Nor was his name actually Daubmann; it was Karl Hummel, and hed taken his new name from a passport retrieved from an old uniform hed bought. Starting on page 12 of this pdf in parts No. In 1983, as the Vietnam Veterans of America was gaining prominence, it was disclosed that one of its spokesman was a fake ex-POW. Retired 'I think this is part of the same phenomenon of human nature that we have seen since the times of the Romans and Greeks,' he said. I have run into many of them and I don't get out all that much. Approximately 2.7 million American men and women served in Vietnam. Vietnam Veterans represent the largest cohort of American Veterans in . . In 2007 the project listed 49 Medal of Honor recipients on its Web site. He had claimed he flew VA experts says others fabricate stories to grab attention, or in an effort to get disability benefits for bogus combat injuries or fake post-war stress. I did find a claim The trouble is I dont know where that 12 Now, extrapolate that across the nation, and imagine the millions of dollars that this runs into.. I must say I never ever thought anyone would falsely claim to have been in Vietnam. CHECKED. There can be problems, however. As it was my unit & he was there after me & knew about a pizza shop that had been setup at the air strip in DaNang. It starts off simple enough. What I havent found Committee votes on major defense policy bill expected in May, Military families share workout with first lady Jill Biden, US conducts first evacuation of its citizens from Sudan war, Ukrainian drones strike Crimea oil depot, Russian official says, Army identifies 3 soldiers killed in Alaska helicopter crash, Understanding the role of artificial intelligence, Mark Kitz keynote speech at the C4ISRNET conference, The latest on software, data and artificial intelligence, Army grounds helicopter fleet for force-wide safety stand down. I was thinking, Theres something wrong here.. identified about 1.7 million Vietnam Veterans still alive at the time of the what I do know. 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. 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. There are many sites devoted to Stolen Valor which had exposed thousands flights over Cuba but that wasnt true either. count, though I have not found any record of this in the census figures I Tag Archives: Fake Vietnam Veteran - militaryphony.com Overall, about 3.5 million Americans served in Southeast Asia during the war. A Department of Defense report suggested that the total number of service members serving during the war was 8,744,000 but this might have included Reserve and National Guard as well as active duty and it also includes the veterans who actually served in country.According to those same DoD figures, 3,403,000 were actually deployed into Southeast Asia, which includes some 700,000 who were not in Vietnam but stationed in Thailand, Guam and the deep water Navy. The suspicion, however, is that it has probably been around as long as people have been on the planet. 568 & 569 can be found some statistics on the number of soldiers serving in Vietnam year by year and total number of active duty personnel during the Vietnam era, just as found in other statistical surveys published by the Census Bureau. actually in Vietnam and that about 8.5 million served during the Vietnam era. "I think Jug Burkett is doing something truly from the heart and something that is truly important," says Vietnam veteran James Webb, author of the Vietnam War novel "Fields of Fire" and a former secretary of the Navy. found it which, I think, adds some legitimacy to the figures and does suggest a Women Vietnam Veterans and PTSDAnother paper using data from the HealthVIEWS study, published in 2015, found that 20.1 percent of women Veterans who served in Vietnam have . And Shipley's estimate of 1000 times the true number is also made up and worthless, not based on anything other than Shipley wanting to believe there is some sort of Navy Seal imposter epidemic.Just as a basic gut check that these huge numbers are preposterous, how many people have any of us run into bragging about being Navy Seals or in Vietnam? Marshal Hanson (and apparently quoted by every vet site as complete gospel), he provides the U.S. Census as the source, just like everybody else:www.veteranstoday.com/2009/02/26/vietnam-facts-vs-fiction/Had you read my post, you would have seen that I quoted this source, including its negative note at the end that was highlighted in yellow and typed in boldface. Other careers, in a variety of fields, have been damaged by similar disclosures. connection to a census though the connection is not identified. Because of the homecoming we got I never brought up Vietnam let alone wore a hat with Vietnam vet on it. Former Army Corporal Richard McClanahan, 29, cuts a dashing figure in his dress uniform and jaunty beret. Don Shipley at his SEALs website Burkett, Chronicle News Services, Associated Press photos, Unmasking Phony `Vietnam Vets' / Fakes big factor in negative image, Texas author finds, Dubs fans picking apart video of possible Poole-Draymond incident, Bay Area preschool teacher suspected of dumping body along road, Bay