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Rioters try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.

Military leaders were confused about how to define and root out extremist behavior, even as they acknowledged a stream of racist or bigoted recruits, in the wake of the U.S. Capitol insurrection, according to a long-awaited independent report commissioned by the Pentagon that provides a snapshot of the effort[1].

The report released this week -- a year and a half after the research was conducted between 2021 and 2022 -- also found that the Pentagon's effort to counter extremism was mired in a hodgepodge of sometimes contradictory policies, security clearance reviews that struggled to weed out extremists, and data collection efforts that were flawed and produced "inconsistent data at best."

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a renewed push to counter extremism in 2021 after hundreds of rioters, including some service members and veterans, broke into the Capitol in a violent attempt to block President Joe Biden's election victory. The insurrection came amid a rising tide of extremist activity in the U.S. that increasingly involved troops and veterans, as well as growing warnings from experts about potential acts of violence and terrorism.

Read Next: Marines Whose Cars Were Sold by Towing Company Will Be Repaid Under Court Settlement[2]

The Institute for Defense Analyses, a private nonprofit think tank, produced the report for Austin, titled "Prohibited Extremist Activities in the U.S. Department of Defense."

Clarity on basic definitions in Pentagon policy such as "active participation" and "extremist activities" had not made it to commanders who are supposed to be on the front lines of the issue, according to the report.

It also found that enforcing policies against extremism may be all but impossible in the National Guard[3] and reserves.

In December 2021, the Pentagon announced a new policy document that it said would address the issue of extremists in the ranks. The new rules banned a range of activities, from advocating terrorism or supporting the overthrow of the government to fundraising for an extremist group -- and even some activities as basic as "liking" or reposting extremist views on social media.

Then-Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters that[4] it was "a more clear explanation of what commanders' authorities and responsibilities are" and stressed that military leaders would look to unit commanders to enforce it "because they know their units and they know their people better than anybody."

But the IDA report noted that those rules didn't provide enough information on the types of "signs of future extremist activities" for commanders -- something outside experts warned could be an issue[5] when the policy was rolled out. Researchers also said that the lack of detail -- especially around "active participation" and "extremist activities" -- was particularly problematic.

The lack of clarity and consistency came as several military leaders told researchers in private interviews that the potential for extremism was present in the ranks.

One senior official told the researchers that "some people come in [to the military] with dislike for other races or ethnicities." Another said that "sometimes, people just come in from a bigoted or intolerant home situation and don't know any better," though they added "that can usually be addressed with mentoring."

Service members who were interviewed told researchers that "'intolerance of others' views,' trying to force one's views on others, and not being open to other points of views are building blocks of extremist behavior."

But those troops "often had difficulty drawing a line between prohibited extremist activities and individual acts of harassment and unlawful discrimination prohibited by the [Pentagon.]"

Leaders interviewed for the report and the authors also argued that strong disciplinary measures to deal with incidents could be counterproductive and "leaders need to be alert to the impact of their actions on 'the whole field, not just a few weeds.'"

Delayed Report Echoes Warnings

The study was one of the first things that the Pentagon announced it would be doing in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and the discovery in the weeks afterward that veterans and active-duty service members took part in the siege of the Capitol building. The following April, Austin announced the creation of an internal working group and commissioned the IDA report "to include gaining greater fidelity on the scope of the problem."

The working group delivered a separate report -- complete with recommendations and lines of action -- a few months later in December, and the Pentagon announced that the group's work was over[6].

Meanwhile, the IDA researchers continued working until June 2022, according to the report.

It is not clear why the IDA report was not released for more than a year after the research concluded. It was also made public by the Pentagon in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, when many troops and much of Washington, D.C., are on leave.

Many of the report's broad conclusions echo what experts have told Military.com in its reporting on the topic over the past two years. For example, the report notes that while military extremists are rare, they are still dangerous[7] since "even a small number of individuals with military connections and military training could present a risk to the military and to the country as a whole."

Examples include a 2020 case in which members of a group that included two Marines[8] and styled itself as a "modern-day SS" were arrested on allegations that they were plotting to destroy the power grid in the northwest U.S. In 2022, a Marine veteran[9] who was arrested on gun charges was revealed to be part of a neo-Nazi group that was stocking up on body armor and regularly training with guns. In 2023, a former Guardsman and self-identified Nazi was arrested for plotting to destroy a Maryland electrical substation[10].

