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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. One alarming detail about the siege on the US Capitol this month is just how many of the rioters and insurrectionists were current or former members of the armed forces. Maybe you've seen the footage from inside the Senate chambers of a man wearing a military-style helmet and tactical vests. That man is an air force veteran. The insurrectionist, killed by police while crashing through a Capitol window, was 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt who had, not that long ago, had finished 14 years in the air force.

Others involved are still serving in some capacity. An NPR analysis finds one in five people charged over their involvement in the attack have at least a record of military service. What is the Pentagon been doing to root out extremism and white nationalism in its ranks? How widespread an ideology is it among Americans in uniform? Are they being radicalized while there? What happens next?

With me now is Leo Shane III, Deputy Editor and Capitol Hill Bureau Chief for the Military Times, which obviously covers the military. Leo, thanks for coming on with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Leo Shane III: I appreciate the invite.

Brian: The findings from NPR are concerning, to say the least. One in five people charged in relation to the siege on the Capitol has a military history. That doesn't mean they're currently in the armed forces but they were, and only a small percentage of people ever serve anymore. How does your reporting in the Military Times either corroborate or complicate that analysis?

Leo Shane III: It really was a great analysis by NPR and something, frankly, that the military and the veteran community has been worried about, has been looking at. As we saw some of those reports, you mentioned a few of the veterans and guardsmen who were involved in the riot. The question has just been, how big is this? We did a survey of our readership last fall to look at just how widespread this problem is. We've been doing it from time to time over the years. Our readership is a little more career-oriented than the entire military, but it's a good reflection of what's out there.

We found that about a third of all members of the military said they saw signs of white supremacists or racist extremist ideology in the ranks. If you talk to minorities in the ranks, it's even higher. More than half said they've seen signs of this.

Now, that's significant because there's not really a good DOD survey. This has been a problem for years. One of the reasons we started asking the question, DOD hasn't done a great job tracking cases of extremism or white nationalist activity among troops. It's something that lawmakers have been pushing them for, for years and they actually included in the most recent defense authorization bill. In coming years, we should get a little bit better reflection of what the picture is, but right now, we've just got a lot of anecdotal stories and then, unfortunately, incidents like this, where we see that, at least on some level, these rioters were connected to groups that have extremist ideology

Brian: In your survey at the Military Times, did you get narrative to go along with those stats? I'll repeat the stats because I know these things go by very quickly on the radio when people are maybe paying attention to the road or cooking lunch or whatever it is. More than a third, you found, of all active-duty troops say they have personally witnessed examples of white nationalism or ideological0-driven racism. For service members who are ethnic minorities, that figure jumps up to more than half. My question is, do you know what kinds of specific actions or behaviors your readers reported seeing most commonly?

Leo Shane III: Yes. We did ask for some anecdotal evidence. Obviously, with a poll, we're trying to preserve some anonymity here, so we can't go into every person. In some cases, it's a matter of language. It sympathies towards certain groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers that are out there, discussions of what's going on. Some of the troops we did make contact with said that they saw activity online, activity on social media, among their peers, and then in some cases, it was blatant. It was tattoos that show white nationalist tendencies. It was even displays of things like Nazi paraphernalia or white supremacist imagery in barracks or in break rooms.

It's a real range of things. Whenever we ask this question, we also hear from folks who dismiss it and say, it's a completely exaggerated issue, and we're making this up. Obviously, if someone sees some tattoos on a fellow service member that are espousing a pretty racist ideology, it's something that sticks with them, something that frightened them that those folks are folks they're are supposed to rely on and trust

Brian: Listeners, help us report this story. We could take a few phone calls for Leo Shane III, Deputy Editor, and Capitol Hill Bureau Chief for the Military Times. If you are a recent veteran, or an active duty service member, or someone who knows a recent veteran or an active-duty service member who maybe you've heard some stories help us report this story. Have you seen examples of white supremacist activity or expression in the armed forces?

