“It’s not their fault that fellow California National Guard members committed fraud to boost enlistment numbers.” In 2013 the Bee editorial board warned that the wrong solution to the problem was to punish soldiers who acted in good faith. But as Lauren Katzenberg at Task and Purpose pointed out, General Antonetti retired “just days before the scandal around bonuses broke” and faced no disciplinary action. “The system paid everybody up front, and then we spent the next five years figuring out if they were eligible,” Colonel Michael S. That said, the Guard established a special Center to hear appeals for those who acted in good faith, which they told ABC News had helped about 4,000 soldiers retain about $37 million in bonus money. But part of why they did that audit was because they had tolerated criminal fraud and misconduct for years the audit wasn’t voluntary good government work. Since the LA Times story came out the California National Guard has defended its actions by claiming this was a national issue impacting all states, and that they have become the focus because they are “the only state that audited” bonus payments.
According to the Bee, her successor in the program halted $43 million of her planned payments as improper. Toni Jaffe, who managed the incentive program, pleaded guilty to filing $15.2 million in false claims. About a month later the Department of Justice, FBI, IRS, and federal Army Criminal Investigation division initiated a criminal investigation. As it became clear to him that many senior officers were complicit or enablers-and might interfere with his work to protect themselves-he secretly contacted the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). “Yet a large portion of those funds went to Guard members who hadn't served a day at war.”Ĭaptain Ronald Clark, then a federal auditor with the National Guard, was tasked with auditing the program. “Most student loan repayments, those documents show, were drawn from money designated for combat vets,” the Bee wrote. The Bee’s investigation found California’s incentives program was operated as a “slush fund, doled out improperly to hundreds of soldiers with fabricated paperwork, scant supervision and little regard for the law.” He called it “operation overdrive,” and as long as the Guard met its end-strength goals, one manager told auditors, “here were leaders – officers – willing to look the other way” regarding improper payments. Incentives included bonuses and federally subsidized student-loan repayments. Antonetti made recruitment and retention his top priority as the commander of the Army section of the Guard from 2007 to 2010. The Sacramento Bee first uncovered the fraud in 2010. Even though some of the soldiers who had received the bonuses were not technically eligible to receive them, the fault was clearly that of Guard officials. In some cases these bonuses were paid out of money designated to only go to people performing certain assignments. Some of those ordered to repay the bonuses included former Captain Christopher Van Meter, who earned a Purple Heart after he was thrown from an armored vehicle turret, and former Master Sergeant Susan Haley, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2008. But now the Guard is asking nearly 10,000 soldiers, including many who served multiple combat tours, to pay them back-with interest. To make up for troop shortfalls, the California National Guard offered soldiers bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist. It’s important to understand that these problems were caused by mismanagement and fraud at the California National Guard, first uncovered by a whistleblower. Congress is also pledging to fix the problem when they return from recess. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter recently announced a halt to Guard repayments, pending a further review (though this may not help those who already made these payments, and doesn’t assuage those worried they will still have to repay the bonuses later). Most of the soldiers accepted them in good faith, but it turns out they were technically not eligible to receive the payments. As you might have seen in the news, there is a lot of (justified) outrage about a recent report by David Cloud at the Los Angeles Times that revealed the California National Guard is forcing thousands of troops to repay enlistment bonuses.
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