Area mom influencer found guilty of lying about kidnapping, More rain, 'unseasonably chilly' temperatures coming to Bay Area, 'Horrible': Oakland rapper dumps on Chase Center Warriors fans, Destructive landslide closes historic California institution, 49ers out in full force at Warriors-Kings Game 7, Sold-out Berkeley crowd gets rowdy at country star's concert, Shock, fear as 2 killings in 3 days rock quiet Davis. During that same Census Since the . More than a few 20th century men tried to pass themselves off as the last surviving veterans of the Civil War. Although it was said that no reputable site had posted All societies in history have revered the warrior, he said. After the war ended, reports began to circulate of veterans so depraved from their war experiences that they turned to crime, with estimates of the number of incarcerated Vietnam veterans as high as . Burkett candidly admits he's not a writer. Veterans Today site also wrote, in big letters, . the same that has been used at many of the sites that I visited. 19 Million Viewers Watched His Story Start To Finish (David Hoffman) How many soldiers died on their first day in Vietnam? Blank says despite the problems, fakes can be screened out, often through military records, sometimes just by having them interviewed by vets. Last year, he dropped out of the state's gubernatorial race, admitting he never got closer to Vietnam than peacetime Korea. Along the way, Burkett has picked up a few enemies: "There had been some threats, and the brokers and secretaries were afraid of being killed, so they moved me way down the hall to this office." Thank you for acknowledging that the actual U.S. Census data does NOT support the claim that the Census has shown 13-14 million people claiming to have been in-country Vietnam vets, or over 10 million fakers (since only about 2.7 million served in-country).For one thing, the claim was always impossible since I am unable to find any question in the ACTUAL Census that asks whether people served in-country. what I think happened. SF tourists go in droves to In-N-Out. Same for number of active duty personnel during this period (in No. In 2007 Xavier Alvarez, a member of the Three Valleys Water Board in Claremont, California, was asked during a visit to a neighboring board if he wanted to introduce himself. Jack Smith, head of the VA's National Center for Stress Recovery in Cleveland, said of the 650 persons treated at his facility in the past two years, just six proved to be fakes. But mistakes have been made. A Commentary on UFOs, Paranormal events, and related topics. 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. He says most imposters are spotted before they are admitted to a VA facility. Its all done for personal gain, he said. (I wondered about this because it made no sense to me This is well within the range of possibility. Fake Vietnam combat vets UPI NewsFeature - UPI Archives 1,713,823 of those who served in Vietnam were still alive as of August, 1995 (CENSUS FIGURES). OUT OF FIVE WHO CLAIM TO BE Vietnam vets are not. (Yes, this is somewhat Vietnam veteran - Wikipedia 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. As a Massachusetts state representative, Royall Switzler portrayed himself as former member of the Army special forces in Vietnam. For further reading, William McMichael recommends: Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History, by B.G. Burkett's quest for that evidence started in 1986, when he was asked to help raise funds from private donors for the Texas Vietnam Veterans Memorial. an ex-Marine who survived combat during two tours of Vietnam, a record he used as a motivational tool. Dennehy did play football for a Corps team on Okinawa, Burkett reported. Missing in Action: How Military Families Spurred the MIA Movement - History During the war, more than 58,000 servicemen and women lost their lives. this seems to be correct, I cant find anything in the census figures to 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. Robert French tells us about his remembered involvement with the Roswell crash, but his military record did not support some of his claims. 'It tears you up inside to see this sort of thing.'. 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. "Lots of people think I'm obsessed, but I'm not," he says, shortly before rushing off to the Xerox machine to make copies of a sheaf of military records. By this census, FOUR A third, claiming to be homeless, was unable to identify where he served in Vietnam, exactly when, and provide a proper unit designation. "It . 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. "Pressure is Vietnam,". And there he was, my false ranger, holding his shadow box of medals as he repeated his fake story. A Different Perspective with Kevin Randle Interview - CURT COLLINS - Saucers That Time Forgot. Yep, that was my outfit, he said. That launched the financial planner into a new career. b. It was endless," he says. Network Web site lists U.S. prisoners of war, reviewed all the history project records. 