Snowden's brief Army Reserve Special Forces attempt and disputed injury claims

46 Instead of seeking a job in Japan, Snowden sought to join the Special Forces through the 18X program. It was an Army Reserve program created in 2003 that allowed individuals who had not served in the military or completed their education, to train to be a Special Forces recruit. He listed his religion on the application as “Buddhist” because, as he explained in a sardonic post on Ars Technica, “Agnostic is strangely absent” from the form.” He enlisted in the army reserves on May 7, 2004, according to U.S. Army records. He reported for a 10 week basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. That was standard course for all enlistees in the infantry. In August, he began a three-week course in of parachute jumping but did not complete that training. US Army records show he did not complete the training requirements and received no commendations. As Snowden put it in his Internet postings, he “washed out.” He was discharged on September 29, 2004, ending his 19 week military career. Snowden would later claim on the Internet that he returned to civilian life because he had injured himself by breaking both legs. An Army spokesman said, however, that he could not confirm that Snowden injured his legs or that he was in fact dropped from the program for medical reasons. Under his alias TheTrueHooHa he wrote that “they [the Army] held on to me until the doctors cleared me to be discharged, and then after being cleared they held onto me for another month just for shits and giggles.” He attributed this treatment in the Army, as he would later attribute his problems in the CIA and NSA, to the inferior intelligence of his superiors, He wrote in his post “Psych problems = dishonorable discharge depending on how much they hate you. Lots of alleged homos were in the hold unit, too, but they only got a general discharge at best.” It is not entirely clear whether or not Snowden actually injured himself. If he had broken his legs, it was not evident to Joyce Kinsey, his next door neighbor, who told me that she never saw Snowden on crutches when he returned to his mother’s condominium in September 2004. Whether or not he broke his legs, Army records show that he did not receive a medical discharge. He received an “administrative discharge.” Unlike a medical discharge which is given because a soldier has sustained injuries that prevent him from performing his duties, an administrative discharge is a “morally-neutral” form of separation given to a soldier when her or she is deemed for non-medical reasons inappropriate for military service. Snowden himself preferred to voice a medical explanation for his severance, just as he had claimed a medical reason for dropping out of high school (and would later claim he needed medical treatment for epilepsy at the NSA.) When he returned home from Fort Benning, Georgia on September 28, 2004, he was 21. Having failed in his attempt to join the Special Forces, he returned to his mother’s condominium in Elliott City, where he remained unemployed for several months. He took a job as a security guard at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language. According to his Ars Technica postings, he worked the night shift from six in the evening to six in the morning. Because intelligence officers took its language courses, Snowden had to take a polygraph exam to get the job. After he passed it, he was hired and given his first security clearance But he had higher ambitions than being a campus security guard, It was only a temporary stop gap for him. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020198