Ethics Newsline®

COLUMBUS, Ohio
Under pressure to fill military rolls, some recruiters for the U.S. Army are breaking rules, helping potential recruits cheat, and concealing applicants’ police and medical records, according to a report last week from the New York Times.

While the Army has increased signing bonuses and relaxed its age and education requirements for recruits, it is struggling still and failing in some quarters to meet its enlistment quotas. Faced with a shortfall, some recruiters are taking their efforts further.

The Times, which interviewed more than 24 recruiters in 10 states, says deception among recruiters is widely acknowledged among the ranks, with commanders often encouraging the fraud or turning a blind eye.

A recruiter in northern Ohio, who says his commanders know he has been hiding police records and medical histories that would disqualify potential recruits, told the Times that the top priority right now is producing enough recruits to meet the military’s goals.

“The saying here is, ‘Production is power,’” he told the Times. “Produce, and all is good.”

Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, the Army’s commander of recruiting, last week denied that the system is becoming corrupted, saying there is no significant increase in rates of cheating.

The Times reports that Army investigators last year substantiated 320 cases of recruitment improprieties, investigating 1,118 — nearly one in five — of its recruiters. Both figures are higher than in previous years.

Of those recruiters found guilty of gross negligence or deliberate improprieties, only three in 10 were relieved of duty last year — a decrease from 2002, when 5 of every 10 were punished.

Rochelle told the Times that he has decided that recruitment violations — from concocting bogus academic credentials to helping applicants beat a drug test — may no longer warrant automatic firing.

“My shift in thinking was that if an individual was accused of doctoring a high-school diploma, it was an open-and-shut case,” Rochelle said. “It may still be, but now I look at person’s value to the command first.”

Interviewed for a CBS report on recruiting violations in Colorado, Lt. Col. Michael Shepherd, U.S. Army Recruiting Command assistant chief of staff, said such violations are “totally unacceptable.”

“We just need to get back to the business of recruiting,” said Shepherd, admitting that times are tough for military recruiters. “These problems are just ones that we can’t stand (for).”

Despite sabotaging the system himself, the recruiter in northern Ohio said he too has concerns about enlisting unqualified applicants, noting that if they assume leadership roles someday, their capacity for making good decisions may be substandard.

“If they are in a leadership position and they’re sending 10 or 11 people all over the place because they can’t focus on the job at hand,” he told the Times, “we’re in trouble.”