05 The total casualties of the war number over 1 million. Too good to be true! This is all based on his say-so with nothing to back it up. According to an estimate by the New York Times, there were 8.4 million Vietnam veterans who were still alive in the year 2000.Of those, 1.1 million had passed away.It was also estimated that there will be a total of 138,000 Vietnam veterans who will pass away every year from this point forward.Editorial note from the administrator of the website: They said, All credit and research to: Capt. Like the nonexistent Census data of 10 million fakers, this seems to be all totally made up by Shipley to push his own agenda. Since you are so death on fraudulent Roswell witnesses, as you should be, I think you would be equally outraged by phony, clearly fabricated statistics, fraudulent references given in support (U.S. Census), and fraudulent veterans charities taking advantage of veterans. Most claim to have been on a ship in the South China Sea, but never got near the country. Is this evidence of ~200,000 fakers, or is there some other explanation, such as how you define active duty military personnel? 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. Senator Richard Blumenthal misrepresented his record of military service during the Vietnam War. 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. Scam artists will try anything, sad to say. So I turned the television on and checked the local news. was not saying it was for service in Vietnam. Darrow 'Duke' Tully resigned as publisher of the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette newspapers 18 months ago after it was revealed that his claims of having been a combat pilot in Vietnam and Korean wars were false. 1,713,823 of those who served in Vietnam were still alive as of August, 1995 (CENSUS FIGURES). 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. fight over the statistics but there is too much information here. VVA's national office has distanced itself from a nationwide convoy by vets to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. By fits and starts, Burkett learned how to investigate. Torres came back Monday with a U.S. birth certificate it was fake, but for a good cause, he thought. combat air patrols over Vietnam but all he had done was fly repaired or new I'm interested in real vets who have their own problems.'. provide a source, I dont know where to take this. Of the 750 people in his graduating class at Princeton, he says 500 went into the service. 'I'm not going to say we don't care. 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. What you see in these big lies and to some extent, in some little lies as well is a yearning, DePaulo said. who couldnt care less and to avoid another long and drawn out but rather pointless Natural attrition through mortality should have reduced the number to around 8.2 million surviving Vietnam era vets. The real Daubmann had been killed in the war. Stolen Valor. that. (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.). REALITY: Johnson -- whose public mea culpa last November was too recent to be included in Burkett's book -- never served in Vietnam and never saw combat. 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. In 2007 the effort snagged eight people who were receiving VA compensation for combat injuries, although none had served in combat and two had never served in the military. about my motives for writing this, I will note that Senator Harkin presented me Dennehy later gave a public apology. http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1395584&mpage=1&key=�. count, though I have not found any record of this in the census figures I (The ONLY question EVER asked by the Census, NOT if they were actually serving in Vietnam.) The I wish a month of my pay could afford a new basic Rolex.. (not the specialty models like this guy could afford). ", 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. but then remembered that if you set foot in a combat zone even for an hour or Published Sep 24, 2018. According to the American War Library, as of February 28, 2019, it is estimated that approximately 610,000 Americans who served in land forces during the Vietnam War or in air missions over Vietnam between 1954 and 1975 are still alive to this day. This is described as , Statistical Abstract of the United States. The efforts of latter-day watch-dogs such as Sterner, Burkett, the Schantags, fake Navy SEALcatcher Steve Robinson and others have given military fakery the appearance of being a modern phenomenon, particularly during the Vietnam era. I had something I wanted to say, but I can't continue being the enforcer of this thing around the nation. I believe the numbers.If I can meet that many phonies in my very small community, I believe the numbers completely. They want to be around real vets,' said Martin. At the same time, she said, I think it is possible that in some cases, theyve told the lie for so long, and its so integrated into their perceptions of their life experiences, that, psychologically, its almost like a truth, because if theyve been telling the lie for a long time, then they dont have the challenge of someone whos making it up for the first time.. Moreover, 30-50% of those meeting criteria for PTSD had mild . I now sometimes wear a hat & look forward to talking to other 'Nam vets.But, for those, playing, I just shake my head.MOS 1141 ElectricianUSMC/DogpatchFeb '69/March '70Semper Fidelis. b. Williams was said