There's a very active 'hunt 'em down and hang 'em up' kind of thing," said B.G. Burkett, a Dallas stockbroker who helped catalyze the movement to unmask pretenders with his 1998 book, "Stolen Valor."
The new crop of debunkers are partly the offspring of the Internet, which makes it easy to check claims against lists of Medal of Honor winners, prisoners of war and other elite veterans.
But they are also responding to a growing eagerness of people to associate themselves with the Vietnam War, whether they were there or not. The war's image has undergone an overhaul as time has soothed society's bitterness, as movies and television have depicted Vietnam War veterans as sympathetic victims or admirable warriors, and as politicians and business leaders with solid Vietnam War records have become models of success and dignity.
Burkett, who has an admittedly unremarkable Vietnam War record as an ordnance officer, said he had helped expose fictitious military stories of about 1,800 people, including Wes Cool ey, a former Republican congressman from Oregon, who was forced out of office after falsely claiming that he had served with Army Special Forces in Korea.
Bailey, who commanded the SEAL training center, said counterfeit soldiers often have little trouble passing for the real thing. "Our society is so mobile and so reluctant to check out anybody's bona fides, that we just accept it," said Bailey, adding that more than 7,000 SEAL pretenders had been uncovered, with about 650 posted on a Wall of Shame at www.cyberseals .org.
Embellishers have included Tim Johnson, the Toronto Blue Jays manager who was fired after his stories of search-and-destroy missions in Vietnam collided with the reality that he never saw combat. Darrow Tully, former publisher of The Arizona Republic and a friend of former prisoner of war Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., admitted that he had lied about flying jet fighters in Korea and Vietnam.
Hunters of phonies get most incensed by people who publicize fictitious exploits in the media or use them to get elected, promoted or wangle undeserved veterans' benefits.
Donald R. Nicholson, a retired police chief of Amelia, Ohio, said the prospect of additional benefits prompted him to falsely claim he had been a prisoner of war, even purchasing fake medals and military papers and persuading the Army to award him the Distinguished Service Cross.
William T. Whitely, a University of Oklahoma professor who founded an organization to prepare students for Navy SEAL training, admitted in March that he had been lying for a decade by claiming he had been a SEAL member and the recipient of Silver and Bronze stars. Whitely, caught after a real SEAL veteran reported him, said he had told himself his fictional story was inspiring to students.
"I guess you could say I was painted into a corner," Whitely said when he acknowledged his lie. "I never claimed being a SEAL in the beginning. It just kind of happened."
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Copyright 2001
The Orange County Register
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