Ex-Walter Reed chief to run Fort Detrick

A two-star general who was fired as the head of Walter Reed Army Medical Center amid reports of shoddy treatment of wounded soldiers will oversee U.S. biological weapons defense research as commander of Fort Detrick, the Army said Tuesday.

Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, a physician who works in the Army surgeon general's office in Falls Church, Va., will command both Fort Detrick in Frederick and the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command there, Army spokesman Paul Boyce said.

Weightman had been at Walter Reed for six months when The Washington Post began publishing stories in February about recovering soldiers languishing in dilapidated housing and their families complaining of inattentive administrators.

The disclosures forced the resignations of then-Army Secretary Francis Harvey and then-Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley.

When Weightman was fired from the Army's flagship hospital March 1, the Army said senior officials "had lost trust and confidence" in his leadership abilities to solve the problems at Walter Reed. In September, the top Pentagon health officer, Dr. S. Ward Casscells, said the military's medical community "got a black eye that we didn't completely deserve."

Boyce said Army leaders reached a different conclusion after reviewing Weightman's efforts at Walter Reed and in the surgeon general's office to improve care of soldiers, veterans and their families.

The spokesman cited the improvement in the ratio of staff to soldiers from one-to-125 to one-to-25 or 30 during Weightman's brief tenure at Walter Reed. Boyce added that Weightman, 56, "has been held in high esteem all along by the military medical community."

Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said it was widely believed that Weightman's departure from Walter Reed had ruined his chances for another prominent command post.

"The way Walter Reed turned out should be a career killer," Rieckhoff said. "If Weightman's getting a second chance here, I think the Army needs to explain why the turnaround happened."

Weightman didn't immediately return telephone calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.

In April, an independent review group co-chaired by former Army secretaries John O. "Jack" Marsh and Togo D. West found that money problems and Pentagon neglect were to blame for many of the problems at Walter Reed.

In an interview with reporters two days before the first Post story was published, Weightman acknowledged shortcomings at Walter Reed but also said the problems were magnified because of the hospital's location in the nation's capital.

Weightman will replace Col. Jonathan Jaffin, Fort Detrick's acting commander since March 3. Cynthia Vaughan, spokeswoman for the army surgeon general's office, said the change of command would probably occur later this month.