By Ken Silverstein
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 1, 2004
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon was warned repeatedly going back a decade that
it was accepting military recruits with criminal histories and was too lenient
with those already in uniform who exhibited violent or other troubling
behavior.
Six studies prepared over 10 years by an outside expert at the
Pentagon's request found that too little was being done to discipline
lawbreakers in uniform or even identify problem recruits.
A 1998 study
estimated that one-third of military recruits had arrest records. A 1995 report
found that one out of four Army career enlisted personnel had committed one or
more criminal offenses while on active duty. Yet many were allowed to reenlist
or received promotions. Some received good-conduct medals or held top secret
security clearances, the research found.
The 1995 study cited the case
of one soldier who was promoted to sergeant despite a record of behavior that
included multiple assaults, drunk and disorderly conduct, property destruction
and obstructio n of justice.
As recently as last year, only a month
before some of the worst abuses of Iraqi detainees occurred at Abu Ghraib
prison, one of the reports said some troops were in positions "where destructive
acts could have the most serious consequences."
"An immediate problem
faced by Defense is that there are military personnel with pre-service and
in-service records that clearly establish a pattern of substandard behavior,"
the 2003 report said.
"These individuals constitute a high-risk group
for destructive behavior and need to be identified."
The September 2003
study, titled "Reducing the Threat of Destructive Behavior by Military
Personnel" and released to The Times with the Pentagon's permission, was written
by Eli S. Flyer, a former senior analyst at the Defense Department and a
longtime Pentagon consultant.
It examined recruiting of active-duty
troops and misconduct by uniformed personnel once they entered the armed forces.
Military reservists undergo the same screening process as active-duty troops,
Flyer said.
Although the Pentagon adopted some new procedures, they were
not adequate, Flyer's most recent report said. The military services have
resisted improving screening procedures because that "would reduce applicant
supply," the 2003 report said, alluding to problems some services have had in
recent years meeting recruitment goals.
"Critically important,
development of applicant screening procedures to identify individuals with
behavior disorders has lagged, contributing to suitability problems and
destructive acts occurring later during active duty," the report said.
Flyer's most recent study said steps needed to be taken to reduce the "wide
range of destructive acts committed by military personnel," including sabotage,
serial murder and rape.
The Army recently announced that it had opened
investigations into at least 91 cases of possible misconduct by U.S. military
personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to violent crim es committed
against detainees, the charges include assaults and thefts committed against
civilians.
"One would hope Defense is doing a thorough investigation of
their backgrounds," Flyer said.
Flyer said Bill Carr, the Pentagon's
acting deputy undersecretary for military personnel policy, requested last
September's report. Carr was not available for an interview.
Curtis
Gilroy, who oversees military recruiting as director of the Pentagon's office of
accession policy, said the screening process for recruits was "pretty good" but
acknowledged some shortcomings.
It is hard to "pick out all the bad
apples," Gilroy said, "but we are striving to improve the system and are doing
so — from recruiters to the military entrance processing stations to the
initial training sites. We are taking screening very seriously and will be more
vigilant at all steps of the recruiting and accession process."
One
measure of the overall problem is provided by the record of a special Defen se
Department screening program called the Personnel Reliability Program, or PRP,
which is designed to ensure that only persons of sound character were assigned
to duty involving nuclear weapons. Between 1987 and 1990, three individuals
approved by the PRP committed murders while on active duty.
In a 1986
case, the Navy gave a PRP clearance to a man known to be a suspect in an
unsolved murder. Three years later, when the man was a fire control technician
on a nuclear submarine, he was charged in the murder of an elderly couple while
off duty. He was later convicted.
In an interview, Flyer said it was
too early to know if the problems he found could have contributed to the
situation at Abu Ghraib or to other misconduct cases that came to light in Iraq
and Afghanistan, although at least two cases involved veterans with checkered
backgrounds.
Most of the names of those being investigated have not been
released, but in at least two high-profile cases men who are charged with
committing cri mes had entered the military despite previous problems.
Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr., an accused ringleader in the
abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, served in the Gulf War in a Marine
reserve unit. He reenlisted in the Army in 2001, joining a reserve unit at a
time when allegations of violent behavior had been made against him in two civil
court proceedings. His wife alleged in divorce proceedings in 2000 that he beat
her, and she obtained three "protection of abuse" orders against him, court
records show.
An inmate at a state prison where Graner worked filed a
lawsuit against him and other guards in 1999 for allegedly kicking and beating
him, according to court records. Graner denied abusing the prisoner. The case
was dismissed in 2000 when the man, who by then had been released from prison,
failed to appear in court.
Graner's attorney in Texas, Guy Womack, did
not return phone calls seeking comment.
David Passaro is accused of
beating a detainee in Afgha nistan so badly that the man later died. Passaro
joined the Army in 1992 and later became a Ranger, after he was fired from the
Hartford, Conn., Police Department for allegedly
assaulting a man during an off-duty brawl, police and
court records show.
At the time of the alleged incident in Afghanistan
in 2003, Passaro was working as a civilian contractor for the CIA. The
indictment against him charges that he beat an Afghan detainee, Abdul Wali, with
his hands, feet and a large flashlight during interrogation June 19 and June 20.
Wali died the next day.
Thomas McNamara, a North Carolina public
defender who represents Passaro, did not return phone calls.
Flyer
worked at the Pentagon for 28 years, retiring in 1979 as staff director for
enlistment standards for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.
Since then, he has been hired by the Pentagon as an outside consultant to write
dozens of reports.
His 1998 report estimated that about one- third of
recruits had arrest records and many were not detected.
Potential
recruits with a criminal record can enlist in the armed forces if they receive a
moral character waiver. Flyer's 1998 report said that of the estimated 3.5
million recruits who entered the military service between 1978 and 1989, 300,000
had enlisted with a moral character waiver, most for a criminal arrest
record.
The report said that those enlisting with a moral waiver were
more likely than others to get into criminal trouble or be discharged for bad
behavior.
The Pentagon addressed the use of moral character waivers in a
report to Congress, also issued in 1998. The report said that during the
previous year, the Army approved 68% of waiver requests for felony
convictions.
The report also said that during difficult recruiting
periods, the services could "become inclined to enlist individuals who, under
more favorable supply conditions, would have been rejected."
Flyer's
most recent study called f or a number of reforms, including providing "military
managers with guidelines on the behavioral signs … likely to be associated
with destructive acts," and better use of computerized records to weed out
people with a history of serious behavior problems.
Flyer said some of
the recommendations in his reports have been adopted, and some outstanding
problems were outside the Pentagon's control, such as screeners' inability to
review juvenile records that had been sealed by courts.
But he said that
although there had been "significant improvements" over time, there were "still
problems to be resolved."
"Building safeguards to protect military
personnel from misuse of the records is no easy matter, but the costs of not
using this information effectively are very high," he said.
Gilroy said
criminal databases used by military screeners were imperfect and that recruits
sometimes provided false names or Social Security numbers to hide past
misconduct.
Gilroy said the Pent agon had made important improvements in
recent years, including centralizing and creating better links between personnel
databases.
He also said Pentagon pressure led Congress to pass a bill
in the late 1990s that required the states to sharply reduce fees they charged
the armed services for criminal background checks.