Hardball Recruiter Gets Promoted

By: Bootie Cosgrove-Mather

In fear, Monarch called the recruiter back.

"He said, 'Oh Chris, don't worry about that. That's just a marketing technique I use,"' Monarch recounted.

Reporter Mark Greenblatt of CBS affiliate KHOU-TV questioned recruiter Sgt Thomas Kelt.

Greenblatt: "I'd just like to know why you have called up young men threatening to arrest them if they don't come and talk to you?"

Kelt: "No comment."

Greenblatt: "You told the young man that this is a standard marketing technique that you use. Is that true?"

Kelt: "No comment. No comment."

Responding to the story at the time, General Michael Rochelle, the head of U.S. Army recruiting, said: "It's really an insult to other Army recruiters who are handling themselves and conducting themselves in the proper way," he said.

Kelt's recruiting behavior was one of various questionable tactics that prompted the Army retraining of recruiters. In Colorado, 19-year-old Michael Flaherty's recruiter gave him a laxative to lose weight to pass a physical.

From fake diploma's from phony schools, detox kits to beat drug tests, Denver's CBS station KCNC uncovered a number of recruiter fraud cases.

"It's very stressful," said former recruiter Jeffery Bacon.

Bacon says he's been busted from Sergeant to Specialist for not meeting his quota of 24 soldiers a year.

"I'm losing my house because I'm losing my job, you know. I'm in financial debt," Bacon said.

This year the Army needs over 101,000 new soldiers world-wide. But as the war continues and volunteers are harder to find military recruiters face the toughest sell -- ever.