Naval services hide supremacists
Discharges don’t mention their cause for removal
For decades, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps have quietly kicked out white supremacists in their ranks, offering them administrative discharges that leave no public record of their hateful activity, a USA TODAY review of Navy documents found.
The documents, obtained via a public records request by the open government advocacy group American Oversight, detail 13 major investigations into white supremacist activity in the Navy and Marine Corps over more than 20 years. They show a pattern in which military leaders chose to deal with personnel involved in extremism by dismissing them in ways that would not attract public attention.
Take what happened to Edward Fix and Jacob Laskey.
In the early hours of Dec. 10, 2000, three white men left a neo-nazi rally and headed to downtown Jacksonville, Florida. They were looking for a Black person to beat up, according to the Navy records.
On Main Street, they found John Joseph Newsome, 44. They beat him severely with their fists, boots and a broken bottle, according to the documents.
The three were arrested and charged with aggravated battery causing great bodily harm and committing a hate crime. All three pleaded guilty to felonies and were sentenced to varying terms in the Duval County jail.
Fix and Laskey faced another investigation. They were enlisted members of the Navy, serving at nearby bases.
The two sailors never faced military charges.
Instead, the Navy dismissed them via administrative discharges. Their only punishment from the Navy for almost beating a man to death in a racially motivated hate crime was to lose their jobs, documents show.
Fix and Laskey entered civilian life with barely a blot on their military record. Fix fared even better: Because he had cooperated with civilian prosecutors, the felony conviction never went on his record.
The Navy records describe investigations into allegations of white supremacist assault, theft, verbal abuse, threats and gang crimes from 1997 to 2020.
One investigation involved members of a white supremacist gang called the “RRR” who branded themselves with lighters and got in fights with nonwhite Marines.
In another case, a female sailor started one of the earliest online white supremacist message boards. She bragged about her top-secret security clearance
while writing screeds about Hitler, Jews and Black people.
Not one of the 13 investigations resulted in a military trial, known as a court martial, according to the documents. That’s the only way a member of the military can receive what’s called a “punitive discharge” such as a dishonorable or bad conduct discharge.
Some of the personnel received small fines or pay cuts. Most of the troops who were let go received a general discharge under honorable conditions, the most mild administrative discharge.
Navy officials said the documents viewed by USA TODAY represent only the most severe instances of white supremacy investigated in the ranks. Most incidents are dealt with internally rather than being formally investigated, according to military law experts and service members. That means there’s no paper trail.
The military doesn’t track how many people are removed for extremist activity.
More than a third of active-duty military personnel reported seeing white supremacist or ideologically driven racism while on duty, according to a survey in 2019 by the Military Times. That was up from 22% in 2018.
“As a country, we haven’t decided that white supremacy is something that we really want to acknowledge, let alone address in a major way,” said Sarah Vinson, a forensic psychiatrist and associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Morehouse School of Medicine.
If the military truly wants to ferret out white supremacy, she said, transparency and consequences are critical: “If you allow things to go unchecked, they don’t magically get better and go away – they escalate.”
Navy officials said the service has always taken accusations of white supremacy
seriously.
“The Navy does not tolerate extremist or supremacist behavior,” Lt. Andrew Degarmo, a Navy spokesman, wrote in a statement. “Participation in supremacist or extremist activities is directly contrary to professionalism standards all Sailors are expected to follow, and the Navy will investigate and hold Sailors accountable for such actions.”
Anti-extremism efforts
At least 38 of the defendants charged with attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 served in the military, according to a USA TODAY analysis.
The prevalence of veterans in the mob spurred military leaders and Congress to renew calls to address extremism in the armed services.
Last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a memo outlining the Pentagon’s plans to tackle extremism in the military, including stepped-up screening of recruits and revising the official Department of Defense definition of extremism.
This year, U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, Dcalif., plans to reintroduce a bill that would amend the Uniform Code of Military Justice to outlaw extremist activity in the military. Speier’s bill would make it easier for the military to track violent extremism within its ranks. The Navy, for example, doesn’t know how many service members have been dismissed for extremist activity.
Speier’s proposed amendment was removed from last year’s military spending bill, despite easily passing the House of Representatives. Speier claimed it was removed to placate President Donald Trump, who argued that claims of domestic extremism were overblown. GOP lawmakers said the bill failed because they disagreed on how to tackle the problem.