Irregular Army

by Matt Kennard

  Despite the mounting evidence, the government itself did nothing, apart from to issue denials. The US Senate Committee on the Armed Forces has long been considered one of Congress’s most powerful groups. It governs legislation affecting the Pentagon, defense budget, military strategies and operations. When I contacted the committee, it was led by the influential senators Carl Levin and John McCain. An investigation by the committee into how white supremacists permeate the military in plain violation of US law could result in substantive changes. Staffers on the committee would not agree to be interviewed. Instead, a spokesperson responded that white supremacy in the military has never arisen as a concern. In an email, the spokesperson said, “The Committee doesn’t have any information that would indicate this is a particular problem.” But in June 2011, the SPLC reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had “virtually dismantled its unit responsible for investigating homegrown extremists.” Daryl Johnson, an analyst who authored a 2009 DHS report warning of a “growing threat” from far-right radicals, told the group: “My greatest fear is that domestic extremists . . . will [carry] out a mass-casualty attack. That is what keeps me up at night.”31 Johnson’s fears came closer to being realized in April 2012, when neo-Nazis started “heavily-armed” patrols around the area of Sanford, Florida—it was the natural conclusion of a decade of hard training by the US military, and a complement to similar work on the US–Mexico border. This new paramilitary garrison in Florida was organized by the National Socialist Movement—who, as we have seen, included a large number of veterans—in the aftermath of the shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin. The Miami New Times reported that the group and their shock troops were “prepared” for race riots, and they would “defend” the white population. “Further racial violence . . . is brimming over like a powder keg ready to explode into the streets,” said Jeff Schoep, the NSM Commander. “In Arizona the guys [in NSM] can walk around with assault weapons and that’s totally legal,” he added.32 Schoep, however, refused to divulge what kind of “firepower” they had with them on the patrols of between ten and twenty American-style Waffen-SS. But with the military experience running through the movement, along with years of access to the highest-grade weaponry in the world, it can safely be assumed that it wasn’t just 9mm handguns.

  Begging

  During the whole time I spend with him, the only time I see Forrest angry, aside from when his kids are messing around, is when he talks about he was treated after his tour of Iraq. He left in June 2006 and was later honorably discharged from the army before being asked to reenlist. “They were begging me to reenlist, they didn’t want me to get out, my whole military career they didn’t want me to get out,” he says. He wanted to join Blackwater, become a private contractor and go back to Iraq. “You make a lot of money at Blackwater, $100,000 a year, I was getting $30,000 when I was in the army,” he says. “They are hardcore, they’re doing cool stuff, the army is fighting with boxing gloves on, Blackwater is gloves off.” Unfortunately for Forrest the SPLC would intervene to stop his dream of going back to Iraq with immunity. In between honorable discharge from the civilian army and application for Blackwater, the SPLC had publicized his neo-Nazi connections.33 After putting his application in to Blackwater, he was told that they “couldn’t touch” him because he had been put on the Terrorist Watch List, kept by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center in a bid to identify all potential terrorist threats to the US. “They defamed me,” says Fogarty with real emotion. “It was slanderous, they painted me as a dumbass . . . I would have been able to stay in without the SPLC,” adds Fogarty. “They [the army] wouldn’t care unless I made an incident at work, but now the SPLC comes out it looks bad.” Fogarty is right that he was unlucky. Despite his girlfriend’s dossier, his tattoos, and his impromptu trip to Germany, he had been allowed to stay in, and would seemingly have been fine reenlisting had the SPLC not intervened. Following their report, the President of the SPLC, J. Richard Cohen, wrote a letter to the Under Secretary of Defense, David S. C. Chu, stating that “a combination of manpower shortages and poorly written inconsistently enforced regulations has resulted in the recent reappearance of significant numbers of extremists in the armed forces.”34

