Background

The National Guard Recruiting Assistance Program (G-RAP) was a revolutionary recruiting concept, conceived in 2005 by then National Guard Bureau Director, General Clyde A. Vaughn and his director of Strength Maintenance, Colonel Mike Jones. The concept was simple: utilize the energy, commitment and enthusiasm of off-duty soldiers to identify potential new recruits. Vaughn and Jones turned to their advertising buddy, Philip Crane, president of Alabama-based Docupak, to create and administer the concept.

Docupak enticed off-duty soldiers with the promise of easy money; Guard leadership pushed troops to participate. Off-duty soldiers would enroll as a Docupak subcontractor, take a brief quiz on National Guard values and be eligible to earn money. For every potential new enlistee those subcontractors brought to an official Guard recruiter, the subcontractor would earn $1000. If that new recruit shipped to basic training, the Docupak subcontractor earned another $1000. For newly recruited officers, the Docupak payment was substantially higher.

Over seven years, G-RAP produced record numbers of recruits during a time when military recruitment was lagging; Guard troops were being deployed to dangerous Middle Eastern war zones and few people were interested in being in harm’s way. But G-RAP changed all that.

The other thing that G-RAP changed was its own set of rules. Over the seven years of the program, Docupak implemented as many as 60 different rules’ amendments. Many of Docupak’s contractors say that they were not made aware of these changes. And, because official Guard recruiters were not eligible to participate in G-RAP – they received no guidance at all from the National Guard Bureau on how to work with the Docupak subcontractors.

By the time G-RAP ended, more than 100,000 new recruits had been enlisted, bringing the Guard back to full strength. But in G-RAP aftermath, General Vaughn received a reprimand for sloppy administration; Colonel Jones was cited by the Army Audit Agency for creating an atmosphere of intimidation; Docupak was admonished for failures; and all 106,000 Docupak subcontractors and hundreds of Guard recruiters were suspected of fraud. Were one third of the Guard’s standing force criminals? No; there was a handful that gamed this poorly run program. They were prosecuted and appropriately punished.

But every one of Docupak’s subcontractors became suspects, many of them civilians by now and many more of them combat veterans. And, as suspects, their lives and careers have been ruined.

The authority that investigated potential G-RAP fraud was the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID), whose operating procedures are classified and whose mission was essentially to define what constituted fraud and then ensure a robust prosecution by the U.S. government. In standard criminal justice, white-collar prosecutions, fraud requires intent. e.g. Did the suspect intend to defraud anyone? In G-RAP, fraud against the United States government is defined as an inability to follow the cascading set of rules changes in a program run by a contractor in the private sector. A federal appeals court overturned a conviction finding that there was no basis for the prosecution to claim fraud against the U.S. Yet prosecutions continue.

The Army CID has brought hundreds of cases of G-RAP fraud to U.S. Attorneys, filing as many as 50 felonies against a single individual. At trial, CID’s evidence is often only the agent’s interpretation of G-RAP rules that no one saw, and that may not even have existed. Regardless, none of those rules are actual laws that anyone broke. But in the face of multiple felonies, many juries find guilt based on the government’s adamancy. Those defendants are or will be sentenced to prison. Those found innocent are not off the hook because in the military, merely being investigated by CID creates a career-ending black mark on a personnel file. In many cases, the CID investigation also generates an entry in the National Criminal Information Center which the subject doesn’t know until failing a background check. So even those out of the military are paying the price for a failure of leadership. It is possible every one of Docupak’s successful subcontractors has faced career-ending and life-changing consequences as a result of merely doing what they were asked to do: bring potential new recruits into the Guard.

This is a travesty of justice and a tragedy of enormous proportion for our nation’s veterans and military heroes.

The G-RAP investigation has led to suicide, divorce, bankruptcy, incarceration, homelessness, and despair.

When is someone going to do something about this?!