NCIS initially refused to provide records in response to a Raw Story Freedom of Information Act request, citing an exemption to protect privacy. Raw Story sued the federal agency, and the courts found in its favor.
“‘Disclosure of the requested records would likely reveal a great deal about law enforcement policy,’ including how defendants handled investigations related to the mishandling of classified information and how the ‘military is addressing extremism in the ranks,’” Judge Lori AliKhan, a federal judge on the D.C. bench, wrote in 2024.
“‘Thus, disclosure would offer the public visibility into defendants’ ‘performance of [their] statutory duties’ and would further ‘let citizens know ‘what their government is up to.’”
‘Insider threat’
NCIS began investigating the case in April 2020, following a Newsweek story exposing Lance Cpl. Liam Collins as a member of Iron March, a global neo-Nazi online forum.
The investigation uncovered messages exchanged between Collins and two self-identified members of the Polish group, Falanga, discussing potentially coordinating paramilitary activity.
By the time the NCIS began investigating Collins’ links to Falanga, he had organized a neo-Nazi paramilitary group that was illegally manufacturing guns and stealing military gear from Camp Lejeune, while plotting an attack on critical infrastructure designed to spark a race war, according to federal prosecutors.
In October 2020, while Collins was under investigation for his links to the Polish neo-Nazi group, he was arrested on firearms charges, along with Cpl. Jordan Duncan, a Marine and Russian linguist assigned to the 2nd Radio Battalion of the II Marine Expeditionary Force. The two Marines had met at Camp Lejeune in late 2018.
When the FBI raided Duncan’s home in Boise, ID, they seized his laptop and an external hard drive. Authorities discovered classified material on the devices, and the NCIS and FBI opened a new investigation for potential violation of a federal law regulating the handling of national defense information.
As the NCIS and FBI reviewed the classified material as part of an “insider threat” investigation, the case widened to include a new charge of conspiracy to damage an energy facility, and three co-defendants, including another Marine and a New Jersey Army National Guard member.
In August 2021, while Duncan was in jail awaiting trial, investigators determined that the files discovered on his devices included a secret “capabilities brief” for the 2nd Radio Battalion, according to another set of investigative files exclusively obtained by Raw Story.
The files included other documents labeled “FOUO,” or “For Official Use Only,” a designation that denotes sensitive material exempt from public release, though not classified. The documents included “Standard Operating Procedures and tactics” specific to the battalion that a special security officer determined “would be detrimental to the Signals Intelligence and Electronic Warfare community as a whole if obtained by an adversary,” according to the investigation.
The investigation revealed that the FOUO materials were commingled with “a large library of improvised explosive device schematics, chemical weapons schematics” and other manuals on Duncan’s hard drive.
“It appears that Mr. Duncan’s hard drive was kind of a source for the entire group,” NCIS Agent Christopher Little testified during a detention hearing for one of Duncan’s codefendants in August 2021. “There was multiple documents from that hard drive on multiple other group members’ devices.”
‘Fresh and ready’
Before Collins met Duncan or started assembling his paramilitary group, he communicated with two self-identified members of Falanga, the neo-Nazi group with roots in the Polish skinhead scene, according to a data set of leaked Iron March chats reviewed by Raw Story.
When Collins began communicating with Falanga members in June 2016, he was a rising senior in New Jersey still more than a year out from entering Marine Corps bootcamp at Parris Island, SC.
Collins told other users on the forum his mother was Polish, that he was proud his “great-grandparents were Nazi collaborators,” and that he didn’t dispute Jews who claimed “Poland helped with the Holocaust.” In fact, it was a point of pride.
“I have a deep interest in creating a sort of ‘alliance’ with you and any members of Falanga that might be able to talk to me,” Collins wrote to a self-identified Falanga member with the username “Phalanx22” in August 2016.
“Like being able to relay information and propaganda between Poland and the United States. I will be serving in the military soon, so I want to come out fresh and ready to train my Polish brothers how to defend their blood and soil.”
Falanga made no secret of its anti-American stance.
The group was founded because of its leader’s perception of “liberalism, capitalism and USA/NATO as the greatest enemies,” a member with the username “Bombenhagel” told Collins.
