The military has long had its own set of rules and regulations, enforced by military courts. Often, the military justice system exists outside the one that applies to the rest of us, and they handle their problems internally. And sometimes, military investigators are tasked with looking into matters they believe could threaten the security of the nation or the integrity of the military and its members. But sometimes, they are tasked with investigating the strangest things you can imagine.
10. The Navy investigated Dorothy's friends
Few issues have as long and storied a history in the U.S. military as homosexuality. “Gays in the military” has been a buzzword for people for years, and the acceptance, at least on paper, is only recent. Before that, the military had a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that went into effect in the ’90s, which essentially said it was OK to be gay as long as no one knew.
Things were even worse before Don't Ask, Don't Tell, when the military was actively working to eradicate the very idea of homosexuality in the military. To that end, the Navy took it upon itself to investigate Dorothy's friends.
Dorothy's Friends is a term that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s. It was a covert way for a person to identify as gay; the name is a reference to a character from "The Wizard of Oz" You didn't come out and say you were gay; you said you were Dorothy's friend, and anyone else in the know would know what that meant. The Navy didn't know.
They learned that gay men called themselves Dorothy's friends, so they began investigating who this mysterious Dorothy was. They believed that Dorothy was a real woman , who ran a secret underground cabal of gay military men in Chicago.
Naval Investigative Service officers went on the hunt for Dorothy in 1981 to get her master list of gays in the military. It sounds silly now, but the NIS' methods and dedication to targeting and persecuting gays and those they thought were gay were almost draconian and resulted in hundreds of soldiers being forced out of the military at millions of taxpayers' expense for nothing. What . The reason, besides the fact that he's gay.
9. The military investigated the journal for irreproducible results when Al Qaeda had their fake bomb plans on hand.
If you love science and humor, you probably know about organizations " Annals of Improbable Research" , which is behind the awarding of the Ig Nobel Prize. It follows in the footsteps of the Journal of Irreproducible Results, another satirical science magazine from the 1950s. If you’re not familiar, all you need to know is that these magazines are supposed to be funny and satirical. They use scientific language and principles, but they’re definitely not the place to get actual instructions on how to build, say, an atomic bomb.
In 2001, the military raided an al-Qaeda safe house and found plans to build a nuclear weapon. Guess where the plans came from.
Although it is the owner another website traced the actual source of the documents after the BBC reported on them, US officials still took time to admit they knew about the prank plans and dismissed their significance. A Pentagon spokesman said the media should better check the authenticity their sources when asked about it.
Incredibly, Jose Padilla, who was arrested for attempting to create a dirty bomb to destroy buildings in the United States in 2002, used the same joke plans , which included instructions on how you could enrich uranium by putting it in a bucket and waving it around your head for 45 minutes. The CIA had to re-examine the documents to determine their source.
8. Investigators went undercover to have sex with men during Newport sex scandal.
The military devoted a lot of time to investigating homosexuality, and in addition to Dorothy's Friends, there was also an extensive, very practical undercover operation. Known as Newport Sex Scandal , events overseen in 1919 by then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt, were allegedly undertaken to eradicate gays from the Navy.
A report from Newport, Rhode Island, stated that homosexuality was a serious problem at the military base. Secretary Roosevelt read the report and agreed that a thorough investigation was needed, although he later denied any knowledge of the methods used in such an investigation in order to absolve himself of responsibility. The team from more than 40 investigators , all who had to be in their teens or early 20s, good looking and willing to put themselves in a compromising position for their country were recruited and promised that they would not be prosecuted if they were to engage in criminal behavior, i.e. whether they had sex with other men. Which they did.
The reports were written in extreme detail, using far from scientific terminology, and showed that the investigators frequently entered into every conceivable type of relationship, sometimes even paying for hotel rooms and lodging afterwards. In one case, an operative "forgot" to learn the name of the man he was with, so he met him a second time and forgot again.
When the story became public, the Navy's response was swift and brutal. Their criminal cases fell apart in civilian court, and the investigation came to a quick end as the outrage and embarrassment exceeded anything they could have expected.
7. The Navy Had to Examine the Celestial Penis
It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that many men who enlist in the military do so when they’re young and, frankly, stupid. Teenagers are dumb, no shame in that. And sometimes they get older and remain dumb and immature. But military law doesn’t allow for immaturity-related exceptions, so in 2017 the Navy was forced to explore a giant heavenly penis .
Airplanes are known to leave contrails in the sky. Conspiracies aside, they look like big, fluffy feather trails on the blue canvas of the sky, and the crew of a Navy EA-18G Growler noticed this when they were flying with some time to spare, so they managed to turn these contrails into a crude but huge sketch of a penis.