There have also been multiple cases[11] of troops using[12] or painting the N-word[13]. One case involved a Marine two-star general[14], another was a top civilian Pentagon official[15]. The Navy[16] has had several cases[17] of nooses being discovered[18] on its ships.

During a 2020 listening session, Navy officials were told[19] of a variety of different examples of discrimination and racism that spanned from being ignored by superiors despite decades of experience to constant use of the N-word.

Guard Reflects Divisions on Extremism

The problems uncovered by the report appear to be even more acute in the National Guard, where the members are far more attached to their communities than the military and its policies of equal inclusion.

In the wake of the Jan. 6 attack, when several Guardsmen were found to have participated in the insurrection[20], it took months for some states to deal with the service members. In the case of Wisconsin Guardsman Pfc. Abram Markofski, it took more than a year after the events of that day and seven months after Markofski pleaded guilty to federal charges[21] for discharge proceedings to begin[22].

Five soldiers even wrote character statements for Guard officials and the Justice Department saying Markofski had been caught up in the moment and that he should be able to continue his military career.

One senior National Guard official told the IDA that "what is accepted as extremism in one location is not accepted in another." Another reported that the reaction to the Pentagon's extremism stand-down -- perhaps the most visible effort to address the problem[23] -- "varied greatly by community, saying, "Some remote areas that are homogeneous ... didn't see the point [of the stand-down], because it doesn't impact them.'"

That dynamic forced researchers to conclude that the Pentagon "may be challenged in its effort to mandate universal acceptance of and adherence to a singular definition and understanding of prohibited extremist activities" for the National Guard the reserve forces since those troops "are embedded in their communities and can be expected to reflect the values and divisions of those communities."

In addition to the confusion around the basic terminology, the Pentagon has little in the way of new data to help give a broader picture of the full scope of the issue. Researchers turned to court-martial records, but they noted that the approach was flawed because "minor offenses and cases that are resolved through plea agreements are unlikely to result in military appellate court opinions."

Meanwhile, efforts to add the ability to flag extremism in the Defense Department's data was still getting off the ground last year, and those flagging systems are "not linked or standardized, and lack clear and consistent definitions."

Security Clearances Fall Short

The report also found that the Pentagon's system of investigating people for security clearances is flawed and "still [focuses] to a significant extent on Cold War threats and threats related to the Global War on Terrorism rather than the threat of home-grown extremism."

The problems became clear in April when Jack Teixeira, an airman first class for the 102nd Intelligence Wing based at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts, was arrested and charged with leaking[24] some of the government's most closely guarded secrets on a private chat server.

Later court documents filed by the Justice Department[25] alleged that Teixeira had a long history of disturbing online remarks, including claims that he would "kill a [expletive] ton of people" if he could because it would be "culling the weak-minded."

Researchers found that, when it came to security clearances, "in many cases, the existing standards and training materials applicable to these processes do not even specifically identify [extremist] behaviors and activities as a potential problem."

The screenings appeared to be so ineffective that they didn't even catch those who are openly white supremacists.

In 2022, Spc. Killian Ryan was arrested[26] for lying on his clearance paperwork after the FBI, not the military, discovered that he had ties to white nationalism and made threats of violence against minorities publicly on social media.

Ryan's personal email address around the time of his enlistment was "NaziAce1488" and one of his posts read: "I serve for combat experience so I'm more proficient in killing n-----s."

Resistance on Capitol Hill

Despite the host of issues revealed by the IDA report, it is likely to be the last major work from the Pentagon on the issue. Since its commissioning, the topic of extremism with the ranks has become politicized by Congress and a problem for the Pentagon.

Military.com's investigation found[27] that cases of domestic terrorism have skyrocketed in the last decade and the groups behind many of these incidents are actively recruiting veterans into their fold, where they often quickly move into leadership positions.

However, some members of Congress have called the Pentagon's efforts "offensive to every veteran in America"[28] and something that "smacks of the 'Thought Police.'" [29]

Top defense leaders have[30] had to sit before Congressional committees[31] and be grilled on the necessity and cost of the policies, and legislators on the political right have signaled that they are not done[32].

In April, a defense official who was familiar with the Pentagon's efforts to combat extremism told Military.com that "the department did not want to really have to engage [on] this to begin with for a variety of reasons, mainly because it does distract from a lot of the other business and work that they're trying to do."

