Recruiting Psychopaths

As though the world isn't a complicated enough affair. Do we really deserve that any country's armed forces' recruiting mechanisms aren't sufficiently well organized that they can readily preclude the entry of sociopaths and psychopaths into the ranks of a country's military? Of course some might have it that an army operates as well as it does because of the presence of those very character types.

And if they weren't like that to begin with, the exercises and protocols of becoming versed in armed conflict would raise the spectre of acquiring such pathologies. This is not, of course, true, but a derogatorily-useful slander used by many citizens of a country who refuse to believe that the prosecution of war is unnecessary under any provocation.

Much, one supposes, like Mahatma Gandhi who, though revered as he is for his ascetic insistence on peacefulness, felt it imperative that physical action to restrain even those whose clear intent it is to take one's life, is never preferable to his preferred option of doing nothing whatever, even in the clear defence of one's existence. Passive, truly passive 'resistance'.

What to think, then, of the recent revelations with respect to recruiting in the Canadian Armed Forces, where a psychopathic personality was accepted as a recruit at the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School in Saint-Jean-sur Richelieu? It took ten days before his peers at the military school understood how frighteningly mentally unstable this man was. So much so that more than a few handed in written statements to a Military Police corporal, outlining their concerns.

Their unease being concerned for the most part with serving with or under someone claiming he was God's chosen, and to him fell the task of obliterating evil. To that end he was prepared to kill Jews, Catholics, blacks, aboriginals, gays and lesbians. And his expectations were that his platoon was there to do his bidding. So then, how might someone so obviously demented pass the initial screening before being sent to basic training?

The screening process is declared to be essential; how otherwise ensure that Canada's military reflects its best and brightest; sound of mind and intent. Something, to be sure, went badly awry.

Police knew Stephen Cox as a grower and trafficker in marijuana. Big deal. RCMP homicide investigators discovered a grow-room located in a bunker under the garage of a man whom Mr. Cox bragged he had killed, along with the man's wife. The reason being that the murdered man had owed money to a Hell's Angels friend of Mr. Cox's. He had claimed to have used a knife to dismember the bodies, but the judge presiding at Mr. Cox's murder trial observed that the forensic evidence suggested a blade with teeth, like that of a hacksaw, had been used.

Enough to exonerate Mr. Cox, who retracted his earlier boasts, given to an undercover agent posing as an influential crime boss interested in recruiting him for membership in a criminal organization. The judge felt that Mr. Cox's bragging to the undercover officer needed to be discounted; he was lying, exaggerating to impress. And he was acquitted. Then proceeded directly to the local recruiting office.

The Canadian Forces' screening includes criminal records, credit and reference checks. Since 2002, six people were denied entry on the basis of their background checks, out of a total of almost 75,000 screened.

Captain Cindy Tessier, spokeswoman for the Canadian Forces Provost Marshall insisted Mr. Cox's past simply did not turn up during the screening process: "It didn't. I don't know why it didn't. The bottom line is: the information wasn't available during the screening process. But the important thing is that as soon as his behaviour was brought to the attention of the authorities it was dealt with."

Right. But Canada's Armed Forces have good reason to be more than competently diligent about personality and background screening. Never to be blotted from memory was the 1993 torture and death of teen-age Somalian Shidane Arone at the hands of Corporal Clayton Matchee and Private Kyle Brown.

His shrieks of pain and torment made no secret of what was happening at the hands of these two Canadian Airborne personnel, representatives of a highly respected crack regiment. And here's the real chiller: others from among the regiment were aware of what was happening, and those others included several superior officers. Our enduring shame.

And, unfortunately, the government of the day peremptorily shut down the resulting enquiry before it could result in any additional embarrassment at the very highest levels of the military command, and the government itself. And the Airborne was disbanded.

With that sad history behind us, the Canadian Military does seek to be careful; more than 26,000 reliability screening tests were conducted in the last year alone. It's not known how many failed the initial screening; that information isn't tracked.

Fact is, in this particular instance with Mr. Cox, his presence was reluctantly accepted by the military. "They didn't want me in but they couldn't stop me," claimed Mr. Cox. "They had all that information. That was all there. I had seven interviews with senior staff at the Vancouver recruitment centre, all the way up to the head boss, who told me quite categorically, 'I don't want you in but I have no choice'."

It was only when he was sent for training, and members of his platoon reported his addled ramblings that matters came to a head. His platoon peers worried that he would be shortly issued a firearm. They threatened to leave basic training if he was not removed, issuing compelling personal reasons revealing the essence of their concerns:

• "Private Cox told me we would become his holy crusaders, charged with the task of hunting down and murdering all who do not share his beliefs."
• "He then explained that he had conducted many missions as a black op. He said that he had killed before and would kill again."
  
• "All who oppose him or his ideals should be lined up and shot."

The man was paranoid, severely deranged. He was obsessed with one of his possessions, a hunting knife. An highly unusual hunting knife. It was roughly 14 inches in length, having a diamond-shaped blade, serrated on both sides. So sharp it could pierce body armour. So much for judges skilled in human behaviour and with a technical knowledge of small saws, like, for example, a hacksaw, which he said, would have been the real weapon in the double murder case against Mr. Cox.

Yet this man feels himself to have been victimized by society. Why is that not dreadfully surprising, after all. It was unfair that the military recruited him, then unceremoniously dismissed him after a mere two weeks' indoctrination. "If they didn't want me in the military, why the hell let me go in to begin with?"

Right. Why indeed.