Rumor has it that the people involved in the contrails would disappear immediately. They didn't. The penis remained visible for a while. People took photos, and they were shared on social media. The Navy investigated the incident for hours, and Washington was prepared for bad media attention.
An investigation was conducted, but the results were kept secret. Even a Freedom of Information Act request two years later revealed onlyheavily redacted document , which concealed the names of the flight crew and the punishment they received, although some kind of reprimand was issued.
6. Army Investigates Medal of Honor Recipient Over Amazon Review
Captain Will Swenson was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2013 for heroism during the Battle of Ganjgal in 2009. There aren't many Medal of Honor recipients in the world, so it's a big deal for someone to receive it, and they really have to show exemplary service. Despite this, the Army still investigated Swenson thanks to an Amazon book review.
The review was of a book called The Wrong War by war correspondent Bing West. The reviewer was a man named Matthew Golsteyn, an Army major. In his review, he called Swenson a friend. And that was all.
This single mention prompted Army Criminal Investigation Department rummage through Swenson's trash and ask his neighbors, friends, and family about his life. Swenson was critical of the military's handling of the battle for which he received a medal. But Golsteyn, a former Green Beret, was kicked out of the military and his " The Silver Star was revoked after he was accused of breaking the rules that killed a bomb maker, leaving him and everyone associated with him in a criminal case.
5. The military investigated Ashley Madison
The Ashley Madison website gained notoriety a few years ago due to a security breach. That's when many people discovered that there was a very popular website dedicated to hidden affairs, possibly for married people. Obviously a shock to many people. But the site also had its own problems with the military.
In 2012, the site was issued a subpoena as the military investigated adultery allegations , which may have been an unexpected consequence of the data leak that exposed the participants. In addition to potential scammers, military personnel on the site were potentially at risk of court martial, as they may have used military computers to access the site.
The investigation later fell apart when it was discovered that military personnel were allowed to use computers for chatting with friends , even if these friends are people they are having an affair with.
4. Canadian military had to investigate a fake wolf pack
Propaganda is a powerful tool that militaries in many countries rely on to sow discord and spread disinformation, as well as boost morale. In Canada, it appears to be used to intimidate civilians.
As part of the exercise, a letter purporting to be an official government document warned Nova Scotians that roams free pack of wolves . It all started with a loudspeaker testing exercise that soldiers performed using wolf sounds for no particular reason. Then another soldier decided to up the ante by producing a fake document that wasn't part of the test at all.
Someone else saw the document and thought it was real, and showed it to his wife unlawfully. It then spread like a pack of wolves and caused panic in the immediate community. An investigation found that the officers involved were not trained in how to properly conduct their exercises and also took too many liberties in what they were allowed to do.
3. Colombian military suspected of killing civilians
Have you ever heard of how the police have quotas for tickets and they will unfairly issue traffic tickets to meet those quotas? Imagine that, but for the military, and it's not the tickets that kill. That's what the Colombian military had to investigate when it was discovered that soldiers and high-ranking officers were killing civilians and then dressing them up as guerrillas to increase their body count.
As a result of the investigation, they were dismissed 20 officers , three of them are generals. In total, it was established that what was killed in 6 years 6402 people to make the military look more effective.
2. The US military had to investigate the sale of stolen military computer components right in front of the base.
Sometimes things go wrong in ways that are almost unbelievable. Like, you were running a military headquarters in Afghanistan, and someone got access to classified computer equipment. What are the chances that the same equipment would be sold literally on the street by street vendors? If you said there was a perfect chance that this happened on 100%, then you read on. But yeah, that's what happened.
A shop owner has been found selling computer flash drives containing sensitive military information, including items such as social security numbers generals who worked at the base. You could get a list of soldiers who had undergone nuclear, chemical and biological safety training for about $20 .
As for the shop owner, he said he didn't sell stolen data, just stolen equipment. He didn't care what was on the disks, but workers kept stealing them from the base to sell to him, and he sold them to others. Thousands of locals worked at the base as cleaners and other jobs, and despite the searches, the disks were really easy to hide, so it was hard to tell who the thieves were.
1. The BBC investigated how they accidentally shipped nuclear weapons across the country
Of all the mistakes the military can make, you'd hope the least likely would be those involving nuclear weapons. Despite the care you're supposed to take with such things, the Air Force still had to investigate how a B-52 bomber managed to fly over the country accidentally armed with six nuclear weapons. warheads .
Seventy airmen were disciplined for their role in the debacle, indicating that a lot of rules had to be ignored for the event to happen. Apparently, the warheads had to be removed according to a very strict set of rules that dealt with disarming, moving, and transporting, but the crew ignored that, made up their own schedule, and simply forgot about that part.
The military assured everyone that no one was in danger, but that was of little comfort and, as was pointed out, the fact that they could be moved by mistake , remains a concern.
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