Pentagon says it will waive bonus repayments for most National Guard soldiers

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said Tuesday it would waive repayment for more than 15,000 California National Guard soldiers and veterans who received enlistment bonuses over the last decade but that 1,000 or so other service members would not have their debts waived.

Peter Levine, the Pentagon’s top personnel official, told reporters that the Defense Department would begin notifying soldiers this month that their debts were being waived and that all of the notifications would be completed before July 1.

“We think that the number of cases in which we’ll be recouping will be a few hundred, as opposed to the many thousands of cases that are under the sword of Damocles right now,” Levine said.

Levine’s figures were higher than those the California Guard had provided in recent months, and suggest the problem was larger than previously recognized. California Guard officials had said they had audited 14,000 soldiers’ bonuses and that about 9,800 were facing repayment demands.

The announcement follows President Barack Obama’s signing of a defense authorization bill into law on Dec. 23. The bill contained language that required the Pentagon to conduct a case-by-case review of the California Guard bonuses and to waive repayment unless a soldier took the money fraudulently or did not fulfill his or her enlistment contract.

The Los Angeles Times reported in October that the California Guard was using tax liens and other aggressive tactics to force about 9,700 soldiers and veterans to repay enlistment bonuses and other financial incentives awarded during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Although some of the bonuses were awarded improperly, The Times found that many of the repayment demands resulted from the California Guard losing soldiers’ records or other administrative errors. Many of the soldiers who received the demands had served in combat, and some returned with severe injuries.

Many soldiers were told to repay bonuses of $15,000 or more, years after they had completed their military service. Student loan repayments, which were given to some soldiers with educational loans, sometimes totaled as much as $50,000.

In the most detailed accounting of the fiasco yet, Levine said that a Pentagon review had found a total of 17,500 bonuses were paid to California Guard soldiers from 2004 to 2010.

Of those, he said, 1,400 soldiers had been ordered to begin repaying a bonus or student loan incentive, while another 16,000 had been notified that they could face debt collection.

About half the 1,400 who have been repaying their bonuses are likely to have the debts waived and their money returned, Levine said.