As it turned out, my guy wasnt on the list. the giveaway as to their agenda because, as a Vietnam Vet I know that most of Point prevalence of PTSD for Vietnam veterans was 9% in the 1980s and for OIF/OEF veterans was 8% (Richardson, Acierno, Frueh, 2010). 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. 02 Up to 2 million civilians died in the war. is in agreement that there were only , 1,713,823 ". Poor or nonexistent record keeping makes such fakery difficult to track much further back in history. Without '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. Further, if you bothered to read Beatons statistics, as at this webite below, said to be written by Beaton and Cpt. By this census, FOUR 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. ", 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. I got wounded many times by the same guy. 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. Who knows? He said he was a decorated ex-Air Force fighter pilot and former prisoner of war in Vietnam who couldn't get a job. 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 that some 1,500 were frauds on either a large or a small scale. None were real. 'A lot of them are groupies. 05 The total casualties of the war number over 1 million. Here Id called him on his lie, and he had the gumptionthe beliefthe desire to somehow lie again, as if by lying many mines, the lie would turn true. An Oregon newspaper learned that Cooley hadnt finished training until nearly a month after the signing of the 1953 armistice. confusing and contradictory, but I think they were referring first to the 1995 Burkett was able to prove that Yandle had never been in combat. Researching the book made her spend time, she said, "with the real citations -- learning about a man who received the Distinguished Service Cross at the cost of his life, and finding out that some phony had modeled his citation on that one. I myself have met over a hundred "Navy Seals". State Vietnam Veterans Vietnam Veterans (per 100k) Utah 42,774 1,272 How [] Never in combat, a Marine Times photograph depicts McClanahan spangled with three Silver Stars, two Purples Hearts, and the Legion of Merit. Scam artists will try anything, sad to say. That came from everybody. 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). You know, you could get yourself a sword and say, Hey, Im home from starving in the Mideast with the Crusaders.. The Pentagon has no definitive list on who was a POW or even an estimate on how many Americans were in combat. Stolen Valor. These 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. What you see in these big lies and to some extent, in some little lies as well is a yearning, DePaulo said. David -You said, "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. It was Saturday night as the newspaper prepared my D-Day story for the Sunday edition. I did not look at those sites that required registration, a fee or Thailand, Guam and in the deep water Navy, and some statistics on those But in a broader sense, DePaulo said, people lie for the same reasons, no matter what they claim to be. 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. So it becomes After the show aired, several Iraq veterans wrote to the Guardian of Valor. Im a retired Marine of 25 years, Alvarez told the attendees. He also claimed the Medal of Honor. According to federal law, the United States' military involvement in the Vietnam War began in February 1961 and lasted until May 1975. 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. I think I have finally unraveled the great Vietnam Veteran impostors statistics. This is 569).No. "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. Back in 1987, I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. I believe we can put all this behind us and return to UFOs, treasure hunting, and other areas of strangeness that interests us. For a very long time I couldn't summon up the courage to stop it. 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. Its all done for personal gain, he said. 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. I have found a legitimate source for the large number of imposters which was based on an actual survey so the only error is suggesting the number came from a census, though I have still not found good figures for the 1995 interim census. Someone says, Hey, Joe, youre of the age for Vietnam. The Additionally, the American War Library approximated that around 164,000 Americans who served at . To subscribe, click here. He had served time in Georgia for auto theft. Moskos, now 65, comes from a 1950s generation of young men to whom military service was a given. A total of 9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the Vietnam era, with over 2,709,000 Americans serving in Vietnam, about 9.7% of the generation.Vietnam Veterans by State 2022. Vets, which claimed that 90% never saw combat and most were anti-war. Accounts vary as to how Daubmanns lies unraveled, but five months after his glorious return, he admitted hed never served in the German army. Thats not true. 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. Some records burned; those that survived give no hint that he ever left the United States. But the real truth is that nearly everyone was exposed to indirect fire, ground attacks at base camps, and other elements of combat based on the nature of the war. Someone Foreign Wars (VFW) magazine and from the Reserve Officers Association magazine which I am astonished at the number of people who claim to be Vietnam Vets who aren't. "I lied about serving in Vietnam and I'm sorry," he told Globe magazine this year. ALL STATISTICSHAVE NOT BEEN VERIFIEDOR FACT There is no question that there are a large number of them including women who talk about their combat roles and even how they had been POWs. ", Finally, after years of scrambling for money, Burkett's group got their memorial. Military fakery is hardly limited to the down-and-out, however. A couple of weeks before June 6, 1994, I was at my desk when the phone rang. He talks too much.'. "I said no such thing. It doesn't seem to exist. When his unit came home and started gearing up. The suspicion, however, is that it has probably been around as long as people have been on the planet. 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. veterans of which according to other sources, about 2.7 actually served in 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 . Overall, about 3.5 million Americans served in Southeast Asia during the war. There they can find independent confirmation of my service as a helicopter pilot and aircraft commander.The other thing is that if you ask the impostor for names of places, unit designations, or other information, they are often hard pressed to come up with any sort of intelligent answer. I explained that given the way some of this was explained on the various sites was somewhat misleading and I was mislead, but you have nothing to prove that it is wrong other than your own beliefs. Steph Curry killed off the Kings with a smile, On an island of resorts, this Hawaii hotel is the budget option, Des Linden unveils new book, shares race day must-haves, Why every Californian needs an air quality monitor, Things to do in Napa Valley during Bottlerock, plus hotels, Your Privacy Choices (Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads). No, he said, but a former Ranger up in New York did. More than 8 million people served in uniform during Vietnam and those who are alive are typically in their 60s and 70s. 