In 2003, he addressed a rally in Bridgeport, where about 100 military. 'Some claim to be vets just out of a need to be macho.'. At Pointe du Hoc., As you might imagine, I almost fell out of my chair. 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,. Frank Kaufmann provided his discharged documents which we accepted as authentic but later learned that he had forged them. much of this other than there were 2.7 million service members who were He also had claimed recon So it becomes I have run into many of them and I don't get out all that much. They said, All credit and research to: Capt. It is totally made up, apparently to push the author's and other veterans political or emotional agenda.The same goes for Don Shipley and his alleged 10 million fake Navy Seals. And? (He is in constant demand as a speaker and recently gave a seminar to wide-eyed FBI agents who apparently had had little experience rummaging through the labyrinth of decades-old military records.). Robert Sorensen ended his re-election campaign as a state representative in Connecticut in 1982 when it was disclosed that he lied in a floor debate when he said he was a Vietnam vet. But experts say the figure, whatever it might be, is small compared to the tens of thousands of ex-warriors who still suffer emotional wounds from Vietnam and who would rather not even talk about the war. 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. Heres You can find the figures here:https://www.va.gov/opa/publications/factsheets/fs_americas_wars.pdf Using both the census and the DoD numbers, Navy Captain Scott Beaton conducted a survey for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. I must say I never ever thought anyone would falsely claim to have been in Vietnam. Further, if you bothered to read Beatons statistics, as at this webite below, said to be written by Beaton and Cpt. count, though I have not found any record of this in the census figures I Everybody else I know who said they served in Vietnam actually served there. copies of the VFW magazine or the ROA magazine so that we can see if they 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. Now, with this book, we have the evidence.". How many fake Vietnam veterans are there? I dont even know if it is bogus or (At other sites, the claim is the 1990 or 2000 CENSUS) I just posted a link with results to the 1995 Census Statistical Abstract of the United States, upon which Beaton claims the statistics resides, and as proven by the Census document itself, there is NO SUCH NUMBER, only the number of living active duty vets during Vietnam. But other men (and women) I've run into over the past 4 decades, thousands of them, have mentioned nothing about being Vietnam vets. John Martin, a volunteer at at a make-shift POW information center in Washington, D.C., near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, figures he has seen a half-dozen pretenders in the past month alone. confusing and contradictory, but I think they were referring first to the 1995 What did you do?, I was in the Army, the voice replied. Disclosure of the facts contributed to his demise. This alone falsifies the claim that the Census data shows 10 million fake Vietnam vets.The ONLY possible evidence in Census data I have found of POSSIBLE fakery was the 2000 Census, which found 8.4 million saying they were Vietnam ERA vets out of the actual 8.7 million figure of the Pentagon. 'My pretense took on a life of its own and almost became real. Im a retired Marine of 25 years, Alvarez told the attendees. In this, he resembles the fake Vietnam vets, whose stories more often concern harm suffered and witnessed than bravery proven. The Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D. C. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle. No, he said, but a former Ranger up in New York did. 'It tears you up inside to see this sort of thing.'. The number of personnel serving in Vietnam year by year (No. To subscribe, click here. Too good to be true! On the US Census web site www.census.gov/prod/cen1990/cp2/cp-2-1.pdf on page 45 there is a chart that lists veterans and which era they served in. Like the nonexistent Census data of 10 million fakers, this seems to be all totally made up by Shipley to push his own agenda. If you are also in a position of power or authority or prestige, then you might also feel less vulnerable, because you think that people wont challenge you, she said. What I havent found actually in Vietnam and that about 8.5 million served during the Vietnam era. This has become pointless and I just dont any more time to devote to it. Last year, he said, 12 Princeton seniors went into the service. But the Stolen Valor claim is itself a fraud perpetrated on the public.By some estimates, 4-5% of the population in general are sociopathic liars. claiming Vietnam service and have been exposed as frauds. ". According to research by historian William Marvel, published in a 1991 issue of Blue and Gray, Williams would have been too young to have served in the war. In an interview with UPI, Castagna said he was a Marine during the Vietnam era, but refused to say if saw combat. http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1395584&mpage=1&key=�. We don't have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. I doubt there are 10 million of them, but it appears to me there are a lot of fakes. 76% of the men sent to Vietnam were from lower middle/working class backgrounds. Fazio, though, praised Castagna for organizing the convoy, which is expected to total thousands of vets when it reaches Washington on July 4. It was much easier to do before. DURING THIS CENSUS COUNT, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country is: 13,853,027. Nothing had changed, and I saw that the damned press and the public believes this bull--. They are all repeating the same phony "statistic" of the Stolen Valor book, claiming it is based on Census data. "I said no such thing. Posted by KRandle at 6:27 PM. This office is the working headquarters of a guy who invests other people's millions in the stock market -- and it's his commissions that help bankroll his singular crusade. Oddly, his charitable endeavors included involvement with local Vietnam veterans groups, which ended in 1994 when he disappeared, only to resurface years later as a con man. "It was so difficult. 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. ", "This was real people dying real deaths. whole record for the breakdown of the numbers. Someone Local community celebrities appear no less prone to telling such tales. Are there people involved in the Roswell case who lied? His first stop was the U.S. Department of Labor, where an economist dredged up some figures showing that Vietnam veterans, as a group, had the lowest unemployment rate in the nation of any group listed in the department's tables. What you see in these big lies and to some extent, in some little lies as well is a yearning, DePaulo said. few: http://www.uswings.com/about-us-wings/vietnam-war-facts/, http://www.military.com/forums/0,15240,84591,00.html, http://www.veteranstoday.com/2009/02/26/vietnam-facts-vs-fiction/. "It . After the show aired, several Iraq veterans wrote to the Guardian of Valor. I was a Army platoon leader. He has a weekly caseload of about two dozen real vets. The work led to 48 arrests, the VA recovered $562,888, and authorities levied $1.23 million in fines. Bill Williamson US Army Vietnam Veteran, Blog of shame. Marshal Hanson, USNR (Ret.) '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.'