New Medal of Honor Museum stirs controversy
The museum in Arlington, Texas, which pays tribute to more than 3,500 U.S. service members who have earned America's highest military honor, opens to the public on Tuesday. But a disparity in the way the museum treated the story of two recipients has reignited a controversy.
Chapman's sister, Lori Longfritz, told "CBS Mornings" she believed her brother would get his own dedicated space at the museum for his heroic acts on March 4, 2002.
Reigniting a controversy
Chapman earned a posthumous Medal of Honor in 2018, becoming the first member of the Air Force to receive the award since the Vietnam War — and the first recipient where drone video provided evidence of his heroic actions.
In one of the most intense battles of the war in Afghanistan, Chapman was working with a team of Navy SEALs who stepped off a helicopter onto the Takur Ghar mountain and into the path of enemy fire.
"Without regard for his own safety, Sergeant Chapman immediately engaged, moving in the direction of the closest enemy position despite coming under heavy fire from multiple directions. He fearlessly charged an enemy bunker, up a steep incline in thigh-deep snow and into hostile fire, directly engaging the enemy," his Medal of Honor citation reads.
After clearing the first bunker, killing all enemy occupants, Chapman started attacking a second bunker before being shot and seriously wounded, according to the citation.
The SEAL team leader at the time, Master Chief Britt Slabinski, told CBS News national security correspondent David Martin in 2018 that he ordered his team to pull back as he "crawled over the top" of Chapman to search for "some sign of life."
"I didn't get any, any sign from him," said Britt. Believing he was dead and in a dangerous spot in the middle of the ongoing firefight, Slabinski left Chapman and relocated his team to safer ground.
A military analysis of drone video later showed Chapman had still been alive at that time. He had regained consciousness and carried on fighting alone, providing crucial cover fire as reinforcements tried to land. He was credited with saving more than 20 American service members, including Slabinski.
"Despite severe, mortal wounds, [Chapman] continued to fight relentlessly, sustaining a violent engagement with multiple enemy personnel before making the ultimate sacrifice," the citation says.
Yet more than a decade after the battle, as the Pentagon considered him for the Medal of Honor for those actions, some Navy SEALs resisted. Two former defense officials involved in the process claim the SEALs argued against Chapman posthumously receiving the award, with one telling CBS News they "couldn't accept any hint that SEALs had left behind a service member on the battlefield."
It's a position Slabinski himself maintained even as he received his own Medal of Honor months before Chapman.
"I can tell you, we left no one behind. No one. What I saw, what I experienced, I know that clearly that we didn't leave anyone behind up there," he said in a 2018 interview with Fox News.
In a statement, a Naval Special Warfare spokesperson told CBS News, "We honor the valor and heroism of all Medal of Honor recipients with the dignity and respect they deserve."
The statement didn't address accusations about past opposition to Chapman's Medal of Honor, saying only that the SEALs hold him "in high regard as a hero who made the ultimate sacrifice for his teammates. He will forever remain in our memory."
"There was never going to be a John Chapman exhibit"
"I do believe that there is such a thing as fog of war," Longfritz acknowledged as she spoke about her brother being left behind on the battlefield in an interview from the town of Windsor Locks, Connecticut, where they grew up.
Regarding Slabinski and the SEALs, she said, "I can't judge them for what they did on the mountain, what happened. I can judge them for how they've acted since then."
Chapman's photo hangs on a wall near a monitor playing the drone footage at the new museum — part of a larger exhibit on the timeline of the Medal of Honor, while Slabinski is among several service members who have their own featured exhibits. Slabinski's section is filled with multiple photos and artifacts — like his field knife, ID tag, combat trousers and dress white uniform.
Longfritz said representatives at the National Medal of Honor Museum led her to believe that Chapman would also be getting his own featured exhibit. However, in a lengthy statement to CBS News, the museum stated that "it is not possible to tell 3,526 stories in a museum's exhibits at one time."
"There was never going to be a John Chapman exhibit," according to a former museum employee, who told CBS News the plan was to "kick this can down the road," knowing the underlying tensions between the two sides.
The museum says Chapman's story is still among the most high-profile mentioned in the museum.
"When evaluating individual coverage of recipients included in the exhibits by word count, Master Sergeant Chapman is among the top 25 percent," the museum added in their statement.
But "word count" is not the right measure for Longfritz.
"It's disgusting," said Longfritz. "I had found a way to just let it go, and then this. I didn't want this, but I'm not going anywhere now."
A growing petition
Many in the Air Force community see this as a problem as well. More than 25,000 people have signed an online petition demanding Chapman be given a full exhibit in the museum.
It's also drawn the ire of Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, an Air Force veteran.
"It's a blatant disrespect for someone who lost their life, serving this country and that wrong needs to be corrected immediately," said Luna, who supports Chapman getting his own exhibit.
When asked what she believes is behind the decision, she answered that "politics played a hand in this entire Medal of Honor debacle," and pointed out that Slabinski serves on the museum's board of directors.
CBS News attempted to reach Slabinski, whose wife also works at the museum, several times but never heard back.
If the museum doesn't fix the disparity, Luna said she would "call to question" anyone supporting the museum "to reconsider giving funds to an organization that would play politics with people that have sacrificed their lives for this country."
According to the museum, "No preference was given to board member Medal of Honor recipients and, to their great credit, it was the board member recipients who specifically asked to be treated no differently in exhibit consideration than their peers."
But if the roles were reversed, Longfritz believes her brother "would be the first one to say, 'Do not honor me. This guy who died saving my life deserves it more than I do.'"
"I feel like if someone is a true hero…they don't want it for themselves," she added.
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