Oval Office Ambush

"I figured the military was the same close-knit group, just more legal," he recalls.

• 

• Jay Soldner

  

Details:

Listen to Alexis Janicki explain why he jumped the White House fence and why he feels betrayed by the Army on this week’s Pitchcast:

Subject(s):

Iraq, President George W. Bush, PTSD

But Janicki didn't do well in boot camp. He had a problem with his joints that made humping heavy gear for long periods of time painful. A base doctor prescribed Zoloft after he became depressed and anxious. He ended up with the 124th Signal Battalion, which provides communications for the 4th Infantry out of Fort Hood, Texas.

Near the end of his enlistment, on March 19, 2003, he landed in Iraq.

Janicki's squad was stationed at an abandoned airstrip just outside Baghdad. As a satellite operator, Janicki relayed communications from 4th Infantry soldiers on the front lines. With a satellite dish strapped to it, Janicki's Hummer looked like a giant target. When his unit stopped to relay messages, he'd watch the sunlight glint off the dish. It made them visible for miles.

His meds had made him sluggish, so they were taken away in the war zone. Doing without made him jittery. In his mind, he'd repeat the training-march yell "Kill, kill with cold, blue steel."

But he was rarely within shooting distance of hostiles. Mostly, he couldn't even identify the enemy. During civil-affairs missions, he handed out food and candy to hostile men who shouted threats in response to having their guns taken by American soldiers. Janicki and a buddy came across a group of insurgents near a stockpile of weapons one day, but his commander told him to retreat until backup arrived. Every night, insurgents would lob mortars over the walls of the base and retreat quickly in pickup trucks, like American drive-by shootings. He slept in canvas tents and metal trailers that offered little protection from explosives landing nearby. One night, Janicki was checking the equipment on his satellite truck when he heard an incoming mortar. He couldn't see it, but its cartoonish whistle sounded improbably close. He dived blindly behind his Hummer. The bomb exploded 10 feet away, spraying hot chunks of shrapnel across his truck. The inability to strike back left him more rattled than a battle might have.

Janicki's video has reportedly been viewed 20,000 times on YouTube:

When he returned to Fort Hood in January 2004, an Army psychologist at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Waco, Texas, gave him a multiple-choice computer questionnaire about his deployment. He indicated that he still found himself scanning buildings for snipers. He'd flip from calm to riotous in an instant. He was afraid of crowds at Wal-Mart. And he was engaging in risky behavior by picking fights with superior officers. He showed all the signs of PTSD.

But Janicki wasn't assigned to counseling. He met once a month with a PTSD specialist, who prescribed him medication to even out his emotions. In the Army, you do as you are told, and because Janicki wasn't told he needed counseling, he didn't think more about it.

He was part of a health-care system stretched to its breaking point. More than a million soldiers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since September 11, 2001. And, according to a 2004 study by the New England Journal of Medicine, as many as 10 percent of them now show signs of PTSD.

Janicki self-medicated by smoking dope, drinking and hitting strip clubs with his friend, Sgt. Brent Gaunt, another soldier with PTSD. The Army seemed unsure what to do with them. "They left us alone for the most part for the longest time," says Gaunt, who is from Chillicothe, Missouri. He recalls Janicki's temper. "If you had a problem with him, he was gonna tell you, 'I'm gonna straight rip out your throat.' That was Janicki. No one was messing with him. He had that crazy look to him."

Janicki failed a drug test and was assigned to extra duties, including picking up cigarette butts and setting up barracks for returning soldiers. When he pissed hot again, he was sentenced to 30 days' confinement and was demoted from private first class to private.

Before deployment at Fort Hood, he'd eased his mounting stress creatively, apprenticing at a tattoo shop near base. Involuntary overtime now kept him from that. Janicki raised his morale a bit in June 2004 when he met Jamie Frame, an apartment manager near the base.

In part because of his problems with drugs, the Army gave Janicki a general discharge on November 14, 2004. The general discharge — which is different from an honorable discharge — can keep him from receiving veterans' benefits. But Janicki was glad to be done with the Army, and he and Jamie moved to Kansas City in 2005. They got married in March 2006.

Without his squad, Janicki's paranoia thickened. He couldn't hold a job. While tending bar at Ameristar Casino, he became unsettled by the sound of jingling coins, which reminded him of spent bullet casings. When he worked as a beer vendor at Arrowhead Stadium, the roaring crowds unnerved him.

"You come home wound up," he says. "They make it your idea to kill people. And then there's no one to kill. And then you wonder why you are wound up all the time."

After interrogating Janicki, the agents who busted him concluded that he was not an immediate threat. Janicki spent a weekend in the District of Columbia jail. A judge signed a restraining order that barred him from coming within five blocks of the White House. He faced two misdemeanors: unlawful entry and possession of marijuana (because the feds found a joint in his pocket). He was allowed to return to Kansas City. But he still felt menacing anxiety. Beneath his shirt, his body reflects his struggles. His upper torso is covered in tattoos: religious and patriotic images on his right side, and visions of death and destruction on the other. His right arm bears a Statue of Liberty armed with a machine gun, and a portrait of a weeping Jesus. On his left arm, a skull with a bandanna mask is superimposed over crossed pistols and a scorpion.