For U.S. service members, PowerPoint presentations have become a mind-numbing, though generally benign, part of service in the modern age. But on Thursday, Army leaders have found themselves called before Congress to testify on one such slideshow.
On Thursday, Army leaders were questioned by members of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel about a July anti-terrorism briefing at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, that listed nonprofits and advocacy groups as terrorist organizations.
During the briefing, which was attended by 47 soldiers at the base, the National Right to Life, Earth First, Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) were listed as terror groups.
Agnes Schaefer, assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower & Reserve Affairs told the committee that the PowerPoint slides used for anti-terrorism training “inaccurately referenced” those groups.
“The secretary of the Army and I have stated unequivocally that nonprofit groups such as those referenced in the training slides are not and should not be described as such in Army documents or training materials,” Schaefer said. “The slides do not represent the official policy or views of the U.S. Army.”
An investigation found that the slides in question were developed at Fort Liberty and had been used for training since 2017. Schaefer said the investigation found that the slides were not reviewed or approved “because local policies were not in place for renewing and approving the sub-training slides.”
During the hearing, Lt. Gen. Patrick Matlock, deputy chief of staff to the Army’s lead official in charge of planning and programming, said that the 18th Airborne Corps commander directed corrective actions that have been completed and cited privacy concerns when asked for specific information.
“The individual who created the training has received corrective training, has been retrained as a trainer, and continues to perform corrective training,” Matlock said. “I’m not going to describe specific acts taken because those actions reside with the chain of command and it’s our policy not to discuss those.”
Matlock also said the soldiers who completed the training were not “specifically told they’ve been misinformed.”
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The subcommittee chairman, Indiana Republican Rep. Jim Banks called the military officials’ answers a “big embarrassment for the United States Army.”
Banks shot back that non-judicial punishments are public information and admonished officials over what he described as a lack of transparency.
Schaefer told lawmakers that the Army issued a directive to review anti-terrorism training and included requirements such as a legal review at the colonel and GS-15 level and emphasized aligning training materials with Army standard training packages.
Officials also highlighted the Army’s recent update to its extremism policy and noted that during the recruitment process, the service has a method of screening out recruits with extremist ideologies based on Department of Defense-wide definitions.
Members of the committee, both Democrats and Republicans, expressed their frustration with officials’ lack of knowledge about the policies and answers to their questions.
“The problem here is we have a diffused sense of accountability if every single command has its own arbitrary, subjective ability to make a determination on extremist activity, therein lies your problem,” said Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii). “I think you have to actually answer the question of, where does the buck stop? And I don’t think I’ve gotten my answer.”
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