to be 117 years old at his death in 1959 in Houston, Texas. Burkett also exposed actor Brian Dennehy's phony claims, in various interviews, of having been wounded as a Marine in Vietnam. Foreign Wars (VFW) magazine and from the Reserve Officers Association magazine which 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 had been a prisoner, but not in Vietnam. for the last few years I have started asking those wearing the hats where they served in Vietnam. ElbertAlfie 8 mo. Frank Kaufmann provided his discharged documents which we accepted as authentic but later learned that he had forged them. Sources: "Stolen Valor" by B.G. 04 Both South Vietnam and the United States of America committed nearly 5 million troops into war. If fact it is close to the total that served and suggests that Viet vets don't die as quickly as others.Either the 2010 figures haven't been digested yet or I could not find them. How many fake Vietnam veterans are there? I have found references that suggest the number came from the Veterans of I retired in the year 2001. In short order, photographer Ken Lyons and I were sitting in the fellows sun-splashed back yard. 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. 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. However, veterans groups estimate that today approximately 9 to 12 million Americans fraudulently claim they served in Vietnam. It is Blank says despite the problems, fakes can be screened out, often through military records, sometimes just by having them interviewed by vets. The story was essentially done at that point, but I said, Sure. 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. $174k/yr for a new Daytona in a month. '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. 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. Retired He said he was a decorated ex-Air Force fighter pilot and former prisoner of war in Vietnam who couldn't get a job. In 1932 a German, Oscar Daubmann, turned up in his homeland claiming hed been a French prisoner of war for the previous 16 years after his capture at the 1916 Battle of the Somme. The increase in their ranks in recent years corresponds with a positive shift in public sentiment about Vietnam vets and a wave of books, television shows and movies about the war, such as the motion picture 'Platoon. Slessler said many of the imposters he sees suffer from 'survivor guilt.' I called, telling this former Ranger that my guy had claimed to be the assistant platoon leader. 'We're becoming more and more. to 14 million had claimed to be Vietnam Veterans and subtracted the true number 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. Fazio, though, praised Castagna for organizing the convoy, which is expected to total thousands of vets when it reaches Washington on July 4. But other men (and women) I've run into over the past 4 decades, thousands of them, have mentioned nothing about being Vietnam vets. People want to be a certain kind of person they only wish they could be. much of this other than there were 2.7 million service members who were Case in point, and perhaps the one for which Burkett is best known: In the early 1990s, Joseph Yandle, a man serving life without parole in Massachusetts for his part in a murder-robbery, began a campaign, soon picked up by the Boston Globe, to have his sentence commuted. There were an estimated 58,318 U.S. soldier casualties alone. think I have been able to deduce what has happened. "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. "I lied about serving in Vietnam and I'm sorry," he told Globe magazine this year. They're all around you. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa was caught up in this. "Man, I was scared to death. Are there people involved in the Roswell case who lied? Marshal Hanson, USNR (Ret.) After killing a prison guard, he said, hed been transferred to a labor camp in French-governed Algeria, where, after years of torture, good behavior had earned him a job as a prison tailor. 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. what was claimed in that article is false but there was no warning about the 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. When his unit came home and started gearing up. "Pressure is Vietnam,". Because of the homecoming we got I never brought up Vietnam let alone wore a hat with Vietnam vet on it. 02 Up to 2 million civilians died in the war. He is back in prison. As I say again, the alleged 10+ million Vietnam vet fakers figure, promoted by various Vet organizations and publications, has absolutely no basis in fact, no actual documentation anywhere to support it, certainly not any ACTUAL Census report that has been cited repeatedly as a reference. I think I have finally unraveled the great Vietnam Veteran impostors statistics. Never in combat, a Marine Times photograph depicts McClanahan spangled with three Silver Stars, two Purples Hearts, and the Legion of Merit. William Weld, that Yandle was fit to be released. 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 . This has become pointless and I just dont any more time to devote to it. But as I soon learned, this fellow was hardly the only person who has fabricated or exaggerated wartime exploits. 'A lot of them are groupies. in the census documents is a number for those falsely claiming Vietnam service. 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. As it turned out, my guy wasnt on the list. 