......There has to be a better way than imploring future Military Officers to rat each other out.
I'd bet it was conjured up by some senior GS-99 "sandcrab", certainly no one in the USAFA (I would hope)?
Think less random bureaucrat and more 'special agent' types. I would guess OSI was tasked to crack down on cadet shennanigans, nothing particularly wrong with that, but went about it like they would any old criminal investigation without consideration for the somewhat unique status of the cadets involved (the honor code, etc).
OSI and NCIS do this stuff on a regular basis in all settings. If you are naive enough to think that the "thought police" aren't active in your organization, think again. I saw it run rampant on the carrier. They operate in a quasi legal environment (UCMJ) with little oversight.
Like the article says OSI agents don't answer to the local commanders and don't have to keep them in the loop, for very good reasons, but an unfortunate side effect is when folks like the cadets in the article are caught in the middle and left hanging in the end sometimes. I have worked with law enforcement and most of the informants they used had been flipped, caught between serving time or ratting out their associates for leniency. The female cadet in the article did actually admit to doing drugs so her eventual dismissal is no surprise. Another former cadet interviewed who was an informant is now commissioned but his story is only briefly touched on. As for the cadet who is the main focus of the article, I am not sure we got the complete story about what he did and how much was sanctioned by OSI. His story about being recruited strikes me as being a little bit too benign, not unbelievable but certainly left it a bit open to me why the OSI would bring him in and focus on him as an informant in the first place. We certainly aren't getting both sides of the story.
With all of that said I would be wary of using cadets as informants given their unique status of the cadets and the academies, especially when what they are asked to do is contrary to some of the core values of the school. The 'not tolerate' clause in the honor code shouldn't be used as a bludgeon by law enforcement or the school administration, there were some levers in place at my school to prevent that from happening with the honor code and were generally followed with a few notable exceptions while I was there. If that is allowed to happen it can have a very corrosive effect on the cadets and the school as a whole.
