Phony Soldiers

[Beowulf]

Phony veterans try to cash in on VA benefits

By Michael Hoffman - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Oct 5, 2007 11:06:36 EDT

Written in the former sailor’s cursive handwriting on his claim for mental health benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs is an elaborate story about how Larry Porter supposedly was tossed into 18 feet of water at boot camp when it was known he couldn’t swim.

“I was … told to swim or die,” wrote Porter, of Seattle. “When they pulled me out, I thought I was dead.”

He went on to tell of how he watched a civilian worker die after falling from the side of a ship in a California shipyard.

Based on these claims, Porter, who served in the Navy for 15 months in the 1970s, obtained $134,000 in VA disability benefits and $40,000 from the Social Security Administration from 1999 to 2006.

It all turned out to be false. Porter is in a jail cell serving a three-year sentence, and was forced to repay all money he accepted from VA and Social Security.

Justice Department officials in Washington state detailed Porter’s story, along with seven other people accused of — or already convicted of — being military frauds, during a news conference Friday on VA fakers.

“We take it seriously because this money is meant for veterans, not for fakers,” James O’Neill, assistant inspector general for the VA’s office of investigations, told Military Times.

“Every dollar that’s lost to a faker is one more dollar that can’t be spent on a veteran,” said O’Neill, whose office is responsible for rooting out those who defraud VA.

The news conference was held the same day that Jesse MacBeth, a former soldier who served in the Army only 44 days and didn’t finish basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., pleaded guilty to making false statements about his service and was expected to be sentenced.

MacBeth filed discharge documents with VA stating that he served three years and separated as a corporal after deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq, said Ronald Friedman, assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington state. He also claimed to have earned a Purple Heart and a Ranger tab, VA officials said.

MacBeth’s VA claim was denied, but his storytelling didn’t stop there. He produced anti-war videos claiming he killed innocent Iraqis after being ordered to do so, Friedman said. The videos were translated into Arabic for Middle East audiences, Friedman said.

An alleged phony from the list, Merrick Hersey, is a fugitive after a warrant for his arrest was issued in Washington, Friedman said. Hersey is accused of filing a false military discharge document stating that he served in the Marine Corps in 1967 and 1968 to obtain VA benefits, according to VA officials.

He claimed to have earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star as a rifleman based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., before receiving an honorable discharge, according to the DD-214, a military discharge document, that he submitted.

There are no official records to show that Hersey ever served in the military, Friedman said.

The case against a former political official who claimed to be a prisoner of war was also spotlighted Friday.

Former Army Spc. Michael Heit, a former chairman of the Constitution Party of Montana who ran for a seat in the state legislature, pleaded guilty to two counts of filing false DD-214s to VA and the Military Order of the Purple Heart in 2005.

The forged discharge documents claimed Heit was a decorated Vietnam veteran who earned a Bronze Star with combat “V” and three Purple Hearts. He also claimed he was held prisoner by North Vietnam from 1969 to 1972.

One poser outed Friday never served a day in the military and isn’t even a U.S. citizen, said Dennis Shen, deputy district attorney for Multnomah County in Oregon.

Carlos Valle Rios, a resident alien from Peru, pleaded guilty in January to “attempted aggravated theft in the first degree by deception” for submitting a false claim to VA and discharge documents, according to court papers.

Valle Rios claimed he earned a Purple Heart from his time as a World War II pilot. He wrote in his claim that he was a member of the famed Flying Tigers who secretly flew in China against Japanese forces before the U.S. officially entered World War II.

Valle Rios, a registered sex offender, also was convicted of illegally obtaining subsidized housing in Oregon. His sentence for defrauding VA was two years’ probation, Shen said, adding that he is in the custody of Immigration Customs Enforcement and is being considered for deportation.

Posted without comment.

[Wicked Pilot]

Scam artist have been around forever and will be around forever.

[Ender]

Only 3 years for defrauding the government for ~$175k?

