nothing wrong with me, it was always you ♪ [ cheering ] [ cheering and applause ] >> thank you so much. ♪ tonight, serving on the spectrum. >> i more or less had my dream taken away from me. >> people with autism struggling to find their place in the u.s. armed services. >> i think that they're missing out some amazing people with some amazing talents.

>> navigating a confusing and sometimes contradictory set of rules. >> it really is frustrating when we hear of excellent candidates who get turned away or who give up because it was just too hard. >> and what happens if you aren't diagnosed until years after you've enlisted? >> my initial thought was does this mean i'm going get kicked out of the air force. >> did you consider not telling anybody? >> with one out of every 36 children now diagnosed with autism, how the armed force's policies could shrink the pool of recruits. >> all diversity would help in the national security fields. >> what the dod told us they're doing to help open the ranks. this special edition of "nightline," "serving on the premium" will be right back. pain means pause on the things you love, but... green... means... go! ♪ cool the pain with biofreeze. and keep on going. biofreeze. green means go. try killing bugs the worry-free way. not the other way.

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♪ thanks for joining us. tonight, you're about to meet americans who want to serve their country but are finding their autism diagnosis is a barrier. as we close out autism awareness and acceptance month, tonight we examine the policies of the american armed forces, and how they turn away these hopeful recruits, even in this time of faltering enlistment numbers. abc's john donovan has reported on autism for more than a decade. >> my original dream was to be a fighter pilot.

people here love planes. >> reporter: tory ridgway is in his third way at emory riddle, a top civilian aeronautical university and flight school. he is studying aerospace engineering, and he is neurodivergent, meaning the way he experiences and interacts with the world is different than a lot of other people. >> it's kind of a strange thing to describe how i see the world, because to me, the world makes perfect sense. >> reporter: tory, along with these men have three things in common, a call to duty, fierce patriotism, and a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, which they say has made finding their place in the american armed forces an arduous process. >> it really is frustrating when we hear of excellent candidates who get turned away or who give up because it was too hard. >> reporter: the dod keeps a list of what it calls disqualifying conditions that are obstacles to joining, things

like eight or more teeth with visually apparent decay, a history of bariatric surgery, lung conditions, and well down the list, there it is without any elaboration, autism spectrum disorders. nowadays it's estimated that about 2% of the adult population would qualify for a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. roughly 20% of kids with autism are profoundly impacted, oftenly mentally disabled. military service cannot be an option. but for the other three quarters, it's a lot less clear that being disqualified just for being autistic makes sense. >> and as courtney winebaum argues, the military has had row cruitment problems. >> some of the hardest problems we have in the country. it makes no sense to want all brain types working on it. >> reporter: tory ridgeway dreamed of a life in uniform. the son of an aviation engineer, he grew up watching his dad work on planes.

>> ooh, tory! >> reporter: even getting the chance to visit the elite blue angel hangar as a boy. >> he was enamored by these aircraft and wanted to fly them. but aside from planes, my dad to me is what it means to be a man. he embodied discipline. he embodied strength, courage, and honor. and the commitment to something greater than myself. notice that those are the navy's three core values. >> reporter: he was just 4 years old when doctors diagnosed him with autism. >> some of the symptoms that led to the diagnosis included me playing alongside kids, but not playing with them. other things included something where i repeat certain phrases. >> reporter: through intensive therapy, tory began to make progress. >> it took therapists who taught me how to read people's facial expressions, an innate ability for most people. >> reporter: by many measure, tory looks like he would be a model recruit, an eagle scout, in junior rotc, and an honor

student. when he was 18, he applied for a navy rotc scholarship to attend embery-riddle. in exchange for his school being paid for, he would serve after his graduation. he did disclose autism in his application, and that day that the letter came telling him the scholarship was his. >> your host unit will be em embry-ri embry-riddle. what do you i think about that? >> his acceptance was conditional, pending a review of his medical qualifications. within weeks a navy doctor found tory's autism to be mild and fully controlled. so it was a shock when a month later he received a letter from the navy saying his rotc scholarship was now on hold, in part because of his autism. >> i more or less had my dream taken away from me. >> reporter: what's more, the military discouraged him from even appealing the decision.

