‘Disgusted’ by Hazing, Cohen Calls for ‘Zero Tolerance’

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen on Friday signaled a new Pentagon effort to stamp out hazing practices that he said had left him “disturbed and disgusted.”

Reacting to reports that elite Marine paratroopers had metal insignias pounded into their chests during training, Cohen said he will get out the word that such abuse “has no place in any branch of the military.” Like sexual harassment and expressions of racism, the practices would meet “zero tolerance” in the Pentagon, Cohen said.

At his first formal press conference as Pentagon chief, Cohen also said he hopes to do something about the 12,000 or so service members who are on food stamps, saying that the situation is “not acceptable.”

And he said that in a few weeks he will take his first official trip to meet with U.S. troops in Bosnia.

The hazing incidents in question took place in 1991 and 1993, but videotape taken by participants has appeared on television newscasts this week. The tape has been shown on CNN and during Friday night’s broadcast of the “Dateline NBC” program.

The incidents involved a practice called “blood pinning.”

The video, taken by participants in the hazing, shows Marines using their hands to pound gold pins, usually used to attach the decoration, into the chests of trainees. The trainees, clad in T-shirts, are shown standing in a row with their backs against a wall, crying out in pain.

The pins are the insignia the Marines earn on completion of 10 paratroop training jumps.

The 1991 incident involved the 2nd Air Delivery Platoon, from the 2nd Landing Support Battalion, 2nd Force Service Support Group, at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The participants in the 1993 incidents have not been identified.

An investigation of the incidents was opened earlier this month, but so far no one has been punished, Marine spokesmen said. The Marine Corps commandant, Gen. Charles Krulak, meanwhile, has ordered unit commanders to see that the practice is halted.

There have been about 80 hazing incidents in the Marine Corps in the last three to five years, Cohen said. He said that while he does not know how many incidents there have been in the services overall, he is trying to find out.

“This form of activity is simply unacceptable and . . . those who indulge or engage in it will have consequences that will have to be paid,” he said.

But some experts inside and outside the military said the Clinton administration is likely to find such practices deep-rooted--like the sexual-harassment and racism problems the Pentagon is fighting.

In a 1993 report, the Marine Corps inspector general came to that conclusion in an examination of hazing practices at a Yuma, Ariz., base. “The real problem uncovered by this investigation is a systemic one,” the inspector general said.

That investigation found that in the course of training, Marines were punched and kicked, forced to swallow burning cigarettes and smeared with excrement. The investigators found that the hazing practices had begun 12 years earlier and “evolved from the seemingly harmless to the perverse.”

Retired Col. Don M. Snyder, who teaches political-military subjects at West Point, said there is “a very fine line between creating an environment in which mental toughness is obtained through military training and abusing the dignity of the individual.”

Snyder said the military has confronted that thin line “forever,” but he contended that the problem now is declining.

“For the last five or six or seven years, the Army has moved away from a culture of abuse to a culture that respects the dignity of the individual and yet still demands that they meet the standards of the soldier,” he said. “It can be done. But it isn’t easy.”

Vice Adm. John J. Shanahan of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington defense watchdog group, predicted that zero tolerance of such practices would be a tough goal to meet.

“You can put out all kinds of rules and regulations,” Shanahan said. “The problem with hazing is you don’t discover it until it has taken place.

“If he [Cohen] says zero tolerance, you step in and seriously take the people to task,” he said. “The punishment has to be commensurate to an effort to end hazing. You have to make a few examples of people.”

In his comments on food stamp use inside the military, Cohen seemed to diverge slightly from the past official line.

Officials usually have said they regretted the need for food stamps, but attributed it in large part to the need for additional support among the lowest paid, junior troops whose families have a large number of children.

Cohen, while proposing no solution, seemed inclined to look for one. “I don’t think we ought to accept the fact that there are people living on food stamps,” he said.