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." They werent. You took part in one of the greatest assaults in U.S. military history?. 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. 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. You'd need to make $108k/yr after-tax annually to afford a Datejust in a month's time. To subscribe, click here. A military impostor is a person who makes false claims about their military service in civilian life. I dont know what stopped me, but I heard myself saying the words, Too good to be true, and decided to call the Ranger headquarters at Fort Benning, Georgia. I have run into many of them and I don't get out all that much. But the Maybe creating phony statistics on nonexistent vet imposters was designed to get vets understandably angry so they would send their hard-earned money to scam vet charities like the VVF. 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. He wasnt a Vietnam veteran, Burkett said. Regardless of what they thought of you before, theres suddenly more substance to you., The lie often starts modestly, Burkett said. Census is not something that I was able to do. I am an in-country Vietnam vet. was conducted in 1995 which is not to say that the statistics about the fake Vietnam veterans is in that census either. Last year, he dropped out of the state's gubernatorial race, admitting he never got closer to Vietnam than peacetime Korea. I said that this provided an insight into those who claimed inside knowledge of Roswell. 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. "What he is trying to do, at considerable risk to himself, is to say that this service means something, and by letting just anyone stand up and claim these honors, you're diminishing the real value of those who did serve. does not seem to be accurate and my review of the census doesnt bear this out. In 1997 Wes S. Cooley, a sitting first-term eastern Oregon congressman, was convicted on charges hed lied about his military service in official state voter guides. Where are all these millions of fakers anyway? I don't need to pretend to be some super secret squirrel sniper badass force recon dude. A Commentary on UFOs, Paranormal events, and related topics. Burkett -- his parents nicknamed him Jug, in honor of a favorite golf pro -- has spent the past 13 years unmasking hundreds of men around the country who have claimed to be Vietnam veterans, Vietnam heroes, Vietnam- post-traumatic-stress-psychos, the guys you read about in the papers ("Viet Vet Kills 14 in Post Office Rampage") and see on the median strip of Van Ness Avenue, wearing signs over their tattered fatigues that proclaim, "Vietnam Vet -- Will Work for Food. 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 Schantags discovered that 24 of those were false entries. Burkett candidly admits he's not a writer. I have been unable to find that precise survey, but this seems to be the place where the 13,853,027 number of impostors comes from. Everybody else I know who said they served in Vietnam actually served there. support it. Last winter, John Maughn contacted a veterans' group in Atlanta and begged for help. David, David, David I tried to end this diplomatically but you just cant let it go. David Rudiak was right about According to the inflated faker statistics, they would represent about 7% of all adult males, or 1 in 14 men we would run into. Now, they are being seen as heroes,' said Dr. Betsy Tolstedt of the Veteran Administration's outreach clinic in Chicago. But we aren't going to discuss this with the news media,' he said. But 80%? 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. Members of chapter 239 of the Vietnam Veterans of America rushed to his aid. Veterans Today site also wrote, in big letters, . 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. Disclosure of the facts contributed to his demise. He was driven out of the group. Take John M. Iannone, a Pittburgh- area oilman whom family members said had it all and was even more admired for his extensive community service. But they soon discovered that Maughn was a fake, one who had earlier flim-flammed other vet groups, employers and newspapers. But since you want to continue, here we goYou wrote, Further, if you bothered to read Beatons statistics, as at this webite below, said to be written by Beaton and Cpt. How many fake Vietnam veterans are there? 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. 10/05/2017 by militaryphonies. 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. Seven years later, Chuck and Mary Schantag, whose P.O.W. Vietnam veterans have a lower unemployment rate than the same non-vet age groups. found it which, I think, adds some legitimacy to the figures and does suggest a Same for number of active duty personnel during this period (in No. Whitley, 43, is of a generation that, as she said, learned about the war largely through their TV sets. Originally published in the March 2010 issue of Military History. awards and decorations they did not earn. have been able to find reliable statistics on the number of men and women who Still, Yandle and veterans groups convinced the Globe and, later, Mike Wallace of the CBS News program "60 Minutes" and then-Massachusetts Gov. 'Vietnam veterans? 76% of the men sent to Vietnam were from lower middle/working class backgrounds. 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. 