“It wasn’t discipline. It was a deposit. And on the morning of the signing I went and collected it, in my Class-As, with four MPs behind me and the doors open, in front of the two civilian executives who had watched him raise a glass to her.

“I have replayed that morning several hundred times in seven years and I have always replayed it as the moment I won. I’d like the record to show that I understand now what it actually was.”

Reeve waited.

“Any one of six officers in my directorate could have executed that arrest,” I said. “Colonel Reyes could have done it. The case would be unassailable today.

There would be no motion, no inquiry, and this panel would not exist.

“I put myself in that room because I wanted him to look up and see the eagles. And because I did, a man who is guilty — and he is guilty, and I would like that in the record too — has an argument.