He shamed the brass into buying bomb-resistant trucks – and drove them mad with his constant calls to the press and Congress. Now Franz Gayl, an iconoclastic civilian scientist working for the Marine Corps, has been stripped of his security clearance, effectively wrecking what was left of his career.

Over the past decade, no one in the Marine Corps has been more creative, more persistent and more migraine-inducing in his pursuit of warfighting gadgetry than Franz Gayl. He Some of his ideas were wacky: oribiting troop transports, super-strength exoskeletons, laser guns that could roast insurgents alive, using the "Mother of All Bombs" to end the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

More than a few of his concepts were rock-solid, however, like sending small spy drones and heavily-armored trucks to troops in the field. Eventually, the Pentagon bought tens of thousands of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) trucks, due in large part to his agitating and whistleblowing efforts.

But instead of earning accolades for his efforts, Gayl got brickbats.

The Marine Corps higher-ups didn't like how Gayl called 'em out for dragging their feet on his MRAP request. They didn't appreciate Gayl's assessment that their "gross mismanagement" kept non-lethal laser "dazzlers" from getting to Iraq and Afghanistan - risking both civilians' and soldiers' lives. Gayl was stripped on his formal responsibilities. His workplace situation at Quantico became a "Kafkaesque nightmare."

These days, the Washington Post reports, Gayl can't work at all. The Corps has taken away his security clearance – allegedly for sticking an unauthorized thumb drive into a classified computer twice in 2008. It's a fairly routine practice in the military; I've seen troops do it dozens of times. And as the Post notes, "no security leaks have been alleged." Which leads Gayl's defenders, like retired Marine Col. Phil Harmon, to conclude that this "is payback, for them to throw Franz under the bus."

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Photo: courtesy Frank Gayl*

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