War, Naive Reporters Produce Slew of Bogus Commandos

26 APR 2003
VeriSEAL

We knew this would happen. We have talked about it since the first boots hit the ground in Afghanistan. The unleashing of Operation Iraqi Freedom has only made it worse.

Hombre de Agua predicted they would be coming out of the woodwork.

Nickers grumbled something about bloodsuckers crawling out from every rock faster than we could squash them.

One of them even introduced himself to El Cuervo in late January during mobilization operations in San Diego. One quick, late night phone call from the salty Senior Chief SEAL within minutes of the encounter put that one away in record time.

Sure enough, the impostors are piling up faster than a brigade of dead Iraqi Republican Guards. And thanks to gullible reporters, there is no shortage of new recruits to be processed each day in news reports from across the country.

"Senior administration officials tell us". . . in their rush to churn out patriotic war hero tales, many Media organizations have altogether dispensed with the "ancient" art of fact-checking before broadcasting outright fallacies or plastering them on their websites. Hey, who would lie about being in Special Forces, or a Navy SEAL, or an Air Force Special Operations Para Jumper?

An impostor, that's who. They do it every day.

In January while covering the Jetts-Raiders playoff game in Oakland, Tri-Valley Herald staff writer Mike Martinez, in describing Jetts fan Bill Bratton's failure to receive any "serious" harassment from Raider fans, declared "Maybe the fact...Bratton is a former Navy SEAL had something to do with it."

Maybe the fact that Bratton is a fake SEAL has something to do with Mr. Martinez's story being cited here. Where did Mr. Martinez garner this so-called "fact"? Was Mr. Bratton wearing a cardboard sign around his neck that read: "I am a former Navy SEAL and I will kick your butt if you tease me"?

The article also described Bratton as a NYPD detective. Another popular fantasy among impostors in the wake of September 11, 2001.

A request for information from VeriSEAL to the article's contributing writer, Dave Newhouse, went unanswered.

All told, that little excerpt seems not to be worth the extra 60 seconds required to drop a note to the reporter, right? Well, consider this: the odds heavily favor that falsely claiming to be a SEAL is the loose thread that leads to the unravelling of an impostor's veritable cloak of life-long fraud and deceit, often of the felonious variety.

So Mr. Bratton was not a SEAL, but he plays one at sporting events. Okay. Is he really a NYPD detective or is that just another role he plays in less "public" venues? A pancake dashboard light, NYPD detective's shield and "Detective" Bratton is on the job. Or is he?

Speaking of cops and shields...

In late March, Butler County, Alabama resident Ronald Shields, off his medication and suffering double-wide delusions, set his home-sweet-home Alabama ablaze and called police. When law enforcement arrived on scene, Shields began blasting away at all the pretty colors. Several officers were slightly wounded before Shields was taken into custody.

Naturally, although he seemingly could not hit a bullet with the side of a barn, local Media picked up on the "fact" that Shields is a former Navy SEAL -- probably from his neighbors whom he more than likely regaled with hair-raising tales of his days as a fearsome frogman -- and ran with it.

"Experts say". . . reporters are predisposed to the notion that SEALs and others of SOF ilk are little more than well-trained, mindless killers who are apt to blow a circuit and commence laying waste to everything within a 50-mile radius if not kept safely locked away in their paddocks, except when in use as personal security details to embedded journalists wandering wide-eyed around free-fire zones.

NBC Affiliate WSFA-12 in Montgomery did not respond to our attempts to apprise them of the fact that Ronald Shields had not been a Navy SEAL. They did subsequently remove the "Broke-dick News" story without fanfare, but not before we got it and graciously republished it for them. No need to thank us.

But you can thank...

The Memphis Commercial Appeal for the irresponsible manner in which they torpedoed the three-month old marriage of Lee Ann Purvis in a most public fashion.

Lee Ann married Army Specialist Michael B. Purvis in January before he deployed to Iraq with the 101st Airborne. Michael Purvis, an infantryman, made his new bride aware that he had previously served in the Gulf War as a Navy SEAL. His story soon became one of the Commercial Appeal's "Call to Arms" profiles of local service members on Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Unfortunately, Michael Purvis was not a SEAL. But that minor detail has not prevented him from claiming otherwise for several years. Unaware that her new husband was fool enough to believe that the lot of a Navy SEAL is somehow more noble than that of a 101st Airborne trooper, Lee Ann was happy to provide the Commercial Appeal with all the information she had about her soldier, "former SEAL", and soon-to-be former husband.

