Army Recruiters Face Investigation

Caught On Tape: Recruiters Seemingly Helping 'Prospect' Lie

(CBS)  In Fort Knox, Ky., Lt. Col. Michael Shepherd, the assistant chief of staff, U.S. Army Recruiting Command, agreed wholeheartedly with Brodeur, telling The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith Monday, "Our initial response is just like the battalion commander's. This type of behavior is totally unacceptable.

"This is under investigation and once that's complete, we'll be able to tell what we need to do next. We just need to get back to the business of recruiting. These problems are just ones that we can't stand (for)."

Admitting it's "tough out there" signing up recruits these days, Shepherd added, "But none of that pressure would ever warrant any of the behavior we've seen here.

"We live by a code of Army values. We have to understand integrity, honor, duty, again, lot of pressure but, what's the penalty for not making mission of the individual recruiter? A matter of maybe he needs additional training, maybe he needs additional resources. And we're here to help provide that here at this headquarters."

Shepherd says penalties for the two recruiters could range from letters of reprimand to court martials.

Could this sort of thing be happening elsewhere? "We have systems and procedures in place to do inspections throughout the command to ensure these types of things do not happen," Shepherd responded. "We have data-mining capabilities, quality assurance capabilities, that look into the records of these recruiters to reveal if there is some sort of pattern of misbehavior. So when that happens, we get into it early. For some reason…this one came through and didn't catch it ahead of time."