Trump supporters, including one waving a Confederate flag, watch rioters storm the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. Robert Reid/Stars and Stripes ()
WASHINGTON (Tribune News Service) — The House Appropriations Committee would require Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to report to lawmakers soon on progress in keeping violent extremists out of the U.S. military.
The panel said in a report made public Monday that it would direct the Pentagon to report on how it is implementing proposals to solve the problem, including recommendations from an internal Defense Department study that was sent quietly to Congress in October 2020 and disclosed publicly by CQ Roll Call in February.
The Pentagon study described in detail the appeals that white supremacists and other extremists make to recruit military members — and their periodic successes.
"Despite a low number of cases in absolute terms, individuals with extremist affiliations and military experience are a concern to U.S. national security because of their proven ability to execute high-impact events," the Pentagon's October 2020 report stated. "Access to service members with combat training and technical weapons expertise can also increase both the probability of success and the potency of planned violent attacks."
Growing concerns
The Defense Department's efforts to grapple with violent extremism, particularly white supremacism, sped up last year in the wake of the George Floyd protests.
The Jan. 6 riots heightened worries more, because at least 50 people with military ties —mostly veterans, some with connections to extremist groups — have been charged with crimes committed that day at the Capitol, according to news reports.
This week's House Appropriations report, which accompanies the draft fiscal 2022 Defense spending bill, sounded a skeptical note about the prospects for excising from the ranks those who espouse and commit violence.
"While senior leaders in the Department of Defense and the Services are speaking candidly about the threat of extremist ideologies in their ranks, their efforts to make serious strides are undoubtedly hamstrung by the lack of definition of 'extremism' and 'extremist activities' in Department policy," the Appropriations Committee report noted. "The Department's efforts to address this threat are further complicated by an inability to collect and track extremist activity of servicemembers, gaps in investigative and record keeping procedures, and the absence of a mechanism to report extremist behavior or attempts at recruiting military personnel by extremist groups."
Pentagon report's proposals
The committee's new report notes that the director of national intelligence assessed in March that violent domestic extremists pose what the panel called a "heightened threat to the homeland."
"This is particularly troubling," the lawmakers wrote, "when coupled with the Department of Defense's October 2020 assessment that found extremist groups are actively seeking to recruit military personnel or enlist their own members in the military to obtain combat and tactical experience and gain sensitive national security-related knowledge."
Congress required the Pentagon's October 2020 report with a provision inserted in the fiscal 2020 defense authorization law at the insistence of California Democrat Pete Aguilar, who has pushed hard for years to get the Defense Department to more forcefully address the presence of extremists in military ranks.
The Pentagon study, written by the Defense Personnel and Security Research Center, recommended improving Defense Department security clearance screening to keep out extremists. It also urged the military services to tap FBI databases of extremist tattoos and symbols so Defense officials can better understand what such signs might say about someone's affiliations.
The report also said the Pentagon could consider hiring contractors to surveil social media as much as is practically and legally possible. And it proposed requiring that all military discharge forms note if someone was expelled because of extremist actions.
In the cover memo with the report, Matthew Donovan, then the Pentagon's under secretary for personnel and readiness, said the department plans to implement most of those recommendations.
'Hatred' in the ranks
The new House Defense spending report would require the Defense secretary to formally inform lawmakers about implementation of the Pentagon research center's recommendations. And the panel wants the Pentagon to provide a separate report dedicated to explaining progress at keeping extremists from getting security clearances.
The committee's indirect endorsement of the research center's recommendations comes five months after Aguilar, who serves on the Appropriations Defense panel, filed a bill that would require implementation of the proposals.
"This report language outlines clear steps to prevent White Nationalists and other dangerous extremists from infiltrating our military," Aguilar told CQ Roll Call in a statement. "We owe it to the brave men and women who serve this country honorably to rid the ranks of hatred and extremism, and this bill helps us do just that."
Austin's engagement
In addition, the Appropriations Committee would direct Austin to report on progress in implementing the Biden administration's government-wide strategy for combating extremism, made public in June, as well as Austin's Defense Department guidance on the problem, issued in April.
Committee report language is not legally binding but federal departments and agencies generally treat committee directives to produce reports as effectively mandatory.
All the reports must be submitted to Congress within 90 days of enactment of the new appropriations law.
The committee also indicated that it "expects" Austin to make funds available for these efforts.
All signs indicate that Austin, the first African American to serve as Defense secretary, does not need to be persuaded on that score. He has personally made combating violent extremism a top priority and ordered all military units to "stand down" at some point between early February and early April to briefly put other activities on hold so that commanders and their troops could discuss how to combat the scourge.
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