Muslim Soldiers Detained for Plot to Poison Fort Jackson's Food Supply?
Despite "no credible information to support the allegations," five Arabic translators are currently under investigation for trying to poison Fort Jackson's food, reports Fox News and CBN. UPDATE: Reasons why the story is dubious.
According to Fox, the military won't confirm anything about the accused soldiers' identities, just that they take this stuff "extremely seriously." CBN broke the story that officials detained the soldiers in December, and that they aren't sure whether they are still in custody. It is unclear what sort of presumably incredible information made the translators worth detaining in the first place—perhaps none, says The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, who suspects the whole story is false.
The terrorist accusation would be "huge—if true," Ambinder writes, but "the Army says it's not true. No one has been arrested. The National Security Council was not aware of any arrests, a spokesperson said." Ambinder points to the cultural rift between the "09-Lima" translation program—which employs many "non-citizen Muslims"—and the rest of Fort Jackson:
A routine and basic background check is conducted before any recruit is allowed into the program, but nothing rigorous. That's because the translators at Ft. Jackson don't handle active work. They're trained — given the whole Army drill sergeant basic routine. Many become citizens after their training finishes. They're then embedded with U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
There has been tension between the drill sergeants there and the recruits, because the drill sergeants fundamentally mistrusted them, and because they're Muslim and many aren't Americans.
