Complaints about the military's failure to share information with the FBI were first made decades ago, two former special agents for the Department of Defense's law enforcement branch told The Washington Free Beacon.
"About 25 years ago, we discovered that the military services were not properly reporting to the FBI information on deserters and criminal conviction," said Robert Koger, a former Defense Criminal Investigative Service special agent. "We pointed it out to the Department of Defense Inspector General's office, and they kind of shinned it on."
The U.S. Air Force admitted earlier this month that their failure to share records allowed Devin Kelley to obtain numerous firearms, which he used to kill more than two dozen at a church in Texas. The shooter had been court-martialed for domestic violence in 2012, but the offense wasn't entered into the national criminal database shared with civilian law enforcement.
Koger and Don Bolte, also a former special agent, said they first observed this problem while searching for military deserters with major criminal records.
"We were going out together as partners and trying to find these guys, people who had absconded from the law," Bolte said. "I'll bet you can go to the U.S. Attorney's office all over the United States and find military people that had the military charge them with something, put them in for desertion, and it's not just desertion. Most of the time somebody deserts for a reason."
"There was nothing on NCIC to report that there were underlying charges or the guy had escaped, similar to the guy in Texas," Bolte said. "The problem there is, obviously for regulatory purposes, if the guy is a convicted felon or has spent time in a mental institution, they can't get a gun."
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