Some military recruiters are skipping a screening process meant to flag whether applicants looking to enlist have affiliations with gangs or extremist groups, the Pentagon's internal watchdog has found.
In a sample of 224 recruits from 2021 to 2022, 41% of applicants were not properly interviewed about affiliation with radical groups or gangs, while 12% did not have their tattoos properly examined, according to a Defense Department inspector general report released to the public Monday.
The news comes as the services confront an unprecedented recruiting crisis and recruiters face immense pressure to meet quotas and get a shrinking pool of eligible applicants to sign up. At the same time, the Pentagon has grappled with how to root out extremists from the military ranks as the threat of violence from extremist groups -- and members with military backgrounds -- has ballooned in the U.S.
Read Next: Army's New Enlisted Leader: The Bet a Green Beret Can Lead the Rank and File
"As a result of not completing required applicant screening steps, military service recruiters may not have identified all applicants with extremist or criminal gang associations during the screening process, increasing the potential for future security risks and disruptions to good order, morale and discipline," the IG said in a statement.
Recruiters are expected to do a broad interview with applicants, mostly to determine whether anything in their background could compromise their ability to serve. But when it comes to extremist or gang affiliation, most of that is self-reported.
The military's vetting process generally does not go deeper than an applicant's criminal background and an unobtrusive questionnaire.
However, as part of the process, recruiters are supposed to identify whether applicants' tattoos comply with policy. Each service has generally relaxed rules for tattoos, but they draw the line at anything obscene, discriminatory, or referencing radical ideologies or gangs.
Tattoos can be an indication of membership in extremist groups, such as the National Socialist Movement or the Atomwaffen Division, two neo-Nazi white supremacist groups that are active in the U.S.
However, there is a wide and ever-changing range of extremist groups, meaning numerous logos and potential tattoos referencing them. Obscure references could skate by any examinations. If a tattoo is in question, the applicant self-reports what its meaning is.
Social media activity -- where members of extremist groups may often expose their beliefs -- is also a weak point of military enlistment vetting.
There is no broad Pentagon policy to vet an applicant's social media, which could provide the military with important indicators. But such an effort could also be a minefield by attempting to train midlevel noncommissioned officers on complex indicators of radicalism.
Experts have increasingly warned that those with a military background can serve as force multipliers for radical groups as extremist threats of violence and attack plots have proliferated in recent years. Also, even the most basic military training -- including mission planning, weapons maintenance and simple combat maneuvers -- can be useful to those extremist groups.
Spc. Killian Ryan, an 82nd Airborne Division soldier, was arrested in August last year and later kicked out of the Army.
Ryan claimed to have joined the military to become proficient at killing Black people, according to one social media post he wrote in May 2021, two weeks after he enlisted in the service. His personal email address was "NaziAce1488," a reference to Adolf Hitler and white supremacy.
In the past 30 years, Americans with a military background have killed 314 people in extremist activity and injured another 1,978, according to a congressional report.
-- Steve Beynon can be reached at Steve.Beynon@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevenBeynon.
Related: An Accused White Nationalist Is Serving in the Montana Guard Despite Efforts Against Extremism
