US Army recruiting neo-Nazis

Hate groups feared in army
U.S. watchdog calls for stricter enforcement
Iraq recruiting shortfalls blamed for infiltration

Jul. 7, 2006. 12:29 AM
JOHN KIFNER
NEW YORK TIMES

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups,
recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-
Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog
organization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups,
estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with U.S.
Defence Department investigators and reports and postings on racist websites and
magazines.

"We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," the group quoted a Defence
Department investigator as saying in a report to be posted today on its website,
http://www.splcenter.org.

A Defence Department spokeswoman said officials there could not comment on the
report because they had not yet seen it.

The centre called on U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to appoint a task force
to study the problem, declare a new zero-tolerance policy and strictly enforce it.

The report said that neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance, whose founder,
William Pierce, wrote The Turner Diaries, the novel that was the inspiration and
blueprint for Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building,
sought to enrol followers in the army to get training for a race war. The groups are
being abetted, the report says, by pressure on recruiters, particularly for the army, to
meet quotas that are more difficult to reach because of the growing unpopularity of
the war in Iraq.

The report quotes Scott Barfield, a Defence Department investigator, saying,
"Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the
armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we
positively identify them as extremists or gang members."'

Barfield said army recruiters struggled last year to meet goals. ``They don't want to
make a big deal again about neo-Nazis in the military," he said, "because then
parents who are already worried about their kids signing up and dying in Iraq are
going to be even more reluctant about their kids enlisting .''

The 1996 crackdown on extremists came after revelations that McVeigh had
espoused far-right ideas when he was in the army and recruited two fellow soldiers to
aid his bomb plot.

The defence secretary at the time, William Perry, said the rules were meant to leave
no room for extremist activities within the military. But the report said Barfield, who is
based at Fort Lewis, Wash., had said that he had provided evidence on 320 extremists there in the past year, but that only two had been discharged. He also said there was an online network of neo-Nazis.