MacBeth filed discharge documents with VA stating that he served three years and separated as a corporal after deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq, said Ronald Friedman, assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington state. He also claimed to have earned a Purple Heart and a Ranger tab, VA officials said.

MacBeth’s VA claim was denied, but his storytelling didn’t stop there. He produced anti-war videos claiming he killed innocent Iraqis after being ordered to do so, Friedman said. The videos were translated into Arabic for Middle East audiences, Friedman said.

So you steal from us, demean those of us who actually earned those medals, and cap it off by slandering us and creating more enemies?

My, everything seems to have gone red. How odd.

[MKSheppard]

There's a really good book that's been out since 1998 about this:

"Stolen Valor"

[Elfdart]

And that book is a worthless pile of horseshit written by a Shit Boater with the aid of a holocaust denier.

[Sidewinder]

And that book is a worthless pile of horseshit written by a Shit Boater with the aid of a holocaust denier.

I found nothing like this on the Wikipedia articles on 'Stolen Valor' and its author. Do you have links to sites where I can see for myself whether or not B. G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley are Holocaust deniers or members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?

[MKSheppard]

And that book is a worthless pile of horseshit written by a Shit Boater with the aid of a holocaust denier.

Aw, I love how elfdart jumps in. That book was written in 1998, long before the 2004 race.

[Darth Wong]

And that book is a worthless pile of horseshit written by a Shit Boater with the aid of a holocaust denier.

Aw, I love how elfdart jumps in. That book was written in 1998, long before the 2004 race.

Logic is obviously not your strong suit. It is completely possible for one of the Shit Boaters to have written a book long before the 2004 race.

[Ender]

And that book is a worthless pile of horseshit written by a Shit Boater with the aid of a holocaust denier.

What points in it are incorrect?

[MKSheppard]

It is completely possible for one of the Shit Boaters to have written a book long before the 2004 race.

Duh.

What I was trying to say is that since it was written six years before the 2004 race, it's going to be clean of any influence or taint that the 2004 election and the Swift Boat organization caused with the authors.

[Darth Wong]

It is completely possible for one of the Shit Boaters to have written a book long before the 2004 race.

Duh.

What I was trying to say is that since it was written six years before the 2004 race, it's going to be clean of any influence or taint that the 2004 election and the Swift Boat organization caused with the authors.

No it won't. Scholarship is based upon integrity; if you can demonstrate that someone is an unrepentant liar, then any of his scholarship is thrown into doubt. Including books he may have written earlier. That's why, when a reporter or author has been disgraced, the first thing people do is go back and inspect all of his previous work with a super-critical eye.

[Beowulf]

And that book is a worthless pile of horseshit written by a Shit Boater with the aid of a holocaust denier.

You're confusing it with Unfit for Command, I think.

[Elfdart]

You're confusing it with Unfit for Command, I think.

Au contraire. Burkett was pimping for the Shit Boaters as early as April 4, 2004, if not earlier: Link

He didn't stop there. He went on FAUX News to do more flack work for the Shitties

Before his appearance on Hannity & Colmes concluded, Burkett took one more cheap shot at Kerry: "He absolutely caused more deaths in Vietnam. He extended the war. That's why he's mentioned favorably in virtually every north Communist book, biography. His picture hangs in honor."

Burkett claims that the Winter Soldiers whose statements John Kerry described before Congress were phonies. His evidence? The word of pseudo-historian and holocaust denier Geunter Lewy, who claims that not was there no genocide against the Armenians or the American Indians, but that he had seen proof in a report commissioned by the US Navy that the men who testified at the Winter Soldier meetings were phonies. The Navy has no such report. When confronted with his bullshit, Lewy backtracked

Conservative historian Guenter Lewy claimed in his 1978 book, America in Vietnam, that a Naval Investigative Service report into the Winter Soldier allegations had discredited many of the witnesses and accounts, and in some cases impostors had assumed the identities of real veterans who were not present at the investigation. But no one can seem to locate a copy of it: "We have not been able to confirm the existence of this report, but it's also possible that such records could have been destroyed or misplaced," Naval Criminal Investigative Service public affairs specialist Paul O'Donnell told the Tribune. In a February 14 Baltimore Sun article, Lewy himself admitted that "he does not recall if he saw a copy of the naval investigative report or was briefed on its contents." Apart from Lewy's allegations, a Media Matters for America search turned up no other reports of evidence that any Winter Soldier witness was an impostor.