(646) 435-7280, for recent veterans active duty service members or anyone close to people in those groups who might have something relevant to add or you can ask a question. If you're just curious about a piece of the reporting from the Military Times. You can ask Leo Shane III, Deputy Editor and Capitol Hill Bureau Chief there. (646) 435-7280, (646) 435-7280. Assuming that your survey at the military times and the reporting that NPR did reflect something real, what is it about military culture that would make it a comfortable environment for white supremacists?

Leo Shane III: I should take a half step and caveat back. What our survey said is that that folks saw signs of it. We're not trying to say that a third of service members may be involved in this. As you know, and as your listeners know, if you know one person in the unit of a hundred that is involved in this, then that's disturbing to you that that person may be there and you may need to rely on them.

When I've talked to folks who study these extremist groups in the past, they've said there's a lot of different reasons why veterans may be more prone to this or maybe targeted. First off, it's really the targeting. When some of these groups look towards their violent goals they look at military folks because military folks are trusted and military folks come with military skills. If you have visions of starting a civil war, starting a violent insurrection, you want someone with military skills. You want someone who knows weapons. You want someone who knows planning and you want to bring those folks in.

In terms of our veterans and military folks, just more susceptible to this, there are complications. We've covered for years the issues of transition out of the military, the feeling that you've lost your mission in life. It's tough to make that transition from something as important as military service to a normal 9:00 to 5:00 job. Plenty of people do it perfectly well, but there are folks that look for a different way, look for different ways to reconnect. We hear from folks all the time, they want to be part of something bigger. They want to be part of a group and know that folks have their back.

Well, unfortunately, for some folks, extremist groups and these kinds of radical activists can provide that, can provide another safety net, feels like some people you know, and they're talking about making the country better and you can fall into that trap of ideology.

I've talked to quite a few folks who just say that the social media problems that we've seen across the board here in the last few years, veterans have been targeted very hard for that. Again, this is a group that cares greatly about the country, and once they see the country better, and can fall into some of the trappings of being led down the line of false information and being led to believe things that aren't true. All those start to play a factor of why you may see some over-representation of veterans there. That NPR report said, about one in five. We know that veterans in the country, we're talking about 1 in 10 people. It's overrepresented, but it's not completely out of the realm of possibility to think that you've got some more veterans in that group.

Brian: Salome, in Philadelphia, you're on WNYC with Leo Shane III, from the Military Times. Hi Salome, thanks for calling in.

Salome: Hi, Brian. Well, I'm a navy

veteran. I got out in 2010. The ship that I was on, I won't say the name. We had an incident where on Martin Luther King's day, a group of-- I guess they were all hung out together, neo-nazis on our ship. They hang a noose on a black doll. They had a cake, and happy Martin Luther King Day and stuff, and they took pictures, and someone else found it and they end up getting in trouble. One thing that stuck with me was that we found out that one of the guys had a swastika tattoo, and his chief sent him to go get it covered up before he went to captain's mastso it wouldn't be more evidence against them for what they had done. There were other things too, there were guys who'd play songs in workspaces that were like, "Go string up a N-word." It was a lot.

Brian: What do you make of it, Salome? A lot of people who have never served in the military might have an impression of it as a place that has been more successful than most other institutions in society at integration and holding people to a single standard. Do you think that's wrong or if it's right, then why would there be--?

Salome: There's people I met out there that were nice enough, but they told me-- they were honest with me that they've never seen a Black person in real life until they joined the Navy and got to boot camp, that they had little to no exposure to anyone outside of their small communities that looked like them or think the way they thought. I see that as something that's a point of view that some of them come in with and they hold on to and that others embrace the diversity that's there because it is there. The military is very, very diverse. It comes down to who they decide they want to seek community with when they get there.

Brian: How do you think they do at policing it? Do you have an opinion or an observation?

Salome: Honestly, it's handled just as well as they handle sexual assault and harassment, which is little to no handling [inaudible 00:12:23].

