Opinion ID: 405227
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Turner Deposition

Text: 31 Turner had reviewed material concerning the Casson selection over Bunch shortly before he gave his telephonic deposition. Turner Deposition at 5-6. Turner was asked to explain the letter sent to Bunch informing him that he had not been selected: 32 Q All right. Now, in that memorandum or letter, there's a mention made of the reasons why Mr. Casson was selected, and it talks about the whole man qualification criteria. 33 A Yeah. You have to state it again. 34 Q Okay. In that memorandum or letter, reasons are given why Mr. Casson was selected instead of Mr. Bunch, and it talks about the whole-man qualifications criteria. 35 A Mm-hmm. 36 Q And then it lists a number of factors that are called merit factors. Nothing is mentioned in there about the OER's, and I wonder if you can explain why it isn't mentioned, if you know? 37 A Well, I don't know except normally, you know, it was not mentioned. We never did mention; still don't today. Never have as far as I know mentioned the type of records that are reviewed in reaching a conclusion like that because it was based on not just OER's. It was based on several different things, and a lot of those-is that 13 April? 38 Q That's correct. 39 A Yeah. I have that here. 40 Q Fine. 41 A There's a lot of things that are listed there that, of course, weren't considered, you know. We looked at the total Military Personal Records which also contains the pictures. We had verbal conversations that took place and there were numerous runs (sic) of those. 42 Q You're going to have to slow down a little bit, too. Sorry. I will keep reminding you. 43 (Discussion off the record.) 44 Q (By Mr. Moen (Appellant's attorney) ) You have that in front of you? Let me ask you a couple questions about that if I may since that is a fairly important letter. 45 A Okay. 46 Q Why would you not indicate the other factors that were taken into account? Would they be less important than the ones that are listed? 47 A Not necessarily. It's kind of a difficult question to answer. 48 Q But in any event, as a normal matter, you would list some of the factors in your decision and not other factors? 49 A It's hard to know what these were because there's a lot of mental processes that went through that period of time as they are still today on selecting anybody. I think what we did here was kind of wrapped everything into oneQ Mm-hmm. 50 A -because we had said in our regulations, there are certain records that are reviewed at Headquarters that are not available to the local field units, and the letter-I notice that we mentioned in paragraph two the application- 51 Q Yes. 52 A -and there we consider the application to be not only the standard 171 which is the thing the guy filled out, but also his copy of flying time, his Military Personal record, voucher from previous supervisors, that kind of thing. 53 Q Mm-hmm. 54 A So we just kind of use the word application for an all inclusive thing, and it was in the selection process. 55 Id. at 26-29. 56 Turner testified that the retainability of both candidates was an important consideration in the decision, id. at 44, and that age was considered in relationship to retainability. Id. at 48. Turner also stated that he was aware Casson's OER's were higher than Bunch's OER's. Id. at 47. Turner could not, however, identify any one factor that was more important than any of the others in the selection of Casson. Id. at 44. 57 Neither Turner nor Lingelbach was asked what weight was given to any specific factor.