Tag: stolen valor

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.

That is what this NPR article is claiming:

Wright says that one of the most interesting parts of the meeting came when he asked Davis about L. Ron Hubbard’s medical records. Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, had maintained that he was blind and a ‘hopeless cripple’ at the end of World War II — and that he had healed himself through measures that later became the basis of Dianetics, the 1950 book that became the basis for Scientology.

“I had found evidence that Hubbard was never actually injured during the war. … And so we pressed [Tommy Davis] for evidence that there had been such injuries and [Hubbard] had been the war hero that he described,” says Wright. “Eventually, Davis sent us what is called a notice of separation — essentially discharge papers from World War II — along with some photographs of all of these medals that [Hubbard] had won. … At the same time, we finally gained access to Hubbard’s entire World War II records [through a request to the military archives] and there was no evidence that he had ever been wounded in battle or distinguished himself in any way during the war. We also found another notice of separation which was strikingly different than the one that the church had provided.”

Furthermore, says Wright, the notice of separation that the church provided was signed by a man who never existed. And two of the medals that Hubbard supposedly had won weren’t commissioned until after Hubbard left active service.

“There were a number of different discrepancies on there that make it clear that [the Scientology document] wasn’t an actual record,” says Wright. “In the 900-odd pages of Hubbard’s war records, there were numerous letters from other researchers from over the years. One of them had inquired about [the name on Hubbard’s notice of separation]. And the archivist at the time said they had thoroughly researched the rolls of Navy officers at the time and there was no such person.”

Wright says he’s not sure what impact — if any — his article will have on the Church of Scientology.

“It’s hard to measure, because we’re dealing with a religion,” he says, “and people are drawn to it because of faith. And if it were simply a matter of reason, then one could put this [document about Hubbard’s service] down in front of you and say, ‘Here is conclusive proof that the founder of Scientology lied about his military record and lied about his injuries and lied about the fundamental principles out of which he created the Church of Scientology. But that may not matter to people who are involved in it, who may feel they are gaining something from their experience — either because they feel like the truths of Scientology enhance their lives or because the community of Scientologists that they live among is something like their family. So they intentionally shield themselves from knowing these types of things.”   [NPR via This Ain’t Hell]

You can read more at the link, but L. Ron Hubbard reminds me a lot of Kim Il-sung who aided by his Soviet handlers used fictitious events to include lying about his military accomplishments during the Japanese occupation of Korea to start the cult of Kim that put him in power.  The cult he constructed has been powerful enough to keep two generations of his family in power as well.  Fortunately Scientology doesn’t control a country with a million man army and nukes.  Could you imagine how strange a place a Scientology led country would be?  It may even make the strangeness of North Korea seem tame in comparison.