Brian: Salome, thank you for calling in. Pete Parker in Arkansas, you're on WNYC. Hi, Parker.

Pete Parker: Hey, guys. I'm a Navy veteran and listening to my shipmate there on the phone, it's very disappointing. I was only in for four years, I served on one ship. I felt like the racism was taken care of very well and very little experience of it. If anything, I've experienced more hypocrisy outside of the military than I ever did in.

Brian: When you say the racism was taken care of well, are you talking about incidents of it that existed, and then you felt that your commanding officers dealt with it in an effective way?

Pete Parker: Oh, yes. If somebody would try and pull the racism card that somebody that they work with was being discriminatory against them, or they were not being looked at for promotion because of their ethnic background, it was immediately taken up with. Definitely, going both ways, if somebody claimed it falsely, they were punished just as much as somebody whose claims of the act themselves to encourage truth and honesty throughout the ship.

Brian: Parker thank you very much. Well, two pretty different perceptions of at least how effective the leadership is in dealing with instances of racism in the Navy. Leo, from your reporting at the Military Times, what are the steps that they generally take to root out white nationalist extremism in the ranks?

Leo Shane III: Well, just hopping back, I think you pointed out one of the great contradictions here because the military is a very diverse melting pot and has for generations been seen as one of the great institutions where folks can put aside different backgrounds, different races, different experiences, and come together in pursuit of a mission. Unfortunately, that also creates situations like our first caller, where the priority is to keep people focused on their mission and not worry about anything else. "We'll tell this person to go cover up a tattoo and we'll discipline them quietly and then try and keep them in the unit so that we don't lose any manpower and we don't fall behind."

There's been concern voiced from a number of lawmakers that if the military isn't looking into these issues enough, they're not going to be punishing these enough. There have been a couple of cases or some higher profile cases of guardsmen, some recruits, Coast Guardsmen a few years ago who were involved in some of these groups, or involved in threatening public figures. They were drummed out, they were taken care of, but it's those smaller things. It's those tattoos, it's those comments or those social media posts that aren't necessarily going to result in large scale criminal charges that are much easier to just brush under the rug or wash away.

That's where, and especially if you're not identifying, would not surprise me in the case of that Navy ship, if there was an official write-up of some conduct on becoming in some inappropriate language but not officially listing it as extremist activity or racist activity. It sounds like there's no record of that sailor having that swastika tattoo. If you don't know it, you don't know it's the problem, then it's easier to say there isn't a problem. That's where the concern lies now is just, how much has the military really committed to looking at this and how deep is the problem?

We have heard from the new Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who was the first Black Secretary of Defense in American history, that he is promising to make this a priority and the issue of sexual assault saying that both of them undermine unit morale, undermine the core values of what it means to be in the military and they have to be addressed. We'll see if he can turn over a new leaf here and that message will travel down, but the concern is still it just takes one person and one commander to overlook it to allow somebody then to not just hold these racist ideologies, but to show that you can get away with it and maybe build a following in the ranks.

Brian: Monique in Tarrytown, you're on WNYC with Leo Shane III from the Military Times. Hi, Monique?

Monique: Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I am the wife of a retired officer at West Point, and I have a daughter who's enlisted, I have a son who's an ROTC. One of the great ethics that I've always admired in the military is this concept of everyone is green and that you really are judged by your character because lives are on the line. Now acknowledging that these are human beings that come with a lot of baggage, come with their environment, their culture, my experience has been that if there's ever been anything that has any nuance, whether it be sexism, or racism or homophobia, it is addressed quickly and really well.

That's why I'm surprised as far as when you were looking doing your-- what do you consider, besides obviously, the obvious swastika, is a confederate flag now considered a white supremacy versus Alabama pride, and that there's a spectrum between being patriotic, nationalist, patriotism, nationalism, nationalistic, fascist, and then white supremacist. I find that that this really broad brush is being put out there. I think that the nuance is-- Basically, my question is, what is considered actions that are white supremacist besides just really overt and how much of it is just subtle in language, in what's being said, and what's being perceived? That's the question I have.

