Joe Wilkins’ record of military service
should make any veteran proud. During his 1967 tour of duty in
Southeast Asia, Wilkins served as an intelligence officer,
collecting and evaluating counterinsurgency information,
determining targets for the bomber pilots. In January and February
1967, Wilkins took flights on small planes to observe battlefield
situations and help direct fighters toward important Viet Cong
positions, “with complete disregard for his personal
safety,” according to government records.
For his work, the U.S. Air Force awarded
Wilkins a half-dozen medals, including the Bronze Star for
meritorious service. The South Vietnamese military awarded him a
Cross of Gallantry with Silver Star.
Wilkins, now 62, also claims a pair of Purple
Hearts for being wounded in combat and the Silver Star, this
country’s third highest award, just two notches below the
Medal of Honor. He has frequently worn replicas of these medals on
his lapels and boasted of his claims in newspaper articles. He has
two sets of special license plates issued by the state of Illinois
— one set displaying the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster,
indicating multiple medals, and another showing that he has the
Silver Star.
Wilkins’ storied military record
laid the foundation for a distinguished civilian career in which he
achieved influential positions in academia, business, and politics [see
“Friends in high places,” p. 16]. At the local state
university, Wilkins was granted full professorship and tenure, despite
never having published in scholarly journals nor completed a doctoral
degree. A resident of Pleasant Plains, Wilkins has been active in
Springfield politics, playing a lead role in the recruitment and
selection of Springfield’s police, fire, and utility chiefs, and
serving on several advisory committees. At the state level, he has won
lucrative grants and contracts and holds a paid position on one state
agency’s employment board. The daily newspaper has lionized him.
The trust placed in Wilkins by local and state
decision-makers doesn’t surprise B.G. “Jug”
Burkett, a recognized expert on military records.
“When you see somebody with a Silver
Star, you automatically think he’s brave, he’s an
American hero, he’s ethical, he’s trustworthy — a
whole string of things,” Burkett says.
Indeed, official military records confirm
that Wilkins was a good and competent intelligence officer. The
records do not, however, support his claim of two Purple Hearts and
the Silver Star, three medals that are central to his reputation
and persona. Historians, experts, and other Vietnam veterans who
have examined Wilkins’ military record and other documents
obtained through the Freedom of Information Act question
Wilkins’ claim to these heroic honors; several say his assertions are fraudulent.
Through his lawyer, Wilkins declined to
comment for this story.
Illinois Times first profiled Wilkins in
August 2003, soon after he restructured Springfield city government
at the request of newly elected Mayor Tim Davlin [see Rhodes,
“Mystery man” at www.illinoistimes.com]. In the course
of research for that profile, a routine check of Wilkins’
military records sparked what became a yearlong investigation.
Records from the National Personnel Records
Center (the official repository for personnel records for all
military employees) in St. Louis show that Charles Joseph Wilkins
was on active duty Sept. 3, 1965, through March 28, 1969, and that
his service in Vietnam began Nov. 7, 1966. By Dec. 11, 1967, he was
back in the United States, stationed at Offutt Air Force Base in
Bellevue, Neb.
When Illinois Times initially
asked Wilkins to explain why the two Purple Hearts and Silver Star
he claims don’t appear on his official record, he produced
several documents for viewing only, allowing a reporter to read the
text into a tape recorder.
One of these documents was his DD Form 214,
the form used by the Department of Defense to document a
soldier’s record upon transfer or discharge. The DD-214
contains a veteran’s service record, including all awards and
decorations. This document is the basis for everything from Veterans Affairs and Department of Labor benefits
to fraternal-organization memberships to burial rights at military
cemeteries. The service member’s signature at the bottom confirms
that the information on the form is accurate and complete.
Wilkins’ DD-214 lists these medals:
NDSM; VSMw/1 BSS; RVCM; SAEMR; RVN w/SvStar-7 AF, 67; BSM, SO
G-1671, 7AF, 67. This string of abbreviations exactly matches the
NPRC’s list of Wilkins’ decorations: the National
Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal with one Bronze
Service Star, the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal (issued to
everyone who served in Vietnam for six months or longer), the Small
Arms Expert Marksman Ribbon, the Republic of Vietnam Cross of
Gallantry with Silver Star 7th Air Force 1967, and the Bronze Star
Medal Special Order G-1671, 7th Air Force, 1967.