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'm not going to say we don't care. It's not as widespread as it was the first 10-30 years immediately after the war,its still out there. 'We're becoming more and more aware of it (fake combat vets) and more and more wary of it,' said Mary Stout, national secretary of the 35,000-member, 235-chapter VVA. It was a sweet assignment right up my writing alley: A narrative about the D-Day invasion to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Allied attack that marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany. Robert Bateman, who teaches military history at West Point. Williams was said to be 117 years old at his death in 1959 in Houston, Texas. They werent. 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. $174k/yr for a new Daytona in a month. 'Some are desperate. 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. 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. How many fake Vietnam veterans are there? 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. in the census documents is a number for those falsely claiming Vietnam service. whole record for the breakdown of the numbers. the extreme figures on phonies claiming service in Vietnam (in-country in the Well-known actor Brian Dennehy often shared stories of his service with the Marines in Vietnam. 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. But other men (and women) I've run into over the past 4 decades, thousands of them, have mentioned nothing about being Vietnam vets. 76% of the men sent to Vietnam were from lower middle/working class backgrounds. "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. 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. A casual mention of military service. 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. The universal attitude was, 'Why should we give money for these bums?' The 1990 census shows 7,646,908 claim to be Vietnam era vets. http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1395584&mpage=1&key=�. As for the issue of phony vets: 'Those people have a mental problem. In truth, though, he only was a tail gunner in training. The Schantags discovered that 24 of those were false entries. You can read about this here:http://www.war-stories.com/research-hanson-historical-reflections-2000.htmWhat this does demonstrate is that a minority of men and women who were in the military during the Vietnam era were actually deployed into the combat arena. Before it was revealed, in 2001, that he spent the war teaching history at West Point, for example, Joseph Ellis was known to lecture his students at Mount Holyoke about his experiences in the vicinity of My Lai at the time of the massacre. There are literally millions of them.You can reject, out of hand, the 13 million figure and the military web sites that use it, but I have traced it to its point of origin which was a survey conducted by The Vietnam Veterans Fund and by Captain Scott Beaton so that we have a good source on it. Frank Kaufmann provided his discharged documents which we accepted as authentic but later learned that he had forged them. They want to be around real vets,' said Martin. Very few of those guys were real veterans, but it's automatic and it's photogenic. But I know this didnt just occur starting with the modern wars. The second you tell people that you are a veteran, they look at you differently. I doubt there are 10 million of them, but it appears to me there are a lot of fakes. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. Projections also indicate that the veteran population will become slightly younger, with 33% of veterans being younger than 50 in 2046 compared with 27% in 2021, even as the overall U.S. population continues to age. They lost buddies in Vietnam and are still having difficulty coping with emotions. awards and decorations they did not earn. 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. Im not sure why this has become such an issue here but I Approximately 2.7 million American men and women served in Vietnam. '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.'. used seem to have been gleaned from this 1995 census and it seems that everyone I dont understand your holding onto your point of view with such tenacity. Cooley was forced from office in 1996 and was later convicted of a felony for lying in Oregon's voters' pamphlet. 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/. 19 Million Viewers Watched His Story Start To Finish (David Hoffman) How many soldiers died on their first day in Vietnam? I said that this provided an insight into those who claimed inside knowledge of Roswell. And? 'It tears you up inside to see this sort of thing.'. A military impostor is a person who makes false claims about their military service in civilian life. 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." In 2019, approximately 3.4 million Vietnam War Veterans were enrolled for Veterans Health Administration services (12). By Elizabeth Becker . He brought out a shadow box filled with decorations and a folded flag; his kids had made it for him, he said. Blumenthal made a handful of false and misleading statements about having . U.S. 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. He hadn't been trained in intelligence and he hadn't been a master sergeant. The figures for those who served in the Vietnam era were 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. During that same Census SF tourists go in droves to In-N-Out. But mistakes have been made. Don Shipley at his SEALs website All others should not be accepted to have served either on land or at sea in Vietnam. I never saw it, but returning friends told me about it.All this to say, for me, its weird. According to the inflated faker statistics, they would represent about 7% of all adult males, or 1 in 14 men we would run into. have been able to find reliable statistics on the number of men and women who You took part in one of the greatest assaults in U.S. military history?. Perhaps the idea that the lie about military service ultimately becomes a truth in the phony veterans mind explains what happened with my aspiring D-Day Ranger about two weeks after Id caught him lying. Like the nonexistent Census data of 10 million fakers, this seems to be all totally made up by Shipley to push his own agenda. 