Here's Burkett coughing up Lewy's furball of lies:

Link

That same disrespect for the truth was in operation during the Winter Soldier hearings. After all the atrocities were dutifully taken down, the transcript was inserted into the Congressional Record by Sen. Mark O. Hatfield, who asked the commandant of the Marine Corps to investigate the many crimes, particularly those perpetrated by Marines.

"The results of this investigation, carried out by the Naval Investigative Service are interesting and revealing," said historian Guenter Lewy in his book America in Vietnam. His history of the war was one of the first to rely on previously classified documents in the National Archives. "Many of the veterans, although assured that they would not be questioned about atrocities they might have committed personally, refused to be interviewed.

Documents that are so classified that even the Navy has never heard of them.

The common thread is that certain morally stunted pricks feel the need to lie about atrocities that were committed, whether it's Guenter Lewy, David Irving, Michael Medved, Joan Peters, B.G. Burkett or the various Shit Boaters. In effect, they are not only lying about those who witnesses the atrocities, not only shitting on the graves of the victims, but in a moral sense have made themselves accomplices after the fact, like a mobster's cleaning crew mopping up blood, disposing of bodies and silencing witnesses. These people are scum in my book.

The fact that Burkett plays a game of "gotcha" with panhandlers and other miscreants who claim to be veterans (did anyone believe their war stories or those "I will work for food" signs?) doesn't change the fact that he's a total scumbag, or that his main source for a smear job on John Kerry is a holocaust denier.

[MKSheppard]

The fact that Burkett plays a game of "gotcha" with panhandlers and other miscreants who claim to be veterans (did anyone believe their war stories or those "I will work for food" signs?)

You mean like taking on a panhandler who happens to be a Senator?

doesn't change the fact that he's a total scumbag

Your opinion.

or that his main source for a smear job on John Kerry is a holocaust denier.

Link

Hhhm...I'm not seeing anything here about holocaust denial; just going against the grain on issues like the American Indians, Armenians, etc; he concludes that the Gypsies were the victims of a delayed genocide....

[MKSheppard]

BTW, I love how the Winter Soldiers/Vietnam Veterans Against the War's "Rebuttal" of Stolen Valor essentially comes down to this:

Link

His central research technique is leafing through the military records of other veterans that are made available through the federal Freedom of Information Act. There are a number of problems with this approach — chief among them the notorious inaccuracy and incompleteness of military records. For Burkett, if there's no military record available through Freedom of Information, there's no veteran.

LURL.

Link to Stolen Valor Page on how to do a FOIA

If the veteran is not a cooperative subject, you must request the record under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Send a letter to the National Personnel Records Center, saying something like this: "Dear Sirs or Madams: I am requesting, under the federal Freedom of Information Act, the publicly-releasable form of the military record of John Jones Smith."

You MUST cite the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a military record that is not your own.

Be sure to use a full and correctly-spelled name. With more than 80 million individual personnel records in the system, going back to the Revolutionary War, it's difficult to get a military record unless you have a full name and service number (for service prior to 1969) or social security number (post-1969). It also helps to include date of birth, home town, and general time of service, if you know it.

While many phonies claim their records were destroyed in the fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis in 1973, very few Vietnam-era records were damaged. Those with the heaviest damage were Army records from 1912 to 1959; some 1947 to 1963 Air Force records in surnames I through Z were less seriously affected. Many of these records are duplicated at other locations such as the VA and the military finance office, and therefore can be reconstructed.