. Some of the statistics being How many times do these real FACTS have to be repeated?BTW Kevin, you should do a Google search on The Vietnam Veterans Fund which was closed down only a few months ago by New York for charity fraud, raising $9 million a year, mostly from veterans, but distributing only 2% for charity purposes. Moreover, 30-50% of those meeting criteria for PTSD had mild . combat air patrols over Vietnam but all he had done was fly repaired or new Fakery was reportedly widespread during the Civil War and its long aftermath. He eventually amended his senate Don Shipley at his SEALs website I wondered if some of this didnt come from the Department of 'There are a lot of people out there doing this and we'd like to expose every last one of them,' said Ray Ashe, secretary of the VVA chapter. Vietnam Veterans represented 9.7% of their generation. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and many other Federal agencies and private He says most imposters are spotted before they are admitted to a VA facility. McCarthy claimed to have been a combat tail gunner in World War II. The branch insignia: The branch insignias should match. So I turned the television on and checked the local news. Castagna was quoted by the newspaper as saying the records were in error and that he was even wounded in battle. The Vietnam War was the nation's longest and costliest conflict of the Cold War. Ironically, maybe the true millions are those vets defrauded by The VVF, not Vietnam vet imposters. But, the former Ranger said, call this other former Ranger down in Pennsylvania; he was in that unit. 'We're becoming more and more. 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. Someone says, Hey, Joe, youre of the age for Vietnam. There have been cases too, such as with Maughn, where once a vet gets a copy of his form, he doctors it to show combat service. 05 The total casualties of the war number over 1 million. Where are all these millions of fakers anyway? guide to other statistical publications and sources both in print and on the parlance of those of us who were there), I found a number of them. The news must have been slow that day, because the reenactment was the lead story. There were an estimated 58,318 U.S. soldier casualties alone. They got in the door with computer-generated or -altered discharge papers known as DD 214 forms. This is Farmer, 26, appeared on Fox's "American Idol" in 2013, claiming he was severely injured by an IED explosion in Iraq. 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. That came from everybody. Of those who said they were in-country most appear to be fake. There is no hard count of how many people have lied about their military service, but one of the best sources on the topic thinks the number is in the millions. 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. Still, Yandle and veterans groups convinced the Globe and, later, Mike Wallace of the CBS News program "60 Minutes" and then-Massachusetts Gov. The Medford Mail Tribune, in Medford, Ore., reported in Maythat Castagna has claimed to have fought in Vietnam, but that his military records show he served in Japan. OUT OF FIVE WHO CLAIM TO BE Vietnam vets are not. (Yes, this is somewhat the giveaway as to their agenda because, as a Vietnam Vet I know that most of So now I had a purpose and a system and I decided I was going to create a book, so I started researching the gaps.". He had seen the occasional stories about Yandle and, unlike others looking into the saga, he had obtained copies of Yandle's military records from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. Some records burned; those that survived give no hint that he ever left the United States. I would think of as reliable sources except I do not have copies of either First, I would expect that number to apply to everything, including number of claimed Vietnam vets or Roswell witnesses. Seven years later, Chuck and Mary Schantag, whose P.O.W. last few years. and reports. not SEALs. "I lied about serving in Vietnam and I'm sorry," he told Globe magazine this year. But at the dedication ceremony, despite the hundreds of "normal-looking" vets in the audience -- suits, jackets, neckties on some -- the television news teams immediately gravitated toward "the guys in fatigues and boony hats, the bearded bums. who couldnt care less and to avoid another long and drawn out but rather pointless The story was essentially done at that point, but I said, Sure. In the spring of 1998, Burkett managed to convince Wallace and others that Yandle was a fake. B.G. In the end, the primary agenda for making up phony facts is the usual one of scammers: $$$$$$$$Yes, there are liars out there, but there is NO VALID evidence for literally millions and millions of Americans claiming to be Vietnam vets who werent, although you obviously still very much want to believe this considering you keep repeating the claim. Their overall agenda makes their warning suspicious and fight over the statistics but there is too much information here. Strewn about the floor, piled crazily on a chair, slopping over the edge of a credenza, teetering on top of his desk are stacks and stacks of file folders containing Xeroxed personnel records from the Vietnam War and tattered news clippings. Natural attrition through mortality should have reduced the number to around 8.2 million surviving Vietnam era vets. Poor or nonexistent record keeping makes such fakery difficult to track much further back in history. a note about sources. Yep, that was my outfit, he said. 'I'm not going to get into that. As were 45 claiming to have been prisoners of war. He searched for the vagrants record and discovered the man had been kicked out of basic training after three weeks on a psychological discharge. By Elizabeth Becker . These count, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country was: Retired 'I have always attempted to be the best at whatever I undertook, but in this instance, I guess I felt what I actually did was not enough, so I pretended to be something I wasn't,' Switzler said. According to a January 1893 article about veterans pensions in Harpers New Monthly Magazine, during a three-year period ending in 1879, out of 4,397 affidavits filed for wartime pensions, 3,084 were false at a cost to the government of more than a half million dollars. And, oh by the way, a Purple Heart and a few other honors earned.
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