In a 2003 interview, Wilkins acknowledged that
he had signed his DD-214 and that he had not filed the forms
necessary to correct any mistakes discovered in the DD-214, despite
the fact that this document reflects neither of the two Purple
Hearts he says he received. He told Illinois
Times that DD-214s are filled out
by clerks who are neither extraordinarily smart nor diligent and
that he didn’t want to argue with these clerks about the
inaccuracy — he just wanted “out.”
As for the Silver Star, Wilkins pointed to
the abbreviation “SvStar” and said, “There it
is.” But the only mention of a Silver Star on his DD-214 is
in the abbreviation “RVN w/SvStar-7 AF, 67,” which
means “Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Silver
Star, 7th Air Force 1967.” The Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry
— a medal issued by a foreign country — is not
equivalent to a Silver Star issued by the United States.
But the DD-214 wasn’t the only document
Wilkins had to support his claim. He also presented four typed
pages that appeared to be two sets of orders and transmittal
letters awarding him one Purple Heart and the Silver Star.
According to the orders, dated July 12, 1967, he received both
awards for an incident that occurred on June 8, 1967, in Tay Ninh
Province, while he was assigned to U.S. Army Advisory Team 95. The
Purple Heart order mentions that he sustained two wounds to his
left arm severe enough for him to be sent to the Philippines to
recover at the Clark Air Base hospital.
The documents do not specify what act of
gallantry Wilkins performed; instead, they state: “The
details of this engagement are classified Special
Intelligence/Codeword and can be accessed through the appropriate
office, this Headquarters.”
Wilkins said this supersecret classification
prevented him from allowing the documents to be photocopied by a
reporter.
As for the second Purple Heart, Wilkins
produced nothing to prove that claim, saying only that he could not
find the documents.
In newspaper articles, on his
résumé, and in University of Illinois at Springfield
presentations, Wilkins has claimed that his service in Southeast
Asia involved clandestine “special operations”
missions. His official record shows that he was an intelligence
officer and that, once he returned to the United States, he was
assigned to the Special Projects Division at Offutt Air Force Base.
But experts and other Special Operations
veterans who have reviewed Wilkins’ records see no indication
that he was given any “black ops” or special-operations
assignments. Even if he had been assigned to secret missions, any
medals he received would still appear on his official record.
Military decorations, especially those of the
caliber of the Silver Star, typically come with at least three
documents: a numbered order simply stating that the service member
has been awarded the medal in question, a citation spelling out
exactly what the service member did to earn the honor, and a
certificate, often suitable for framing. If the service member has
been transferred before receiving the award, it may be accompanied
by a letter of transmittal, forwarding the documents and the medal
to the service member.
The order may be so generic that a single
page can be used to award two dozen service members the same type
of medal. Each citation, on the other hand, is written specifically
for the particular service member and consists of a detailed
description of his or her heroic act. Experts say that such
citations could possibly be classified but that, more often, the
wording regarding the location of the incident is purposely kept
vague.
For example, the citation accompanying a
Silver Star awarded to a soldier whose heroic act was committed
during secret operations (with troops in Laos, for example, when
the United States was officially not present in Laos), might have
been classified. More likely, the citation would simply read
“Southeast Asia” instead of “Laos.” But
regardless of whether the citation was classified, the order would
not be classified.
“Every order awarding a decoration is
public. There are no secret orders,” says James Howard, a
veteran who works with historical military records.
“There’s a very good reason for not having classified
orders. The order is the bona fide, and it has to be available to
everyone, including yourself. The citation very easily could be
classified, but if a person has a decoration, then he has to be
able to produce an order of the award.”
Tom Lee, a retired Air Force colonel who flew
scores of missions as a targeteer in Laos during the “secret
war,” says that the decorations he and his fellow airmen
received were not secret. Lee, who spent 26 years in the Air Force
before taking a job with a Virginia-based defense contractor,
maintains a database of fellow U.S. veterans who served in Laos,
and says he doesn’t know Wilkins.
“My medals that came out of Laos in the
classified period — and we were in black ops —
they’re on my record. They don’t say where I was, but
they do say what I was doing,” Lee says. “So the
probability is rather slim,” he says, that Wilkins’
medals were “secret.”
Hal Fritz’s decorations include the
Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, and the highest award of all, the
Medal of Honor. In May 1995, after 27 years with the U.S. Army,
Fritz became deputy director of the Illinois Department of Veterans
Affairs, a post he held through April 2003. He now works for the
Illiana Healthcare System at the VA outpatient clinic in Peoria.
