Gerald L. Courson was charged in separate investigations with rape and sexual battery. He was convicted in 1993 on charges of extorting sex from a woman and judged guilty another time on charges of sexual battery.
Brian W. Taylor came home to Ohio after being charged in 1993 with molesting four children from three families in Florida, where he appeared at afederal criminal proceeding.
Jerry D. Webster was convicted in Virginia in 1992 on charges of rape, sexual assault and battery involving three women.
Any of those charges would have given most Americans a permanent criminal record - a rap sheet. But there's no record the men were even charged with those crimes, at least none in the FBI's criminal files.
They are among hundreds of people charged and, in some cases, convicted of crimes by the United States armed forces but have no criminal record in the FBI's computer system.
Though the FBI's system cannot be accessed by the public, it is used thousands of times a day by civilian police to track suspects, identify repeatoffenders and prevent child molesters from working in schools. Even the U.S. Secret Service uses it to screen people seeking access to the president.
But the Dayton Daily News found that the FBI never received hundreds of criminal records on people arrested, prosecuted and, in some cases, convicted while in the military.
"I'd say if we got 20 percent of the cards that were military arrests, thatwas good," said Melvin Mercer, who headed the FBI's fingerprint identificationsection until his retirement in May 1994. "The military was very, very lax in sending in arrest cards."
Vital to civilian officers
Civilian police send to the FBI records on nearly everyone arrested for serious offenses, even if the arrests don't result in convictions. An arrest record for child molestation can be a valuable indicator to a police detectivesearching for suspects in a child-abuse case, Mercer said.
"The chances of them (sex offenders) getting out of the military and doing it again are excellent," said Robert Ingram of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
After Courson got out of the Air Force in 1993, he was arrested in Florida for battery on a police officer and for throwing volleyball-size chunks of concrete through the bedroom window of a woman, narrowly missing her 14-year-old daughter, who was asleep in the bed.
"He could have killed her," said the girl's mother, Gail Hull, Courson's former girlfriend. "She woke up and there was glass and debris everywhere."
Florida police checked the FBI's computers for other charges, but Courson'smilitary criminal record was not there.
It still isn't. Based on the results of the search, the prosecutor recommended probation, and the court agreed.
Had he known about Courson's military record, the prosecutor, Ace Grinsted,said he would have reconsidered his recommendation.
"The only conviction we had for him was a reckless driving offense," said Grinsted, assistant prosecutor in Okaloosa County, Fla.
Thousands of records missing
Even some minor offenses are reported to the FBI by civilian police. Police, for example, turned in a misdemeanor reckless driving arrest on Courson, causing the charge to appear on his rap sheet.
But the military is not turning over records of all the people tried on serious criminal charges. In 1993 and 1994, the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force tried 5,735 people for offenses requiring FBI notification, yet the FBI received only 2,554 criminal history records.
That's only part of what should have been reported. The military actually conducted several times that number of legal proceedings, many that could haverequired reporting. But since records of those other proceedings - primarily administrative hearings - are secret, it's impossible to determine how many were reported.
The Army refused to release computer records of its trials, but at one Armybase, only 12 of the 39 soldiers investigated for rape and other sexual assaults since 1988 were reported to the FBI. The newspaper obtained information from the Army base's investigative files on sexual assaults after agreeing not to disclose anything that would lead to the source of the information.
In seven cases in which the FBI should have been notified, the files eithercontained the fingerprint cards the FBI should have received or there was no evidence the suspect was fingerprinted at all.
One of those seven suspects was cleared of a rape charge and arrested by civilian police weeks later while burglarizing a business. His civilian paroleofficer said the rape arrest should have been on his rap sheet.
"His rap sheet does not indicate any prior arrests or convictions," she said. "I'm surprised it doesn't."
In 1992, while in the Army, the man was accused of raping a woman he had driven home from a party. The evidence included injuries to the woman and the fact the accused soldier ran naked from the scene.
Instead of a court-martial, the accused man got a non-criminal hearing, where the military decided he would "receive no punishment."
The man now lives in Ohio.
Problem for years
For nearly 30 years, Thomas J. McGreevy watched people like Courson, Taylorand Webster leave the military. He watched them as an officer for what is now the Army Criminal Investigation Command and later as deputy director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
But when McGreevy had trouble getting military records on a murder suspect in Georgia, he attempted to change the system. He tried to persuade the heads of military investigative agencies to turn over their criminal records to the FBI.
