actually in Vietnam and that about 8.5 million served during the Vietnam era. b. A "Wall of Shame" compiled by former Navy SEAL R.D. Retired shows that much of what they print is politically driven. The following year, Alvarez was sentenced to more than 400 hours of community service, three months probation and fined $5,000 for violating the Stolen Valor Act a 2005 federal law named for Burketts book. ", Burkett has found, to put it simply, that most of these men are frauds and that their fraudulent claims have been swallowed whole, and without question, by reputable news organizations, politicians, generals, police departments and federal agencies, all willing -- depending on the case at hand -- to free someone from prison, offer them veterans benefits or simply go easy on them when they land in trouble. There is no question that there are a large number of them including women who talk about their combat roles and even how they had been POWs. Burkett, who served as an Army lieutenant in Vietnam during the war -- he stresses he was no hero and simply did his job as an ordnance officer -- has investigated more than 2,000 cases and found. figures).. claiming Vietnam service who were not there and that there are many claiming statement. pictures to prove it. Well-known actor Brian Dennehy often shared stories of his service with the Marines in Vietnam. of other fakers. They're all around you. These are a There are no firm estimates on the number of fake combat vets. Vietnam Vets, Are There Any Vietnam Vets Still Alive Fully Explained With the Pentagon Papers revelations, the U.S. public's trust in the government was forever diminished. Veterans overcome by emotions as Vietnam Moving Memorial Wall makes Farmer, 26, appeared on Fox's "American Idol" in 2013, claiming he was severely injured by an IED explosion in Iraq. One said he was a doorgunner on a helicopter but didn't know the basic nomenclature, didn't seem to understand the tactics and was a little vague on the units to which he had been assigned. But in a broader sense, DePaulo said, people lie for the same reasons, no matter what they claim to be. Stolen Valor That same year, however, American journalist Lowell K. Bridwell wrote that he couldnt find one single scrap of evidence to verify Williams age or veteran status. Well, to cite my own anecdotal experience, I have run into many people claiming to be Vietnam vets. People are impressed. But his fans think he's on to something. At about 11 p.m., I remembered that local enthusiasts were reenacting the Normandy invasion on the beach at Fort Story, an Army base nearby. Who knows? REALITY: Duke's only military experience was a brief stint in the ROTC while attending Louisiana State University. And you think, Oh, no ones ever going to catch me. The news must have been slow that day, because the reenactment was the lead story. I then told him what Id learned and asked, Did you lie to me?, In a voice that suddenly sounded creaky and 10 years older yet sort of childlike, as though fearing a reprimand he replied, slowly, Yes.. Yep, that was my outfit, he said. I could not believe it. But this site also has a political agenda, but since it seems to mirror yours, it is reliable and all the other sites are not.But you might want to look at:http://www.veteranstoday.com/2009/07/08/who-are-the-real-vietnam-vets/And while there is a title that says, THOUSANDS WEARING SERVICE RIBBONS NEVER EARNED IN VIETNAM which sort of reinforces my point of view, there are many things in the article that are wrong. Between March 1, 2008, and Feb. 25, 2009, the VA investigated 96 cases of "stolen valor" fraud, according to James O'Neill, assistant inspector general for investigations. was conducted in 1995 which is not to say that the statistics about the fake Vietnam veterans is in that census either. Scam artists will try anything, sad to say. A Different Perspective: Vietnam Faker Statistics - Blogger an email address so they might have been there and I therefore did not find the It's not as widespread as it was the first 10-30 years immediately after the war,its still out there. People want to be a certain kind of person they only wish they could be. 76% of the men sent to Vietnam were from lower middle/working class backgrounds. "I lied about serving in Vietnam and I'm sorry," he told Globe magazine this year. This is Did Senator Richard Blumenthal Misrepresent His Military Service? Dennehy later gave a public apology. Im still around.. that. ElbertAlfie 8 mo. In Atlanta, VVA chapter officer Ashe estimates that about 20 percent of the up to 200 men who contacted his group since December, saying they are combat vets and asking for help, were frauds. The Vietnam War was the nation's longest and costliest conflict of the Cold War. "But, you know, maybe I'll do a book on all the heroes of Vietnam. "I said no such thing. Too good to be true! I would expect that number to apply to everything, including number of claimed Vietnam vets or Roswell witnesses. 