National Guard recruiters forged re-enlistment papers: report

Washington State National Guard recruiters repeatedly forged re-enlistment papers in a desperate attempt to hold on to soldiers in the run-up to the Iraq war surge, a local news channel's investigation has found.

In one case, a soldier found himself fighting against deployment to Iraq after re-enlistment papers with his signature on it appeared -- even though he never signed any such papers, reports Chris Ingalls at KING channel 5 news in Seattle.

And in another case, a sergeant who had signed up for a one-year tour of duty was shocked to discover his enlistment papers stated he had signed up for two years.

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The Washington National Guard soon determined that Sgt. Wendy Schaefer, a recruiter, had paid soldiers and civilians out of her own pocket to sign up recruits. She also promised the Guard would pay $1,000 for each enlistment.

According to Guard documents, Schaefer "created an environment that may have caused some of these 'paid assistants' to fabricate documents in order to get money."

rawstory.com...

This is appalling. It's bad enough they have to go fight and die in another countries conflicts that have at least partially been created by the US's lies and policies, but now it's obvious OUR government is making up papers to force them to stay longer than they are supposed to.

From reading the article, it looks like it has been found to be true, that this really has occurred, but is apparently being covered up, as none of the implicated parties have ever been charged, and at least 1 has already been honorably discharged from the military.

Originally posted by webpirate
but now it's obvious OUR government is making up papers to force them to stay longer than they are supposed to.

Not quite, but it is obvious that the recruiters responsible abused their positions and forged people's signatures to bolster their recruitment numbers.

Originally posted by Jenna

Originally posted by webpirate
but now it's obvious OUR government is making up papers to force them to stay longer than they are supposed to.

Not quite, but it is obvious that the recruiters responsible abused their positions and forged people's signatures to bolster their recruitment numbers.

More from that article:

In neither case has anyone in the Guard been disciplined. Sgt. Schaefer told KING 5 in an email that she left the Guard with her record intact. And the soldier who forged the signature in order to collect money from Schaefer has never been held to account either.

If the government itself wasn't explicitly complicit in this, they are still accountable because they have covered it up. Not prosecuting the recruiters who did this, and allowing them honorable discharges is at least guild by association, if nothing else....

reply to post by webpirate


It wasn't the government that forged the signatures, that was the recruiters doing. It also isn't the government's job to discipline those recruiters who do something stupid, that falls on whoever is above them in the chain of command. Every recruiter answers to someone up the chain of command and that chain of command failed to do their job when they found out what these recruiters were doing. They're the ones responsible for letting this go without any form of punishment, not the entire government or the entire military for that matter just the ones who covered it up and let it slide. I'm just as ticked off as you are that these recruiters not only forged enlistment papers but also got away with it, but at least direct the anger in the right direction.

reply to post by Jenna

OK. I will give you that point. You are correct that this isn't being shown as a full government conspiracy.

It isn't the government, it is agents of the government that were creating documents and forging signatures.
And, as you said, there were serious flaws there in the chain of command.

I still think something needs to be done. This made the news last night in Seattle again. Hopefully this will get the attention this issue deserves.

I mean, the video shown in the original article from the news shows the recruited ADMITTED she forged signatures. If the Seattle news can't get this the attention it deserves maybe ATS can.

Star to you for calling out my mistake and misguided accusations.

Wow. Just... wow. This is wrong on so many levels. It's not enough that these guys get sent into an unpopular and at face value, illegal war. When they're done these callous recruiters simply forge documents making them go back? There's got to be some sort of legal loophole here that would allow for prosecution (I'm no legal expert so please correct me if I'm wrong). If their enlistment was done, if they didn't voluntarily re-up, then technically they were civilians, no? Could not a civil court bring charges against the recruiters?

As far as the charges, how about attempted murder? Because if these guys, before their term of service was up, were attached to a combat operations unit, that is in effect what it was by forging their signatures.

It wouldn't stick, I know, but the mere implication that one could be tried for such might give some number crunching recruiter pause before they attempted to illegally send anyone back into harms way.

reply to post by Legion2112


Well there's fraud, forgery, and it seems like I'm forgetting one but I can't for the life of me remember what it is.. Whether or not they would be able to make the charges stick, however, is another matter. Usually when a signature is forged on a contract, the contract is just considered null and void and the one whose signature was forged isn't held liable for upholding whatever the contract says their part is. With this being a military contract though I don't know that the rules are exactly the same. They're similar I'm sure, but I can't swear their identical.

If these guys were already released from the contracts though then there probably isn't anything any court can do about it since they aren't being bound to something they didn't sign anymore.

There are a couple of errors in this report that need to be answered.

Recruiters don't do re-enlistment paperwork. That is done through their units

You don't sign up for Iraq. Iraq is a deployment and you go with your unit. It is impossible to re-enlist for Iraq and get stuck there for 2 years because of paperwork. You could go with your unit and spend up to 18 months, but it is not based off of the individual.

Originally posted by cavscout11cav
There are a couple of errors in this report that need to be answered.

Recruiters don't do re-enlistment paperwork. That is done through their units

You don't sign up for Iraq. Iraq is a deployment and you go with your unit. It is impossible to re-enlist for Iraq and get stuck there for 2 years because of paperwork. You could go with your unit and spend up to 18 months, but it is not based off of the individual.

I'm with cavscout on this. Alot of it doesn't make sense. Recruiters do the initial enlistment paperwork when a person first joins up. After that, it's the unit career counselors/reenlistment NCO's that do reenlistment paperwork. And as was said, you don't reenlist specifically to go to Iraq, unless you're in a unit that's deploying there.

This article has me wondering if it was a unit career counselor that was fudging reenlistment paperwork and not an actual recruiter.

Actual reenlistment entails a ceremony as well. It would be kinda hard to fudge that. Which leads me to believe that any paperwork fudging was paperwork for an extension. Which just needs that person's signature, or forged signature as alleged in the article.

It's still seriously messed up, regardless.



[edit on 21-4-2010 by bg_socalif]

Thats the military. Did anyone read the Air Force Times a couple of years ago about a military lawyer that had actually been disbarred prior to joining the military but he ended up serving 20 years as a lawyer in the military. In my experience in the military I found that a lot of criminals are serving with a lot of good people. I personally knew of people that did hard core drugs while serving, eventually they were kicked out, but there is a lot of bad people as well as good people in the military.