"They didn't want to do it," he recalled. "A thousand excuses: It will hurtrecruiting . . . These people have a right to privacy. We don't have the moneyto train people to take fingerprints.' "
But with help from Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., then chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McGreevy got the military to adopt Criminal InvestigationsPolicy Memorandum Number 10 in 1987.
The policy required military investigators to tell the FBI about military members accused of serious offenses, so long as the offense resulted in a scheduled trial or administrative hearing.
But the policy is vague. Investigators, for example, aren't sure whether they should report hundreds of suspects allowed to resign after being charged and scheduled for trial.
"It (Memo 10) is vague. There's no question about it," said Jack Kennedy, aDepartment of Defense official charged with making sure military police implement the memo.
Many agents aren't following the policy. Some aren't even aware of it, and many aren't sure what it requires them to do.
David M. Pickering, while a security police officer at Wright-Patterson AirForce Base, was charged with raping a woman at a party in Enon. He went beforethe military's version of a grand jury proceeding and was allowed to resign inlieu of court-martial. He has an FBI criminal record.
Like Pickering, Taylor was charged with a sex crime: molesting four girls -ages 8 to 10 - at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. He was charged at the same type of proceeding and allowed to resign, too. But he has no FBI criminal record.
"Our marching orders are if they're not convicted, we don't send any form,"said an investigator from Wright-Patterson, who asked not to be identified. "That's what I was told."
Shari Wagner, a former agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations at Wright-Patterson, said she never heard of Memo 10, even though she was an agent until 1990, three years after the memo was implemented. She said she never filled out an FBI fingerprint card.
"I was an agent for seven years. Up until that time (1990), there was no requirement," said Wagner, now with the Greene County coroner's office.
Few arrests in military
Memo 10 doesn't require the military to notify the FBI when people are arrested but not prosecuted, contrary to civilian practice. And even if Memo 10 required arrests to be reported, large numbers of criminal suspects would go unreported.
That's because the military, unlike civilian authorities, often doesn't arrest people - especially officers - prior to trial.
"Very rarely does a (military) person get taken into custody prior to a legal action," said Detective Rick Adamson of the Pierce County, Wash., sheriff's office, an OSI agent in the Air Force Reserve. "The only time I've ever seen that is in a murder case."
The Air Force didn't arrest Dr. B. Kenneth Ake after a patient, Carla Kirkpatrick, accused him of sexually assaulting her in 1985. Moments after theassault, Ake left the room, and a nurse found Kirkpatrick standing next to theexamining table, wrapped in a sheet and crying, refusing to let Ake touch her again.
"I believe an arrest should have been made, and it should have been reported" to the FBI, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Valerie VanBrocklin, who helped convict Ake while a prosecutor with the state attorney general's officein Alaska.
With a clean criminal record, Ake had no problem keeping his civilian medical license when he left the Air Force. He renewed his license in 1990.
"If there was any indication of a doctor having problems with a patient, itwould have been investigated," said Colin Matthews, an investigator for the Alaska licensing division. "I know unequivocally there was nothing on him."
From 1987 to 1990, after leaving the service, Ake raped five female patients. In 1991, he pleaded guilty to raping all five and was sent to a civilian prison.
"If that case had not been mishandled by the military, it's possible that five other women we know of would not have been raped," VanBrocklin said.
Kirkpatrick believes Ake's rank kept him from being arrested.
"It's a rank thing," Kirkpatrick said. "I'm an enlisted wife, and he's an officer."
No policy for Coast Guard
Besides exempting the military from reporting many crimes civilian law officers report, Memo 10 has another flaw: It doesn't cover the U.S. Coast Guard. That service is part of the Department of Transportation, yet it uses the same criminal justice system used by Department of Defense services.
"We do not have a policy on submitting prints to the FBI," said John David Pressler, who supervises the 121 agents in the Coast Guard's Criminal Investigation Section.
Pressler said he found no record that his agents ever told the FBI about three of the five rapists convicted by the Coast Guard since 1988.
"They're quite certain they didn't do it," he said.
A further check on Machinery Technician 2nd Class Jerry D. Webster confirmed he has no record.
He was convicted in Portsmouth, Va., in May 1992 of raping one woman and assaulting two other women.
"I remember being pulled down to the floor," the rape victim testified at his court-martial, adding that Webster then backed her up against a counter.
"I remember him holding on to me. I couldn't move."
Webster was sentenced to 60 days in jail and was discharged from the service.
