In my ten years of working for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), I’ve seen many cases in which the military’s attempt to justify a violation of regulations just dug them in deeper, but this one takes the cake.
On May 4, MRFF received complaints from twenty-one civilian Army employees at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania. Upon their arrival for work that morning, these twenty-one federal government employees (fifteen of whom are practicing Christians) were shocked to see that a gate guard at this military installation was wearing a black baseball cap sporting in large silver numbers the biblical citation “3:16” — a number immediately recognizable to both the religious and the non-religious as a reference to the Bible verse John 3:16 due to the widespread media coverage of Tim Tebow’s wearing of it on his eye black, as well as its very recently having been in the news again because of former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez having written this same Bible verse citation in ink on his forehead and in blood on his prison cell wall before hanging himself.
On behalf of the twenty-one employees who came to MRFF about this gate guard, MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein sent an email to Tobyhanna Army Depot’s commander, Col. Gregory Peterson, informing him of the situation and demanding that the gate guard remove his Christian evangelizing baseball cap, and that the gate guard as well as those in his chain of command who allowed him to wear it be appropriately punished.
Weinstein’s email to Col. Peterson was answered on Peterson’s behalf by Robert D. Haas, Tobyhanna’s acting chief of public affairs. Mr. Haas’s reply made two points, one of which was to claim that it was perfectly permissible for this gate guard to be wearing a hat with a Christian evangelizing message on it while working at the main gate of this military installation, citing a twenty year old document from the White House Press Secretary’s Office titled “Guidelines on Religious Exercise and Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace,” which says that it is permissible for employees in a federal government workplace to wear apparel with a religious message on it as long as they are not coming into contact with the public. According to Mr. Haas, the gate guard was only “assisting arriving co-workers, not the general public.” But according to an employee who has actually worked in installation security at Tobyhanna, including entrance gate security, “… security guards do have access to the general public and they have it all the time, even at the gate and lanes reserved only for Army civilian employees” because visitors regularly make the mistake of ending up in the employee lane, and it is part of the job of the gate guard to redirect visitors to the correct lane.
But it was Mr. Haas’s other point that left Mikey Weinstein, the Tobyhanna employees who had contacted MRFF, and a whole bunch of other people who have seen Mr. Haas’s email in complete shock and amazement.
When Weinstein wrote his email to Col. Peterson, he was under the natural assumption, as were the twenty-one Tobyhanna employees who had contacted MRFF, that this gate guard was an armed, trained security guard officially tasked with protecting the security of this military installation. But to everyone’s utter disbelief, Mr. Haas’s other justification for its being just fine for this person who was entrusted with the security of this military installation to be wearing his “3:16” hat was that he wasn’t a real security guard!
According to Mr. Haas, “The employee is not a Police Officer or Guard, was unarmed and wearing personal clothing not issued by the Government.”
Yes, seriously, in these days when the security of our military installations is an issue of paramount importance, Tobyhanna Army Depot is actually allowing untrained, unarmed civilian employees to help out by playing security guard at its main gate!
The following were the reactions of two Tobyhanna employees to Mr. Haas’s email, and its revelation about the security of their workplace:
I am an Army civilian employee at Tobyhanna and have been employed there for more than 15 years.
I am a client of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) and consider myself to be a Christian.
Part of my employment career at Tobyhanna has included time in installation security at Tobyhanna to include entrance gate security at the Main Gate which is the subject of MRFF’s Complaint to our Commander Colonel Peterson.
I have seen the so-called “explanation" provided MRFF by our Public Affairs Office as to the individual wearing the Christian “3:16” hat. There are at least two things very wrong with that Public Affairs statement.
First, I have never heard of a non-trained, non-uniformed, unarmed, civilian Army employee being utilized for actual gate security even if only allegedly for fellow Army co-workers. Even the idea of allowing individuals who are not security-trained to any extent – which is what our Public Affairs Office seems to be admitting – to be passing judgement on public and non-public (Army employee) people trying to access our military facility is both dangerous and preposterous.
Secondly, and let me make this very clear, there is no way to ensure that such untrained, non-security, Army civilians would not have access to the general public even if serving at only the “employee entrance lanes” and gate at the Main Gate. The fact is that our Tobyhanna security guards do have access to the general public and they have it all the time, even at the gate and lanes reserved only for Army civilian employees.
The simple reason is because it is a routine and regular occurrence that sometimes non-Tobyhanna employees, in other words, the “general public” makes mistakes and uses the wrong lanes (like the lanes reserved only for Army civilian employees) to try to enter our military facility. Part of the important job of the gate security guards is to recognize this typical mistake situation and redirect those in the general public to use other entry lanes and gates at the Main Gate entrance.
I can’t say how often these mixups and required redirects at the Army civilian employees gate and lanes happen but they are expected and planned for by our Tobyhanna security staff.
They certainly occur frequently enough to be described as SOP at least.
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Dear Mr Weinstein
Thank you for forwarding the weak and insufficient response from Tobyhanna Public Affairs Department on the matter of a person who cleared me to enter the Depot while wearing a proselytizing Christian biblical phrase on his hat which offended me and clearly many others on the morning of 4 May 2017.
I have been entering that same gate every morning for 15 years and have never been checked by anyone but either an armed Dept. of the Army civilian security guard or an armed active duty Army security officer.
Never has a non-trained non-security person every checked me in until the morning of 4 May 2017. This poor excuse from Tobyhanna raises many serious questions involving security as well as Christian religious proselytizing.
As far as vehicles being either Tobyhanna employees or the general public I believe we all can and do use that very same gate to enter the Tobyhanna Depot.
The issue of who that was clearing me and others into the Depot that morning now seems as important as the offensive John “3:16” hat that he was wearing in a highly visible obviously authoritarian military job. How would any of us know that he was not a real military gate guard or law enforcement official?
I concur that appropriate measures be taken as soon as possible to punish the decision makers who allowed this incident to occur.
And I further recommend that published procedures be issued and that specific training take place around those procedures to ensure that something as terrible as this never happens again.
Security Gates at our Military Installations are very important locations that must go out of their way to be as professional and secure as possible. Having a non-security person checking IDs at the Tobyhanna Army Depot Main Gate seems to be an egregious breach of DoD security protocols. Having that same person wear a clearly Christian proselytizing hat in the performance of this security role at the Main Gate is a clear breach of the separation of church and state in our Constitution and DoD and DA regulations.
Thank you MRFF for ensuring that Tobyhanna Army Depot, and through this example to all DoD installations, complies with the Constitutional standards for non-establishment of religion that the DoD espouses.
Anonymous Tobyhanna U.S. Army Employee