EXCLUSIVE — House Republicans will bring in Army officials to testify at a hearing next week on a training presentation that referred to pro-life groups as terrorists, Fox News Digital has learned.
The House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Military Personnel will hear Thursday afternoon from Agnes Schaefer, assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and Reserve affairs, and Lt. Gen. Patrick Matlock, Army deputy chief of staff.
Republicans led by Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Subcommittee Chairman Jim Banks, R-Ind., wrote a letter to Army Secretary Christine Wormuth demanding information about the slide deck.
The Army recently wrote back, admitting that the slides “inaccurately referenced” pro-life groups like Right to Life and Operation Rescue, and a slew of pro-animal and green groups like PETA, as “terrorist organizations.”
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Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaks during a ceremony on Christmas Eve at Bagram Air Base, in Afghanistan, on Dec. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File)
Schaefer wrote that the training deck, which was used to teach 9,100 Army soldiers at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, between 2017 and 2024, was “inconsistent with Army’s antiterrorism policy and training.”
She said the slides had not been reviewed by Fort Liberty leadership and are no longer in use. Schaefer added there is “no evidence” to suggest the individual who created the slide deck did so to “deliberately subvert” Army policy or to “further a personal viewpoint.”
The slides were used to conduct terror awareness training for soldiers assigned to guarding the gates at Fort Liberty. Schaefer said the slides were not shared outside of Fort Liberty.
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The Republican letter in July said the slides indicated members of pro-life organizations could be threats to the safety of military installations and that regalia of such groups, like a pro-life license plate, could potentially indicate terrorism.
Officials at the Fayetteville, North Carolina, garrison said the person using the slides remains employed at the facility.
Iraqi Army soldiers secure streets in a village recently liberated from Islamic State militants outside Mosul, Iraq. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, File)
U.S. Army soldiers in North Carolina until this year were being trained to be skeptical of pro-life groups as “terrorists.” (Source: U.S. Army )
“It’s downright ridiculous to claim the slide deck doesn’t ‘further a personal viewpoint,’ but there have been no consequences for the employee who ran anti-life training sessions at Fort Liberty that clearly violated Army policy,” Banks told Fox News Digital.
Rogers said the hearing will be held “to get answers on how this occurred and ensure it never happens again.”
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In June, the Army revised some of its policies, with Wormuth announcing that “active participation in extremist activities can be prohibited even in some circumstances in which such activities would be constitutionally protected in a civilian setting.”
Service members are now prohibited from liking, sharing or engaging with content supporting extremism, according to the American Legion.
Fox News Digital’s Charles Creitz contributed to this report.