  John Fain is another. A soft-spoken and more thoughtful character, he spent two years fighting in the War on Terror, but has none of the bravado of other military extremists. He tells me he joined up “Not to learn combat, but to make myself a better person. I wanted a better work ethic, not just the training to be a soldier. It wasn’t so much for a political thing when I joined the military . . . I’m concerned with the welfare and wellbeing of white Americans,” he continues, “but the main thing with me is not so much how people look, but there’s a particular interest that there is in the media, most of the people are Jewish, they’ll admit it. It’s not good when you have a population of three percent brainwashing the rest of the populace. People should be made free to have information, because the masses are stupid.” His neo-Nazi affiliations did nothing to stop the military trying to reenlist him. Fain claims he has never been a member of the National Alliance, but considers himself a “patriot, which liberals in the military deem as extremist,” and admits that he “support[s] the National Alliance” and “agrees with most of what they say.” Erich Gliebe, the leader of the Alliance, seems surprised when I tell him Fain wasn’t a member. “He isn’t?” he asks. “I’m a separatist,” says Fain. “I’d be willing to state it out in the street. I’ve worked with a black guy who had been member of the Black Panthers; he said, ‘I don’t have problem with white people but I don’t want my daughter bringing home white men.’ I feel the same, we’re both racists. We had an understanding.”

  Fain joined the military in 1999 when he was eighteen years old, and since he had no tattoos or criminal convictions, he passed through recruitment easily. “I was kind of at a crossroads in my life, doing a dead end job,” he says, in a familiar story. “I wanted to try to better myself, and I thought about joining the military. I was going to join the Navy but when I was there the army recruiter said, ‘Can I talk to you in a sec?’ ” Within a week Fain had signed up. Between 2003 and 2004 Fain served two tours in Iraq, going all over the country, from Baghdad to Basra. “Most people keep their opinions to themselves,” he says of fellow extremists. “But I’ve met quite a few of them actually. Last year I ran across a lot of people. I was sitting in the barracks in the US,” he says. “There were some guys I overheard on their laptop and they were playing music from Resistance Records [a neo-Nazi music label]. I never noticed people causing a ruckus; the unit I was with was what would be considered good ol’ boys from the country.” Fain is actually relatively pro-Arab, for good racist reasons. “It’s more what’s in someone’s head than color of their skin. Arabs aren’t European, but they are governing themselves. They are not coming over to mingle with us. And they are against Zionist control of governments; they just want to have their own country and own lands.”

  When Fain returned from Iraq in 2004 he started to work for Vanguard Books, the literary arm of the National Alliance. It sells US army books: $9.95 will get you a tome on Explosives and Demolitions. And when Fain left the army, this spell working for the National Alliance came back to haunt him. The army refused him security clearance, which is a privilege conferred on soldiers and other civil servants after service that gives them access to classified information of a certain sensitivity. “They had found out information about me,” says Fain. “I had worked for National Vanguard books, and they were like, ‘Who owns it?’ and I said, ‘It’s owned by a corporation.’ So they said, ‘Isn’t it owned by the National Alliance?’ I said, ‘I don’t know,’ ‘Are you member?’ ‘No, I don’t hold membership but I work for them.’ ” The army had procured information on his employment through tax returns, and pursued their investigations of Vanguard Books. Despite this, Fain claims he was asked to reenlist. “I’m not going to do it, I’ve had enough now,” he says. Does he think they rela
xed standards? I ask him. “It’s quite possible. I can’t say that it is, I don’t know what the government has issued, but I would say it’s quite possible. Before they could be picky, now that they need to keep troop numbers high they are accepting no high school diploma, which is more detrimental. I’d rather see swastika than an idiot with no tattoos.” Elsewhere the SPLC quotes Fain as saying, “Join only for the training, and to better defend yourself, our people, and our culture. We must have people to open doors from the inside when the time comes.”35

  The discharge figures confirm the experiences of Fogarty and Fain. They show that the avenues the army guidelines stipulate for dealing with extremists already serving in the military have been drastically reduced since 1998, and increasingly so since the War on Terror was initially announced. One such avenue is the denial of reenlistment, which fell from a high of 4,000 soldiers rejected in 1994 to a low of 81 in 2006. Another is a soldier receiving misconduct charges resulting in discharge from the army. In the five-year period from 1998 to 2003 the number of discharges for misconduct teetered from a high of 2,560 to a low of 2,307. But by 2006 this number had fallen off to 1,435.36 Again, misconduct is a broad category but the decline shows clearly that standards dropped.

