KADENA AIR BASE, Okinawa — An Air Force master sergeant was sentenced Monday to two months’ confinement and given a bad-conduct discharge for his part in a promotion test cheating scandal in Germany in 2004.
Master Sgt. Ulysses S. Dotson, assigned to the 733rd Air Mobility Squadron, also was demoted to E-1, the lowest pay grade, by Air Force judge Lt. Col. Eric Dillow.
At his special court-martial, Dotson pleaded guilty to copying questions from a Specialty Knowledge Test booklet provided in February 2004 by his then-supervisor at Rhein-Main Air Base. He also pleaded guilty to possessing the Air Force’s Promotion Fitness Examination.
Both were provided by Master Sgt. Abdur-Rahim Saafir, who was mission support flight superintendent for the 469th Air Base Group. Saafir was court-martialed at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, last July and sentenced to 3½ years in prison and given a dishonorable discharge. He pleaded guilty to 30 counts of conspiracy and failure to obey a lawful order.
Saafir and his associates shared information on promotion tests, which are so carefully controlled it is forbidden for airmen to form study groups to prepare for the exams.
Dotson said he received answers to the Specialty Knowledge Test while riding with Saafir in February 2004.
“I told him I was concerned about taking the test, and he told me he had the test booklet in the car,” Dotson said. “He just gave them to me.”
He said he jotted down the questions during the two-hour ride.
“I felt pressured by him, but I still knew it was wrong,” Dotson said. “I had the feeling I was being cornered in a tough situation.”
When asked what kind of pressure he felt, Dotson said Saafir’s position as his supervisor was intimidating. He said Saafir gave him a copy of the other test later that month, but he returned it the next day.
Dillow asked Dotson, who had been in the Air Force for 18 years, whether he believed he had been ordered by Saafir to copy the questions.
“No sir,” Dotson answered. “He never said this was an order. I didn’t feel like it was an order. He just said write it down and I did.”
One witness presented by Capt. Andrew Griffin, the lead prosecutor, during the sentencing phase of the trial was a master sergeant passed over for promotion in 2004 with a score just 0.06 points below the cut-off point. She was promoted 15 months later, but lost $4,800 in pay she would have earned had she been promoted at the same time as Dotson.
“It’s all about integrity,” Griffin said. “One person cheating to make rank prevents someone else from being promoted.”
Capt. Michael Bibbo, Dotson’s attorney, argued to keep his client in the Air Force.
“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong supervisor,” Bibbo said.
