Thread by @weareoversight

This week, @USAToday reported on records we obtained that detail 13 major investigations into white supremacist activity in the Marine Corps and Navy over the past 20 years.

For #FOIAFriday, we’re discussing what we’ve learned about white supremacy in the military.

The presence of white supremacy and right-wing extremism in the U.S. military has been a serious concern for years, given heightened attention following the involvement of several former and even current military personnel in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

A recent Pentagon report warned that the infiltration of such ideology among the armed forces poses a serious national security threat, and officials have acknowledged a lack of centralized tracking of specific cases or numbers.
apnews.com/article/us-new…

Responses to our FOIA requests and records we received further illustrate how branches of the military are not adequately tracking incidents of white supremacy within their ranks.

First, USA Today reported on records we obtained from the US Navy that “show a pattern in which [Navy and Marine Corps] military leaders chose to deal with personnel involved in extremism by dismissing them in ways that would not attract public attention.”
usatoday.com/in-depth/news/…

Navy officials told @willcarless that those records represent the most serious incidents, and that most cases “are dealt with internally rather than being formally investigated, according to military law experts and service members. That means there’s no paper trail.”

In its cover letter attached to the documents, the Navy wrote that the branch “does not have a case category designated for white supremacy or hate crimes, nor do we track those types of crimes.”

The letter also stated that the Navy “does not conduct studies concerning incidents of white supremacy. Furthermore, we do not track the number of such incidents. However, individual commands may conduct internal command investigations without notifying our Service.”

These are not the first such records uncovered by our investigation of white supremacist or far-right activity or ideology among military personnel. The Marines previously sent us a spreadsheet with 29 complaints.
americanoversight.org/document/usmc-…

The spreadsheet, created by the Office of Manpower and Reserve Affairs, included complaints filed between May 2018 and July 2020. 4 complaints were categorized as extremist, 15 as supremacist, and 10 were classified as “other dissident activities.”

USMC also told us that they could not find records responsive to our request for studies concerning incidents of white supremacist activity or ideology. Given recent reporting on the prevalence of extremism in the military, this is concerning.

Further, USMC said that the Judge Advocate Division’s Military Personnel Law Branch advised them that ensuing action recommended or executed by the agency in response to these incidents “is not tracked and there is no searchable database from which to retrieve it.”

In other words, it seems that the result of these 29 complaints, and other potential instances of white supremacy and extremism in the Marine Corps, is not currently being tracked.

There’s more. Last May, we asked the Air Force for reports or studies of incidents of white supremacy among military personnel.

It said it had no such records.
americanoversight.org/document/no-re…

We also asked the Army for similar documents and in August, the Army Research Institute also told us it found no such records.
americanoversight.org/document/no-re…

A three-page spreadsheet provided by the Coast Guard summarized seven separate incidents from late 2018 through early 2020.

In its cover letter, the Coast Guard indicated that it was unable to release records under the Privacy Act because the information sought was exempt material compiled for law enforcement purposes.

We uncovered these records as part of our investigation into domestic terrorism and right-wing extremism, but our inquiry still ongoing. Learn more here:
americanoversight.org/the-u-s-milita…