Posted on 11/11/2006 6:09:04 AM PST by mware
ATLANTIC CITY — Mayor Bob Levy has knowingly misrepresented his military record to family, friends, reporters and the public for decades.
As an Atlantic City lifeguard and as a candidate for mayor last year, Levy claimed he had served during the Vietnam War with the U.S. Army’s elite Special Forces, more familiarly known as the Green Berets. In campaign literature distributed last year, he claimed he had won medals as a Green Beret.
None of that was true.
Levy — who has an otherwise distinguished military service record — was never a member of the Army’s Green Berets, he told The Press this week
(Excerpt) Read more at pressofatlanticcity.com ...
Jesus H. Christ. Fred Sams was outed in the nineties. He's STILL making SF claims...???
Yep, he is. This page has several stories on SAMS, including a 2006 bio claiming that he was "Special Forces Trained." He did a Special Forces CORRESPONDENCE course but never showed up for the actual training bit, apparently (the correspondence training was long ago eliminated, exactly because of frauds like Sams -- and Levy, the same kind of scumbag).
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/sams_fred_275389341.aspx
I notice that Sams also claims to be a 6th Degree Black Belt in some martial art, and claims a small pile of college degrees. I'd bet my own (authentic) I-Love-Me-Wall that those claims are bogus too. There seems to be a strong correlation between bogus martial arts claims and bogus special ops claims. Very, very few guys in SF master any Oriental martial art. One in a thousand? They have the discipline but seldom the time. And compared to skydiving (1 in 100), mountain or rock climbing (about the same), or getting a pilot's license (1 in 500), it wasn't ever that big an activity.
Nuts. I'm gonna start saying I'm a cook. These guys are everywhere. They should be given to the Marines in Anbar Province to use as sandbags on their HMMWVs. Or to the Afghan National Army to feed the guard dogs.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I guess I missed "Speed Addiction." I notice that he's banned.
Hey, the recruiters are always looking for 18X candidates. If anybody is interested in the Army National Guard SF units, I can steer 'em to a local contact (well, within a few states. Clinton and Les Aspin trashed a lot of SF units).
If somebody wants to tell war stories, we can arrange that. He just has to spend a year or two training. The war's not going anywhere.
Of course, over 40 Special Forces soldiers have lost their lives so far, I'm told. Not counting our bro's from the other special operations elements. So if a guy's the sort of pissant who wants to boast about what a hero he is, or be Mayor of Atlantic City some day, he just might not be up to it.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Yep, he's been banned since late June. He talked big until it caught up with him, but that's what happens when you stretch the truth. I will have to decline on the SF offer because of my personal health though, sorry.
http://www.vva.org/TheVeteran/2003_01/wannabe.htm
The VVA was a latecomer to the project, you might say. Because it grew out of the VVAW, the VVA was and is chockablock with phonies. The POW Network has a whole page of just VVA phonies, including national officers.
At one time, the VVA directory listed dozens of DSC, Navy Cross and Air Force Cross, etc., awardees -- almost all phonies. I think ALL the AFC "heroes" in the VVA were bogus. They were very, very reluctant to clean house and I don't think they ever did.
Best orgs I have seen are the Special Ops Association and the Combat Infantry Association, in terms of checking your stuff. Special Forces Association has let a few squirters in over the years, but unlike VVA it has no mercy when they are exposed -- and they always are exposed.
If any wannabees are listening: you can run, but you can't hide. Time to come clean and face the music like a man. For the first time, you weasel.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I do know a man who recived his SF qual roughly as you described. Just like there once was a correspondence course which formed part of a path to SF qualification for reserve component soldiers, there are some SF soldiers who were awarded the SF designation without attending SF school, unlike Navy UDT/SEAL sailors who ALL went to a course.
Soldiers who OJT'd in specific ways included: 1. Soldiers in the earliest days of SF before there WAS a course; 2. Soldiers who volunteered for a tour in SOG after a first tour in non-SF recon units, such as LRRP/Ranger elements. 3. There may have been others, as, at some times in the past, commanders at the Colonel (O-6) level had authority to grant (as they still have authority to YANK) SF Qualification status.
However, once this qualification is granted it is invariably noted in the serviceman's records. No other school suffices. Any OJT that was real, resulted in orders granting Skill Qualification Indicator "S" or Prefix "3" or various other indicators that have been used on the records over the years. The soldier's file would contain both an indication that the SQI (prefix, etc) had been granted, and a copy of the orders.
Any OJT producing an SF Qualification would be while assigned to an SF unit. A set of records that do not show any assignment to a Special Forces unit are ipso facto not records of an SF soldier -- ever.
The soldier's DD214 (discharge papers) also indicates his SF Qualification. I am unaware of any exceptions since SF was established in 1952.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I learned a lot from you and DJ Taylor, I'm so rarely this much in the dark about a military subject.
