Tag: Alicia Watkins

Alicia Watkins who has more than received her 15 minutes of fame over the past few years claiming to be a wounded warrior from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  However, she has now been officially outed as having lied about her background.  The Air Force Times was able to get a copy of her DD-214 that shows she was not a recipient of the Purple Heart and never deployed to Iraq:

Official military records contradict several claims made by an Air Force veteran whose story of surviving the 9/11 terror attacks and battling severe combat injuries gained her access to prestigious events and captivated  celebrities, most recently Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump.

Alicia Watkins, who retired from the Air Force in 2008 for undisclosed medical reasons, has since appeared on multiple mainstream news and TV programs, including “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and the TLC reality series “Say Yes to the Dress,” to discuss her struggles after sustaining a career-ending back injury from an improvised explosive attack in Afghanistan. However, there is nothing in the list of awards and decorations contained in Watkins’ military personnel file indicating she was ever involved in an enemy attack. A spokesman for the Air Force Personnel Center in San Antonio, Texas, Mike Dickerson, provided Air Force Times with Watkins’ decorations, awards and deployments, as noted on her DD-214 discharge form.  [Air Force Times]

I recommend reading the entire article at the link, but the Air Force Times piece has still left some questions unanswered.  For example she was assigned to the Pentagon during the timeframe of the 9/11 attack.  However, was she there the day the attack happened like she claims?  The fact she was not awarded a Purple Heart directly contradicts the claim she has made that she was injured during the attack.  This also proves she was not wounded by an IED in Afghanistan as well.  The other part of her narrative that has yet to be resolved is if she really knew the Army soldier who died during the 9/11 attack that she supposedly started a charity for.

Then her personnel records show she was only awarded 8 awards, but she has been seen wearing 19 awards to include the Purple Heart.  Then there is the fact that she was not awarded an Afghanistan Campaign Medal. The Air Force Times says she deployed to Afghanistan, but if she did not receive the campaign medal that means she was not in theater long enough to receive it.  Personnel receive the medal after 30 consecutive days in theater or 60 non-consecutive.  So she may not have even been in Afghanistan longer than 30 days.  I am also amazed that after nearly 10 years in the Air Force she did not receive an Air Force Achievement Medal.  This really makes me wonder about her performance if as an E-5 she did not receive at least an achievement medal.

Anyway this should close the book on her, but I am sure she will defend herself by saying the Air Force screwed up her records like many other people caught inflating their service tend to do.  It will be interesting to see if any legal action is pursued because she has profited from her wartime injury claims which is against the law.

You can read more about the DD-214 findings over at Guardians of Valor as well as John Q. Public.

For those that haven’t read about this read I recommend going over to the John Q. Public blog and read about the curious case of Air Force veteran Alicia Watkins.  She was the woman that for yet to be determined reasons was given media credentials at a Donald Trump event and given the opportunity to ask a question.  Trump then invited her to come up on stage and made her a job offer.  The whole scene was strange, but when people began digging into Alicia Watkins backstory things got even stranger.

If you take everything she says at face value she is a 9/11 survivor from the Pentagon attack who had a close friend die who she started a charity for.  She then deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq where she saw combat action, suicide bombers, was seriously wounded and was awarded the Purple Heart.  She was also a military sexual assault survivor, has a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress.  She was then medically discharged from the Air Force and proceeded to become a homeless veteran.  While homeless she did video diaries that eventually landed her a spot on the Oprah Winfrey show.  She then went on to attend Harvard, become a beauty queen, reality television personality and gets the VIP treatment at Super Bowl 50.  I probably missed a few things, but that is the best I could do in a paragraph.

So what has been verified about Watkins?  As far the media company she claimed to be working for that got her press credentials according to CNN it does not exist.  We also know that she was an executive assistant for Major General Durbin at Camp Eggers in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2006.  I have seen nothing yet to show she deployed to Iraq.  We also know that she is claiming to be at two places at the same time.  This 2007 Air Force article has her addressing airmen that had recently returned from an Iraq deployment.  Her speech was about how being at Ground Zero during 9/11 motivated her to join the Air Force which is different from her other accounts of being assigned to the Pentagon during the 9/11 attack.  The Washington Post was able to confirm that her enlistment date was in 1998 which means that the 9/11 attacks could not have motivated her to enlist.

It is also unclear if she had to be homeless because if she was medically retired she should have been receiving a stipend and disability each month.  As far as attending Harvard this was a stretching of the truth because she enrolled in the Harvard Extension School which is an online offering of courses which anyone can sign up for.  There has yet to be any evidence that she was actually hit by any IED or seen any combat action.  I also could not find any evidence of the charity she supposedly started for her friend killed during the Pentagon attack.

Really a DD214 would pretty much clear a lot of this up because it would show whether she has a Purple Heart or not.  It would also show her assignments to see if she was actually assigned to the Pentagon on 9/11.  It would also show her deployment history.  There are already a lot of holes in this story, but hopefully the Stolen Valor folks can get a copy of her DD214 to put the remaining questions to rest.