Rodney Barker - Dancing with the Devil - Sex, Espionage and the U.S. Marines - The Clayton Lonetree Story

But while that may have been the picture of Clayton Lonetree his high school football coach was carrying around, inside Clayton a very different self-image was apparently taking shape. After a long silence in which he seemed to be debating how personal he should get, Lonetree revealed to Williams that beneath his stoical and apparently passive exterior, he had begun to nurse passions of hatred and fanaticism.

It all started at the Navajo Gospel Missions with a TV movie about Germany and the Third Reich, he said. While everyone around him thought of Adolf Hitler as a sinister figure whose name was identified with evil, when he listened to what Hitler said, it got him excited. On scratch paper he started drawing iron crosses. In his spare time he fashioned a makeshift Nazi-style uniform that included a cross-chest belt, a side bag, and an armband with a swastika on it.

So immersed did he become in World War II fantasies that they began to invade his nighttime dreams. One nightmare in particular he would never forget: He was traipsing across a muddy, cratered, body-strewn battlefield while bombers roared overhead, machine-gun bullets whistled through the air, shells exploded left and right… and he walked through it all as though he were invulnerable.

Sometimes these dreams seemed so real he thought they might be memories.

Lonetree didn’t say exactly when or how he obtained a copy of Mein Kampf, but he did say that after reading Hitler’s autobiography, he had been amazed by the parallels between his life and the Führer’s. Hitler too had been raised in humiliating circumstances under the thumb of a drunkard father who was unsympathetic, hard to please, and short-tempered; who insisted on respect and discipline; who was dissatisfied with his son’s school reports and made his disappointment clear. As a boy Hitler too had been awkward and reserved in social situations; had few friends, lived a solitary life, and spent much of his time brooding and dreaming. Just like Lonetree, Hitler had exhibited an artistic flair that was manifested in sketchbook drawings, and had developed an interest in warfare at an early age.

Clayton said that was when it first occurred to him he might even be Hitler reincarnated.

This fascination with Nazism started coming back in high school. He devoured German-history books, focusing primarily on accounts of battle campaigns and the biographies of war heroes. He found a store in the Twin Cities that catered to World War II buffs, started a collection of Nazi military memorabilia, began wearing combat boots to school, and even contacted the American Nazi Party about attending their meetings.

As he heard Lonetree’s confession of “fascist-type thinking,” Williams pronounced no judgments in his mind because he thought he understood what was going on with the young man. This obsession with the Third Reich sounded like the syndrome of a minority member trying to fill a deep personal void by identifying with a dictatorial group that preached superiority. More probable than a genuine admiration for Nazi beliefs was that this was part of an unconscious strategy for achieving a strengthened sense of self-esteem. When Lonetree described how Hitler had overcome a boyhood of hardship and misery, he was no doubt seeing in the Führer’s success a formula for prevailing over his own circumstances.

Over the course of his junior and senior years, Lonetree said, his readings brought him into the larger arena of foreign affairs and contemporary world events. Naturally, his political views were conservative, almost hawkish. “I started thinking about the Communist threat. I was angry about our retreat from Vietnam. I was ready to bomb Iran if they didn’t return American hostages. I was also in favor of increased defense spending and the need for a first-strike capability with nuclear weapons.”

A bit sheepishly he admitted as well to fantasizing about being president of the United States.

This last acknowledgment was a significant one for Tom Williams, and not only because it showed the magnitude and direction of Lonetree’s active fantasies. It also revealed that Lonetree possessed a defiant streak and an exalted sense of his potential that was very different from the way other high school students of the day were thinking. In the late seventies the youth were into smoking dope, partying, and blaming the whole elusive system of authority, from the President to the principal to teachers and parents, for the country’s social ills. If there had been a draft, the majority of them would have been dodgers and shirkers. But in this milieu Clayton Lonetree was an exception. He took his rebellion to the right instead of the left. He said he didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t swear, didn’t do drugs, and he spoke about himself with almost an elitist attitude, as someone who believed in destiny and felt he was meant for something special.

Halfway through his senior year, without parental knowledge or permission, Lonetree said, he skipped school, spent the day in the recruiter’s office, and joined the Marines on the delayed-entry program that allowed him to graduate first. The reasons he gave were varied. To get away from an overbearing father who wanted him to go to college and become a lawyer. For the action, the adventure, and to see the world—the usual reasons. To uphold the Lonetree family’s distinguished tradition of military service.

Lonetrees and their relatives had fought valiantly in every conflict from the Civil War to the Vietnam War. A great-uncle, Mitchell Red Cloud, had even been posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his exploits in the Korean War. Clayton said he had grown up listening to the story of Mitchell Red Cloud’s stand on Pork Chop Hill: Mortally wounded, his arm wrapped around a tree, he had mowed down Chinese Communist troops with automatic-rifle fire, almost single-handedly keeping the enemy from overrunning his company’s position.

The way Tom Williams saw the decision, joining the Marine Corps offered Lonetree a sense of roots and gave him an affiliation: As a Marine he would be part of a family, a tribe. Being a Marine would also help him define his self-image as well as project it to others. The Marine Corps would take care of him, fulfill his need for a macho image, provide him with security, and bestow honor upon him.

In civilian jails an interview like this would have been interrupted by now. A guard would have shown up and said it was chow time, count time, lockdown time. But at the Quantico brig there was no interruption, and Williams encouraged Lonetree to keep talking.

Clayton said he reported for active duty on July 29, 1980, at the Marine Corps Recruitment Depot in San Diego. He said he was not singled out for special treatment, favorable or otherwise, and liked the fact that the Corps seemed to make no racial distinctions. Although the spectrum of racial colors represented at boot camp included white, black, red, and yellow, once in uniform everyone was green. The Marine Corps color.

After completing his basic training, Lonetree said, his first duty assignment was Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He admitted he was excited at being sent to one of the few places where the American flag flew on Communist soil. Where better to learn what war was about?

At first, he said, he enjoyed himself at Guantánamo Bay. His primary duty was walking point, and it was a rush knowing that this was no longer playacting in a field exercise with false bullets—it was the real thing. Even though there was never an exchange of fire, he would pause during his rounds along the perimeter fence to stare across the minefields separating him from the bunkers and guard towers manned by Communist Cuban soldiers, imagining the kind of assault that the detachment anticipated in its defense exercises.