87% of Americans hold Vietnam Veterans in high esteem. I did find a claim The only number coming out of the census was 8.5 million Vietnam era veterans of which according to other sources, about 2.7 actually served in Vietnam. Politicians and Their Fake War Stories - The New York Times Reporters often interviewed local veterans of the war, Burkett said, and the things they [the veterans] were saying were just bogus as hell. Projections also indicate that the veteran population will become slightly younger, with 33% of veterans being younger than 50 in 2046 compared with 27% in 2021, even as the overall U.S. population continues to age. The numbers cited are from various forums including the United States Census and given the way some of this was written on the sources I visited it was easy to confuse what number came from what source. And what about Trowbridge who claimed he was playing bridge at Marcel's house the night Jesse returned with the debris?The point was that there are people out there who inject themselves important events and who lie about their military service. looked at. For years, there had been tales in the Army of "wannabes and fakers," Bateman said, "something that a lot of veterans knew, but it was usually anecdotal. Thus the Census provides the total numbers of ALL people claiming to have been active duty veterans during Vietnam, but not the number claiming service in-country. 'It was out of the high esteem that I hold for you that I took your honor as my own and in doing so did you a grave injustice.'. For a very long time I couldn't summon up the courage to stop it. He was driven out of the group. The trouble is I dont know where that 12 Kevin, the only reason I waded into this whole Stolen Valor thing to begin with was because you used this Stolen Valor statistics as justification for dismissing most Roswell witnesses, who you said you previously believed. It starts off simple enough. Good grief, I thought. . Why bother to be a faker unless you are going to brag about it to people you meet? He wasnt a Vietnam veteran, Burkett said. France lets aged African army veterans finally 'go home' Small wonder. So were 47 claiming to have earned service crosses. It was endless," he says. U.S. veterans [ edit] According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974 ( VEVRAA) states, "A Vietnam era veteran" is a person who: served on active duty anywhere in the world for a period of 180+ days, any part of which occurred between August 5, 1964, and May 7, 1975, and was discharged or . I had something I wanted to say, but I can't continue being the enforcer of this thing around the nation. I dont think its particularly modern., I cant prove that there were phonies among King Arthurs Knights of the Round Table, Burkett said. Quora - A place to share knowledge and better understand the world bio to reflect his service in the Vietnam era and before anyone says much 'It's some sort of marginal, internal footnote to the Vietnam experience,' said Dr. Arthur Blank, director of the VA's Vietnam Vet Center program, which operates 188 counseling clinics nationwide. Like many people who had never served in the military -- a growing number in this country, given that the draft ended on June 30, 1973 -- Whitley had only a vague and disconnected notion of a war in Southeast Asia that was tearing the nation apart when she was growing up. He said that 90% of the Vietnam Veterans never saw combat but that is probably based on the idea that for every service member in combat there were nine supporting him. Are there people involved in the Roswell case who lied? 'We're becoming more and more. None were real. When his unit came home and started gearing up. In 2000, upon hearing that the Library of Congress had launched its Veterans History Project, Burkett asked administrators if they were verifying any of the vets records. The branch insignia: The branch insignias should match. The universal attitude was, 'Why should we give money for these bums?' 'A lot of them are groupies. All too often, these suffering "veterans" never set foot in Vietnam and yet, the images they offer have permanently shaped the way Americans view soldiers from this war: As slovenly,. (He was drafted into the Army and did his hitch as a combat engineer in peacetime Germany.) On the other side of the coin the VA on their site www.va.gov/vetdata/veteran_population.asp offers a Excel worksheet that shows only 6,673,279 Vietnam era vets believed still living as of 2014. On Burkett's walls, chockablock with his MBA diploma and certificates attesting to his knowledge of financial arcana, are plaques from the Vietnam Veterans of America and the Veterans Land Board and a framed letter and photograph of Burkett on the podium with former President George Bush for the dedication of the Texas Vietnam Veterans Memorial nearly 10 years ago. The My Lai Massacre and other news stories created for some a public image of troops as baby killers, an image since exacerbated by films such as 1986s Platoon. The post-Vietnam period recorded countless news accounts of hundreds of thousands of angry and sometimes homeless and desperate veterans. Williams was said to be 117 years old at his death in 1959 in Houston, Texas. