Security concerns led to “weeding out” foreign-born troops
According to the Military Times, Pentagon officials were concerned that foreign-born recruits had falsified their backgrounds when they tried to enlist. For that reason, they started culling the herd of recruits;
In a statement filed by Roger Smith, branch chief for personnel security policy at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, DoD argued that regular reviews of the program found security holes, including that some applicants could not be vetted because the U.S. lacked “access and the ability to conduct standard security screening and interviews with associates, friends, and family members, as many [Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI)] soldiers are from nations who remain hostile to the United States or do not have data-sharing agreements with the United States.”
In addition, in his statement Smith said that through a 2016 review, DoD found that “(1) a number of individuals accessed into the military based on receiving fraudulent visas to attend universities that did not exist; (2) some MAVNI recruits attended, and later falsified transcripts from, universities owned by a Foreign National Security Agency and a State Sponsored Intelligence Organization (notably, most of the university classmates of one MAVNI recruit later worked for the same State Sponsored Intelligence Organization); and (3) one MAVNI recruit who entered the United States on a student visa professed support for 9/11 terrorists and said he would voluntarily help China in a crisis situation.”
Another MAVNI recruit had family connections to foreign military entities.
In DoD’s judgment, these examples indicated that sufficient vetting of MAVNI personnel was not occurring at the accessions stage, contrary to the goal of avoiding altogether the accessions of individuals who present potential counter-intelligence, security, or insider threats.
I guess Associated Press reports aren’t as interested in the story now as they were a few weeks ago.
Category: Big Pentagon
It is so damn nice to see adults running the Five Sided Asylum these days.
no shyt! Also damned nice they figured this one out! break time or “time out” for those kiddies must be over?
News full of the Army reversing itself on a high profile discharge. Don’t know which one.
Possibly the discharge and deportation of that “poor soldier who came to the USA and raised his right hand for our country”? The one, who when one digs deeper and finds, that was caught in some sort of large drug dealing operation? That one, that the bleeding hearts are so distraught over?
Nah, of course the MSM won’t follow up on this. They’re too busy salivating over Helsinki and calling Trump a traitor.
Takes one to know one, I guess.
Doesn’t fit the racism narrative propagated by the Lame Stream Media.
Culling the herd
Gee whiz. I wondered when that would happen. Someone finally woke up and smelled the coffee burning.
Amazing isn’t it, 2 world trade buildings, the pentagon, 3 passenger aircraft, a destroyer, a barracks on and on ad nauseum and some dimwit in the pentagon said ‘DUH’ maybe we shouldn’t let dem peoples in ???
Serving in the military is a civic duty not a right. I think the MSM has lost sight of the fact that Service Members serve at the pleasure of the US Congress and the President, thereby they serve the citizens of the United States.
If these MAVNIs put anything above the Constitution or lied about their boot size, put them back on the streets or better yet, a slow boat back to their home nation.
The Services aren’t a social experiment.
I feel like a broken record…
I blame USAREC and it’s willingness to please the former administration.
uh uh brother, because….muh rights…muh free stuff. and because…Trump! or something.
i always chafed at the idea that we in uniform were/are a social experiment or a petri dish for social change. “it works in the military” being the standard go-to, while totally forgetting or omitting the fact that your average service member does not often have the ability (or animus) to challenge the new “standards” at will.
broken record or not, keep shouting it from your chosen soapbox.
If you’re a security risk, it doesn’t matter if you were born in Baltimore or Baghdad, native-born citizen or naturalized, the military does not need you. It really is that simple.
Being familiar with the security clearance business, I’ll just say that I called this story back when it came out.
I’m betting that the core of the problem here is that no one can validate or interview anyone who knows them or their families.
No interviews, no clearance. It really should be that simple.
You can’t do a background check if there’s no records anywhere. These recruits could be squeaky clean but if there’s no record, it doesn’t matter. It’s exactly the same reason Trump pushed the travel bans. You can’t trust a passport from a country that essentially has no government.
Security? Background checks? BULLSHYT! I was chief of security at a casino and we were told we could not ask any direction questions about new applicants! AND we could not give out any condemning info on any former employees! “In their wisdom , they became foolish”!!!
Well said SFC D… the MSM loved the story because it went along with their narrative (no matter how naïve it was). However, when challenged with the truth, they conveniently ran out of space to print. Oh well, I guess they will understand…
what we meant to say!
I can’t imagine the damage that has already been done. Or is currently being done.
I wouldn’t worry about that. They’re small potatoes. Imagine the harm done by Trump’s immediate predecessor in office, his appointees, his cabinet members (esp., Wide Load and Lurch) and that monthly suicide threat, what’s-its-name, the thing.
That’s what I meant. The damage from the insane policies of the past. Can’t help but wonder just who exactly has been allowed to serve in our military that didn’t belong there. How many are still in today that shouldn’t be there?
Major Nidal Hassan
American born of immigrant parents. Your point?
AW1Ed,
Point is: There are service members who are radicalized and represent threats who are present in the Armed Forces, no matter where these individuals are from.
John
Got’cha, thanks. A bit confused, this being an immigrant thread.
From an MI perspective, it’s a tricky problem. Anybody who has been through DLI could probably tell you that native-born speakers of a language present an advantage not only in terms of linguistic skills but also nuance of the target culture. At the same time, the native born are always going to present a potential security risk.
How to mitigate such a risk is likely to be a constant on the radar of counter-intel, and it’s not something they’re going to discuss with those outside the loop.
Hassan displayed so many “tells” (including emails to Anwar al-Awlaki) that it was inexcusable he was still in uniform when he committed his atrocities.
Except it didn’t, and the Army too ignored the signs, and the tragic event occurred. He’s still breathing air.
Yeah, but he is constantly smelling ass. I might be a big meanie but I kind of like the idea of him sitting in that chair in a box for 40 years until he croaks.
My experiences with these immigrant soldiers were all bad. When they are supposed to be speaking Arabic and my counterpart had no idea what the hell he was saying, in fact spoke better English and Arabic than the linguist then we knew we had problems. Why does it take ten years to fix a problems like that?
Why? It’s called ‘plausible deniability’. That’s why.
About time. Doesn’t matter, as others have said, where a security risk was born, what languages they speak, or any other factor other than being a security risk. “No go” on the investigation should result in “No go” on a clearance. Just like it does for those of us with easy investigations.
Yep, it really is just that simple.
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This is my surprised face. 😐
Doesn’t DoD know that’s it’s racist to look into someone’s background? 😉
I have an old friend thar came from Germany back in 59. He grew up in Leipzig which was in East Germany after WWII. He had a mechanical engineer degree and joined the US Army in the early 60s with another German immigrant. Since he could not get a security clearance because all of his records were in East Germany, he spent his enlistment rotating the tires on missle launchers in West Texas.