Military Debt Protection Could Hold Lessons for Congress, Consumers

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• JIM LEHRER:

  Next tonight: a special Frontline/NewsHour collaboration on how to protect consumers from too much debt. Advocates say the military could teach Congress some lessons on that subject.

  Frontline correspondent Lowell Bergman reports.

• LOWELL BERGMAN:

  Here at the Point Loma Naval Base in San Diego, California, everyone working on this nuclear submarine requires a security clearance. And the single biggest reason sailors fail to get their security clearance is debt, involving credit cards, cash advances, and other consumer loans.

• Navy Captain Mark Patton:

• CAPTAIN MARK PATTON:

  When you get a security clearance, your credit rating is actually a very important part of that. And it looks to see if you could be susceptible to bribery or espionage. If you look at the history of espionage, it's generally all about money.

• LOWELL BERGMAN:

  In 2005, the military realized it had a problem. The number of personnel unable to get their security clearance because of severe debt had skyrocketed to over 2,500.

  At the time, Captain Patton was base commander at Point Loma.

• CAPTAIN MARK PATTON:

  I had sailors standing gate guard because they were unable to deploy on their submarine because they had financial issues that needed to be resolved.

  If an individual can't deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan, that doesn't mean that nobody goes. That means somebody else gets short-cycled in order to fill that position. So, we saw that there was a relationship between the financial health of our service members and the operational readiness of their unit.

• LOWELL BERGMAN:

  Captain Patton was appointed head of a military-wide task force to tackle the problem and help service members struggling with overwhelming debt, like Airman Ashlyn Tracy.