Both of these jobs require him to read and interpret military
personnel records, and he has learned to spot inconsistencies.
In 1994, Fritz conducted an investigation of
Kane County Circuit Judge Michael O’Brien and ultimately
forced the judge to resign from the bench, admitting that he was
not the Medal of Honor recipient he claimed to be.
As for Wilkins, Fritz says he met the
professor and specifically remembers attending a strategic-planning
seminar at UIS during which Wilkins, a speaker, was introduced as a
Vietnam veteran with a distinguished military career.
But when Fritz reviewed Wilkins’
official service records and other documents obtained by Illinois Times, he
became suspicious.
“I’ve seen enough records in the
Department of Veterans Affairs and in the military that I recognize
certain keys, like, ‘Something is wrong with this
picture.’ And that’s what happened when I went through
[Wilkins’] records,” Fritz says.
He wonders why Wilkins would claim five
medals not supported by his DD-214 — the Silver Star, two
Purple Hearts, the Air Medal, and the Air Force Commendation medal
— yet never attempt to correct the document.
“If the person won the award and was
actually awarded the medals late, then the individual can go back
and request an official correction to be added to the discharge
papers,” Fritz says. “If the individual didn’t do
that, there’s a reason, and one reason is that the medal
never existed.”
Military policies provide for
orders and citations to be recorded in numerous official
repositories in case the decorated soldier loses the documents or
awards. But no record of Wilkins’ highest medals could be
found in any official archive.
Using the tape-recorded transcripts of the
documents he provided, Illinois Times sent a FOIA request in the fall of 2003 to
Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, headquarters of the
Air Force Personnel Center, seeking confirmation of Special Orders
S-869 and G-1049, the orders Wilkins had shown to prove his Silver
Star and one Purple Heart.
In November 2003, Randolph’s FOIA
manager, Karen Murray, responded: “After a thorough review of
Mr. Wilkins’ official military personnel records, we were
unable to verify the award of the Silver Star or Purple Heart. In
addition, Mr. Wilkins’ DD Form 214 (Armed Forces of the
United States Report of Transfer or Discharge) does not reflect
award of either the Silver Star or Purple Heart.”
Murray forwarded the FOIA request to the
headquarters of the Pacific Air Force, Hickam Air Force Base in
Hawaii, “to ensure we have exhausted all possibilities of
locating these records.” On Nov. 17, 2003, Hickam sent this
reply: “We have conducted searches for Special Orders S-869
and G-1049 which awarded 1LT Charles J. Wilkins the Silver Star and
the Purple Heart in July 1967. Searches were conducted by the Osan
AB FOIA Manager, the HQ PACAF FOIA Manager and the HQ USAF Records
Manager; no records were located.”
Another FOIA request, this one to
Hickam’s history section, produced a similar response:
“Mr. Bill Harris, of HQ PACAF’s History Office,
conducted an extensive, page-by-page research through PACAF and 7th
Air Force histories and archives. No special orders or letters
awarding Lieutenant Wilkins the [Silver Star] medal was
located.”
Not only could these Air Force historians
find no record of these medals, but they also pointed out problems
with the documents Wilkins presented. Murray, the FOIA manager at
Randolph, noted that Air Force regulations dictate that award
orders bear numbers starting with the letter G, not the letter S,
as Wilkins’ Silver Star order does.
Murray wrote: “In researching the
Special Order Numbers you provided we find that ‘S’
series orders are not prescribed in Air Force Instruction (AFI)
33-328, Administrative Orders; concluding Special Order S-869, 12
July 67, may not be a valid order number.”
Researchers at Maxwell Air Force Base in
Montgomery, Ala., the history center of the U.S. Air Force, noted
that the phraseology of the Silver Star order presented by Wilkins
doesn’t match the Air Force template. The official criterion
for the Silver Star is “gallantry in action”;
Wilkins’ order reads “valor in action.” Also,
Maxwell researchers said, if these documents were secret, the pages
would have been stamped with proper indicators.
When a military service member is
promoted, the event is documented with an official photograph of
the service member wearing his or her uniform with all decorations
arranged in a specific order — highest honor on the top
inside position and any foreign medals on the lower outside
position. This portrait goes into the soldier’s personnel
file.
Wilkins’ last official promotional
photo (see cover), taken upon his promotion to captain, Sept. 30,
1968 — more than a year after he received the Silver Star and
Purple Heart, according to his own documents — reflects the
same set of medals listed on his DD-214, the highest of which is
the Bronze Star for meritorious service. Like other official
documents, the photograph indicates that he has no Silver Star and
no Purple Heart.
