August 2, 2009
In Ranks of Heroes, Finding the Fakes
By IAN URBINA
Last August, the Texas Department of Transportation started asking
applicants for more documentation after discovering that at least 11
of the 67 Legion of Merit license plates on the roads had been
issued to people who never earned the medal.
Last September, the House of Representatives passed a bill naming a
post office in Las Vegas after a World War II veteran who, it later
turned out, had lied when he claimed he had been awarded a Silver
Star. The legislation was rescinded.
In May, one of the most prominent veterans' advocates in Colorado
was detained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after it was
discovered that his story about heroic service in Iraq and severe
injuries from a roadside bomb was an elaborate hoax.
Military imposters are nothing new. But the problem has grown or at
least become more obvious as charlatans are easily able to find fake
military documents, medals and uniforms on auction Web sites.
At the same time, the Internet has also stepped up the cat-and-mouse
game, allowing watchdogs to uncover fraudulent claims much faster
and mobilize a more effective response.
"Public opinion of the military went up after the Sept. 11
attacks," said Thomas A. Cottone Jr., who from 1995 to 2007 ran
the F.B.I. unit that investigates cases of military service fraud,
"and as more people joined the military and were being
publicized winning medals, more phonies were getting ideas."
Mr. Cottone said that in 2007 he received about 40 to 50 tips per
week, roughly triple the number before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Nonetheless, verifying claims of military service and awards remains
difficult because no official and comprehensive database exists. The
problem has recently led to a number of embarrassing and potentially
costly blunders by organizations with much at stake in policing the
issue.
In April, The Associated Press found that the Department of Veterans
Affairs was paying disability benefits to 286 supposed prisoners of
war from the Persian Gulf war of 1991 and to 966 supposed prisoners
of the Vietnam War. But Defense Department records show that only 21
prisoners of war returned from the gulf war, and that fewer than 600
are alive from the Vietnam War.
Last month, The Marine Corps Times found 40 erroneous profiles in
this year's Marine Corps Association Directory, including false
claims of 16 Medals of Honor, 16 Navy Crosses and 8 Silver Stars.
In response, some members of Congress are calling for an
investigation of the veterans department. Katie Roberts, a
spokeswoman for Veterans Affairs, said the agency was working with
the Defense Department "to analyze and verify the accuracy of
the data."
"The department fully intends to complete this review by the
fall," Ms. Roberts said.
A pending bill also seeks to make verification easier by requiring
the Defense Department to create a national online database of all
medals and honors awarded.
Committing military fraud usually starts with the fabrication of a
false DD-214 form, a one-page summary that all service members
receive when they are discharged. The forms, which are used to prove
military service, list rank, training, awards and length of time in
the service.
No database of these documents exists, but a 2004 study by the
National Archives, which stores the paper records, concluded that
all of those forms issued since 1947 could be digitized at a cost of
$12 million, resulting in an annual savings of $4 million over the
cost of retrieving paper records.
In April, a Defense Department report said such a database would be
expensive and incomplete, since 18 million documents were destroyed
in a St. Louis warehouse fire in 1973. Advocates say that other
records can be used to substitute for the missing files.
For the time being, a spirited corps of volunteer debunkers, many of
them veterans connected by the Internet, comb small newspapers
searching for poseurs, file Freedom of Information requests for
military files, and field requests for research help from employers,
biographers and obituary writers.
"This kind of fraud matters," said Doug Sterner, a
decorated former Army sergeant, "because it cheapens the valor
of service, warps the historical record and scams taxpayers of
millions of dollars in veterans' benefits."
Over the past decade, Mr. Sterner has built an online database of
120,000 valor-medal recipients going back to the Civil War.
Special Agent Mike Sanborn, who since 2007 has led the unit in the
F.B.I.'s Washington office that handles stolen valor cases, said
that while the bureau did not keep statistics on the crime, the
biggest increase came after 2006 with the passage of the Stolen
Valor Act, which made it a federal crime to falsely claim, verbally
or in writing, that a person had been awarded a medal. Previously,
the law only prohibited wearing a medal that a person did not earn.
Some First Amendment scholars worry that laws regulating the use of
symbols are similar to those against flag burning, which the Supreme
Court has said are unconstitutional limitations on free speech.
Others have also questioned whether overzealous activists risk
slanderously and erroneously accusing people of fraud because of
missing or misprinted military documents.
"Before we make any accusation, we check historical and
military records, as well as tracking down former service
members," said Mary Schantag, who runs the P.O.W. Network in
Skidmore, Mo., a nonprofit group that investigates claims to
military honors and prisoner status.
Ms. Schantag, who is married to a veteran, said she had seen fraud
complaints grow to more than 12,800 in 2008 from 22 when the group
first went online in 1998.
Because prisoners of war and military medal winners have performed a
service to society with their bravery and in some cases have endured
humiliating forced marches, torture or other trauma that may haunt
them for years, the government extends them special benefits, from
free parking and tax breaks to priority in medical treatment.
Having been awarded a medal or classified as a prisoner of war does
not directly increase a veteran's monthly disability check. But
tales of physical or psychological suffering can influence whether a
veteran receives some money or nothing at all in disability
payments, veterans' advocates say.
Ms. Schantag said she had seen cases in which civilians lied for
self-aggrandizement or money and veterans embellished their records
to win the trust of loan officers, earn leniency in criminal
sentencing or defer child-care payments.
Robert W. Levy, a former mayor of Atlantic City, resigned in 2007
after it was revealed that he lied about being a Green Beret and
having been awarded combat infantryman and parachutist badges.
A decorated veteran who spent 20 years in the Army, including two
tours of duty in Vietnam, Mr. Levy said in an interview that he did
work with the Green Berets during the war, but that over time after
he came home the experience led him to start making claims that he
had been a member of the unit.
"It was wrong, and I should have corrected it ages ago,"
he said. "I ruined my life with those claims."
