Bishop Garrison

We're not here to be thought police in any way, shape, or form.

Extremist activity, active participation, two things go together.

Those last two things you mentioned would both be activities. That is something that is prohibited. I would even argue it's always been prohibited.

Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense for Human Capital and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

In Garrison, he starts getting these messages on social media. And that included everything from threats against my career, my livelihood, to threats of personal violence. And he was really worried about his wife and baby back home. My wife truly was afraid of, like, someone is going to show up on our doorstep with a long gun.

As one very senior official relayed to me, you know, these types of things are like quicksand. You say, like, he's a good guy, next question, and that will go away because if you fight against it, fight against it, you're going to get pulled more into it. I think not pushing back harder and not fighting for it, just let it breathe more and let it breathe longer.

And that's what we're even, I think to some degree today, still seeing the remnants of that.

My biggest fear is that it's going to take some type of major or massive incident in which people get hurt, if not worse, for the department to actually stop and take action on this.

What we were hearing on the ground from units was that there was just a lot of confusion.

Well, you know, what is extremism? My extremism may not be your extremism.

You, me, and all of the Joint Chiefs would love to have a clean definition of it. And the problem is the definition is it depends. It's one of those things where you kind of know it when you see it.

It almost has to be like a rubric. You can't make for every instance of what may or may not be extremes activity. It really depends on the situation and the individual.

It couldn't just be that you went and read a thing because you could be a historian. You're reading Mein Kampf because you want to know more about World War II and Hitler.

You have an activity that may not in and of itself be prohibited or be criminal, but it leans in that direction. It gives the commander an opportunity to say, wait, wait, wait, what is this about?