after that unit is already in a combat theater. Not every unusual assignment later becomes part of a public biography built around service, leadership and sacrifice in the pursuit of high elected office.
That is why the backstory matters.
Moore’s Afghanistan deployment was not simply the story of a young officer answering the call to duty. It was also the story of a novice officer whose path to Afghanistan was guided by access to an influential mentor.
Whether that access should be called mentorship, sponsorship, favoritism or something stronger, the effect was the same: Moore received an opportunity that retired officers consulted bySpotlightsaid others would not have received.
The next question is what happened after he got the opportunity to deploy.
Moore was assigned to a staff role involving information operations, a specialized function for which his records do not show the expected background or training. Near the end of the deployment, he received an Officer Evaluation Report describing his performance in extraordinary terms — language several retired officers said was difficult to reconcile with his limited experience and qualifications — and his “boots on the ground” time in Afghanistan simply isn’t what he says it was.
Those issues will be examined in the next article in this series.
For now, the question is how Moore got to Afghanistan in the first place.
The records suggest the answer was not merely duty, timing or Army need.
Was it inappropriate access?
Drew Sullins can be reached at dpsullins@sbgtv.com. Spotlight on Maryland is a joint venture by FOX45 News, The Baltimore Sun and WJLA in Washington, D.C. Send story tips to spotlightonmaryland@sbgtv.com or call our hotline at (410) 467-4670. Follow us on X at @SpotlightMDNews, and on Instagram and Facebook at Spotlight on Maryland.
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