Related: What the Pentagon Has, Hasn't and Could Do to Stop Veterans and Troops from Joining Extremist Groups[33]

© Copyright 2023 Military.com. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rebroadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Military.com, please submit your request here[34].

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Water sampling in process at the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base, Michigan

Oscoda, Michigan, has the distinction as the first community where “forever chemicals” were found seeping from a military installation into the surrounding community. Beginning in 2010, state officials and later residents who lived near the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base were horrified to learn that the chemicals, collectively called PFAS, had leached into their rivers, lakes, and drinking water.

Thirteen years later, the community is still waiting on whatever it will take to clean its water. As a result of dogged activism and pressure from government officials, the Air Force has finally taken initial steps simply to contain the chemicals.

Wurtsmith is just one of hundreds of contaminated U.S. military sites. Under congressional pressure, the Defense Department has acknowledged it has a big mess to clean up. It has spent years trying to grasp the scale of the contamination and assess the costs U.S. taxpayers will shoulder to clean it all up. Further, there’s no clear scientific agreement on how to destroy the chemicals, even as companies pitch their scientists’ best solutions in a bid for a share of billions of dollars in looming government contracts.

“We’re really at the forefront,” said Tony Spaniola, a lawyer turned activist whose family owns a home across Van Etten Lake from the former base. “There has been gross mismanagement of this entire program — a lot of stonewalling, a lot of foot-dragging.” He added: “In the meantime, this stuff is continuing to spew into groundwater continuously, into lakes, rivers.”

PFAS chemicals have been linked to increased cholesterol levels, preeclampsia in pregnant women, decreased birth weights, and decreased immune response to vaccines, as well as certain types of cancer. A federal study of U.S. military personnel published in July was the first to show a direct connection[1] between PFAS and testicular cancer, and the chemicals have been linked to increased risk of kidney cancer.

Pentagon Has Lacked ‘Urgency’

Despite rising concerns over the potential effects of these substances, Pentagon officials have defended their use[2] as a matter of national security, asserting in a report to Congress in August that banning them would undermine military readiness.

As many as 600 active or former military installations and adjacent communities are or may be contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. The chemicals are found in a bevy of products used by the U.S. military for decades, including industrial solvents, stain retardants, waterproofing compounds, and firefighting foam.

While the Pentagon was aware of the potential health effects of PFAS as early as the 1970s, the individual military services didn’t begin responding to PFAS pollution at bases until 2014. More than nine years into the Defense Department’s work to analyze its contamination problem and plan for cleanup, frustrated advocates and community residents continue to worry about the safety of their drinking water.

“There hasn’t been an urgency from the DOD that we’ve seen to actually clean up their mess,” said Jared Hayes, a senior policy analyst with the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization that focuses on pollution issues nationwide.

The Defense Department did not respond to questions about the pace of the cleanup or provide updated cost estimates.

A spokesperson said the Pentagon is committed to addressing its PFAS contamination. “The Department recognizes the importance of this issue and is committed to addressing PFAS in a deliberative, holistic, and transparent manner,” Jeff Jurgensen wrote in an email to KFF Health News.

Water is sampled from the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base, Michigan, on Aug. 1, 2017. (Breanne Humphreys/U.S. Air Force)

Cleanup Costs Balloon

By June 30, the Defense Department had determined that 359 of 714 active and former bases and National Guard facilities were polluted with PFAS and 107 didn’t meet a threshold for action. Investigations are underway at the remaining 248 sites, with nearly all results expected by year’s end, according to Defense Department records[3].

Cleanup cost assessments have ballooned as the list of contaminated installations grows and researchers work to develop technologies to remove or destroy the toxic compounds. The Defense Department estimated in 2016 that the “total cleanup liability” — only a portion of which applies to PFAS cleanup — was $27.3 billion.

But according to a Sept. 21 letter[4] from 52 members of Congress, that estimate climbed to $38.7 billion by 2022.

The House version of the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2024 funding bill includes more than $1.1 billion for cleanup of PFAS and contaminants such as PCBs, dioxins, and radiation at active and former installations, while the Senate’s version would boost the military’s PFAS-specific $250 million funding request by more than $67 million to address water contamination. The legislation has yet to pass, mired in congressional debate over the fiscal 2024 appropriations process.

“DOD has a massive backlog of cleanup at their sites and the funding just wasn’t adding up. … The amount of funding that they are putting toward cleaning up the problem isn’t matching the need of the problem,” Hayes said, referring to an analysis conducted by EWG[5].