"The man's history demonstrates to the government that he will be a continuing threat," a military attorney said during the court-martial.
Pressler blamed himself for the absence of a Coast Guard policy on reporting to the FBI.
"I can see what people would say about something like this," he said. "It'sjust something that didn't occur to us."
Pressler said he is writing a policy, and he expects it to be implemented soon.
"We're doing something about it," he said.
Double standard
Although the military doesn't think civilian law officers need to know about many people the services charge with crimes, the military thinks its ownmilitary investigators should know about them. The military keeps the same information it does not provide to the FBI in its own computer database, called the Defense Clearance and Investigations Index, or DCII.
Courson's conviction for the sexual offense he committed in the Air Force was on the military's DCII computer, said Maj. James Pasierb of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. But it was not in FBI computer records, which is what civilian prosecutors searched when deciding that he was not a repeat offender.
The Department of Defense will sometimes give civilian law officers information from DCII, but most civilian officers are unaware the computer system exists. And the military wants it that way.
"We just don't advertise the existence of it. We're busy as it is," said Dale Hartig, spokesman for the Defense Investigative Service, which oversees the DCII system.
Roger Lake oversees a drug task force and is president of Washington state's narcotics officers association, and he never heard of DCII.
"There isn't one detective in 10,000 who has the slightest clue," McGreevy said.
The civilian officers who are aware of DCII usually are former military investigators.
Asked about the value of DCII, Detective Ben Nivens of the Millington (Tenn.) Police Department reached for the closest file on his desk. Nivins worked for years as a Navy investigator at the base just a mile or so from hisoffice, so when an ex-sailor was accused of sexual assault this summer, Nivinschecked the military computer database.
"The (FBI check) came back no sex offender and nothing about the other charges," Nivins said. A check on the military computer, however, showed the ex-sailor was kicked out of the Navy for beating his girlfriend, a record thatmade the latest victim's story seem more believable to investigators.
Deleted criminal records
Although the military refuses to erase someone's record from DCII, it has no problem helping the same person erase his record from the FBI computer system.
Helping sailors and Marines expunge their FBI records is what Marine Maj. Steven Parker is assigned to do.
"I think people become aware of them (records) because they're applying fora job in law enforcement or as a prison guard," Parker said.
That's exactly what happened to Charles J. Giampietro when he returned to Ohio after being discharged from the Marines in California.
In 1990, Giampietro, while stationed in the Los Angeles area, was accused of breaking and entering, theft and forging military records to obtain a rental car. He was allowed to resign rather than face trial, but such arrangements require that a Marine "admit that he committed one or more of theoffenses," according to a Navy record of the case.
After resigning, Giampietro moved to the Youngstown area and got several jobs in law enforcement. Milton Twp. Police Chief William Moretz said he hiredGiampietro part time after a search of FBI files indicated no criminal record.
"We checked the National Crime Information Center and nothing was there - absolutely nothing," he said.
In the spring of 1994, however, Giampietro wrote to his congressman, U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., D-Ohio, complaining that the Navy criminal recordhad suddenly surfaced.
"He applied for another police officer's job and this (criminal record) showed up," said David Drummond of Traficant's Youngstown office.
Navy records show Traficant, a former sheriff, wrote a letter asking the military to review the case. The Navy asked the FBI to erase Giampietro's record but didn't erase it from the military computer database.
The Navy charges against Giampietro are currently not on the FBI's computer.
No incentive to report
The military doesn't think civilian officers should have access to its records, but it does think the military should have access to civilian criminal records.
"They were interested in getting access to our records," said Mercer, the retired FBI supervisor. "We tried to trade with them. We said, 'Hey we'd like to get your records (too).' "
The military didn't consider reporting criminals very important, said retired Gen. David Brahms, former chief military attorney for the Marines and technical adviser for the movie "A Few Good Men."
"It just wasn't high on anybody's list," he said.
McGreevy said the problem is lack of incentive.
"In the military, you tend to believe the problem's gone when the individual is gone from your base," he said. "The . . . solution is, get the problem out of sight and out of mind."
Kennedy, who oversees the military's compliance with Memo 10, said he was not surprised the policy is sometimes ignored.
"It hasn't been something that has been followed up," he said. "You're certainly not going to get any argument from this office that a review needs to be done."
Editor's note
All the women identified in this series as sexual assault victims agreed to the use of their names and, in some cases, photographs. Where victims did not agrene to this, their names were withheld to protect their privacy.
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