The military has long had its own set of rules and regulations that are overseen by military courts. Often, the military justice system exists outside the one that applies to the rest of us and they handle their issues internally. And sometimes the investigators in the military are tasked with looking into issues they think might threaten the security of the nation or the integrity of the military and its members. But sometimes they’re tasked with investigating the weirdest stuff you could imagine.
10. The Navy Investigated Friends of Dorothy
Few issues have had as long and storied history in the US military as homosexuality. Gays in the military has been a buzz term for years for people and acceptance, at least on paper, is a very recent thing. Before that the military had a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that went into effect in the ’90s that essentially say it was okay to be gay as long as no one ever knew about it.
Before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, things were even worse, with the military actively working to root out the very idea of homosexuality in the military. To that end, the Navy took it upon itself to investigate the Friends of Dorothy.
Friends of Dorothy is a term dating back to the 1940s and ’50s. It was a covert way for a person to identify themselves as gay; the name being a reference to the character from The Wizard of Oz. You didn’t come out and say you were gay; you said you were a friend of Dorothy and someone else in the know would understand what that meant. The Navy was not in the know.
They had come to learn that gay men referred to themselves as Friends of Dorothy and thus began an investigation into who this mysterious Dorothy was. It was their belief Dorothy was a real woman running a secret underground cabal of gay military men in Chicago.
Naval Investigative Service officers went on the hunt for Dorothy in 1981 in an effort to get her master list of gays in the military. It sounds silly now but the methods and dedication of the NIS in pursuing and persecuting gays and those they believed to be gay were all but draconian and resulted in hundred of soldiers being kicked out of the military at an expense of millions in taxpayer money for no reason other than being gay.
9. The Military Investigated The Journal of Irreproducible Results When Al-Qaeda Had Their Fake Bomb Plans on Hand
If you like science and humor you’re probably aware of the Annals of Improbable Research, the organization behind the Ig Nobel Prize awards. It followed in the footsteps of the Journal of Irreproducible Results, another satirical science magazine dating back to the 1950s. If you’re unfamiliar, all you need to know is that these magazines are meant to be funny and satirical. They use scientific language and principles, but they’re definitely not a place that would give you genuine instructions for building, say, an atomic bomb.
In 2001, the military raided an Al-Qaeda safe house and discovered plans for building a nuclear weapon. Guess where the plans came from.
Though it was the owner of another website who tracked down the actual source of the documents once the BBC reported on them, US officials did have to take the time to acknowledge that they were aware of the joke plans and dismissed their significance. A Pentagon spokesperson said the media needs to check the credibility of their sources better when asked about it.
Unbelievably, Jose Padilla, who was arrested for trying to build a dirty bomb to destroy buildings in the United States in 2002 was using the same joke plans which include instructions about how you can enrich uranium by putting it in a bucket and swinging it around your head for 45 minutes. The CIA had to once again investigate the documents to determine their source.
8. Investigators Went Undercover to Have Sex with Men During the Newport Sex Scandal
The military has dedicated a lot of time to investigating homosexuality and, aside from Friends of Dorothy, there was also a very extensive, very hands on undercover operation. Known as the Newport Sex Scandal, the events overseen by the then-assistant secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt in 1919 were purportedly undertaken in an effort to eliminate gays in the Navy.
A report out of Newport, Rhode Island suggested that homosexuality was a serious problem on the military base there. Secretary Roosevelt read the report and agreed that a thorough investigation was required though he later disavowed any knowledge of the methods used in such an investigation to absolve himself of responsibility. A team of over 40 investigators, all who needed to be in their teens or early 20s, handsome, and willing to put themselves in compromising positions for their country were enlisted and promised that they wouldn’t be prosecuted if they had to engage in criminal behavior, which is to say if they had sex with other men. Which they did.
Reports were written in extremely explicit detail using less than scientific terminology and showed that the investigators engaged in frequent relations of every conceivable type, sometimes even paying for hotel rooms and spending the night afterward. In one case, an operative “forgot” to get 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 received a swift and brutal backlash. Their criminal cases fell apart in civilian court and the investigations drew to a swift close as the outrage and embarrassment surpassed anything they could have anticipated.
7. The Navy Had to Investigate a Sky Penis
It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that a lot of men who sign up for the military do so when they’re young and, to put it bluntly, kind of dumb. Teenagers are dumb, there’s no shame in that. And sometimes they get older and stay dumb and immature. But military law makes no room for immaturity exceptions which is why the Navy was forced to investigate a giant sky penis in 2017.
Jets, as you know, leave contrails in the sky. Conspiracies aside, they’re like big, fluffy pen marks on the blue canvas of the sky and the crew of a Navy EA-18G Growler noticed that when they were flying around with some time to spare so they managed to turn those contrails into a crude but enormous sketch of a penis.
Word is the men involved through the contrails would fade right away. They did not. The penis stayed visible for some time. People took pictures, and they were shared across social media. The Navy was looking into the incident within hours, and Washington had been braced for the bad media attention.
