[1][2] According to the book, the RAND Corporation commissioned a 500-page report showing open service would not affect military readiness, but generals ignored it in favor of a video circulated by a Christian producer that graphically described gay sexual practices.

[1][3][4] Frank, a senior research fellow at the Palm Center of the University of California, Santa Barbara, spoke with members of the Military Working Group, the 1993 panel of six admirals and generals that helped draft the DADT policy.

General Robert Alexander, who headed the panel, said the findings were completely subjective and not based on any actual data, and that the group did not fully understand what "sexual orientation" even meant.

John Hutson, a retired United States Navy rear admiral who participated in the talks, told Frank the assessment of gay service was "based on nothing.

[5] On February 28, 2013, at a pretrial hearing in her court-martial, United States Army Private First Class Chelsea Manning testified that in early 2010 she had nicknamed her anonymous contact at WikiLeaks Nathaniel Frank, "after the author of a book I read in 2009.