In the military it’s extremely common for someone above you in the Chain of Command to get the credit; it may be your boss, or several levels up.

Some of that credit may or may not spill over to you, but the general thought process is that they are responsible for what happens in the command so they get the credit. Good ones avoid that and push the credit to where it belongs, but then they don’t promote. This leads to an incentive to take credit from those under you in order to get promoted.

It's like a dark-mirror version of a really good principle in leadership philosophy, which was outlined in Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. "Everything that happens under your command is your responsibility." If a man fails to do his job in the correct way, it's because you failed to make a system that would train him properly, and possibly because you allowed the wrong man to be hired. Technically, every success is also your responsibility, but a smart leader spreads blame for success and privatizes blame for failure. In reality many leaders pretty much do the opposite.

Starship Troopers is on many recommended military reading lists for career professionals for very good reasons.

Functional fascism is a fascinating concept. Surprisingly excellent in the corporate world.

Right, but someone /other than your boss/ was mad that you didn't arrange for your boss to receive the credit. That's the WTF detail.

Correct; the fact that my name was on the presentation that went before Congress, vice my CO's, indicated to them that I went AROUND my CO.

In reality, this is certainly possible. It just would have been a career killer. My CO was the one who sent that presentation up with my name front and center. He had to defuse the situation.

Also, and this is absolutely relevant, I was not a Commissioned Officer. I retired as a Chief Petty Officer, though I had a degree (Nuclear Engineering) and multiple "graduate level" certifications (PMP, LSSBB, CISSP, etc., etc.). There is only so far competence and capability can take you without rank in the US military. I chose to exit rather than move over and promote, which was the right decision for me.

I apologize for lacking the context in my previous comments; I often forget people don't understand the intricacies of the arcane ways of the military unless they subjected themselves to it.

Presidents routinely take credit for all sorts of things that happen without their involement or knowledge. It's part of the tradeoff of expecting them to be omnipotent.