Melzer O9A Infiltration Record

PROBLEM: Former Pvt. Ethan Phelan Melzer joined the U.S. Army in approximately 2018 and, per the Justice Department, infiltrated its ranks as part of an "insight role" to further his goals as an adherent of the Order of the Nine Angles (O9A) — a white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and pro-jihadist group that espouses neo-Nazi, antisemitic, and Satanic beliefs and, per court documents, encourages its membership to infiltrate the military to dismantle it from within. Serving with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Italy, he used encrypted messaging in May 2020 to send O9A members — including a sub-group called the "RapeWaffen Division" — his unit's location, movements, armaments, topography, and security ahead of a deployment to guard a sensitive installation in Turkey, planning what he called a "jihadi attack" to cause a mass-casualty event against his fellow service members. The FBI arrested him on June 10, 2020. He pleaded guilty on June 24, 2022, and was sentenced on March 3, 2023 to 45 years in federal prison. A group that tells its members to join the military to destroy it from inside found a member in the ranks — and the infiltration doctrine is on the court record.

SOLUTION: An infiltration-doctrine record: every extremist group's stated military-infiltration doctrine logged with the group's own words, the court document that records it, and the service member case that carried it out — so a group's recruitment doctrine is visible next to the case it produced.

EVIDENCE BASIS: DOCUMENTED — Melzer joined the Army ~2018 as an O9A "insight role" (DOJ, S.D.N.Y.); O9A doctrine of military infiltration per court documents; encrypted disclosures of unit location, movements, armaments, topography, security (May 2020); arrest June 10, 2020; guilty plea June 24, 2022 (attempting to murder U.S. service members; material support to terrorists; transmitting national defense information); sentence Mar 3, 2023 (45 years, U.S. District Judge Gregory H. Woods). Sources: DOJ, U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York (Mar 3, 2023); Army Times (Mar 3, 2023).