>> it didn't feel like i lost funding for college. it felt like i had lost a part of myself and who i was. >> reporter: tory did appeal, applying for medical waiver. and while he waited to hear, he received orders to report to boot camp after all. technically, new student indoctrination, or nsi. even though other paperwork he received clearly stated he could not attend nsi if he had a medical waiver pending. so what did he do? >> i still had orders. so i went. even if -- even if i wanted to prove i could make it through that. and i did. the colonel marine corps in charge of the program came up to me on the last day and said you did good, ridgeway. >> that colonel wrote a letter recommending tory for rotc and commissioned office in the navy, saying during boot camp that tory's ability to listen to and comprehend instructions and quickly adapt to new activities was on par with his peers. a navy spokesperson responding

to tory's case told abc news mr. ridgeway reported to nsi while his appeal was pending. once his appeal was denied on july 8th, 2021, mr. ridgeway was offered the option to depart nsi. however, he requested to continue and complete the training if he wanted to enter another military program. his family denies that they ever received a denial of his appeal and that tory was offered to depart boot camp. after months of waiting with no assurances he would be medically cleared or be an engineer in the navy, tory decided to withdraw from rotc. >> so much of who i was based around the navy, about being just like my dad. and that was no longer possible. >> reporter: the navy told abc news they do not address the scholarship recipient's ineligibility, and that tory can still pursue enlistment and a waiver. >> so the autism numbers in the military are not currently known because there is no data set for

this data. >> reporter: winebaum offered one of the few studies that attempted to assess how the military is handling autism. she soon discovered a hidden community. >> people started calling me and said i have never told anyone my diagnosis. i have to hide at work and the symptoms that lead to my diagnosis, but i love serving my country. and if revealing my diagnosis might mean i might get medically discharged, it's not a risk i'm willing to take. >> reporter: but hiding an autism diagnosis can have extreme consequences. it did for ryan horsley's son garrison, who said he wanted to enlist in the army after high school. you didn't really feel you could count on the army to understand what garrison was about? >> that is correct. and, you know, at the same time, even looking at him, yeah, he seems perfectly normal, intelligent. however, you put a lot of stress and anxiety on him, things will change. >> reporter: so you really didn't want him to do this. you wanted to give him support.

>> yes. but at the same time, i wanted him to understand that he wasn't going to get medically cleared. >> reporter: to ryan's surprise, garrison was cleared and started basic training. but within days, ryan got a phone call from his son. >> he said i'm starting to freak out. and then that next morning, he said he got locked up. his drill sergeants had locked him up. i asked garrison, i said how do we get to this point? and he said the recruiter hid my diagnosis. and i said are you serious? >> reporter: garrison was soon given a melodies charge from the army. an army spokesperson told abc news that the u.s. army recruiting command conducted a thorough investigation on the allegations of recruiter misconduct related to enlistment of mr. garrison horsley. the allegations were fully investigated and appropriate action was taken. mr. horsley's recruiter no longer serves with the u.s. army. >> it was pretty painful for him. he kind of went into a dark place for a while. you know, he is finally kind of coming out of that. >> reporter: still, garrison told us it was too stressful to sit down with us to retell his story on camera. he gave his dad the okay to tell

his story. what's the point he wants to get across and that you want the get across? >> we don't want this to happen with anyone else. people with autism are amazing people. maybe that they have, you know, a place in the military. i think that they're missing out on some amazing people with some amazing talents. >> reporter: what do you think might have been the outcome if he had not hidden the diagnosis? >> i think that he would have been very successful. >> reporter: coming up, what happens when an active duty service member gets an autism diagnosis. >> so you might have had the option of not telling anybody about this. did you consider not telling anybody? >> reporter: and what is the department of defense doing to make the military more accessible to people with au autism? >> so there is some cost benefit analysis going on. >> there is. >> in other words, how much do we have to invest to make this person succeed. >> correct. with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, my skin was no longer mine. my active psoriatic arthritis joint symptoms held me back. don't let symptoms define you.

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the last two decades or so, the way autism is recognized and defined has shifted immensely. but perhaps not as much as changed for how the military thinks about autism, which is a spectrum diagnosis. there is huge variation among people diagnosed with asd, but they share one label. and to the defense department, it's a problem. >> instead of treating autism as a binary diagnosis, you have it or you don't, let's treat it more of a spectrum like we treat vision. when a recruit comes in with a vision diagnosis, we give him an eye chart. based on that, we decide do they meet the threshold for military service. why don't we do that for autism? >> stephanie miller is deputy assistant secretary of defense

for department of milleritary a the department of defense. >> what assessment do they make in evaluating their mental health, their physical health, which ewant to make sure as they come in if they have preexisting conditions they wouldn't require excessive time away from training or deployment. >> so there is some cost benefit analysis. >> there is. >> in other words, how much we would have to invest to make this person succeed. >> correct. >> at a certain point, if it becomes too much, that becomes a disqualifier. while it seems you could make those individual accommodations individually, once that starts to compound across a wide number of service members, that can make it difficult to deploy people into a wide different range of environments often at short notice. >> reporter: miller says the military is beginning to take a more individualized approach to autism in the waiver process, reflecting a more nuanced understanding of the diagnosis. >> with asd in particular, what we've seen over the last few years, we've seen about 1800 applicants come through the process with that diagnosis.