A November analysis of Pentagon data found that the extent of the contamination may even be broader[6], with tests showing thousands of samples from private wells near military installations contained levels of PFAS that the Environmental Protection Agency considers unsafe.

The EPA has proposed stringent limits on multiple types of PFAS, including PFOA and PFOS, in drinking water. The new standard, expected to take effect by the end of the year, would set a cap of 4 parts per trillion for those two compounds. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has been evaluating its sites using a 2016 EPA health advisory of 70 parts per trillion.

If the EPA limit becomes the standard, the Defense Department will need to incorporate it into the review, planning, and cleanup process, Jurgensen said.

But activists, including Spaniola, are pushing the Biden administration to start the cleanup process even while investigations are ongoing. In a July memorandum[7], Brendan Owens, assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations, and environment, directed the Defense Department to find locations near current and former bases where PFAS can be extracted from groundwater and soil while a cleanup plan is developed.

At Wurtsmith — the first military site where contamination was discovered — officials started by installing two groundwater treatment systems, adding to a handful of other pumps[8] installed over the years.

The two systems won’t destroy the chemicals, but they will stop some of the flow of contaminated groundwater into Van Etten Lake from a landfill and a repository that once held discarded or unused equipment, according to Air Force officials[9].

As for completely ridding the environment of PFAS chemicals, a long, bumpy road remains.

‘Multiple Decades of Cleanup’

For years, the Defense Department had disposed of the chemicals by burning them in incinerators. In 2018, the Defense Department paid contractors to begin work to incinerate more than 2 million gallons of stockpiled firefighting foam. In 2021, Congress ordered the Pentagon to stop the practice in anticipation of new EPA guidelines for PFAS disposal and destruction, which the agency says it expects to update this winter, but the Pentagon lifted its moratorium[10] on incineration on July 11.

Studies have shown[11] burning the chemicals can release toxic gases into the air.

In suspending the moratorium, the Defense Department said it had found four commercially available options for effectively burning PFAS.

EPA spokesperson Tim Carroll said in a statement[12] the agency understands the Pentagon needed to provide guidance to its personnel regarding destruction and disposal of PFAS.

But communities already affected by PFAS contamination should be protected when making decisions about how to dispose of the chemicals, according to the statement.

“EPA understands that DoD considers high temperature incinerators to be an effective destruction option,” Carroll said. “EPA notes that, at this time, it is difficult to determine whether high temperature incinerators are an effective PFAS destruction option because data on PFAS releases from incinerators are generally lacking.”

Besides incinerating waste, injecting it deep into the earth, and putting it in landfills, a number of companies are testing technologies they hope will work to destroy PFAS. Among those methods is supercritical water oxidation, known as SCWO, which oxidizes organic compounds at high temperatures.

Conventional incineration plants are “nowhere close to being able to destroy PFAS,” said Zhuoyan Cai, director of Denmark-based Aquarden Technologies, which he said is currently in talks with U.S. companies about its SCWO technology. “The PFAS is used in firefighting foam, so it’s highly thermally resistant, so it’s very difficult to just burn it away in a traditional plant.”

Supercritical water is essentially a fourth state of water under extremely high pressure and temperature — different from ice, liquid water, and steam — with special characteristics that dissolve oil and other organic compounds, including PFAS and pesticides.

When wastewater is under those conditions, the salts fall away and the oils and pesticides blend into the supercritical water. Mix in oxygen and it reacts aggressively and rips the PFAS carbon bonds apart, with greater than 99.999% destruction, Cai said. A study from EPA scientists[13] said the method “could be a permanent solution for PFAS-laden wastewaters.”

A handful of companies are working with the Pentagon to bring mobile SCWO technology to widespread use, including Revive Environmental[14], a spinoff of the Ohio-based nonprofit Battelle, and 374Water[15], which originated from research at Duke University in North Carolina.

“Unfortunately, we as a society are still manufacturing and selling [PFAS] into the market. So I think the first thing we need to do is stop putting it in our ecosystem,” 374Water’s board chairman, Kobe Nagar, said. “It’s multiple decades of cleanup.”

Other companies are developing and testing their own approaches, using everything from ultraviolet light[16] to plasma[17].

Dallas-based AECOM, a consulting firm that handles PFAS response work for the U.S. military, uses electrodes to break down the chemicals by removing electrons.

