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Navy says Williams not a SEAL
By EUGENE L. TINKLEPAUGH, Staff Writer
Navy officials have confirmed that former
Aurora police Chief Stephen Williams was not a Navy SEAL.
“We have no records that indicate he has
graduated from the SEAL training program,” said Lt. Brian Ko,
public affairs officer at the Naval Special Warfare Center, in a
phone interview Monday. “According to our records, this guy is
not a Navy SEAL.”
Williams has claimed that he served with the
elite organization in the early 1970s.
Reached for comment, Williams said he
wouldn’t respond to the Navy’s official statement “until I
read my paper tomorrow. I have no comment right now,” he
added.
The Naval Special Warfare Center at Naval
Amphibious Base Coronado, San Diego, Calif., is the training hub
for all students seeking to enlist as a SEAL, Ko said.
“Our data processing folks looked it up,”
Ko continued. “They have records of every student who has ever
graduated from SEAL training.”
Navy human resource specialist Audrey Cowen, a
student control officer at Coronado, said, “There was no
record of him ever being at this command for training.”
All students training to become SEALs must
graduate from basic underwater demolition and SEAL — or bud/s
— training.
“He did not graduate from here, not under
that name,” Cowen said.
Student control keeps a database of all bud/s
training graduates.
“We would have records verifying whether he
came through here or not,” Ko said. “To be a Navy SEAL, you
have to pass through the doors of the Naval Special Warfares
Center.”
According to Ko, the quickest and most
accurate way to tell if someone is a SEAL is to ask what class
the person was in.
“Everyone that’s a SEAL knows their class
number,” said Master Chief Petty Officer Joe Goward, a former
SEAL. “It’s our connection to our community. That
authenticates who you really are.”
Williams declined to give his class number to
the Daily News.
During an Aurora Richland Township Concerned
Citizens meeting, however, Williams told Commissioner Jeff Peed
that he was in class 71.
Williams later said he “made up a number”
because he was getting frustrated with the allegations Peed was
lobbing at him. Williams has bristled at Peed’s investigation
into his military background, which apparently began after the
former chief was removed from office.
“I’m not going to tell him my class number
because I shouldn’t have to prove anything to him,” Williams
said. “I’m no longer a town employee.”
Williams’ name was also run through
databases of two independent, Internet-based organizations.
Though neither organization is endorsed by the
Navy or the federal government, both are “legitimate Web
sites,” Ko said.
The sole mission of VeriSEAL and AuthentiSEAL
is to investigate and expose SEAL impostors.
“We don’t pass information on to them,”
Cowen said. “It’s a private thing on their own, but they are
reliable.”
Both companies released statements reporting
that Williams’ name does not appear in their respective
databases.
Gregory Platt, a former AuthentiSEAL
investigator and a former Navy SEAL, said he has exposed more
than 5,000 frauds without error.
The database used, he said, is “classified,
to keep it pure” and dates back to the World War II era.
Not all SEALs are in the database, Platt
confirmed, but the names of SEALs that have slipped through the
cracks in the system are those of individuals who went through
the program at its inception during the second World War.
“But from Vietnam on, we know them all,”
Platt said.
“Even though Williams is a quite common
name, it’s easy to look up and say, ‘No, he’s not a
SEAL,’” Platt continued.
To date, there have been only about 10,440
SEALs, he pointed out. “So, it’s a relatively small
organization,” he said.
Platt received the first request for
verification on Williams July 11, 2005, he indicated. The
request was made by Peed, Platt confirmed.
Those results returned the same findings as a
later request by Peed. In October, Peed again requested the
information and provided the class number Williams cited at the
ARCC meeting.
“That makes it even easier,” Platt
related, “because then all I have to do is look up the class
number, and I can see who was in the class; and he was not in
class 71, either.”
Platt said he has never met a SEAL who would
not divulge his class number.
“First of all, it’s not classified; it’s
something you shout from the mountaintops. That’s something
you’re proud of,” Platt said. “There’s no way a real
SEAL would not tell you his class number for any reason.”
Rumors that Williams’ claims were false
began bubbling to the surface in recent months, after a
town-initiated State Bureau of Investigation probe. The
investigation found Williams had violated town policies, but his
actions fell short of being criminal.