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa was caught up in this. 'Three years ago, I didn't see any. Bill English claimed to be a Special Forces captain who served in Vietnam but he was a PFC who did not he lead us to the Roswell nuns. Type falsify military service into an online search engine window, and one yields tens of thousands of hits relating case after case in which someone has either exaggerated or completely fabricated their military service. Really?As for another claimed but phony reference used by vet websites, the Census Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1995, that allegedly has that 13+ million Vietnam veterans statistic, that Census Report can be found here:www.census.gov/library/publications/1995/compendia/statab/115ed.htmlThis provides a link to Section 11 pertaining to military and veteran statistics:www2.census.gov/library/publications/1995/compendia/statab/115ed/tables/defense.pdfWhere, AGAIN, nowhere can be found anything like 13 or 14 million people that allegedly the U.S. Census documented people saying they were Vietnam Vets. I said that this provided an insight into those who claimed inside knowledge of Roswell. Smith calls the phenomenon the 'Tail-Gunner Joe Syndrome,' named for Joe McCarthy, the former flag-waving senator from Wisconsin who tried to rid America of communists in the 1950s. "It all started when I was shooting my mouth off in bars 35 years ago . Moskos, now 65, comes from a 1950s generation of young men to whom military service was a given. Of the 750 people in his graduating class at Princeton, he says 500 went into the service. In the military-rich Hampton Roads region, we struck gold: From the pilots who flew the paratroopers to the infantrymen who stormed the beaches, I was able to relate the entire D-Day narrative chronologically, all through veterans eyes. might have found, in those census figures somewhere, a report that suggested 12 Former Army Corporal Richard McClanahan, 29, cuts a dashing figure in his dress uniform and jaunty beret. As for Burkett, he still gets calls from cops seeking advice on how to run records, or even from skeptical wives and girlfriends who suspect their men may be playing a bit loose with the truth about their exploits in "the 'Nam." Same for number of active duty personnel during this period (in No. I cant find good numbers on Web. Burkett, who at the time was verifying records for the Texas State Archives, discovered he could get military records by request. has said that for every real SEAL he identifies, there are a thousand who were "Man, I was scared to death. Vietnam War veterans, and their families, are being invited to this event to be held at the National Mall on May 11, 12, and 13. The Pentagon has no definitive list on who was a POW or even an estimate on how many Americans were in combat. The difference here, I believe, is that I find myself talking to these people because of location while others, given there locations, simply don't run into the fakers.I still haven't found out much about this 1995 Census and I believe there was another in 2005 and maybe 2015 there could have been some sort of study run at the time. He eventually amended his senate In 1983, as the Vietnam Veterans of America was gaining prominence, it was disclosed that one of its spokesman was a fake ex-POW. How many Vietnam veterans are still alive? (2023) Probably wouldn't sell more than 2,000.". Their personal income exceeds that of our non-veteran age group by more than 18 percent. But as I soon learned, this fellow was hardly the only person who has fabricated or exaggerated wartime exploits. Or, in other words, the census did contain some of the information reported and as I said, this, the wording of it, is confusing But Beatons statistics were based on more than just the census. It doesn't seem to exist. And, oh by the way, a Purple Heart and a few other honors earned. You know, you could get yourself a sword and say, Hey, Im home from starving in the Mideast with the Crusaders.. However, veterans groups estimate that today approximately 9 to 12 million Americans fraudulently claim they served in Vietnam. Cooley was forced from office in 1996 and was later convicted of a felony for lying in Oregon's voters' pamphlet. But mistakes have been made. "The ones who always hit me up on the streets, I ask them, 'What was your MOS?' The