A newsgroup poster reports receiving this reply to his email:
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The tip for this man's story came from a highly credible woman in the community and, if his story is not true, we feel duped. In almost 30 years of doing this job, I've never had a veteran tell us a false story.
The reporter has been doing this for more than 40 years and has never had a vet lie. So we had no reason to believe this was false. We are doing a followup story.
Sincerely,
Terry Greenberg
Editor
The Avalanche-Journal
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The truth, of course, is that the paper makes no effort to validate anybody's service, and therefore have absolutely no idea whether they've been lied to before or not...
good work ... please let us all know if/when they publish a follow-up article
It's interesting that the guy didn't "confess" to committing war crimes. Perhaps that is becoming a less popular form of self-expression for guys lying about their Vietnam service. At least, one can hope...
I'll link the paper's followup article to this thread when it arrives. Expect lots of posturing and efforts to exonerate the reporter for failing to do his job.
Ping to post #90.
Received an e-mail from the A-J editor, Mr. Greenberg.
They're "95% certain Mr. Lee was not telling the truth" and are doing a follow-up.
Boy howdy. In almost thirty years of doing this job I've scarcely heard a true story. In Rogers's Rangers Standing Orders (from the 18th Century!): "You can lie all you want when you tell other people about the Rangers, but don't never lie to a Ranger or an officer."
And yes, even we get snookered. We had a guy in 10th Special Forces Group, Brian Sirois, who was SF Qualified, but had to add bogus awards to his uniform. His career vector went retrograde, you might say, when he was caught. (After being thrown out, he went on to murder his wife and is in prison in Massachusetts. Character is pretty fixed in adults, and many wannabees and blowfishes display their poor character in various criminal acts). There was also a company commander in one of the Ranger Batts who had never actually bothered to, like, go to Ranger or even airborne school. No word on his fate after HE was thrown out.
I don't blame the reporters so much on this. They don't have our (meaning, vets') knowledge of what is normal and sensible, so stories that align with their TV-induced prejudices won't ring the alarm bells that some of us have.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Thanks for the update. Good work!