An earlier photo, taken Oct. 7, 1967, raises
more questions. It shows Wilkins standing in line with at least two
other airmen, shaking hands with Vietnamese Lt. Gen. Le Nguyen
Khang after receiving the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.
Wilkins’ sleeves are rolled up past his elbows, revealing
arms that appear strong and healthy. Yet the photo was taken just
four months after Wilkins sustained two wounds to his left arm that
required his evacuation to the Philippines, according to the
documents he showed Illinois Times.
This picture appeared in Wilkins’
hometown newspaper, the Anna
Gazette-Democrat, on Oct. 27, 1967, in
the “Servicemen’s News” section. And that was the
only news about Joe Wilkins in the Anna
Gazette-Democrat between the date
he purportedly won the medals and the end of that year. There is no
mention that a native son of Cobden — a tiny community just
five miles north of Anna — received a Silver Star or Purple
Heart.
Although
Wilkins refused to allow a reporter to photocopy his “secret” medal orders,
the secretary of state’s office recently provided copies of
the same documents in response to a FOIA request seeking proof of
Wilkins’ eligibility for special Purple Heart and Silver Star
license plates.
The orders appear to have been signed by Air
Force Capt. Donald L. McCabe. The transmittal letters appear to
have been signed by Air Force Capt. Carl I. Walters. But when
contacted to confirm their signatures, both Walters and McCabe said
they did not sign the documents.
Walters, a former Air Force pilot who now
works as an engineer at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, says that he
never signed any document pertaining to a Silver Star — or
any other decoration. As a forward air controller, he spent most of
his time flying. His “extra duty” assignment as
“awards-and-decorations officer,” handled in his spare
time, was limited to creating the first drafts of citations for
various awards. He forwarded these drafts to the office of the
commander where, if approved, they would be typed up and signed by
either the commander himself or, more likely, his administrative
officer. Walters says he could not sign orders or even the
transmittal letter forwarding an order to an airman in the
hospital, as Wilkins’ documents suggest.
“The awards-and-decorations officer
would never, ever send a transmittal letter to another organization
saying, ‘Award something,’ ” Walters says.
“It was not within my purview to sign that.”
When he examined a digital scan of
Wilkins’ documents, he said the signatures definitely were
not his but appeared to be someone else’s effort to match his
handwriting.
McCabe, now a safety consultant, contacted at
his home in North Carolina, says he did sign the Bronze Star order
contained in Wilkins’ official file. “That’s a
legitimate order. That’s my signature,” he says.
But after reviewing what was supposed to be
his signature on the Silver Star and Purple Heart orders
Wilkins’ provided, McCabe was shocked: “That’s so
outrageous, that’s not even a good attempt. Good
grief.”
McCabe spent his yearlong tour in Vietnam
doing nothing but handling awards and decorations for Headquarters
Seventh Air Force. McCabe doesn’t claim to have committed any
heroic acts. “I was just an administrative officer, signing
on behalf of the commander,” he says. But he read enough
nominations, citations, and orders to consider himself a good judge
of real awards — and he says the four “secret”
pages presented by Wilkins do not conform to the format of similar
awards, even awards for special-operations officers.
The fact that medals Wilkins claims
don’t appear on his DD-214 further persuades McCabe that the
medals don’t exist. He won’t even listen to a reporter
repeat the explanation Wilkins gave in 2003, that the reason the
medals were omitted is because clerks were careless.
“There’s no ‘it’s
because,’ ” McCabe says. “It’s not on his
214. The reason it’s not is because it’s a fraud. The
orders are fraudulent for both the Silver Star and the Purple
Heart. I don’t have any question about that —
none.”
The Wilkins orders that bear McCabe’s
name are dated July 1967. McCabe was at Syracuse University at that
time, finishing his last two courses for his MBA. He didn’t
arrive in Vietnam until Sept. 20, 1967, two months later.
The medals are just part of
Wilkins’ warrior persona. A pilot, scuba diver, and skydiver
who keeps himself fit by running regularly, Wilkins exudes the
self-disciplined, spit-and-polish image befitting a military hero.
When he was teaching at UIS, he used the
classic bomber-pilot movie Twelve
O’Clock High as a lesson in his
business-management course. He addressed his fellow faculty members
as “ma’am” and “sir” as though they
were military officers, and offered to loan at least one professor
a videotape about Vietnam, as a way to help his colleagues
understand his mindset. And in his office he displayed an 8-by-10
photo of himself, wearing fatigues and posing in front of an
airplane. This photo, he told Illinois
Times in 2003, was taken in Long
Tieng, Laos, in 1966.