Maybe you guys can help me with one more thing, when I was in the army during the Vietnam war, my memory is that OCS required a GT(?) of 110, but that Special Forces at the time required a 115.
Is my memory good on that?
This scumbag Levy belongs in jail.
Of course, so does Senator Tom Harkin.
I thought it was 105 and 110, with SF the higher. That changed in the nineties. The Clinton DOD did a big study, by a panel headed by recently retired GEN Colin Powell, about "minority underrepresentation" in special operations forces. I have a pile of documents on that study (mostly .pdfs) somewhere.
The study concluded that the two biggest obstacles were the GT score requirement (which is essentially an IQ test) and the swim test. For both physical and cultural reasons, some minorities are less likely to be strong swimmers than whites or east-asians.
The Clintonistas wanted to eliminate the standards and require a quota... you know, if 20% of the military is black, 20% of each graduating SF and BUDS (etc) class must be black. All the way down to eskimo and Samoan quotas. Saner heads prevailed and the final result for SF was, GT score lowered to 100, and swim test still taken, but no consequences for failure.
The results? Nil. Under the lower standards more minorities were accepted, but GT score is strongly correlated with SFQC completion, to a point. (Apparently you can get so smart that you say, "**** this!" -- and apparently I'm not that smart). As a result, almost all the candidates who scored between 100 and 110 did not complete SFAS or SFQC. I believe we netted two more grads over the first year, and they weren't blacks who had been excluded, they were dumb (but very stubborn) whites.
At one time there were many more black NCOs and officers in SF, back in the 1960s. But there were very few decent opportunities for a bright young black man in 1962; none that could compare to the fair shake he'd get from the military. Paradoxically, increased opportunities for, and fairness to, minority Americans in general, has resulted in fewer of them in some military elites than there were when society discriminated cruelly against them.
After basic and advanced infantry training at Fort Dix, N.J., he went to Fort Benning, Ga. for basic airborne training in October 1964.
The reference to Levy as a "leg" may have been misplaced since it seems that he attended jump school. That does not mean he graduated.
He "may" have served with SF but that doesn't mean he had more than a support role.
but I do know that PTSD is absolutely for real.
If Levy misled people about his SF status, what is to stop him from misleading people about his mental status?
As for your comments:"Some of us are extremely proud of being legs" and"I've jumped out of plenty of planes and been to worse places than jump school.", which is it? Are you Airborne qualified?
Former 18D/18C
I'm pretty sure my memory is accurate on this, they pulled me into the OCS thing, until I realized I was only in the army for fun, not a career.
The SF 115, I believe that is accurate as well.
The San Diego Union did a three part , front page series on special operations, in the last 4 years.
Blacks are about 1.5% to 2.0% of Special Operations, from the Air Force to the Army, Navy Seals etc.
Map reading is also an obstacle.
And yes the article revealed, or admitted, that the army (including Special Ops) does affirmative action based on race.
De Oppresso Liber
Yeah, IMO there is.
In my example some guy is whispering meaningless northing's, a glorified pick up line, this Mayor ginned his resume to get elected.
And back in that early to mid eighties I can't even recall the guys I overheard (by sitting next to) softly say to some woman they were in the 101st, a SEAL or in the SF.
We have a loooong time family friend (he's almost like my wife's cousin) who was career Army (+/-30 yrs). He spent about 17 years of those years in the SF. First with the 5th Group then the 10th. Now he actually IS a Mayor now of a town in VA. I wonder if he'd like to meet mr Levy?
Sorry. A liar is still a liar. A slime still a slime.
Are you Airborne qualified or just someone with a machiavellian attitude?
As far as being "whacked", it'll take a lot more than you have.....LEG. Go run for a political office. I hear the Dems are gearing up for '08.
Dang, I would have to either dig in my attic for that information or remember all the way back early 1963, but I believe you remember correctly. Not only did Special Forces require a higher GT score than did OCS, but SF also required an ALAT score of at least 118. The ALAT test measured a soldier's ability to learn a foreign language; because back then, all SF troops were required to learn at least one foreign language.
The first training an SF entrant attended at Special Forces Training Group was MOI (Methods of Instruction). If the soldier failed the course, he was out. At the time, SF troops' primary mission was to teach their soldiering skills to foreign soldiers, and then lead them in combat.
SF had a number of requirements back then and many of them were either lowered or eliminated during the height of the Vietnam War. One requirement we didn't have, and should have, was the swim test. Entrants were simply asked on a form, and then they signed, "Can you swim?" It was when we started losing troops to drowning in the canals of IV Corps that we saw the need to check and make sure a soldier could actually swim before we found out the hard way he couldn't. As happened in our lose of 1LT Pelligrino.
You've caused me to remember things I haven't thought of in decades, and I thank you.
In this case I would say no, he was a soldier and was awarded quite a few medals during his service.
I would say Rush could say, "Stolen Valor" in his case.
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