Eight other people have been punished as a result of the ambush, Pentagon officials said on Wednesday, including Maj. Gen. J. Marcus Hicks, the head of Special Operations forces in Africa, who had been previously scheduled to retire in the coming weeks.
Col. Bradley D. Moses, then the commander of the 3rd Special Forces Group, is the only person in the Special Operations chain of command involved in the ambush who remains unpunished. The redacted report indicated Colonel Moses, who was based in Germany at the time, was briefed on the planning to redirect Captain Perozeni’s team to the riskier mission.
Colonel Moses is currently the chief of staff of Army Special Operations Command and, according to Defense Department officials, is scheduled to take a staff job in Afghanistan in coming weeks. A rising star in the Army Special Forces community, Colonel Moses is widely considered to be in line to be promoted to brigadier general, a promotion that requires Senate confirmation.
Captain Perozeni, who was put in command of the Green Beret unit — Team 3212 — just weeks before it deployed to Niger, was reprimanded twice. In both cases, however, he successfully appealed the punishments, and Army commanders twice rescinded them.
Despite claims to the contrary by senior Pentagon officials, some Special Forces officers have privately said the Army has done little since the 2017 ambush to reform personnel policies and unrealistic training and deployment timelines.
Mr. Wright, the father of Sergeant Wright and himself a former soldier who can trace the family’s lineage in the armed services to the War of 1812, said he had grown disgusted by the military’s handling of the ambush.
“There’s no way in good confidence I could encourage anyone to join the United States Army right now, and our family goes back over 200 years,” he said.