My Sunday column: Recruiting case snares National Guard colonel

Back in February, my colleague Mark Brunswick reported about the anger in Congress over the U.S. Army's scuttled recruiting bonus program. A couple of months later, I discovered Col. Mark Hodd's name on a list of debarred federal contractors (downloadable here). I documented my journey through FOIA to the Army here, here and here, and ended up with the column, pasted below.

It's been two years since the U.S. Army stopped paying cash rewards to people who helped recruit new National Guard soldiers. The trouble caused by PFC payola lingers on.

The Guard Recruiting Assistance Program (G-RAP, in military parlance) helped bolster the ranks at a time when the Pentagon worried about a troop shortage during wartime. Its loose rules and somnolent oversight also contributed to widespread fraud, as civilians and service members who signed up as "recruiting assistants" could not resist an easy $2,000.

The scandal has politicians in Washington howling, Army brass squirming and the Alabama-based private contractor who ran G-RAP, Docupak, promising to help clean up the mess.

Meanwhile, Army investigators have gone after former recruiting assistants who they say collected commissions for new soldiers who enlisted without their help.

One person caught up in the recruiting investigation, Col. Mark Hodd of Coon Rapids, shows up in a public list of individuals prohibited from receiving federal contracts. To find out more about Hodd, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Army. Three months of pestering later, I received a 58-page PDF from the Army's Legal Service Agency in Fort Belvoir, Va.

The records provide an intriguing window into how this program went astray.

The enlistee happened to be dating Hodd's daughter at the time. During a visit to Hodd's home, Berg told the colonel that he was joining the Guard and that his friend would collect the cash for referring him.

Around that time, according to investigators, Hodd had gone online and registered himself as a "recruiting assistant." To do so, you had to learn about the program on a website and complete an absurdly easy multiple choice "quiz" on what you just read.

Six days later, Hodd claimed Berg as a referral and went on to collect $2,000 — half at enlistment, the rest when the enlistee completed basic training, records show. Berg's friend got nothing.

It took five years before an Army investigator sat down with Berg at a Caribou Coffee in Woodbury in October 2013. He told the investigator that he wasn't recruited by Hodd, and that he only found out later that the colonel had nabbed the bonus.

Hodd had just retired, after 32 years of service with the Guard. He never gave a statement or otherwise responded to the investigation.

In an interview last week, Hodd denied the Army's findings and said he did nothing wrong. He said he didn't fight the action because of other issues in his life at the time, but he said he would never risk his career for $2,000. Those investigating the program were eager to punish a colonel, he said.

"I made a mistake by not responding," Hodd said. But, he added, "this story's bigger than me."

Indeed, the soldiers and civilians facing criminal charges in other states admit to bribery and five-figure gains, if not more. As of last week, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division was investigating six cases of suspected recruiting fraud in Minnesota, involving up to 13 people, according to Col. Kevin Olson, a Minnesota Guard spokesman.