>> nationally? >> correct. and we've seen about 500 applicants actually approved for a waiver with a history of asd. >> reporter: but miller admits that this waiver process can be opaque, even lengthy, as it was for tory ridgeway. >> we do not necessarily put out a lot of information about the waiver process itself because every review is individualized and depends on those individual circumstances. but we do believe that we are -- we need to do more to make the waiver process understood and known. >> reporter: what's the time? is it a matter of months? is it a matter of a day? >> it depends on the complexity of the case history. if it's relatively straight forward, then within a few days you might be able to get a waiver determination. in a more complex cases, it might take a few months. >> the anecdotal stories i heard when we were doing our study is not only is every service going to do it differently, but every recruiting station might do it differently. >> we want the shift perspectives to an inclusive environment.

>> reporter: major daniel kaiser may be one of the best examples of navigating the service with an autism diagnosis. >> for autism spectrum disorder, that could be noise canceling headsets. >> reporter: he always felt a bit off growing up, struggling with sensitivities to sound and light. >> feel free to stop, take a break, whatever. in our interview, he asked if it was okay to wear sunglasses as an accommodation. he was nearly ten years into serving with the u.s. air force when he received an autism diagnosis, having served multiple tours in the middle east. how did those deployments going for you? >> what i didn't realize at the time, create that overstimulation aspect, make me a little bit more i guess snippy with people, more overly blunt. i even got some fairly candid feedback from a commander that people don't really like working with you. >> reporter: in tandem with that assessment, major kaiser began seeing an onbase doctor for

anxiety disorder when the pandemic pushed care off base. >> i was referred off base to a provider who saw me exactly three times before asking me if i'd ever been evaluated for autism spectrum disorder. >> what did you think when you heard that question? >> my initial thought was does this mean i'm going get kicked out of the air force. >> reporter: because? >> because i knew it was a disqualifying condition for entry. >> reporter: because off-base medical records don't necessarily need to be submitted to the military, major kaiser had the option of keeping his new diagnosis a secret. did you consider not telling anybody? >> no. >> reporter: how come? >> any consequences of this referral need to be communicated to my on-base provider for continuity with care. and really so the air force can make the best decisions about my worldwide deployability status. >> reporter: he says he got support from his higher ups. and with annual performance reviews has continued in his role as an instructor in the air force special operations command. you good at it? >> yes, sir. i feel like i'm very good at it.

i feel that i have the ability to communicate the magnitude of threats in way that's easy to understand. and then ultimately how to plan around it. >> reporter: people's lives are counting on you getting that stuff right. >> yes, sir. >> reporter: are there any ways in which you think your being on the autism spectrum makes you good at your job? >> definitely. >> reporter: like what? >> can recall information, can break that information down to a way where everybody else can understand it. >> reporter: you that's that's because of your autistic brain? >> yes, sir. >> reporter: a google search led him to the air force's newly formed barrier analysis group. he reached out and started working on their disability action team. >> i began to realize no, we just have a huge population of people like me who potentially -- >> reporter: would are there all alone? >> who flew under the radar. who weren't diagnosed. i had the benefit of coming in as an officer. our enlisted force doesn't necessarily have that same amount of protection. that may join the military, face huge challenges interacting with

their peers, keeping up with their peers and dealing with high stress environments, and then not having the ability to advocate for themselves. >> reporter: what is your understanding of why the military seized the word "autism" and says no. >> what we're seeing is last century's policy informing decisions that don't mesh well with our modern understanding of autism spectrum disorder. >> change the standards. >> reporter: skieser is now working with the house armed services committee to help review the standards for autism used by the military for determining eligibility. >> we need the best intelligence analysts in the world. we need to have the best linguists in the world. we need to have people within our organization that see things differently so that we can think out of the box and continuously outpace the adversary. >> reporter: and thinking out of the box is exactly what tory ridgeway says he had to do. >> i finally rewrote myitety as someone who is smart and loves planes more than anything else

rather than somebody who needs to be in a uniform. >> reporter: he about to start an internship with lockheed martin. >> it made me really happy that they thought even with my disabilities, they looked at me and said you can come work with us, no problem. and that was the first time i actually felt accepted truly, 100% in a professional a. way. >> reporter: he is also sharing his personal story with his local easter seals chapter. >> have i been challenged beyond what i thought could i possibly handle. however, these challenges helped me find my purpose. >> i want them to see me and think my kid has autism and so does he. can if i can make one parent hopeful for their kid again, he will have done my job. crohn's disease. i have me now, there's skyrizi. ♪ things are looking up, i've got symptom relief. ♪ ♪ control of my crohn's means everything to me. ♪

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and that's "nightline" for tonight. our thanks to john donovan and the team for that report. we'll see youight back here tomorrow, same time. thanks for staying up with us. good night, america.