to his superiors in an attempt to press them into action. It had resulted in an investigation into the unit over the course of its thirteen-month deployment to Iraq, which turned up ironclad evidence of gang activity. According to the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, “the probe involved soldiers believed to be members of the Chicago-based Gangster Disciples. Numerous photos of Disciples had been found, along with graffiti and a list of potential gang members, in the soldiers’ living quarters.”49 But the investigation reported to have found no evidence “validating or disproving” the rampant gang activity in the unit.
Just two months later Johnson was dead. “The only thing that came from the investigation downrange was that I was a disgruntled soldier, causing problems,” Pasquale said. He had even written down the names of those he suspected of gang activity and given them to his superiors, who refused to take action. “Then we come back from Iraq and wham, bam a soldier’s dead. I want [Johnson’s] family to know that your son, your husband, the father of your child did not have to die. I want his family to know that he didn’t have to die if someone had done their job and not swept this under the rug,” said Pasquale. In the aftermath of his testimony, Pasquale was the target of relentless abuse and intimidation, including threats to his life and gang graffiti daubed on his barracks. He even had alarms fitted and slept with knives. “If I do get killed, I don’t want to be another Sgt. Johnson with people wondering, ‘What happened to him? Why?’” he said. “I don’t want my mother going through what Sgt. Johnson’s mother’s going through, trying to get answers from the army.”
Getting Answers
That Pasquale didn’t want his mother asking the military for answers is understandable. Throughout the War on Terror, getting genuine answers from the army or any other branch of the military about gang infiltration was impossible. The reaction from the military brass when presented with evidence of the vast numbers of gang members in their midst—even from federal investigators or their own troops—oscillated from outright denial to ad hominem attacks on those making the charges. The threat to the wellbeing of troops, the occupied populations and those back home in American cities didn’t seem to trouble them. The most serious and important work undertaken to collect information had, therefore, to be undertaken outside of the military establishment—primarily, by the FBI and civilian police. An extensive report on the problem was published by the FBI in 2007, but at the time it barely registered on the radar of the mainstream media and became another important military-related document read only by the initiated.50 This time around, however, it was more surprising than usual as the findings were particularly worrying for the domestic population of the US. Gang-bangers know a lot about fighting and violence—it’s their raison d’être. But until the War on Terror that “expertise” had never been shifted wholesale from the inner city to the US military, from South Central to Baghdad and back again. “Gang-related activity in the US military is increasing and poses a threat to law enforcement officials and national security,” the investigators concluded. “Members of nearly every major street gang have been identified on both domestic and international military installations.” The FBI did not mince words when outlining the problems this could cause for the military. Gang membership in the ranks will “result in disruption of command, low morale, disciplinary problems, and a broad range of criminal activity,” as well as the “risk of transferring their weapons and combat training back to the community to employ against rival gangs and law enforcement officers.”
Despite this prognosis, in its long history the US military had never instituted regulation prohibiting gang members from joining its ranks. It is true that gang members tend to have criminal records, which can bar an individual from enlistment, but if they are clean, there is sufficient ambiguity in regulations to allow them through. And even criminal records aren’t always a bar. Another strange feature of the military’s enlistment process is that it relies on recruits to voluntarily reveal their past records, rather than actively investigating them. If the recruit is upfront enough they will go through a “suitability review” which includes a police record check. If that record contains frequent offenses for a number of misdemeanors, the recruit will require a “moral waiver” in order to serve.51 The FBI fingered this as a serious problem which had allowed gang members to fly through recruitment. “Gang members have been known to enlist in the military by failing to report past criminal convictions or by using fraudulent documents,” said the report.52 And once they are in, a whole new complex of problems appears. The FBI lamented the impossibility of gauging the extent of the gang members in service because “military authorities may not recognize gang affiliation or may be inclined not to report such incidences” (my emphasis). It’s an incredible suggestion: the federal government’s investigative branch cannot gauge the problem of criminal gangs in the country’s fighting forces because the military refuses to report gang activity. This dereliction of duty could, the report said, “ultimately jeopardize the safety of other military members,” as it did so tragically in the case of Johnson—and he was far from being the only one.
The unit of the military assigned to investigate criminal activity in the service, the CID, was an integral part of the cover-up, denying the existence of the problem from start to finish. “We recently conducted an Army-wide study, and we don’t see a significant trend in this kind of activity, especially when you compare this with a million-man army,” said its report into gang activity in the military, published at the same time as the FBI report.53 CID’s own report found that gang-related investigations went up from four to sixteen between 2003 and 2006, while incidents went up from eight to forty-four in the same period, in keeping with the enlargement of the force. But FBI gang investigator Jennifer Simon told Stars and Stripes that “it’s no secret that gang members are prevalent in the armed forces, including internationally.”54 She said gang members had been documented on or near US military bases in Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Iraq. The discrepancy in the reporting of the problem caused huge tensions between the FBI and the military’s investigative units, who seemed piqued that the federal authorities took their job so seriously. They were shocked that the FBI was failing to understand the manpower pressures the military was under. The resulting internecine war was bitter. On the back of the worrying FBI report, the military said the bureau was “overstating the problem, mixing historical and more recent events, and using unsupported hearsay type comments and statements from various undocumented experts.”55 In the aftermath a joint memorandum from the military investigative units was sent to the FBI “contesting parts of the assessment, asking for its withdrawal, and offering increased cooperation and coordination to obtain a more accurate estimate of the gang problem in the military.” The FBI said no, and the military published its own report in riposte.
A military spokesman later asked about the problem entered the realm of fantasy: “In nearly every one of the cases that we looked into, it is a young man or woman who thought that the symbol looked cool,” he said. “We have found some people even get gang tattoos not really knowing what they are, or at least that they have not had any gang affiliation in the past.” It’s a serious strain to believe that the significance of florid gang tattoos would be unknown to their owners: usually an indelible mark on the skin demands some research. But these dopey soldiers had company within the military in the form of recruiters, who seemed to know even less about what gang tattoos look like. It wasn’t entirely their own fault: as the military investigators demonstrated so impeccably, commanders didn’t see it as an issue and preferred to turn a blind eye in the face of pressure to maintain recruitment levels. On top of that, as the FBI pointed out, many “military recruiters are not properly trained to recognize gang affiliation and unknowingly recruit gang members, particularly if the applicant has no criminal record or visible tattoos.”56
Hunter Glass, the gang investigator, adds: “If we weren’t in the middle of fighting a war, yes, I think the military would have a lot more control over this issue, but with a war going on, I think it’s very difficult to do.” The military was also experiencing an intense financial squeeze from the Bush administration, which was impacting its ability to control the problem. “Forming multi-agency task forces and joint community groups is an effective way to combat the problem,” says the FBI report. “However, decreases in funding and staffing to many task forces
