I strongly suspect that the situation outlined above, where active duty federal soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen have strong ties to non-military groups, is not unprecedented.  Lets take a quick look.

The overwhelming majority of generals and admirals that have run for office after their careers were finished aligned themselves with the most conservative political party of that day, whatever it might have been.  I have no evidence to support this claim, but I would guess that most of the officer corps in the U.S. Armed Forces today are right wing Republicans or at least extreme conservative types.

Groups such as the Freemasons have long been represented in the Armed Forces.  I know because I am a Blue Lodge Mason, a Scottish Rite Mason and a Shriner.

I knew several Rosicrucians while I was in the Service and I knew one young guy whose parents were card carrying communists. 

I knew several French Canadians who were serving on active duty in the U.S. Coast Guard when I served there who had family ties to Candadian separatist groups. 

He shall go nameless, but I knew of one U.S. Coast Guardsman who had strong family ties reaching back decades among the Irish Republican Army and I knew one Scottish American chief radioman in the U.S. Coast Guard who had family ties to a seperatist Scottish group with violent tendencies and that was in the early 1980s.

In 1983-1984 while assigned as an instructor to Coast Guard Yeoman School in Petaluma, California, I had several bad experiences with a large group of Coast Guardsmen that somehow or other had gotten themselves involved with an extreme anti-Catholic Bible Ministry headquartered in San Francisco.  It was absolutely bizare.

On the ship in which I served as a chief yeoman, USCGC RUSH (WHEC 723) from Oct 1984 until July 1987 I served with a guy who was a Native American and a third class machinery technician.  He  was a cousin to Leonard Pelltier, the American Indian who was convicted of shooting and killing an FBI agent in the 1970s.  He made no secret of his hatred for the FBI.

What I am trying to say is that this whole idea of an "untainted" mind serving in uniform, that is a mind that has no allegiance to any sort of ideology other than the Code of Conduct for Service men and women is unrealistic. Some of the most radical and unstable people I have ever met in my lifetime wore a U.S. uniform. And that was almost thirty five years ago. 

In my limited experience with "outside influences" in the U.S. Armed Forces, they are a hell of a lot more prevelant than anyone would think.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)