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/. According to the inflated faker statistics, they would represent about 7% of all adult males, or 1 in 14 men we would run into. He had served time in Georgia for auto theft. https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-schneiderman-announces-settlements-vietnam-veterans-charity-and-its-founderNY Atty General: This Organization Took Advantage Of The Good Will Of MILLIONS Yet Failed To Fulfill Nearly All Of Its Promises To Help Those Who Have Sacrificed For Our Nation.If Beaton and the VVF are the original source of the Census claim, they are hardly a good source. The second you tell people that you are a veteran, they look at you differently. How many REAL Vietnam vets are alive today? - American War Library In 1983, as the Vietnam Veterans of America was gaining prominence, it was disclosed that one of its spokesman was a fake ex-POW. 'I'm not going to say we don't care. Last winter, John Maughn contacted a veterans' group in Atlanta and begged for help. 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. Thailand, Guam and in the deep water Navy, and some statistics on those might have found, in those census figures somewhere, a report that suggested 12 Robert Bateman, who teaches military history at West Point. The numbers quoted by me were based on all these sources, though it had been suggested, and I followed suit, that some 13,000,000 had lied on the census form. 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. 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. 6.1 million VA continues to serve Vietnam Veterans VA's Veteran Population Projection Model estimates the number of living Vietnam War-era Veterans to be 6.1 million (11). For the past three years, Burkett has worked behind the scenes with the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of the Inspector General on Operation Stolen Valor, aimed at uncovering people in the Pacific Northwest whove fabricated military service in order to obtain VA benefits. to 14 million had claimed to be Vietnam Veterans and subtracted the true number In 1999, Donald R. Nicholson, the police chief of Amelia, Missouri, in the 1980s, admitted that he had lied about being a Vietnam veteran and a prisoner of war to obtain better veterans benefits. How many Vietnam veterans are still alive? (2023) I guess the spell has broken and we are dropping like flies now. 'A lot of them are groupies. Thats not true. The alleged 13.8 million fakers or four out of five who claim to be Vietnam vets is CLEARLY stated as being based on U.S. CENSUS DATA, not some independent survey. '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. (The ONLY question EVER asked by the Census, NOT if they were actually serving in Vietnam.) (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.). It is not. It lasted about three years. I've run into a half dozen in the last few years, that were to quick to tell stories of their heroics & actions.Too me IF one says they were a Seal, or a Green Beret, I push a bit. 04 Both South Vietnam and the United States of America committed nearly 5 million troops into war. However, veterans groups estimate that today approximately 9 to 12 million Americans fraudulently claim they served in Vietnam. Burkett, author of the acclaimed 1998 expos Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History. Thats a big number approximately 23.6 million. And he describes the hostile reaction directed at veterans coming back from Vietnam, intimating that he was among them. But in a broader sense, DePaulo said, people lie for the same reasons, no matter what they claim to be. He said he was a decorated ex-Air Force fighter pilot and former prisoner of war in Vietnam who couldn't get a job. ), It seems, This is 1999-08-13 04:00:00 PDT Dallas -- Jug Burkett's cozy office high up in a big glass-and- steel tower looks more like the cluttered, haphazard digs of a college professor than the lair of a successful stockbroker. In truth, though, he only was a tail gunner in training. How Many Vietnam Veterans Are Still Alive? - MilitaryPerson.com 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. Sources: "Stolen Valor" by B.G. Heres Aren't those the guys who are unemployed and on drugs? Yandle apologized publicly and was returned to prison. VVA's national office has distanced itself from a nationwide convoy by vets to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. served in-country, on those who served in areas surrounding Vietnam such as After the show aired, several Iraq veterans wrote to the Guardian of Valor. All you need to do is look at the numbers he supplies and his agenda is sort of like mine it annoys me that the fakers are out there spouting their nonsense. I personally believe there are as many American males claiming military service falsely as there are living veterans in America, said B.G. 'Three years ago, I didn't see any. The Schantags discovered that 24 of those were false entries. Like the nonexistent Census data of 10 million fakers, this seems to be all totally made up by Shipley to push his own agenda. Stolen Valor Why bother to be a faker unless you are going to brag about it to people you meet? 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. 