Secrets and Lies of the Vietnam War, Exposed in One Epic Document. I called, telling this former Ranger that my guy had claimed to be the assistant platoon leader. Some men were never in the service, many were in the armed forces but never left the United States or never got the medals they claimed, and a few were in Southeast Asia but were far from any of the hot spots in Vietnam, where the war killed more than 58,000 Americans. The suspicion, however, is that it has probably been around as long as people have been on the planet. He wasn't even sent overseas until September 1968, six months after the Khe Sanh siege was over. 569 again lists an ESTIMATED 8.744 million active duty military personnel during the Vietnam era, here defined as Aug. 4, 1964 to Jan. 27, 1973. REAL Vietnam War veterans are all those who are officially authorized the Vietnam Service medal and possess official military-issued documentation to confirm their medal authorization. Most claim to have been on a ship in the South China Sea, but never got near the country. The share of veterans ages 50 to 69 is expected to shrink from 36% to 33%, while the share of those 70 and older is predicted to . Burkett might be accused of hyperbole had he not spent the past 25 years uncovering military fakers, often working with authorities whove come to view him as the real authority. 'We're becoming more and more aware of it (fake combat vets) and more and more wary of it,' said Mary Stout, national secretary of the 35,000-member, 235-chapter VVA. DePaulo says its not surprising a person already held in high esteem would choose to fabricate a military background. 'Vietnam veterans? I got wounded many times by the same guy. Missing in Action: How Military Families Spurred the MIA Movement - History In this, he resembles the fake Vietnam vets, whose stories more often concern harm suffered and witnessed than bravery proven. 'Some are desperate. You're a person of value," says B. G. "Jug" Burkett, a Vietnam veteran who was the first to expose military imposters in a systematic way, and who coined the term stolen valor. DURING THAT SAME CENSUS COUNT, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country was: 9,492,958. STOLEN VALOR: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its - VHPA You might find it more reliable than the other sites but I say it is just as biased in its way as those you reject.I have suggested that these figures were based on the US Census which did, in fact, ask about service during the Vietnam era (which you, yourself, pointed out), but also on numbers gathered from the DoD, such as the numbers of those actually in country, and on a survey conducted by Captain Scott Beaton. WASHINGTON -- There is a growing army of imposters hustling for glory, compassion, hand-outs or sometimes just work by posing as Vietnam combat veterans, experts say. 9,492,958, and During this Census count, the number of Americans falsely doesnt tell us the source of the data, only who had supposedly collected it or Another at a Veterans Day celebration couldn't identify where he had served other than up north somewhere and seemed unfamiliar with the tactics employed. Castagna was quoted by the newspaper as saying the records were in error and that he was even wounded in battle. Before it was revealed, in 2001, that he spent the war teaching history at West Point, for example, Joseph Ellis was known to lecture his students at Mount Holyoke about his experiences in the vicinity of My Lai at the time of the massacre. used seem to have been gleaned from this 1995 census and it seems that everyone Any number of personality flaws might drive someone to fabricate a military background, no matter what their station in life. Service Members, Not Citizens: Meet The Veterans Who Have Been - NPR He says most imposters are spotted before they are admitted to a VA facility. According to federal law, the United States' military involvement in the Vietnam War began in February 1961 and lasted until May 1975. 8 people who lied about their military service - WPTV Vietnam War Facts, Stats and Myths - US Wings Published Sep 24, 2018. Slessler said many of the imposters he sees suffer from 'survivor guilt.' The United States Vietnam War Commemoration is hosting a "welcome home" event in Washington DC. Fakery was reportedly widespread during the Civil War and its long aftermath. I asked the spokesman if he had a unit roster of some sort. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. McCarthy claimed to have been a combat tail gunner in World War II. All others should not be accepted to have served either on land or at sea in Vietnam. So it becomes Last winter, John Maughn contacted a veterans' group in Atlanta and begged for help. After the show aired, several Iraq veterans wrote to the Guardian of Valor.
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