Robert Lee West, an active-duty airman at Warner Robins Air Force Base, poses with Nazi paraphernalia.

When extremists are identified, they rarely face discharge.

Some are forming networks within the military. Some even openly advertise their violent tendencies and radical views on the Internet in photos replete with Nazi symbols and weapons.

These white supremacists, many who advocate race war and the overthrow of the U.S. government, are receiving combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as training in weaponry and explosives -- obtaining skills they could one day turn on U.S. citizens.

The Center released the Intelligence Project report, A Few Bad Men, on its website in early July, garnering national publicity. It appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of the Intelligence Report.

Center president wrote Rumsfeld
Center President Richard Cohen, in a letter (PDF) citing past problems with extremists in the military, urged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to immediately investigate the problem and enforce a zero-tolerance policy.

Rumsfeld, who is already facing widespread criticism over his handling of the war in Iraq, has not responded.

The report, however, did spark outrage in Congress, where 40 members signed a letter to Rumsfeld demanding that the Pentagon adopt the Center's recommendations to expel extremists. The letter was initiated by U.S. Reps. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) and Elliot Engel (D-N.Y.), who also are sponsoring a House resolution urging Rumsfeld to act. The signers represent 20 states and all regions of the country.

U.S. Senator Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, also urged Rumsfeld to enforce a zero-tolerance policy. "Military extremists present an elevated threat both to their fellow service members and the public," Shelby wrote. "We witnessed with Timothy McVeigh that today's racist extremist may become tomorrow's domestic terrorist. Of all the institutions in our society, the U.S. military is the absolute last place extremists can be permitted to exist."

Report cited in Senate hearing
In a July Senate hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), cited the Intelligence Project's report and pressed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to have the Department of Justice help identify and expel extremists from the armed services.

Rumsfeld's silence is puzzling in light of the history of this problem and previous responses by members of both Republican and Democratic administrations.

The report comes 10 years after Pentagon leaders cracked down on extremist activities by active-duty personnel -- a move that came in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by decorated Gulf War combat veteran Timothy McVeigh and the murder that same year of a black couple by members of a skinhead gang in the elite 82nd Airborne Division.

And a decade before that, Center co-founder Morris Dees wrote to President Reagan's defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, warning of the threat posed by Ku Klux Klan members in the armed forces and demanding that members of hate groups be thrown out of the military. As a result, Weinberger declared, "Military personnel must reject participation in white supremacy, neo-Nazi and other such groups." That directive was clarified and strengthened by military leaders during the 1996 crackdown, which came during the Clinton administration.

Now, with the country at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military appears to be turning its back to the threat of extremists.

"Recruiters are knowingly -allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military, even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members," Department of Defense gang investigator Scott Barfield told the Intelligence Project. "[Racist extremists] stretch across all branches of service, they are linking up across the branches once they're inside, and they are hard-core."

[After speaking with a writer for the Intelligence Report, Barfield resigned from the military under pressure from his superiors.]

Barfield and other military investigators said they recently uncovered an online network of 57 neo-Nazis who are active-duty Army and Marines personnel spread across five military installations in five states: Fort Lewis, Wash.; Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Camp Pendleton, Calif. The Intelligence Project found that hundreds of neo-Nazis identify themselves online as active-duty soldiers.

After the report became public, a group of Iraq war veterans spoke out about the need to crack down on these extremists.

The president and three senior advisers of VoteVets.Org, a non-partisan political action committee, sent a letter to Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, calling for "immediate hearings to examine the impact of low recruiting standards in the military."

SPLC Report
September 2006