Racists Work Fertile Ground of Military

T.J. Leyden, a hulking man with tattoos covering half his body, struts back and forth in front of an auditorium packed wall-to-wall with soldiers.

The faces staring back at him reflect many races and ethnic groups, but that doesn’t stop Leyden from blurting slurs.

His words--shocking epithets that cause the crowd to shift uncomfortably--identify those he routinely assaulted and ridiculed as a neo-Nazi in the military.

Oblivious of the squirming audience, Leyden goes on, explaining how he was a leading skinhead recruiter and organizer for 15 years, and how he did some of his most successful recruiting on U.S. military bases.

“I looked for the young, scared white kids who just wanted a group to fit in with,” he said. “We warned them of a New World Order and offered them the chance to get aboard.”

Now, instead of spreading a message of hate, Leyden uses his unique brand of bluntness to spread a different kind of warning to the military bases he once targeted.

“The U.S. military is the best-trained group of people in the world. And that’s why the racist groups send their people here--to get trained,” he told the soldiers at Fort Leonard Wood, an Army base in central Missouri. “If you don’t think it’s happening here, you need to wake up.”

The former Marine is waging a war against the hate groups he once embraced.

As a full-time consultant for the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Task Force Against Hate, Leyden, 34, travels the country speaking to thousands of military personnel and law enforcement officials about his experiences in the white supremacy movement and the recruitment methods he used.

His stories are shocking.

“When I joined the Marines, I brought my racism and bigotry with me. I had a swastika tattoo two inches high on my neck and hung Nazi flags on my barracks walls. There was no way the Marines could have denied I was a racist,” he said. “Yet, as long as my commanding officers thought I was a passive Nazi, it was OK with them.”

The U.S. military is aware of the presence of racism in its ranks. A 1994 House Armed Services Committee report found that overt cases of racism and subtle forms of discrimination existed at some military facilities.

Four years ago, the secretary of the Army created a Task Force on Extremist Activities after the slaying of a black couple in what prosecutors said was a skinhead initiation rite in Fayetteville, N.C.

Three white soldiers from nearby Fort Bragg were charged in the case. Follow-up investigations led to the discharge of 19 other soldiers who allegedly followed some type of skinhead ideology.

The Army has taken several steps since then to flush out extremists.

“The task force is gone, but its legacy continues,” said Maj. Ryan Yantis of Army public affairs in Washington, D.C. “The findings have helped bring heightened awareness at all levels as to what kind of conduct constitutes extremist behavior.”

New rules require Army personnel to “reject participation in extremist organizations and activities.” Army recruiters can also reject people who display racist tattoos or have a tendency toward extremist behavior.

“Since Fort Bragg, the military is slowly starting to tighten the noose on hate groups,” Leyden said. “Military recruiters are becoming more intelligent about spotting the quieter racists--they sit down in counseling sessions with privates and look for signs of attitude. They question the white recruits who only approach their white commanding officers as opposed to the minority officers.”

Still, groups do slip through the cracks. Nine Marines were released from a base in San Diego last year because of racist activity, Leyden said. And the Wiesenthal Center--which tracks hate groups--has noted at least one supremacist Web site geared toward active-duty military personnel.

Lately, Leyden said, he has seen white power groups backing off from full-time active-duty military. Instead, the groups are pushing their young recruits to join National Guard units.

“It’s just one weekend a month, and it’s a lot easier to hide their racist sentiments that way,” he said.

When he was a Marine, Leyden said, he did most of his recruiting for the neo-Nazis at bars, inciting racially motivated fights between Marines and then backing his “new white buddies” in the scuffle. Other groups recruit by sending women into bars to gain the soldiers’ trust, slowly enlisting them for their cause.

Leyden used his own Marine training to educate fellow supremacists back home in skills like camouflage concealment and close combat training.

Change for Leyden came about four years ago, after watching his 3-year-old son recoil at seeing blacks on television. At first, he said, he was proud of his son’s revulsion.

But a slow, steady transformation changed his mind, he said. Pressure built from his family including his brother, a police officer, to leave the group known as “Hammerskins.” He also began to question the teachings of his church, which preached hate.

He eventually decided to quit the neo-Nazi movement and his marriage to a fellow skinhead.

Today, he works with the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles where he wages a personal war against the 457 active hate groups in the United States--from the old-fashioned Ku Klux Klan to new and growing supremacist groups in prisons.

Since Leyden started his crusade, three attempts have been made on his life, he said. Several skinhead Web sites have posted threats, declaring that he has “sold out his race.”

The threats fuel his anger, Leyden said, provoking him to do more to educate others and help strengthen hate crime legislation.

“I am always shocked by the number of people I talk to that don’t know diddly about these groups,” he said. “There are people who still think racism doesn’t exist.”

On the Net: Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Task Force Against hate:

https://www.wiesenthal.com/watch/taskforce.html