By Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer
White-supremacist groups have recruited 203 people who served in the U.S. military or who claim to have U.S. military backgrounds, according to a new report by the FBI. The unclassified FBI Intelligence Assessment, issued last week and obtained by NBC News, cautions that white-power extremists are trying hard to recruit active-duty soldiers and recent veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“White supremacist extremists hope to revitalize the white supremacist movement by exploiting antigovernment sentiment among opponents of the overseas conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the FBI report states. It adds, however, that the effort is not going particularly well. “Although some veterans of these conflicts have joined the extremist movement, they have not done so in numbers sufficient to stem declines among major national extremist organizations, nor has their participation resulted in a more violent extremist movement,” the FBI writes.
The report, titled “White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel since 9/11,” compiles statistics from hundreds of FBI cases from October 2001 to May 2008. It finds that U.S. military experience “is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement.” It adds: “FBI reporting indicates extremist leaders have historically favored recruiting active and former military personnel for their knowledge of firearms, explosives, and tactical skills and their access to weapons and intelligence in preparation for an anticipated war against the federal government, Jews, and people of color.”
And it’s not just veterans who are drawn to the cause. “FBI cases also document instances of active duty military personnel having volunteered their professional resources to white supremacist causes,” the report states. The FBI finds that “an estimated 19 veterans (approximately 9 percent of the 203) have verified or unverified service in the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Reaction from Watchdog Groups:
NBC News shared the bulletin, prepared by the FBI Counterterrorism Division, with Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Potok is an expert on extremist groups, and helped prepare a report called "A Few Bad Men," on how “extremists are once again worming their way into a recruit-starved military.”
“This is a genuinely important report,” Potok said. “The FBI has confirmed what the Southern Poverty Law Center disclosed in a major investigation -- that radical right-wing extremists have infiltrated the military in a bid to gain weapons and other specialized training, and that many former military members are a part of organized white supremacist groups.”
“The fact is, even if their numbers are small, violent white supremacists armed with the best military training in the world are a real presence in hate groups today. It’s important to remember that Timothy McVeigh, who murdered 168 people with a truck bomb, got his training in the military,” he added.
FBI Stats:
Skinhead groups and the extremist organizations National Alliance and the National Socialist Movement account for 72 percent of the total number of successfully recruited veterans (or men who claim to be U.S. veterans.) “According to sensitive and reliable source reporting in October 2006, the National Socialist Movement received a number of queries from active duty Army and Marine personnel stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan expressing interest in joining the organization or inquiring about chapters located near domestic US military bases,” the FBI states. “Whether as a result of group recruitment efforts or self-recruitment by active military personnel sympathetic to white supremacist extremist causes, FBI information derived from reliable, multiple sources documents white supremacist extremist activity occurring at some military bases.”
The authors also state that supremacist leaders have encouraged followers who lack histories of neo-Nazi activity to infiltrate the military as “ghost skins,” in order to recruit and receive training for the benefit of the extremist movement.