But Rosa Gwinn, global PFAS technical lead at AECOM, cautioned that none of these emerging technologies is a perfect response to the cleanup predicament. “There is not going to be a single solution, no matter what somebody says,” she said.

But as industry chases billions of dollars in government contracts, towns like Oscoda linger under a cloud of health concerns with little action.

Well over a decade after the discovery of the chemicals surrounding Wurtsmith, a bounty of public health warnings[18] about PFAS exposure remain, including for drinking water, fish and wildlife, and the chemical-laced foam that still washes ashore. One site now finally being targeted is a beach with a YMCA camp for children, Spaniola said.

“Am I concerned for my health? Yes,” he said. “Am I concerned for my family’s health? Yes.”

KFF Health News[19] is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF[20].

KFF Health News[21] is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF[22].

Subscribe[23] to KFF Health News' free Morning Briefing.

© Copyright 2023 KFF Health News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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The Fort Stewart Directorate of Public Works' lead mold remediation specialist shows where a barrack room's bathroom ceiling in building 212 has mold after the room was flooded by an equipment failure.

The Pentagon will have to set military-wide standards for what makes barracks habitable under the defense policy bill that was signed into law late last week.

Requiring minimum standards for habitability is one of several ways this year's National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, seeks to improve barracks conditions, which have come under increasing scrutiny from lawmakers over the past year amid growing evidence of deplorable living conditions for junior service members.

President Joe Biden signed the NDAA into law late Friday afternoon. The wide-ranging bill covers everything from endorsing the annual military pay raise[1] to facilitating medical studies of psychedelic drugs to scaling back diversity programs[2].

Read Next: The Top 10 Military.com News Stories of 2023[3]

Also included in this year's NDAA are several reforms for barracks that come after a Government Accountability Office report documented squalid living conditions[4], including overflowing sewage, rampant mold, bedbug infestations and squatters.

The GAO report bolstered previous anecdotal evidence and news reports about rundown, moldy barracks. The report infuriated lawmakers[5], who demanded accountability and a culture change within the military that pays more attention to living conditions.

"If I would have had these conditions in any of our barracks, I would have gotten fired," Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a retired Air Force[6] brigadier general who heads a House Armed Services Committee quality-of-life panel, said in September following the revelations.

While military officials have acknowledged falling short in maintaining their barracks, some have continued to deny that there are systemic[7] issues even after the GAO report. Top officials have also largely attributed barracks woes to funding issues. The Army[8], which owns the lion's share of barracks in the military, has said it plans to ask Congress for $4 billion to renovate and build new housing.

In the meantime, Congress is mandating several changes to the way the military thinks about the barracks. Most prominently, the NDAA requires the secretary of defense to establish military-wide minimum standards for assigning service members to barracks.

The standards will cover the buildings' condition, habitability, health and environmental comfort, safety and security, and "any other element the secretary of defense determines appropriate," according to the bill text.

Clarifying department-wide minimum standards for health and safety of the barracks was one of the key recommendations in the GAO report.

The standards can be waived only by a service secretary, according to the bill. The services will have 30 days from when the Pentagon establishes the standards to issue their own guidance on them.

The Pentagon will also have to certify to Congress every year that the cost of repairing a barracks facility isn't more than 20% of what it would cost to replace the building altogether. And it will have to create a military-wide index of the condition of all barracks, as well as a department-wide maintenance work order system.

For barracks that are substandard, the bill seeks to give the military more flexibility to replace them quickly by launching a five-year pilot program that will allow the services to dip into their operations and maintenance funding or unspecified minor military construction funding to build new housing.

The Pentagon will also have to establish military-wide design standards for barracks that stipulate, among other things, the minimum amount of floor space rooms can have and the quality of construction material that must be used, according to the NDAA. The military services will have two years from when the standards are issued to comply.

The bill also makes it harder to waive any minimum standards for privacy and configuration of the barracks by raising the waiver approval authority to the service secretaries. And it mandates that a civilian be put in charge of managing the barracks at each base's housing office, with limited exceptions for service members whose occupational specialty is focused on barracks management.

The reforms in this year's NDAA could be just the start of more sweeping changes. The House Armed Services Committee’s quality-of-life panel launched this year will make recommendations to include in next year's defense bill. Bacon and panel members have said housing will be one of its key priorities.

Related: Biden Signs Law Backing Military Pay Increase for 2024. Here's How Much More You'll Get.[9]

© Copyright 2023 Military.com. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rebroadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Military.com, please submit your request here[10].

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