On March 20, The Commercial Appeal published the profile and the fuse was lit. An "anonymous" e-mail note, quite possibly from a certain psychotic bridge troll in upstate New York, alerted the Commercial Appeal to the established SEAL fakery of one Michael B. Purvis. They immediately withdrew the Purvis profile, replacing it with a preposterous statement to the effect that The Commercial Appeal owed it to its readers to check the veracity of the story's details. Hello?! Isn't that supposed to occur prior to publication? The Commercial Appeal "scrambled", under the specter of impending legal action, to verify the facts of the story -- after the fact, so to speak.

And so it was with some regret, when Memphis Commercial Appeal reporter Laura Coleman Noeth finally got around to checking her post-publication facts (Oh, now you want to talk to us), that we had little choice but to confirm that Michael B. Purvis had indeed not been a Navy SEAL.

Had The Memphis Commercial Appeal fulfilled its due diligence responsibilities instead of rushing another unverified, patriotic "feel good" piece to publication, they might have spiked the story and given Lee Ann Purvis the chance to confront her husband's deceit somewhere slightly more intimate than the Internet -- behind closed doors, perhaps. But that just wouldn't be very sensational, now would it?

Which brings us to the sensational psychosis of Sammy Banks

Samuel, actually. Sammy was on point when the Iraqis launched their ambush. He knew something was wrong. Sammy's razor-sharp SEAL senses...uh, sensed it. Fortunately, Sammy has the reflexes of a cat...er, SEAL...E-3 "Specialist" Sammy the S.E.A....Huh?!

The Navy rate/rank issue notwithstanding, young Sammy's harrowing tale of combat and courage found its way into the pages of the St Francois County Daily Journal on April 4, 2003. Apparently the story had been delayed by three days.

It seems Samuel has left his family with the impression that he is a SEAL stationed at NAS Oceana. Just days before commencement of impending hostilities, he informed his family that he and his "team" were preparing to deploy to Iraq. His family was understandably, however needlessly, concerned. Just days after commencement of hostilities, Samuel, supposedly in Virginia (Back so soon, boy?) phoned his family, stating, "It went bad".

Samuel's SEAL team had been ambushed (Uh-huh) and Samuel had been shot (Uh-huh). Most of his team had been shot (Uh-huh) and were recuperating back in Virginia.

We can only hope that when Sammy is fully recovered, his father does not drag his lying, scrawny butt out to the back Forty and shoot him for real.

From the people who brought you 'Tailwind' . . .

No he wasn't. No he wasn't. No he wasn't.

Does anybody out there other than CNN need us to repeat that Robert Lee Hixson was NOT a Navy SEAL and therefore could not now be an "unemployed, ex-Navy SEAL"? Anybody? Associated Press? New York Post? FBI?

Well, of course the FBI needs it repeated. They were the ones who declared Hixson a "SEAL" based, allegedly, on "intel" from local Constables Goober and Fife.

Aside from the fact that Hixson's name was posted to the Hall of Shame within approximately 30-minutes of his arrest (could have been there sooner had anyone thought to ask) and we contacted CNN immediately thereafter -- twice -- is there any legitimate reason CNN has continued to identify Robert Lee Hixson as an "ex-SEAL" in light of the fact that he was not? Indeed, CNN updated the story with the same false information following our contact to their "editorial" department.

"High-ranking intelligence officials have confirmed". . . CNN is staffed by snot-nosed, twenty-something, trust-fund activists who "feel" no one other than CNN could possibly know anything, and certainly not before CNN has ordained it with "Breaking News" graphics and Ave Satani soundtrack. But while CNN was sexing up their Navy-SEAL-gone-bad report with FUBAR'd Fed facts, real reporters were picking up the phones or firing off short and sweet e-mails to VeriSEAL to check the "SEAL" angle before publication. Because if real reporters know one thing, they know it's good not to be last to know.

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