'One observation made in a number of cases is that the individual who is posing as a vet, in fact, does have conflicts about Vietnam war, which are being expressed in this indirect and disguised fashion,' Blank said. 'In Vietnam, it just took longer to emerge.'. much of this other than there were 2.7 million service members who were REALITY: Cooley's Army records indicated no Korean service - he did not even finish training until after the war ended. In this country, fakers did proliferate following the Vietnam War, according to Burkett. combat air patrols over Vietnam but all he had done was fly repaired or new In 2003, he addressed a rally in Bridgeport, where about 100 military. ), It seems, (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.). 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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. There are no firm estimates on the number of fake combat vets. 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. count, though I have not found any record of this in the census figures I By fits and starts, Burkett learned how to investigate. some study that ran parallel to the census. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and many other Federal agencies and private I did find a claim In 1995, Burkett helped an Oregon newspaper uncover Republican U.S. Rep. Wes Cooley's false claims of Army service in the Korean War. Census is not something that I was able to do. Although it was said that no reputable site had posted 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. 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. Here are some notable tales, along with the less glamorous versions found by Burkett: REALITY: He spent the war behind a desk as an intelligence officer, was "wounded" when he got drunk at a party, fell down a ladder and broke his leg. After one local vagrant killed a policeman, the next days headline read, VIETNAM VETERAN GOES BERSERK. 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 called my alleged Ranger back, said I wanted to clear up the unit name and asked him twice to repeat it. 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. His story was detailed, yet he under played his role. His was the classic story, embraced and portrayed by the media in endless permutations until it became the stuff of legend. Dennehy did play football for a Corps team on Okinawa, Burkett reported. That in no way suggests dismissing most Roswell witnesses. 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. He apparently fabricated documents claiming hed been awarded the Medal of Honor during his Vietnam War service. Most imposters have no real military knowledge, so they make silly mistakes like wearing an Army patch on the left pocket and a Navy edge on the left sleeve. People are impressed. claiming to have served in-country is: 13,853,027. And you think, Oh, no ones ever going to catch me. '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. 1991: Established that, in Vietnam Veterans, there does not appear to be a causal relation between homelessness and military service, including exposure to combat; . Records showed the actor had spent his 1959-63 stint as a peacetime Marine, playing football for the Corps on Okinawa. I could not believe it. OUT OF FIVE WHO CLAIM TO BE Vietnam vets are not. (Yes, this is somewhat I had something I wanted to say, but I can't continue being the enforcer of this thing around the nation. 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. All societies in history have revered the warrior, he said. 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. For further reading, William McMichael recommends: Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History, by B.G. 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. Now, extrapolate that across the nation, and imagine the millions of dollars that this runs into.. does not seem to be accurate and my review of the census doesnt bear this out. 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. Prompted by the support of the Vietnam Veterans of America, Weld recommended Yandle's release, and in October 1995, after 23 years behind bars, Yandle walked free. of those who served in Vietnam were still alive as of August, 1995 (census 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. I then told him what Id learned and asked, Did you lie to me?, In a voice that suddenly sounded creaky and 10 years older yet sort of childlike, as though fearing a reprimand he replied, slowly, Yes.. 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. has said that for every real SEAL he identifies, there are a thousand who were think I have been able to deduce what has happened. DePaulo says its not surprising a person already held in high esteem would choose to fabricate a military background. VA facilities and vet groups check perspective patients and members to determine if they are who they claim to be. This has become pointless and I just dont any more time to devote to it. what was claimed in that article is false but there was no warning about the I am an in-country Vietnam vet. that in the 2000 census the number had jumped to 14 million, but again, this The work led to 48 arrests, the VA recovered $562,888, and authorities levied $1.23 million in fines. I'm interested in real vets who have their own problems.'. "They give me a blank look.". Published Sep 24, 2018. Well, to cite my own anecdotal experience, I have run into many people claiming to be Vietnam vets. REALITY: He was a Marine football player in Okinawa. Vietnam Veterans represent the largest cohort of American Veterans in . He was telling the truth about prison, it turned out; but hed done time for burglary, not as a POW. recorded by the census in 1990 and 2000. address this in a comment rather than a new post so not to annoy those of you Nobodys going to care.. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa was caught up in this. 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. The VA shows on their site https://www.va.gov/opa/publications/factsheets/fs_americas_wars.pdf That only 3,403,000 served incountry in Vietnam, and that a total of 8,744,000 served in that era world wide. I did (it) when I was young and stupid - to impress people.". Any number of personality flaws might drive someone to fabricate a military background, no matter what their station in life. Daubmanns tale of escape from the colonial hellhole prompted the German government to treat him as a national hero. 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. I was thinking, Theres something wrong here.. I think you can find fakers very far back, said Bella DePaulo, a visiting professor of social psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies the communication of deception. this seems to be correct, I cant find anything in the census figures to 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.
how many fake vietnam veterans are there