[MKSheppard]

Also

Phonies often claim they have no military record because they were involved in covert operations and the government has purged the documents from the system to disavow their illegal activities. Don’t accept that. If an Army or Marine recon specialist, for example, was assigned to a MACV-SOG or CIA operation (in Laos, perhaps), his chronological record might state: "Classified assignment," with the applicable dates. Awards and decorations are treated the same way. The geographic location may say nothing more than Southeast Asia. The operation may be given a code name. But the record exists. And covert operatives must go through extensive training -- which will be documented.

To verify POW status, you don’t even have to file a FOIA: a list of all Vietnam POWs returned alive is available from DOD, and also is printed in Stolen Valor as an appendix, as are lists of Vietnam era recipients of the Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Air Force Cross, and Navy Cross.

[MKSheppard]

Say, out of curiosity, for the WarWolves; have you ever run into a case where someone tried to BS his way in, or personally run into a liar inflating shit?

[Elfdart]

You mean like taking on a panhandler who happens to be a Senator?

I'd like to see the source for that story.

Hhhm...I'm not seeing anything here about holocaust denial; just going against the grain on issues like the American Indians, Armenians, etc

Just as David Irving and Ernst Zundel are only "going against the grain" when it comes to the Final Solution.


Actually, now that I think about it, Lewy is worse than Zundel and Irving. They only lie about one genocide. Lewy lies about two.

[Lonestar]

Say, out of curiosity, for the WarWolves; have you ever run into a case where someone tried to BS his way in, or personally run into a liar inflating shit?

BS his way into what?

[Ritterin Sophia]

Say, out of curiosity, for the WarWolves; have you ever run into a case where someone tried to BS his way in, or personally run into a liar inflating shit?

BS his way into what?

Into the Mess.

[Lonestar]

Into the Mess.

Yeah, some dude named RogueIce. But we decided to just make him our mascot.

[Knife]

Into the Mess.

Yeah, some dude named RogueIce. But we decided to just make him our mascot.

*out of the shadows a man throws a black bag around Lonestars head and drags him back into the shadows*

Shhhhh.

[Beowulf]

There have been others... we don't want to talk about them though...

@Elfdart:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005497

What he did while on active duty is even more confusing. In 1979, Mr. Harkin, then a congressman, participated in a round-table discussion arranged by the Congressional Vietnam Veterans' Caucus. "I spent five years as a Navy pilot, starting in November of 1962," Mr. Harkin said at that meeting, in words that were later quoted in a book, Changing of the Guard, by Washington Post political writer David Broder. "One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions. I did no bombing."

That clearly is not an accurate picture of his Navy service. Though Mr. Harkin stresses he is proud of his Navy record--"I put my ass on the line day after day"--he concedes now he never flew combat air patrols in Vietnam.

He was stationed at the U.S. Naval Air Station at Atsugi, Japan. Damaged aircraft were flown into Atsugi for repairs or sometimes flown out of Atsugi to the Philippines for more substantial work. Mr. Harkin says he and three other Navy pilots flew these ferry flights. And, when the planes had been repaired, he and his fellow pilots took them up on test flights. "I had always wanted to be a test pilot," he says. "It was damned demanding work."

First thing I found on Sen. Harkin.

[Stile]

Into the Mess.

Yeah, some dude named RogueIce. But we decided to just make him our mascot.

*out of the shadows a man throws a black bag around Lonestars head and drags him back into the shadows*

Shhhhh.

*cackles wickedly and starts loading cans of soda into a pillow case*

We could tell you but then we would have to have Rob kill you...

[Elfdart]

First thing I found on Sen. Harkin.

So an Op-Ed writer for the Wall Street Journal claims David Broder accurately quoted Tom Harkin, and uses this quote in an editorial page hatchetjob on Harkin? The same WSJ editorial page that ran all those absurd lies about John Kerry's war record? Even if you assume (a) Broder is a reliable journalist and (b) that a WSJ hack is entirely honest in his smear job, the "evidence" is just pettifoggery about how many times Harkin flew into Vietnam, or whether he should have said he served during Vietnam (referring to the war) instead of in Vietnam (the country).