  The US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) is set up to investigate criminal behavior by army personnel and their reports have often touched on the problem of extremist soldiers. A number of internal investigations into extremist soldiers I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that CID consistently ignored evidence of violent neo-Nazis and white supremacists. One case at Fort Hood included evidence that a soldier was making internet postings on the white supremacist site Stormfront.org. But the investigator seems to have been unable even to locate the soldier in question. Due to “poor documentation,” he writes, “attempts to locate with minimal information met with negative results . . . I’m not doing my job here,” he notes. “Needs to get fixed.”37 Another investigation into another soldier at Fort Hood is even more distressing. The investigators found that he belonged to the neo-Nazi Hammerskins and was “closely associated with” the Celtic Knights of Austin, Texas, another extremist organization, a situation bad enough to merit a joint investigation by the FBI and CID. The army summary states that there was “probable cause” to believe that the soldier had participated in at least one white extremist meeting and that he had “provided a military technical manual [Improvised Munitions Handbook] to the leader of a white extremist group in order to assist in the planning and execution of future attacks on various targets.” Of four preliminary probes into white supremacists I obtained, CID carried through on only this one. On March 22, 2006, the suspect provided the Improvised Munitions Handbook to the leader of the Celtic Knights, it notes, “to assist in the planning and execution of attacks on five methamphetamine laboratories in the Austin, TX area.” It adds, “these attacks were not carried out and the [Joint Terrorism Taskforce] indicated a larger single attack was planned for the San Antonio, Texas after a considerable amount of media attention was given to illegal immigrants. The attack was not completed due to the inability of the organization to obtain explosives.” The document notes that despite these grave threats the subject was only interviewed once, in 2006, and the investigation was terminated the following year because the action commander or prosecutor indicated intent to do nothing or at least only “action amounting to less than a court proceeding.” The report added, “no further investigative assistance of CID is required.”

  Another internal report documented the case of an Army National Guard member who investigators believed was “the leader and recruiter” for the Alaska Front, yet another white supremacist organization. The summary describes the soldier as “a person of interest to the FBI due to statements made by the Soldier relating to the robbery of armored cars.” The soldier and another member of the Alaska Front were, the report notes, employed by the security company in Anchorage responsible for transporting money using armored cars. Once again, after noting clear affiliations and concrete threats of criminal activity, the narrative indicates that the investigation was closed. “The Soldier’s Commander was briefed,” it reads. “No further investigation has occurred by the FBI since the Soldier has been mobilized to Camp Shelby, MS in preparation for deployment to Iraq.”38

  The 2005 DPSRC report found that because recruiters and basic training officers lack clear instructions on how to handle evidence of extremist affiliations and also fail to share information, “military personnel cannot evaluate the full extent to which problematic persons associated with particular groups are trying to enlist in the military and their apparent strategies for doing so.” It concludes, “Personnel are unlikely to be able to detect anything beyond what would appear to be isolated incidents.” Finding evidence of participation on white supremacist websites would be another easy way to screen out extremist recruits, but the same report found that the DOD had not adequately clarified which web forums were gathering places for extremists. In fact, even in cases where active-duty soldiers have been caught posting to such sites, the investigations have been terminated. It appears to some insiders that this incoherence and confusion is consciously fostered to allow the recruitment of extremist soldiers to continue, and to avoid their discharge. “Effectively,” the report concludes, “the military has a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy pertaining to extremism. If individuals can perform satisfactorily, without making their extremist opinions overt . . . they are likely to be able to complete their contracts.”39 This went for Islamic fundamentalists, too. When Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly murdered thirteen of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas, it was revealed afterwards that the military had been aware of his Islamic extremist ideology but had done nothing to stop it. Hasan had been in contact with his ideological hero Anwar al-Awlaki—the extremist cleric exiled in Yemen who was assassinated by the Obama administration in 2011—and the military had either not trained its personnel well enough or had told them to turn a blind eye to extremism.

