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Army pair's tactics eyed

Student-led sting ensnarls recruiters

John Aguilar, Rocky Mountain News

Published April 30, 2005 at midnight

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Two Army recruiters in Golden have been suspended from their jobs while military officials look into allegations the two men used improper tactics to get an Arvada high school student to sign up for duty.

The Denver Army Recruiting Battalion, which oversees recruiting for Colorado and parts of three other states, launched the investigation Friday after CBS 4 News broadcast a report the previous night about the alleged improprieties.

The report featured David McSwane, an Arvada West High School honors student and editor of his school newspaper, who was "curious" to see what recruiters at a Golden recruitment facility would do if he told them he wanted to join the Army as a high school dropout with a serious marijuana problem.

McSwane, 17, said he had read about the challenges the military was facing in recruiting and wanted to find out "how desperate they really are."

"Being my age and in high school, you see recruiters all the time. It's something that's affecting people my age," he told The Rocky Mountain News Friday.

Starting in January, McSwane met with two recruiters in Golden several times and secretly taped a series of phone calls with them. On the tapes, one recruiter is apparently heard encouraging McSwane to create a fake high school diploma to cover for the fact that he had dropped out.

"It can be like Faith Hill Baptist School or something - whatever you choose," the recruiter said.

McSwane said he bought a phony diploma, complete with a transcript, from a Web site for $200. He was told that it passed the Army's academic evaluation.

"At one point, I thought he would look up my academic record, but he never did," McSwane said.

McSwane got a friend to film another recruiter driving him to a store to purchase a detoxification kit to rid his system of supposed marijuana traces.

By the middle of March, McSwane was asked to sign a routine paper attesting that everything he had told recruiters was true.

"He wanted me to strip down and get on the scale and sign some papers -I walked out . . . and never came back," he said.

McSwane's story was published with his principal's approval in the high school newspaper, The Westwind, on March 17.

Debbie Cannon, public affairs chief for the Denver Army Recruiting Battalion, wouldn't comment on the allegations. She expected the investigation to be completed within 30 days.

"Recruiter misconduct is not acceptable and it violates honor, duty and trust," Lt. Col. Jeffrey Brodeur, the battalion's commander, said in a statement.

McSwane said he got the feeling from the recruiters he talked to that they were desperately trying to sign him up by a certain date so that they could meet a monthly quota.

"I'd like to see the Army investigate this thoroughly, not just two guys in this office," he said.

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