Collins’ comments in the Iron March chats do not reveal his position on Russia, but he disparaged NATO — a bulwark of the US military alliance with Poland — for its role in the Balkans war of the 1990s.
“Opportunists like NATO wanted a reason to build more bases in Eastern Europe after the Cold War,” Collins wrote, “so they stopped Serb and Croats from genociding every last Muslim in the Balkans.”
Addressing an Iron March user in Canada, Collins said he was forming a “paramilitary.” In April 2017, Collins told “Bombenhagel” his group would be “purchasing a lot of land soon for training, so if Falanga ever organizes a trip to the U.S., you are welcome to come train with us.”
“Bombenhagel” thanked Collins for the invitation. It’s unclear if Falanga members ever traveled to the U.S. to train.
The last documented exchange between Collins and Falanga on Iron March took place in May 2017, but an NCIS investigative report noted that Collins expressed concern about the security of the forum, while suggesting they continue to communicate through a different platform. It is unclear how long the relationship between Collins and Falanga lasted.
In early 2018, three Falanga members were detained by the Polish Internal Security Agency on suspicion of carrying out an arson attack against a Hungarian cultural center in Ukraine.
The three were convicted, according to Przemyslaw Witkowski, a Polish scholar who researches the far right and pro-Russia influences at Civitas University in Warsaw, and who described the attack in the book Russia and the Far-Right: Insights from Ten European Countries as “the most infamous act of terror committed by Polish citizens in the last 20 years.”
Polish prosecutors argued that the purpose of the crime was to “publicly incite national hatred between Ukrainians and Hungarians” and to cause “disruption of the political system in Ukraine.”
The clear beneficiary was Russia, which in 2014 had annexed Crimea from Ukraine, and was backing separatists in the Donbas.
Three years later, Russia launched a full-scale invasion that continues to exact a bloody toll.
Witness testimony in the trial for the 2018 terror attack implicated Manuel Ochsenreiter, a German journalist active with the far-right Alternative for Germany party, according to Witkowski. Ochsenreiter reportedly denied involvement but relocated to Moscow, where in 2021 he died suddenly of a heart attack, aged 45.
‘Exchange of information’
Falanga members have addressed the Duma in Moscow, visited Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas, and interviewed Aleksander Dugin, a Russian intellectual close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Witkowski noted.
Witkowski told Raw Story he finds it unlikely that Falanga would be able to maintain such high-level contacts without some kind of approval from Russian intelligence services.
“For sure there is an exchange of information in this environment,” Witkowski said.
The secret “capabilities brief” and other sensitive U.S. military information Duncan obtained through his assignment to the 2nd Radio Battalion in the II Marine Expeditionary Force would likely be of interest to Collins’ counterparts in Falanga, Witkowski said.
He noted that Falanga members have demonstrated an interest in infiltrating the Polish police, national guard and army.
Duncan is now serving a seven-year sentence in Pennsylvania, for illegally manufacturing a short-barrel rifle. His lawyer declined to comment.
Collins, who is serving a 10-year sentence in South Carolina for aiding and abetting the interstate transportation of unregistered firearms, could not be reached for comment.
Emails to Bartosz Bekier, the leader of Falanga, went unreturned.
NCIS told Raw Story the investigation yielded no evidence that any military information on Duncan’s devices was transferred to Falanga or wound up in Russian hands.
“NCIS has determined, in coordination with the FBI and [the U.S. Department of Justice], that there were no indications that classified information was provided to other groups or to foreign entities,” said Meredith March, an NCIS spokesperson.
March added that NCIS was “unable to provide information that may be contained in the FBI’s investigative files.”
The FBI National Press Office and FBI joint terrorism task forces in Wilmington, NC and Boise, ID, declined to comment.
The NCIS “insider threat” investigation on Duncan for potential violations of the federal law on communicating, transmitting or retaining national defense information was closed in November 2021. Federal prosecutors agreed to refrain from mention of the classified materials on Duncan’s devices, to avoid prejudicing a jury if he were to go to trial on firearms charges. Duncan pled guilty to the gun charge shortly before his trial was scheduled to begin.
While the National Security Division Counterterrorism Section prosecuted Duncan, alongside federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of North Carolina, the Department of Justice opted to not charge him for mishandling classified materials.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina, where Camp Lejeune is located, declined to comment. The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.