Brian: Thank you. Leo?

Leo Shane III: Yes, it's a complicated question, because there is some nuance there. It's important though not to assume that everyone who responded to our survey was lost in the nuance. Again, there were cases of people saying we saw Nazi paraphernalia, we see white supremacist tattoos. I can't give you a specific breakdown because we didn't ask for everyone to detail what they had. We did have one person who wrote to us and said, "I've seen multiple soldiers online disrespecting the Black Lives Matter movement and saying terrible things about these protesters." That in of itself, you would say, "Well, it's a political movement. You could certainly have some problems with what they're saying without harboring racist views or white supremacist views."

Then this person went on said, "I've also seen multiple occasions where some of these folks are saying that these protesters should be put down like dogs, they should be shot. I haven't seen leadership act on that." If you're a Black soldier who sympathizes with Black Lives Matter and see your fellow soldiers

saying that those protesters should be shot like dogs, you're going to take that as pretty racist ideology and white nationalist ideology. How do we define that specifically? Where does that come in? Regardless what it is, that's the issue that leadership has to find a way to deal with and has to restore some order in. Otherwise, you've got folks who just don't have trust in the people that they're serving alongside.

Brian: Roland in DC, You're WNYC. Hi Roland.

Roland: Good morning. Mr. Shane, thank you for all of your reporting over the years. You are a treasure to the Military Times. Thank you. The issue of why racism would not be in the military is an odd question, because, I served for a while as a basic combat training officer, the soldiers every 12 weeks, I got a new batch of young men who came from Louisiana and Texas and Arkansas, and Harlem, and Bed-Stuy and they came with who they were. When they showed up at Fort Jackson, were they racist coming in? For some of them, this is the first time that were exposed to people from other races and backgrounds. My Chinese soldiers tended to stick together, my Black soldiers tended to stick together no matter where they were from. The white guys from the South stuck together and it was not something that they didn't come in-- We were stationed at bases. My time in the military, I was on bases named after Confederate Generals, Fort Lee, Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg was a failed Confederate officer. Why he has anything named after him is beyond me. But I spent a lot of my career at a base named after Braxton Bragg. I had recruits call me a Nigga. I did Article 15s against them, but there's a tension in the military that's no different than it is in civilian life. The Black culture--

Brian: Roland, let me ask you a follow-up question. I think what they're trying to get at in the reporting, the survey that NPR did, and the survey that the Military Times did is not, "Is there racism in the military?" That would be commensurate with what there is in all of society. That would be expected. I think the question is, is it more prevalent in the military and if so, are there reasons for that? To the extent that it exists in the military, even if it's at the same proportion as in society at large, is the military, as an institution, taking the right steps to deal with it? What do you think about, from your experience, in the service, any of those things, starting with the prevalence compared to society at large?

Roland: People in the military are doers. We do things. Civilians, and this is not the [unintelligible 00:23:12] putting us down, but when you have a mission, you have to accomplish that mission. If I've got to get 16 AR-15s to a company, to a platoon somewhere off in the boonies, I've got to get it done. Civilians can put things off, soldiers don't do that. When you have an ideology that you come from a racially divided background, and you are a racist person, you're not a racist person with a benign sense of, "I'm not going to do anything." You're a soldier, sailor, a marine, an airman, you do things. You act on the things that civilians say, "Well, I harbor this, but I won't do anything." To a soldier, you see a mission, you accomplish that mission, whether it is a PT test, getting through jump school, jungle training, we do things and when people [crosstalk]--

Brian: So they're more likely to act on those beliefs.