Lee, the targeteer who was stationed in Laos
1968-1969, says this picture doesn’t look right, because
Wilkins is wearing a U.S. uniform at a time when any U.S. presence
in Laos was in clear violation of the 1962 Geneva Accords.
“During my time, we were known as the
‘aloha shirt’ crowd — all civilian
clothes,” he says. “Our cover was exceedingly thin. Our
story was that we worked for USAID [U.S. Agency for International
Development]. We tried to avoid telling any story,
however.”
This same photo accompanied a Jan. 17, 2002,
feature story in the State
Journal-Register that further
enhanced Wilkins’ reputation as a military leader. Not only
did it mark the first publication of Wilkins’ claim to a
Silver Star and two Purple Hearts in a news story, it made the
medals a mere footnote in a tale of larger heroism — that
Wilkins had spent 30 years teaching combat and survival skills to
special-forces soldiers.
Published on the eve of the release of the
movie Black Hawk Down, which is based on the true story of a tragic 1993
special-forces mission in Mogadishu, Somalia, the article described
how Wilkins had been a mentor to the hero of this movie, Chief
Warrant Officer Mike Durant. Eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed,
and Durant was held hostage for almost two weeks.
Wilkins told the SJ-R that he had taught
hand-to-hand combat to Durant and other “elite
special-operations troops” such as Army Rangers, Navy SEALs,
Delta Force, and the 101st Airborne’s Screamin’ Eagles.
“He periodically is summoned by military officials to various
bases to teach combat survival courses to troops trying to refine
their skills,” according to the SJ-R story.
“The people with whom I work are
already at the ‘instructor’ level of proficiency. I
work with only the most elite of the special-operations
troops,” Wilkins is quoted as saying. “They bring youth
and strength; I bring skill and experience.”
He showed the reporter a copy of the book Black Hawk Down,
autographed by Durant, and said that the helicopter pilot was just
one of the many special-forces soldiers he had trained over the
years.
But Durant, contacted by e-mail, told Illinois Times that
he didn’t know Joe Wilkins.
There’s another explanation of how
Wilkins obtained Durant’s autograph and of how he came to
claim that he teaches special operations forces.
Lance Charlson worked more than 25 years for
the Illinois Secretary of State Police, rising to the rank of
investigator and captain. He met Wilkins at this agency, and they
became “friendly acquaintances,” Charlson says.
Knowing Wilkins’ interest in military
operations, Charlson invited him to visit Fort Campbell, Ky.,
where, for the past decade, Charlson has worked on an as-needed
contractual basis teaching “close-quarters
countermeasures” (hand-to-hand combat and personal firearms)
to the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation
Regiment.
The 160th is better known as the Night
Stalkers, and Durant — as well as five helicopter pilots
killed in the Somalia tragedy — were members of this
regiment. Charlson does not claim to have taught any of them. He
works only with Night Stalkers’ training group, or
“green platoon,” certifying instructors to teach
close-quarters countermeasures to other soldiers.
The day Wilkins visited Fort Campbell, Durant
was there, running the Black Hawk simulator. Charlson asked Wilkins
whether he’d like to meet the Black
Hawk Down hero, and says Wilkins
eagerly agreed.
“They were meeting each other for the
first time,” Charlson says. He saw Durant give Wilkins the
same souvenirs he gave many people: an autographed book and a
business card.
Wilkins sat in on Charlson’s class and
made a brief speech when Charlson introduced him to the soldiers.
When Wilkins joined them on the pistol range and in their combat
exercises, Charlson says Wilkins demonstrated no skill in either
area.
Jeff Hahn, a helicopter pilot who was then
the executive officer of the green platoon, was on hand that day
and remembers overhearing Wilkins regaling the young soldiers with
Vietnam War stories. One tale involved Wilkins retrieving sensitive
material from a downed plane in Cambodia, and Hahn — who
served seven years on a Green Beret Alpha team — says the
story didn’t sound right.
“In my heart, when I heard him talking,
I had doubts. There was something about Joe’s story when he
told it that did not sit well with me,” Hahn says.
“What didn’t jibe with me was, the Air Force
didn’t have guys during Vietnam doing that as their mission .
