Drugs ‘ . . . can spoil your name, ruin your reputation.’ : Marine Fights for a Job He Loves

Staff Sgt. Michael Jordan is thinking maybe it’s better that his ponytailed daughter doesn’t understand what all the commotion is about--what he calls “all this mess about drugs.”

Like most curious 3-year-olds, Jamila is too busy reciting the ABCs and climbing on and off daddy’s knee to recognize that the conversation in her Tustin living room Tuesday evening has turned serious.

“She really doesn’t understand what’s going on,” Jordan said. “It’s probably better that way. It has been hard enough on the family.”

Jordan, 30, an El Toro Marine, is waging a one-man battle against the Marine Corps brass to prove his innocence, clear his name and prevent his ouster from the military service. A career soldier and 10-year Marine veteran, Jordan was ordered out of the service after he tested positive for marijuana use in a surprise urine test last summer.

An aircraft maintenance supervisor assigned to a unit of F-4 fighter jets at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, Jordan denied that he smoked marijuana and said that the test must have been in error.

On Monday, the day before Jordan was to have been mustered out of the service, U.S. District Court Judge William J. Rea signed an order prohibiting his discharge until a hearing could be held Feb. 3.

“This whole thing has really shaken us up, primarily because I don’t use drugs and am totally innocent,” Jordan said as Jamila tugged at his shirt in the small apartment he shares with his wife, Donna, and his other child, 11-month-old Michael.

“It’s crazy. It’s suicide to use drugs in the Marine Corps. We had been told they would deal with us severely,” he said.

“This kind of thing can spoil your name, ruin your reputation,” added Jordan, whose appearance mirrors the spit-and-polish Marine image. “I didn’t have any choice but to fight it. I was going to get dumped.”

Jordan’s problems began last June 2 when his unit underwent one of the Marine Corps’ periodic urine tests to detect drug usage.

According to Kevin McDermott, Jordan’s civilian attorney, the first test had Jordan registering a 379 nanogram count (parts per billion in the bloodstream). Anything over 15 nanograms constitutes marijuana use.

“To register 379, he would have had to have been totally under the influence of marijuana, stoned cold on the stuff,” McDermott contended, adding:

“The crazy thing about this case is that after testing positive on June 2, he tested squeaky clean in three follow-up tests on June 8, 9 and 10. There wasn’t a trace of (marijuana) in his system on those three follow-up tests. That alone should lead you to believe that something may have been wrong with the original test.

“And if that were true, even the government accepts that it takes 30 to 60 days for the human body to flush itself of all traces of marijuana. So why did he test negative a week later?”

McDermott also faulted the Marine Corps on the way it then tried to expel Jordan.

Among other things, McDermott charged that Jordan had been unjustly denied his request that the case be heard in a special court-martial, a procedure that would have given him the right to a lawyer and to cross-examine witnesses.

Instead, Jordan was first scheduled for a summary court-martial and then sent before an administrative hearing, where he was given a less-than-honorable discharge, a stigma that could remain with him for life.

“I have asked that the discharge be declared null and void,” McDermott said. “If (the judge) does that, the Marine Corps will have to decide either to court-martial him, upgrade his discharge to an honorable one or keep the Marine.”

As it now stands, Jordan would lose all benefits accumulated over his 10 years of service if discharged less than honorably. An honorable discharge would afford him back pay and vacation time, moving expenses and travel back to his home of record.

Despite repeated attempts, Marine Corps officials could not be reached for comment on the Jordan case.

But lawyers who have had experience in dealing with similar cases involving the military said the Corps, like other branches of the military, has the discretion to discharge a serviceman after the first positive test.

Follow-up tests on other urine samples from the same serviceman are not required. Moreover, the decision on how to discipline the soldier--punishments can range from a simple demotion in rank to discharge--usually rests with the unit’s commanding officer.

According to the Pentagon, the armed forces run more than two million drugs test a year, making the Department of Defense easily the nation’s largest employer screening for drugs. The Marine Corps has randomly tested its troops since 1982.

Gordon Brownell, a San Francisco lawyer who specializes in drug-test cases, said that given the circumstances in Jordan’s case “it sounds to me as if the first test was somebody else’s (urine) sample.”

“When you are dealing with literally millions of urine samples a year, it is impossible to avoid any mistakes, no matter what safeguards were taken,” he said. “If this Marine tested positive at the 379 level and six days later didn’t test positive at all, this would raise suspicion that this was not this man’s urine sample.”

Another San Francisco attorney who also specializes in drug-screening cases, Cliff Palefsky, said that discharging Jordan based on the one positive result was a “fundamentally flawed” decision.

“It violates every rule of toxicology,” he said. “As a scientific rule, unless you use a second and different method, the results are unreliable and inadmissible. Even the hard-nosed guys won’t rely on a single, unconfirmed test.”

McDermott, meanwhile, said that the tragedy in this instance was the potential loss of “a man who has been trained, loves his job and, in fact, has done a good job.”

“The point is, there should be some additional safeguards built into the system that when you throw someone out, you make damn sure he is a drug abuser before you do so,” he said. “It seems to me a hell of a waste of time and money to kick these people out. We have so much time and money invested in these guys with 10, 15 years.

“I’m not advocating that we have kids who are stoned working on jets, but I am saying we ought to be damn sure they are drug abusers before we single them out.”

Jordan, toying with Jamila’s hair Tuesday as she sat on his lap, said “the difficult thing is what it has done to my family. I have always loved my job. It’s been a real challenge. I want to keep doing it. It provides stability for my family. It’s been my life.”

“It has made everything really anxious,” his wife added. “There’s been a lot of strain as a family. We just don’t know what the future holds. You know, two small children . . . you just don’t know from one minute to the next.”

If the appeal fails, Jordan said he would try to find a job in the aircraft industry. “That’s what I’m good at and I like the challenge. But if I don’t get an honorable discharge, it will be real tough to find a job. I don’t really know what I could do.”