  Carter F. Smith, another former military gang investigator, defends CID, who he worked with in 2004–6, telling me, “They don’t bend to the whims of the commander as much as people on the outside say. They piss a lot of people off. If they wanted to push something they could, but it takes a lot of emphasis on what’s right.” But he is not surprised by the lax 2006 CID “investigations.” “When you need more soldiers you lower the standards whether you say so or not,” says Smith, who served as military investigator from 1982, and from 1998 to 1999 was the chief of the gang-hate group investigations team. “The increase with gangs and extremists is an indicator of this.” He says the pressure to maintain numbers might make an investigator “ignore stuff . . . Say an investigator sees a soldier with a tattoo that reads ‘88,’” he says, “if you know 88 is Heil Hitler, but the soldier gives you a plausible reason and you don’t look for any memorabilia, you can let him go . . . It’s not that they aren’t concerned about white supremacists,” he adds, “but they have a war to fight and they don’t have any incentive to slow down.”

  Iraq as Race War

  For neo-Nazis to prosper in the US military, a general culture of racism is undoubtedly a prerequisite. Forrest stood out because of his skinhead appearance and tattoos, but his casual use of the derogatory term “hajjis” and perception of Arabs as “backward” became endemic throughout the military during the War on Terror. “Racism was rampant,” recalls veteran Michael Prysner, who served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. “All of command, everywhere, it was completely ingrained in the consciousness of every soldier. I’ve heard top generals refer to the Iraqi people as ‘hajjis.’ And it wasn’t auto-ingrained in the soldiers, the anti-Arab racism came from the brass, it came from the top and was pushed into the mind of subordinate soldiers.” Prysner believes this kind of racist attitude is consciously fostered to make the military operations easier to carry out. “Even before the invasion racist language was a
lways used against the Iraqi people,” he said. “Attributing their condition to cultural backwardness, painting a picture of backward people helped this idea that they needed the US to go in. When you are carrying out missions this is what was on the mind of the soldiers, so the soldiers conduct themselves terribly; we weren’t acting with human beings to protect them, we were there to control every Iraqi who was subordinate to us, and everything was justified because they weren’t considered people.”

  Another vet, Michael Totten, who served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne from 2003 to 2004, agrees: “I think at a fundamental level there’s a type of superiority complex, a heightened sense of importance; the military carries this attitude, in my experience, towards the people of Iraq. The Iraqis were seen as substandard, second class, a lot of times they weren’t seen as human, they were seen as an obstacle, more of a burden, I didn’t feel that we were going in as liberators, I felt I was there for the sake of being there.” On neo-Nazis like Fogarty, he doesn’t think they would stand out at all. “It wouldn’t stand out if you said ‘sand-niggers,’ even if you aren’t a neo-Nazi. At the time, I used the words ‘sand-nigger,’ I didn’t consider ‘hajji’ to be derogatory. I have changed since I came back, obviously.” Even racism between soldiers was rife. In late 2011, eight soldiers were charged after the suicide of Chinese-American Private Danny Chen, a nineteen-year-old infantryman from New York, who shot himself in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The charges were brought against the soldiers for an alleged long history of assaults and racist taunts which led to him taking his life. Geoffrey Millard served in Iraq for thirteen months, beginning in 2004, as part of the Forty-Second Infantry Division. He recalls General George Casey, who served as the commander in Iraq from 2004 to 2007, addressing a briefing he attended in the summer of 2005 at Forward Operating Base, outside Tikrit. “As he walked past, he was talking about some incident that had just happened, and he was talking about how ‘these stupid fucking hajjis couldn’t figure shit out.’ And I’m just like, Are you kidding me? This is General Casey, the highest-ranking guy in Iraq, referring to the Iraqi people as ‘fucking hajjis.’” (A spokesperson for Casey, who later served as the Army Chief of Staff, said the general “did not make this statement.”) “We had a frago [fragmentary order] come out one day that actually talked about how the DOD wanted us to stop using the word ‘hajji’ because it was seen as a racist slur, but I still heard [another general] use the word hajji. He’d have to correct himself, but it didn’t change his thought pattern.” Millard was later an organizer for Iraq Veterans Against the War and says he has seen white nationalist tattoos during outreach operations. “Since we’ve been doing outreach to bases there’s this [White Power] tattoo that I’ve seen a couple of times, and a couple of other different racial symbols. They’ve got rid of the regulations on a lot of things, including white supremacists . . . The military is attractive to white supremacists,” he adds, “because the war itself is racist.”