. . . Normally they would send in a Green Beret or SEAL team.
Cambodia was known to have a lot of special forces operating over
the border, so normally a special-forces team would do a
cross-border-type operation.”
Hahn didn’t mention these doubts
because he had complete faith in Charlson, he says, and Charlson
had introduced Wilkins as a special-operations veteran.
Weeks later, Charlson put Hahn in touch with
Wilkins again. Hahn, in the midst of a difficult divorce and
needing cash, had asked Charlson to help him find someone who might
be interested in buying his prized collection of six artistic
prints, created especially for members of the Special Operations
Command, commemorating their missions. One was a
limited-edition print given only to Delta Force personnel involved
in Operation Just Cause, in which Gen. Manuel Noriega was snatched
from Panama. Another depicted Mike Durant’s Mogadishu crash
site. And most were signed by Hahn’s fellow soldiers.
Charlson contacted Wilkins, who
immediately agreed to buy the art. Hahn says Wilkins paid him
$2,500 and promised to hang the prints in the military wing of a
library.
When Charlson picked up his newspaper weeks
later and found the feature claiming that Wilkins had trained
Durant, he was stunned. “It floored me,” Charlson says.
A mutual friend told Charlson that he had
called the SJ-R at Wilkins’ request, giving the paper a
“tip” about Wilkins’ purported Black Hawk Down connection.
Charlson called the story’s author, Matthew Dietrich, to
complain. But Charlson says that Dietrich didn’t seem to take
his call seriously, and Charlson decided not to push it. “I
didn’t want it to become an issue the 160th had to deal
with,” he says.
Nevertheless, that experience changed his
view of Wilkins. Had he known then what he knows now — that
medals Wilkins claims are not supported by official documents
— Charlson says that he never would have taken Wilkins to
Fort Campbell.
“There wouldn’t have been any
association with him at all if I’d known that,”
Charlson says.
Anyone
who served honorably in Vietnam, as Joe Wilkins certainly did,
merits respect. Anyone who earned a Bronze Star, as Wilkins
certainly did, deserves to be admired.
But Wilkins went to great lengths to convince
others that he had earned greater honors, including the Silver
Star. He wore special lapel pins, applied for special license
plates, and, once he obtained the plates, mounted them on the
flashiest car in his personal fleet, a late-model Corvette
convertible.
If he truly has all these medals — the
two Purple Hearts, the Silver Star, and the others — he has
not taken the necessary steps to have his official record
corrected. If he truly doesn’t have these medals, federal law
says it is a misdemeanor for him to wear them, even the small
lapel-pin versions.
Burkett, the military-records expert who has
unmasked some 2,000 individuals making fraudulent claims about
Vietnam War records, says that such perpetrators are seldom
prosecuted, so long as they agree to stop making false claims. As
the co-author, with Glenna Whitley, of Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of
Its Heroes and Its History, Burkett
received the Army’s highest civilian honor, the Distinguished
Civilian Service Award, in 2003 for his research. Acting as an
unpaid consultant, Burkett advised every step of Illinois Times’
investigation into Wilkins’ record and reviewed all documents
we obtained.
To Burkett — himself a Vietnam veteran
with a handful of medals, the highest of which is a Bronze Star for
meritorious service — the deceit of claiming unearned medals
is less a crime than it is a blasphemy.
“We Americans have all these freedoms,
and they weren’t given to us by politicians,” Burkett
says. “They were given to us by citizen soldiers who were
willing to strap on a weapon and defend our freedoms.
“They don’t get stock options and
retirement packages for going to war. The way we recognize them is
with a piece of ribbon and a medal that’s worth maybe 65
cents — and to lie about it and cheat and steal the honor and
bravery of another man, it’s a form of sacrilege,”
Burkett says. “That’s my good Catholic upbringing
talking.”
More than a dozen veterans were interviewed
for this story. All shared two reactions: bewilderment at
Wilkins’ apparent failure to realize that he already was a
war hero, and utter disgust at the possibility that he may have
claimed honors he did not deserve. Those who know him personally
expressed profound sadness; those who don’t know him had
trouble sympathizing with him.
Jeff Hahn — the Night Stalkers veteran
who sold Wilkins his prized military art collection — regrets
his unwitting role in helping Wilkins embellish his record. As a
genuine special operations soldier who counts Mike Durant and other
Black Hawk Down heroes among his friends, Hahn has only a few
carefully-chosen words for Wilkins:
“Tell Joe I want my pictures
back.”
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2005.
