EXPOSING MILITARY PHONIES

Ever heard of Richard Armitage?  Assistant Secretary of Defense for President Ronald Reagan.  Deputy Secretary of State for President George W. Bush.  An impressive résumé as long as your arm.  Why would such a man lie about being a Navy SEAL?

SEAL is an acronym for SEa, Air, and Land for the comprehensive training required to be a member of the most elite special operations force in the US military.  It was my great privilege to serve my country as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam, and ultimately to be the Commandant of the Naval Special Warfare Training Center in Coronado, California, where graduates of the BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) course earn the right to be a SEAL.

Some years ago after my retirement from the Navy, I found myself introduced to a US Army lieutenant general (since deceased) who commented that he had once worked with a former SEAL officer.  When I asked who it was, he replied, "Dick Armitage."  I casually remarked that Armitage had sometimes identified himself as a SEAL but that he had not been a member of the SEAL teams.

The general objected to my comments, and I thereupon, perhaps unwisely, mentioned some first-hand information I had to prove my point.  At that juncture, the general loudly proclaimed, "Dick Armitage is the most honorable man I have ever met, and if he says he was a SEAL, then he was a SEAL."

I had heard Armitage’s claim before and knew it was false, because I had researched the student personnel files at the Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado, and there was no record of an Armitage ever having been enrolled in BUD/S (much less graduated).

I knew it was no use to argue with a three-star, but the episode got me to thinking – how many others are there who lie about their being a SEAL?  I decided to look into it, and got a number of retired SEALs to help me.  What we discovered astounded us.

There are some 8,000 living SEALs today – and we include in that list pre-Vietnam UDT "Frogmen" going all the way back to World War II.  Our little group has exposed over 30,000 phony SEALs or "frogs" – and we have just scratched the surface.

The number of "SEAL-thieves" – men who have stolen the valor and sacrifice of real SEALs and pretended it was theirs – is staggering.

Believe it to not, we ran across one guy who claimed he was me.  We got an inquiry from his girlfriend who was suspicious – especially after he claimed he won the CMH (Congressional Medal of Honor).  We informed her of the truth on both counts, and she dropped him like a hot tamale.

SEAL-thieves range from the down-and-out to the upper reaches of society, including one who was being hired to be CEO of a Fortune 1000 company in San Francisco.  A wary board member knew highly decorated SEAL Frank Thornton, who asked me to confirm the guy’s status.

At that very moment the phony was in the air headed from the East Coast to San Francisco for what was to be the final interview by the board of directors, so expediency was the order of the day.  I contacted a lady who had worked for me in the Student Control section of BUD/S and asked her to see if he had, in fact, been a student there.  An exhaustive search proved negative, and I passed that information to Frank, who thereupon notified the suspicious board member of the situation.

As things developed on the day of the interview, the candidate rode the elevator to the top floor of a very tall building in San Francisco, where he encountered a delegation of directors.  They informed him that his claim to have been a SEAL officer had been disproved and that he should re-board the elevator and return whence he came. 

The irony of that story is that the putative CEO had not helped himself by claiming to have been a SEAL.  Had he not made the claim, he would be overlooking San Francisco Bay from the loftiest of perches.

Why, you might ask, would otherwise reasonable men make a claim that can be easily disproven?  I have asked myself the same question a thousand times, and I can never provide an adequate answer.  The best I can come up with is that each of us has a vacuum in our souls that must be filled, and some people have to fabricate the filler. 

Dick Armitage had enough of this spiritual filler to satisfy a dozen souls, but he still had the need to squeeze in that extra bit to satisfy some need within his own.  Perhaps my fellow TTPers can explain why.

In the meantime, our program of exposing SEAL-thieves has caught the attention of Hollywood.  It seems that certain Hollywood heavy-hitters think a reality TV series exposing phony military heroes could be a real hit. 

It would also be a real public service.  We must not allow phonies with an emptiness in their souls to steal the valor of those who have earned it.

USN Capt. Larry Bailey retired from the U.S. Navy in 1990 after a 27-year career as a SEAL officer.  His website is cyberseals.org.