An investigation was conducted, but the results were kept under lock and key. Even a Freedom of Information Act request two years later only turned up a heavily redacted document that concealed the names of the flight crew and the punishment they received, though there was some kind of reprimand handed out.
6. The Army Investigated a Medal of Honor Winner Over an Amazon Review
Captain Will Swenson was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2013 for heroism during the Battle of Ganjgal in 2009. There are not a lot of Medal of Honor winners in the world so it’s a pretty big deal for someone to get one and they really have to show exemplary service. Despite that, the army still conducted an investigation of Swenson thanks to an Amazon book review.
The review was for a book called “The Wrong War,” by war correspondent Bing West. The review was left by a man named Mathew Golsteyn, an army major. In his review he referred to Swenson as a friend. And that was it.
That single mention prompted the Army Criminal Investigation Division to pick through Swenson’s trash and question his neighbors, friends and family about his life. Swenson had been critical of how military leadership handled the battle for which he won the medal. But Golsteyn, a former Green Beret, had been kicked out the military and had his Silver Star revoked after he was accused of a rules violation that resulted in the death of a bomb maker. He, and everyone associated with him it seems, became the subject of criminal investigation as a result.
5. The Military Investigated Ashley Madison
The website Ashley Madison gained notoriety a few years back thanks to a security breach. That’s when a lot of people discovered there was a very popular website dedicated to facilitating discreet hookups, arguably for married people. Clearly a shock to many people. But the site also had its own run in with the military.
In 2012, the site was issued a subpoena as the military was investigating claims of adultery, a maybe unexpected repercussion of that data breach which outed members. In addition to potential divorcers, military members on the site were potentially at risk of court martial because they may have used military computers to access the site.
The investigation later fell apart when it was determined that military members are allowed to use computers to communicate with friends, even if those friends are people they’re having affairs with.
4. Canadian Military Had to Investigate a Fake Wolf Pack
Propaganda is a powerful tool that the military in many countries relies on to sow discord and spread misinformation as well as boosting morale. In Canada it apparently is used to scare civilians.
As part of an exercise, a letter made to look like it was an official document from the government warned residents of Nova Scotia that a pack of wolves was on the loose. It started with an exercise in testing loudspeakers, which the soldiers involved did by using wolf noises for no particular reason. Then another soldier decided to up the ante by making the fake document, which wasn’t part of the test at all.
Someone else saw the document and thought it was real and showed his wife off base. Then it spread like, well, a pack of wolves and caused panic in the nearby community. An investigation determined that the officers involved were untrained in how to conduct their exercise properly, and also took far too many liberties with what they were allowed to do.
3. Colombian Military Was Investigated for Killing Civilians
Have you ever heard about how police have ticket quotas and will unfairly give out traffic tickets to meet those quotas? Imagine that, but for the military, and it’s not tickets it’s kills. That’s what the Columbian military had to investigate when word came that soldiers and high ranking officers were killing civilians and then dressing them up as guerillas to boost their kill counts.
Twenty officers were dismissed as a result of the investigation, three of them generals. In total, 6,402 people were found to have been murdered over a 6 year period in order to make the military look more efficient.
2. US Military Had to Investigate The Sale of Stolen Military Computer Parts Right Out Front of the Base
Sometimes things go wrong in a way that’s almost too hard to believe. Like, say you ran a military headquarters in Afghanistan and someone had gained access to sensitive computer equipment. What are the odds that same equipment would then be for sale, literally out front, by street vendors? If you said there are perfect odds that this 100% happened then you’re reading ahead. But yes, that’s what happened.
A shopkeeper was found selling computer flash drives that contained sensitive military information including things like the Social Security numbers of the generals who worked on the base. You could get a list of soldiers who’d undergone nuclear, chemical and biological safety training for around $20.
As for the shopkeeper, he said he wasn’t selling stolen data, just stolen hardware. He didn’t care what was on the drives, but workers kept stealing them from the base to sell to him and he sold them to others. Thousands of locals worked on the base as cleaners and in other capacities and, despite being searched, the drives are really easy to hide so it was hard to say who the thieves were.
1. The Air Force Investigated How it Accidentally Flew Nuclear Weapons Across the Country
Of all the mistakes the military could ever possibly make, you’d hope the least likely ones would involve nuclear weapons. Despite the caution with which you’d assume these things are handled, the Air Force still had to conduct an investigation into how a B-52 bomber managed to fly across the country accidentally armed with six nuclear warheads.
Seventy airmen were punished for their part in the debacle that indicated a lot of rules had to be ignored for the event to transpire. Apparently the warheads were meant to be removed according to a very strict set of rules that covered disarming, moving and transporting but the crew ignored that, made their own schedule, and just forgot that part.
The military assured everyone that no one was at risk but that offered little comfort and, as was pointed out, the fact that they can be moved by mistake is still cause for alarm.