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DoD: No military mail use for charity efforts

Army Chief Warrant Officer 5 Paul Holton got the message loud and clear, he said, when the Pentagon sent him a “cease and desist” letter about his efforts to help Iraqi children.

“They said it was unlawful to get and receive items that weren’t for yourself, and that it was unlawful to solicit,” Holton said.

The letter came during his tour in Iraq with the Utah National Guard in 2003-04, after he had received thousands of boxes of toys and needed items at his APO address in Iraq, which he gave out to Iraqi children in hospitals, orphanages and elsewhere.

With the holiday mail season approaching, the Military Postal Service Agency is reminding organizations and troops that shipping anything that can be considered humanitarian aid to APO or FPO addresses violates Defense Department regulations.

“We understand that there’s a lot of caring in our service members,” MPSA policy analyst Peter Graeve said. “Military mail is not the right avenue.”

In a recent news release, Army officials in Europe suggest those who want to send these sorts of materials should contact the International Red Cross or other charitable groups, rather than going through a service member.

The Military Postal System “is funded by taxpayers for military mail delivered to authorized U.S. and allied recipients,” said Keith Jones, postal operations chief for the Army’s installation command in Europe. “Delivering parcels to nonauthorized recipients drains manpower and resources, and can delay delivery of parcels intended for our troops.”

Graeve said such efforts could backfire if, for example, a local provincial leader in Iraq has been negotiating for humanitarian aid through official channels and is unaware of the troops’ efforts.

“If one of those efforts goes the wrong way, and local leadership is embarrassed ... we’re trying to eliminate that possibility,” he said.

However, the Defense Department has written internal news stories and releases extolling troops’ efforts to help local communities where they are deployed. A story in February on the Pentagon’s Web site details the efforts of an Army major whose friends and co-workers in Illinois sent him boxes of toys for children in an Iraqi school.

“We’ve seen some of the same stories,” Graeve said. “We’re trying to put the word out there’s a right way and a wrong way.”

He said officials do not have a good sense of how much of this mail is in the system or whether it has been increasing.

When Holton was getting toys through his APO address in Iraq, military mail was his only option.

“Since then, we’ve come up with other options,” he said.

He founded a nonprofit group, Operation Give, when he got back from Iraq in 2004. The group has shipped 75 40-foot containers overseas at $6,000 each, sending everything from toys and school supplies to wheelchairs, tools and sewing machines. The group also pays to airlift humanitarian supplies to Afghanistan.