Sergeant Joshua Abate, a marine charged for his alleged participation in the US Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, had been transferred, on assignment, to the Marine Cryptologic Batallion at the National Security Agency headquarters (NSA).

The NSA is one of the US's most sensitive intelligence institutions and the Marine Cryptologic Batallion is a liaison between the Marines and the NSA at Fort Meade.

Though Abate confessed, last summer, that he had engaged in the January 6 Riots, he was not charged until last month.

Not a punishment, a promotion

Alongside Abate, two other marines were charged for taking part in the Capitol riots, however, the two others were also transferred on intelligence assignments according to a report by The Intercept.

Marine Corps sergeant Dodge Dale Hellonen was assigned to the 3rd Marine Raider Support Battalion, which provides intelligence, general, and combat support to the Marine Forces Special Operations Command at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina.

Similarly, Corporal Micah Coomer was assigned to the Marines 1st Radio Battalion, which provides Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), Electronic Warfare (EW), and Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) for the Marine Expeditionary Force, part of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force, based in Camp Pendleton, California. 

Initially, the Marine Corps. did not offer much information concerning the three marines, but an investigation by The Intercept revealed that they all received new assignments and even promotions.

The fight over right-wing radicals in the military

The reassignments raise massive new concerns regarding the military and intelligence communities' capacity to recognize right-wing radicals among their ranks.

While earlier, the Pentagon stated that it has been working to ferret out radicals since the Capitol riots, there have been "few signs that the problem has yet been reduced or even that the scale of the threat has been adequately measured." Furthermore, the Pentagon's efforts are now being hampered by House Republicans, who are attempting to obstruct efforts to remove right-wing radicals from the military.

Republicans are threatening to go after what they term "woke" practices at the Pentagon now that they control the House. According to The Intercept, that would include the ongoing attempts to drive out right-wing radicals.

While Pentagon leaders have spoken openly about the problem of right-wing extremism in the military, the US intelligence community has been significantly more diplomatic about it, the report highlighted.

Although intelligence authorities have reported on the growing threat presented by white nationalism and right-wing domestic terrorism, there is insufficient publicly available information on the magnitude of the issue among its ranks, and no evidence that it is taking considerable action to prevent the spread of extremism within its own agencies.

It is worth noting that the three Marines are not the first with ties to the intelligence agency to face charges in connection with the January 6 attack. 

The three men were friends at the time of the riots, and were assigned to the Marine Corps Information Operations Center in Quantico, Virginia. 

Interviews and court records seem to indicate that it took detectives some time to pin Abate, Hellonen, and Coomer down over their January 6 riots involvement.

Read more: Oath keepers’ Rhodes guilty of seditious conspiracy in Jan. 6 attack

Coomer waits for 'boogaloo'

Coomer was, according to the report, the first among the men to be identified by the FBI.

On August 13, 2021, a federal search warrant was served to Facebook authorizing the search of the Instagram account of “mrcoomer08.”

The Intercept highlighted that "Coomer had posted photos from inside the Capitol on January 6 to his personal account." The captions revealed the extent of his radicalism. On the January 6 post, he wrote “Glad to be apart [sic] of history.”

More significantly, on January 31, 2021, Coomer wrote that “everything in this country is corrupt. We honestly need a fresh restart. I’m waiting for the boogaloo.”

When asked by another Instagram user, according to the FBI complaint, what a "boogaloo" is, Coomer replied with "Civil War 2". 

Read more: Neo Nazi leader arrested for planning a Baltimore power grid attack