Williams was being investigated for allegedly
misappropriating town equipment. The state probe was launched
after Williams’ removal from office during a special town
board meeting in May. The investigation was unrelated to his
dismissal.
Since Williams’ firing, many residents loyal
to him have campaigned to put him back in office.
Out of that called meeting in May, when a
majority vote ousted the popular top cop, the Aurora Richland
Township Concerned Citizens formed and soon became a political
force in the area.
ARCC has endorsed three candidates in this
year’s municipal elections. All three have said, if elected,
they would push for the immediate reinstatement of the former
chief.
Peed, who is also running for mayor, said he
received an anonymous tip that Williams’ claim was fraudulent
in July.
The reason, Peed said, he began investigating
Williams’ military record is that “the people of this town
deserve to know the truth.”
“He’s divided this town and lied to these
people long enough,” Peed said. “There are too many good
people trying to improve this town.”
Peed serves as the town’s police
commissioner and suspended Williams without pay in May while the
town looked into allegations that the chief had misappropriated
funds.
Three days later, Peed made the motion to fire
Williams, which passed 3-1.
Reportedly, the crux of the matter was a
missing check.
In this year’s audit, the town auditor had
to note a finding of noncompliance with state law.
According to the audit report, state law
requires that the finance officer receive and deposit all moneys
accruing to the local government.
The Aurora Police Department received a $1,000
donation from PCS Phosphate to conduct a planned spring safety
clinic.
The $1,000 check was sent to Town Hall. Sandra
Sartin, town clerk and finance officer, put the check in
Williams’ box. Williams cashed the check made out to the
police department and converted it to a cashier’s check made
out to Wal-Mart.
The town finance officer is the only town
employee authorized to distribute funds and cash checks made out
to any department in town government, according to state
statutes.
Members of the ARCC considered termination too
drastic an action for the offense.
Town officials have claimed that was not the
only issue that decided Williams’ fate.
Because it is a personnel matter, officials
have remained tight-lipped on their reasoning, offering
“If-you-only-knew-the-whole-story” responses to residents’
questions.
Williams’ military record and Peed’s
inquiries about it emerged as campaign issues at October’s
ARCC meeting, where Williams’ wife, Debbie, asked the
commissioner about charges that he and other town officials were
probing the former chief’s military records.
“I had heard the rumor (that Williams
wasn’t a SEAL); everybody has now,” Peed said, recalling his
comments from the meeting.
Peed recalled openly questioning why the
former chief’s discharge papers did not indicate he was a Navy
SEAL.
Williams then produced a DD-214 different from
the one Town Hall had in his personnel file. A DD-214 is a
discharge document.
The Navy veteran has two discharge papers, one
from when he was discharged from active duty and another dating
to his reactivation to serve during Operation Desert
Shield/Desert Storm.
Town Hall had Williams’ most recent DD-214.
Discharge papers are not cumulative, according
to Navy officials. The Navy would not recreate Williams’
original DD-214 when creating a later one. Nor would it combine
the two.
Williams showed a copy of his first DD-214 to
the Daily News. It has bud/s training on it, as well as a
reference to the Navy SEALs.
Ko said that form “does not tell you whether
you’re a SEAL or not.”
“All a DD-214 says is he was scheduled for
bud/s training. That doesn’t mean he showed up or completed
it,” Ko continued.
Navy officials conceded it is possible to
forge a DD-214, but more than likely the clerk creating the
document didn’t verify Williams’ qualifications.
“I stand by my military record. I stand by
my DD-214,” Williams told the Daily News Monday in a phone
call he made after declining to comment.
The Navy Bureau of Personnel can get the
document authenticated, a Navy official said.
Last week, the Daily News requested that
Williams release his military records for authentication.
Williams told the paper Thursday that he had
faxed to the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis,
Mo., the Standard Form-180 — a form used to obtain military
records protected under the Privacy Act of 1974.
According to its Web site, the NPRC Military
Records Facility currently has a backlog of 65,000 requests and
receives approximately 4,000 requests per day. The average
response time on all requests is about four and a half weeks,
the Web site indicates.
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