By AuxBeacon News Reader

Dear AuxBeacon Editors,

A number of my encounters with former USAF service members and CAP members could only be characterized as disturbing and worrisome for our future. Throughout all levels – airmen, NCOs and officers – I found a mix of incompetence, ignorance, arrogance and deceit that continues to ensure many of our best and brightest will shun this path of national service tainted with set-up for failure. I personally witnessed alcohol and drug usage, sexual misconduct, threats and intimidation, physical violence and the destruction of evidence and documents. Today I find part of that story has been released to the public after passing through Representative Liz Cheney.

U.S. Troops Guarding Nuclear Missiles took LSD, Air Force Records Show

Air Force records obtained by The Associated Press show that service members entrusted with guarding nuclear missiles bought, distributed and used the hallucinogen LSD and other mind-altering illegal drugs as part of a ring that operated undetected for months on a highly secure military base in Wyoming. After investigators closed in, one airman deserted to Mexico.

A slipup on social media by one airman enabled investigators to crack the drug ring at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in March 2016, details of which were reported in a CBS/AP article for the the first time. Fourteen airmen were disciplined. Six of them were convicted in courts martial of LSD use or distribution or both.

“Minutes felt like hours, colors seemed more vibrant and clear,” testified one Airman Basic. “In general, I felt more alive.” He said he had used LSD in high school, which could have disqualified him from Air Force service; he said that his recruiter told him he should lie about it and that lying about prior drug use was “normal” in the Air Force.

At his court martial, that airman acknowledged distributing LSD on the missile base in February 2016. A month later, when summoned for questioning by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, he confessed and became an informant for the agency, an arrangement the Air Force said yielded legally admissible evidence against 10 other airmen. Under a pretrial agreement, he agreed to testify against other airmen and avoided a punitive discharge. He was sentenced to five months’ confinement, 15 days of hard labor and loss of $5,200 in pay.

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