Major General William F. Mullen, USMC (Retired), the former commander of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center who on June 29 died while he was on a ceremonial visit to that facility, expired from a pulmonary embolism, the coroner’s division of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has determined.
The cause of General Mullen’s death was less than clear at the time he was found by base personnel in guest housing located within the Twentynine Palms training center, triggering a thorough examination of the circumstances surrounding, leading up to and the causation of the death by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
Mullen, who was then a one-star brigadier general, took on the assignment of the commanding general of the Twentynine Palms base, known officially within the Marine Corps as the Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Command and Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in July 2016. While he was in that assignment, Mullen promoted to two-star major general status. On June 8, 2018, he left Twentynine Palms to serve as the commanding general, Training and Education Command in Quantico, Virginia. He took official retirement from the Marine Corps in 2020.
A graduate of the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps program at Marquette University, Mullen obtained further training at the Army’s Airborne and Ranger schools, the Marine’s Summer Mountain Leader course, and the Royal Marine Arctic Warfare Survival courses. In 1986, he was assigned to 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, where he served as a rifle and weapons platoon commander, and battalion training officer from 1987 to 1990.
From 1990 until 1993 he served as a platoon commander, executive officer and commanding officer of the Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team Company with the Marine Corps Security Force Battalion, Pacific at Mare Island, where he served as a platoon commander, executive officer and ultimately commanding officer. In this capacity, he deployed to Operation Desert Shield and participated in several counter-narcotics missions in support of Joint Task Force-6, also serving as battalion training officer. Among his several duties during Operation Desert Shield was a counter-terror assignment.
After attending the Advanced Artillery Officer course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Mullen in 1993 was transferred to 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines (later converted to 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines) at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, as the commanding officer of Fox Company. He participated in Operation Sea Signal in 1994, and deployed to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from 1995 to 1996 as a company commander with the small boat raid and cliff assault company, participating in contingency operations in the former Yugoslavia. From 1996 to 1999 he served as the inspector-instructor for Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and led a successful counter-narcotics mission in the Los Padres National Forest of California.
In 1999, then-Major Mullen was selected to be the Marine aide to President Bill Clinton. He continued to serve in that capacity under President George W. Bush until he left to attend the School of Advanced Warfighting in 2001. After school, he reported to the Joint Operations Division of the Joint Staff, J-3 for duty in the Untied States Indo Pacific Command (PACOM) and the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) sections, and served as executive assistant to the deputy director for regional operations until 2004.
In 2004, having been promoted to lieutenant colonel, he reported to 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune for duty as the division plans officer, and was chosen later that year to be the operations officer for Regimental Combat Team – 8, with whom he deployed to Fallujah, Iraq from 2005 to 2006. After returning, he assumed command of 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines and returned to Fallujah in 2007. Following that command he attended the Naval War College from 2008 to 2009, and subsequently commanded the Marine Corps Tactics and Operations Group in Twentynine Palms from 2009 to 2011.
After promotion to brigadier general in 2012, he was assigned as the commanding general, Education Command, and president of Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. He then became director of the Capabilities Development Directorate for Combat Development and Integration, and subsequently deployed and served as the director of operations in the Combined Joint Operations Center in Baghdad from June 2015 to June 2016 in support of Iraqi security forces during Operation Inherent Resolve.
In July of 2016, he assumed command of Marine Corps Air Ground Task Force Training Command, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center. He was succeeded as the commanding general of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center and Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Command in Twentynine Palms by Brigadier General Roger Turner.
There were multiple factors that led to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service’s intense scrutiny of his death, which extended to the circumstances under which it had occurred, the lack of previous serious medical indicators of concern relating to his health, his age being below that of normal life expectancy, his general state of fitness and his widely known support of Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia, which included his having met with Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense Natalia Kamykova in February, assisting the Ukrainian military in developing training protocols for its troops and advising it with regard to artillery tactics and his lobbying of officials in Washington, D.C. to intensify the provision of military supplies and hardware to the Ukrainians. Russian agents, like their Soviet predecessors, have a pattern of poisoning those they consider to be enemies of their state, having carried out multiple such missions outside the confines of Russia, including within the United States. It is known that foreign espionage agents, including at least two spies from the communist People’s Republic of China, within the last two years have made repeated penetrations onto the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center and the Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Center in Twentynine Palms. The mainland Chinese are supporting the Russian war effort against Ukraine.
On June 28, Mullen was present at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center and Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Center to take part in change of command proceedings of the Marine Corps Tactics and Operations Group. On the evening of June 28/the morning of June 29, he was staying at the base’s Roadrunner Inn, which provides temporary lodging akin to a hotel. He was to return later that day to Arvada, Colorado, where he resided and served as a board member of the University of Colorado’s leadership center. Mullen had a scheduled check-out time of 11 a.m. but did not meet it. Shortly after 1 p.m., base staff went to his room, but he did not respond to repeated knocks on his door, which was locked and double secured from the inside. Thereafter, a successful effort was made to pry the door open, at which point Mullen’s body was found near his neatly packed and orderly bags and luggage, an indication he was about to take his leave when death struck.
Paramedics were summoned and responded, but his corpse provided no vital signs, such that, according to the coroner’s office “there were no resuscitation efforts made.” The responding paramedics pronounced Mullen dead at 1:39 p.m. on the spot June 29.
According to the autopsy report, Mullen’s sudden and unanticipated end came when a blood clot, referred to in medical terms as a deep vein thrombosis, broke free from the circulatory system in Mullen’s left leg and migrated to his lungs where it lodged, blocking the left and right sides of his pulmonary arteries, a condition also known as a pulmonary embolism.
According to the coroner’s office, Mullen’s was “known to be healthy” generally and his medical history contained no significant diagnoses of life-threatening conditions. His family members referenced known coronary problems among some of his ancestry and that he was under a physician’s care with regard to “lung issues” as well as a persistent cough. He had been prescribed an inhaler because of difficulty he had with being “unable to breathe properly,” according to the autopsy.
With regard to the embolism that was determined to have been Mullen’s cause of death, the autopsy reported, “[I]t is possible that Mr. Mullen had a genetic condition which predisposed him to the development of blood clots,” but that the “underlying cause of the blood clots in the left lower extremity is unknown.”
The autopsy unequivocally ruled out that any sort of violence led to Mullen’s death, as there was no indication he had sustained any kind of trauma to his body. The toxicology screen showed the presence of no substances that could have led or contributed to his death.
While the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is uniformly tight-lipped about the results of all of its investigations, it is anticipated the matter with regard to General Mullens’ death is to be closed out shortly with a final conclusion that he died of natural causes.
-Mark Gutglueck