For Daniel Harris, the journey from Marine Corps uniform to plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan was brief. Mr. Harris, a rifleman in Third Battalion, Second Marines, was honorably discharged as a corporal in June 2019. Roughly 16 months later, he was charged with conspiracy to kidnap the governor as a member of the Wolverine Watchmen, a far-right extremist group. |
 | | National Guard members at the Capitol on Tuesday, a day before the inauguration.Amr Alfiky/The New York Times |
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For Joseph Morrison, a Marine reservist who trained as a mechanic and was assigned to a part-time unit in Michigan, military service and involvement in the same extremist schemes overlapped. Mr. Morrison, a founder of the Wolverine Watchmen, was discharged as a lance corporal almost simultaneously to criminal charges being filed against him in the kidnap plot. |
This week, the Department of Defense removed 12 National Guard soldiers from inauguration duties because of their expressed antigovernment positions. Among them were two soldiers who had made threatening comments toward public officials in texts or on social media, a general said during a telephone briefing with reporters. |
The removal of the guard soldiers from duties followed the mob assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. In that bedlam were an unknown number of veterans, including prominent rioters like spear-carrying, fur-and-horn-clad Jacob Chansley, who served in the Navy, and less flamboyant but more prepared members of the far-right Oath Keepers, Jessica Watkins, a former soldier, and Donovan Crowl, a former Marine. |
What has become clear at last to the Pentagon is that military and veteran communities have been harboring extremists with a propensity toward racism, xenophobia, antigovernment sentiments and premeditated, lethal violence. These facts should have been evident long ago, and certainly by the time of the white supremacist "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017, in which a counterprotester was killed. |
The rally was attended by active-duty troops and veterans alike, including Vasillios Pistolis, a neo-Nazi and member of another extremist group, the Atomwaffen Division, which the Anti-Defamation League describes as "preparing for a race war to combat what they consider the cultural and racial displacement of the white race." (Mr. Pistolis, who was a young Marine on active duty when he participated in the rally, was separated in disgrace from the Corps in 2018.) |
This is just a small portion of what's become visible by many means — through social media posts of the accused, through statements the accused made in the presence of an undercover investigator or in texts investigators obtained, or through actions captured on video, as was the case in the insurrection at the Capitol this month. |
On Thursday, NPR reported that nearly one in five of the criminal defendants so far from the Capitol riot served in the U.S. military — far out of proportion to the roughly one in 14 Americans who are veterans. |
All of this naturally raises the question: What has gone unseen, unrecorded, undocumented and unreported? |
This week, the At War channel posted a callout seeking tips or pitches about extremism that veterans or members of the armed forces have seen or experienced in their midst. The callout is here. |
Have you had an experience, either in uniform or as a veteran, in which you witnessed extremism? We ask that you share it with us. |
If you want to write about it, and work with our fact-checking team to verify it, send a pitch. We're open to assigning a few essays and helping writers write. |
If you want to share a tip, we can keep your name and other identifying information confidential unless you give consent otherwise. |
The events of recent years, months and weeks show that problems related to extremism in the ranks need more exploration. Thank you in advance for helping us further the conversation about this demoralizing and dangerous menace. |
C.J. Chivers is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. He received a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2017 and is the author of two books, including "The Fighters," which chronicled the experiences of six American combatants in Afghanistan and Iraq. |
Afghan War Casualty Report: January 2021 |
 | | Kabul police officers remove the wreckage of a car bombing in Kabul city on Jan. 10. Hedayatullah Amid/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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At least 206 pro-government forces and 64 civilians have been killed in January so far. [Read the report.] |
Here are four articles from The Times that you might have missed. |
 | | A police checkpoint in Kabul, Afghanistan, this month.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times |
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"People are killed at the mosque, they are killed in the street, they are killed at work." Fear has long been part of life in Kabul, with the possibility of sudden death from a Taliban strike. But these days — even as the Afghan government tries to negotiate peace with the Taliban — there is a heightened sense that life is fragile here. [Read the article.] |
"The government comprehensively failed its first real test of maintaining security." Hundreds of people have been killed or injured in violence that enveloped Sudan's Darfur region in recent days, dampening hopes for long-lasting peace in an area that has been plagued by fighting and instability for decades. [Read the article.] |
"These people are not representative of our country's military." The Pentagon is intensifying efforts to identify and combat white supremacy and other far-right extremism in its ranks as federal investigators seek to determine how many military personnel and veterans joined the violent assault on the Capitol. [Read the article.] |
"There was no alternative but to move forward with the prisoner releases as the parties had agreed." The internal debate in Washington over the fate of an Iranian prisoner who killed an American in Afghanistan illustrates one of the difficult decisions the end of a war brings. [Read the article.] |
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