The Stolen Valor of Vietnam

Several years ago, I remember watching a news story about a medal of honor winner. This man was in his sixties and had chosen to devote his golden years to exposing impostors who claimed to have won the Medal of Honor.

He was driven. His eyes flashed when he talked about those who he'd exposed as frauds. How dare they?

At the time, I'd discussed this story with a family member who scoffed at this man. "Sounds pretty sad to me," they'd said, "embarrassing these old frauds - and for what?"

I think they'd have had a point if the veteran was doing it for the sake of their own award. It would seem petty and prideful. But this man's drive was on behalf of others - dead men who'd won an honor. And their honor was being diminished by the undeserving.

To me, the distinction was ennobling.

Today, I read about a man with a similar quest - and I have to say my impression was the same. In the latest issue of  Columbia Journalism Review, Russell Working revisits the 1998 book Stolen Valor and I have to say I'm sad to have missed it the first time around.

It's by a man named B.G. Burkett, who is determined to point out that popular view of Vietnam veterans is absolutely backward. Burkett's aim was to expose the complete lack of journalism standards in news accounts of Vietnam veterans. Using basic tools like FOIA requests, Burkett let the air out of stories where criminals blamed non-existent Vietnam experiences. Journalists wrote the stories that fit the public mood, and basic fact checking wasn't done. Brazen frauds became heroes, and the collective reputation of veterans became an unjust stereotype.

It's not often you read something that reverses a long held view, but these three paragraphs did for me:

     For reporters trying to make sense of the phenomenon of [Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome], Stolen Valor offers particular cause for concern. Since the war's end, veterans' activists have claimed that anywhere from 200,000 to 2 million of the 3.3 million men who served in the Vietnam theater suffer from PTSD - never mind that fewer than 15 percent of those who set foot in the country were in front-line combat units, Stolen Valor notes. A four-year, $9 million study commissioned by Congress and undertaken by North Carolina researchers concluded that 830,000 Vietnam veterans were suffering from full or partial PTSD.

     Impressive numbers indeed. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that only 2.2 percent of Vietnam veterans had the disorder. And the North Carolina study clearly had some methodological flaws. For example, it cited six women who claimed their disorder had been caused by being prisoners of war. "Apparently," write [authors] Burkett and Whitley, "no one involved in analyzing the survey realized that not a single American military woman was ever a prisoner in this war."

     This is not only a matter of principle, but of public finance. The VA offers life-long disability payments to those suffering from PTSD, we read, yet is willing to accept documentation from veterans without checking military records to see if the form has been altered. The result, according to Stolen Valor, is an inflated roster of PTSD victims earning $32,076 per year tax-free for 100 percent disability at taxpayer expense - and more, if there are dependents.

Which is not to suggest that there's no such thing as a PTSD afflicted Vietnam veteran. But the idea that large percentages of them are drug users, psyche cases and criminals deserves a brutal dose of skepticism.