Roland: Definitely, yes, more likely. The command structure, for officers, you either get promoted or you have to leave. I have seen racism at promotion boards. It happens. You can't do away with it. When my father came back from World War II, he was at the Battle of the Bulge. He had $3,000 in his pocket. He was a Quartermaster, he did pretty well but he couldn't get a taxicab in Baltimore to stop for him, and he refused a ride in the back of the Baltimore Transit Company bus, so he walked six miles home in the rain to his mother's house, plus a army uniform.

Now, he's come a long way, but you got to remember that when Colin Powell was promoted to general the first time-- I know Colin. The Secretary of the Army was a young lawyer, not so young, but a lawyer from Harlem named Clifford Alexander who'd been appointed [unintelligible 00:25:18] Secretary of the Army, Clifford Alexander knew enough about the military to know that when he got the list, and all general officers and private officers have to get promoted by a presidential nomination approved by the Senate. When Clifford Alexander got his first list for colonels who are eligible for promotion to brigadier general, he said, "How many Blacks are on this list?" Someone says, "Well, there's none." He said, "Well, how? I was in the army, I know people on the army, you mean to tell me that there's not one single Black colonel who's eligible for promotion to brigadier general?"

Alexander asked the Department of the Army, the officers under him to go back and look at all colonels in the army who had eligibility to be promoted to brigadier general. He then asked that any colonel who had a bad officer efficiency report that had caused him to have a delay in promotion, at any point in his career, he wanted to review those OERs, officer efficiency reports. When he got that he said, "Now tell me, the reviewing officers who had kept those people from being promoted, do they have a pattern of not getting good promotion recommendations to other Black officers?" Believe it or not, they came back with-- There was some colonels who had always put Black officers at the bottom of, "Not likely to be promoted, I don't recommend them."

Brian: That's it. I'm going to have to go, Roland, because we're running out of time in the segment, but you've got to the moral of the story there, that it wasn't just about individuals not being promoted, there was a pattern on the part of enough supervisors that none were on that list to be promoted from colonel to brigadier general at that time. Thank you for telling that story and everything else in your call. We really appreciate it. I want to finish up with two quick things, and we're over time, but I want to get these in. One, we have a number of callers, who were saying that it's probably worse now than it was in the Vietnam era when there was a draft, or earlier than that when there was a draft, because the white Americans who are most likely to enlist in the military might be more likely to harbor racist views. Tell me if you think evidence backs that up. The last question is about the new Defence Secretary, Lloyd Austin, who was confirmed just last week, and as you noted, making him the first Black person to hold that office. With respect to white nationalism, or right-wing extremism, what is he walking into and what can he do about it? What about that question that a few different callers, who we don't have time to go to, are raising about the draft era versus today?

Leo Shane III: Sure. I'd be interested, I don't know that I have any data that that supports that idea. You certainly could see some arguments there but I also think that we live in a society where we just have more information now. I don't have any reason to believe that the folks who would enlist are inherently more racist or more prone to this. I think we just do a better job of identifying it, and frankly, over the last four years, unfortunately, we've seen more cases of it, more boldness among folks who do have that.

The military is still a very, very diverse and a very unifying force. We're talking about a small percentage, but I think that that small percentage is getting bolder and maybe bolder than it has been in the past. In terms of Secretary Austin, you touched on this earlier, but representation matters. What is he walking into? First off, he's got to figure out what he's walking into, because DOD just has not kept good records and good investigations of how much of a problem this is, but it's going to be very different to have a Black Defence Secretary looking into these things and there's another old white man. That's a just a visual message that is going to go out to everyone that says, "Hey, this is the person who's in charge, this is the person who's been trusted to lead the Pentagon. If you harbor views against him simply based on his race, on his background, then you're not in the right place."

Brian: Leo Shane III, Deputy Editor and Capitol Hill Bureau Chief for the Military Times. Thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it and judging from our callers, so many of them really appreciated it too. Thanks a lot, Leo.

Leo Shane III: Oh, anytime. Have me back on again. We can hopefully talk about progress on this issue soon.

Brian: That would be great if we can.

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