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.". REALITY: Duke's only military experience was a brief stint in the ROTC while attending Louisiana State University. Moskos, now 65, comes from a 1950s generation of young men to whom military service was a given. I wondered if some of this didnt come from the Department of They shouldn't bother. Yandle apologized publicly and was returned to prison. The 2000 census site at www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/censusatlas/pdf/12_military-service.pdf shows the claims rose to 8.4 million Vietnam era Vets. They have a lower unemployment rate than the same non-vet age groups. An Oregon newspaper learned that Cooley hadnt finished training until nearly a month after the signing of the 1953 armistice. Instead the standard Census question on the long form is whether somebody has ever been active duty military and lists multiple war and peace eras, including the Vietnam era from 1964-1975. More than 8 million people served in uniform during Vietnam and those who are alive are typically in their 60s and 70s. Back at the office, I started typing up my notes, shaking my head at times. None were real. Without 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. I could not believe it. 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. might have found, in those census figures somewhere, a report that suggested 12 In 1983, as the Vietnam Veterans of America was gaining prominence, it was disclosed that one of its spokesman was a fake ex-POW. Their lies collectively cost the VA $1.4 million. 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. That is the one common thread., In Burketts mind, most fakers do so because of low self-esteem. 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. He had claimed he flew 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. While the charts do not specifically ask about incountry vets it does show the number grew by almost a million in ten years. Between March 1, 2008, and Feb. 25, 2009, the VA investigated 96 cases of stolen valor fraud, according to James ONeill, assistant inspector general for investigations. He eventually amended his senate The number of personnel serving in Vietnam year by year (No. magazine so that I have nothing on their sources. There can be problems, however. ', 'For years, Vietnam vets were portrayed as crazies. It doesn't seem to exist. But I know this didnt just occur starting with the modern wars. An archive compiled by a national prisoner-of-war. Web. Very few of those guys were real veterans, but it's automatic and it's photogenic. Very rare and usually done by people looking for high profile jobs. Cooley had claimed Korean War service with Army Special Forces. According to the American War Library, as of February 28, 2019, it is estimated that approximately 610,000 Americans who served in land forces during the Vietnam War or in air missions over Vietnam between 1954 and 1975 are still alive to this day. I did find a claim Starting on page 12 of this pdf in parts No. 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. Former Army Corporal Richard McClanahan, 29, cuts a dashing figure in his dress uniform and jaunty beret. All others should not be accepted to have served either on land or at sea in Vietnam. His words were recorded. ". 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. a note about sources. 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. 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. The second you tell people that you are a veteran, they look at you differently. The event will include displays related to the Vietnam War, a jump by the Golden Knights (Army parachuting team . "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. Posted by KRandle at 6:27 PM. By Elizabeth Becker . 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). But in a broader sense, DePaulo said, people lie for the same reasons, no matter what they claim to be. 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. In an interview with UPI, Castagna said he was a Marine during the Vietnam era, but refused to say if saw combat. 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. In 1995, Burkett helped an Oregon newspaper uncover Republican U.S. Rep. Wes Cooley's false claims of Army service in the Korean War. Khe Sanh was one of the war's bloodiest battles -- hundreds of Marines were killed -- but the only killing Yandle was intimately familiar with was the June 1972 slaying of 65-year-old shopkeeper Joseph Reppucci in a Boston liquor store. '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 years, before the Yandle campaign and during it, Burkett had been quietly doing research for a book on phony Vietnam veterans. REALITY: Cooley's Army records indicated no Korean service - he did not even finish training until after the war ended. Nobodys going to care.. And 97 percent of Vietnam veterans received honorable discharges, exactly the same rate for the military in the peaceful 10 years prior to the war. So it becomes what I think happened. So he found, in his own backyard, Glenna Whitley, a veteran journalist and senior editor at D, a monthly magazine about Dallas and Fort Worth. If you look at the sites and read the information carefully, you will see, as I noted, that some of the information is from ACTUAL Census reports, some from the DoD and some from Beaton's survey.So, you can continue to beat the dead Census reports horse if you so desire, but I believe we (you and I) have corrected the information, we have supplied the links to the web sites and identified the source of the 13 million figure.