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. Nor has military fakery been limited to Americans. Burkett, who at the time was verifying records for the Texas State Archives, discovered he could get military records by request. His story was detailed, yet he under played his role. Did you get drafted, go in the military? Rather than say, No, I avoided the draft, the guy says, I dont like talking about it.Well, I was in the Army. You serve overseas? Yeah, I was in Vietnam. The next thing you know, the guys being asked to join the VFW., DePaulo more or less agreed: You say something, almost as a trial balloon. 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. 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. The [2] [3] [4] This includes claims by people that have never been in the military as well as lies or embellishments by genuine veterans. fight over the statistics but there is too much information here. In Sterners experience, its all about the financial advantages fakers can obtain. The story was essentially done at that point, but I said, Sure. A couple of weeks before June 6, 1994, I was at my desk when the phone rang. Reject it if you wish, but that doesn't mean it is wrong and look at all the Stolen Valor sites where you will find claimant after claimant who has been exposed. Burkett and Glenna Whitley; No Guts, No Glory: Unmasking Navy SEAL Imposters, by Steve Robinson; and Fake Warriors, by Henry Mark Holzer and Erica Holzer. organizations., I think census and then to the 2000 census but did not explain this problem. copies of the VFW magazine or the ROA magazine so that we can see if they 'It pretty difficult to fabricate a war history because it is relatively easy for someone who was there to see through it,' says Blank. Other still claim to be combat vets as an explanation for emotional problems. "But, you know, maybe I'll do a book on all the heroes of Vietnam. 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. As for phony Vietnam veterans, I still meet them all the time. Further, if you bothered to read Beatons statistics, as at this webite below, said to be written by Beaton and Cpt. With the Pentagon Papers revelations, the U.S. public's trust in the government was forever diminished. 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. Vietnam Veterans - Veterans Affairs (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. figures).. Any number of personality flaws might drive someone to fabricate a military background, no matter what their station in life. But, some of them are so good that they have done the research though once one of them told me he had been a door gunner with the Hornets at the time I was a pilot in the unit. How Many Vietnam Veterans are Alive Today? - CherriesWriter I know that there are many In some cases, too, these bogus ex-warriors are motivated by guilt - a gnawing feeling that they should have fought in America's longest war, psychologists and veteran counselors say. magazine so that I have nothing on their sources. That negative image was fresh in Burketts mind when he decided to help a friend in Dallas raise money for Vietnam veterans a quarter century ago. veterans of which according to other sources, about 2.7 actually served in I run into far more than my share of World War II fakers, said Sterner. 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. An archive compiled by a national prisoner-of-war. Lest Burkett sound like some wild-eyed zealot, seeking phonies at every turn of a Memorial Day parade, he likes to point out that he fell into this avocation by accident and, now that his book is out, wonders how much longer he is going to be called upon as the nation's expert in tracking down military records. facts being unverified. I called my alleged Ranger back, said I wanted to clear up the unit name and asked him twice to repeat it. But we aren't going to discuss this with the news media,' he said. The project, it would turn out, had a profound effect on her. does not seem to be accurate and my review of the census doesnt bear this out. I asked the spokesman if he had a unit roster of some sort. I don't think this matter to anyone but us anyway. Now, they are being seen as heroes,' said Dr. Betsy Tolstedt of the Veteran Administration's outreach clinic in Chicago. That guy, the real Ranger told me, got killed on D-Day. 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. for the last few years I have started asking those wearing the hats where they served in Vietnam. 87% of Americans hold Vietnam Veterans in high esteem. The event will include displays related to the Vietnam War, a jump by the Golden Knights (Army parachuting team . Someone says, Hey, Joe, youre of the age for Vietnam. 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. He then says that from his personal experience, it is much more than this, hence the 1000 fakers for every 10,000 living Seals, or 10 million fake Seals. And rather than doing the hard work of actually trying to become that person, they just do a shortcut of claiming to be that person., DePaulo believes that most people who tell such lies probably are doing so consciously.
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