We covered the story when it first broke here.
Scott Swett has some new details over at the American Thinker.
It’s a long article, and I’m pressed for time today. If this is of interest to you read the whole thing, meanwhile below are the closing paragraphs.
Navy sources told reporters that Sanders was responsible for what they referred to as “administrative errors” in the creation of the award, and said that he “may have lied.”
Other veterans familiar with the case question whether the Navy awarded a Silver Star to Sanders in the first place. They believe he fabricated the documentation while he was a high-ranking Pentagon official, in a position that would have offered ready access to his own personnel file. Sanders was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Reserves by President Clinton on July 22, 1993, and remained in the job until 1998.
Stolen Valor author B.G. Burkett, an expert on fraudulent military awards, considers such an event to be well within the realm of possibility. He notes that it is far more difficult to validate Navy awards than those issued by the other services. The Army, for example, numbers each general order sequentially and maintains a copy at the unit level, making it much easier to identify discrepancies. Attempts to research problematic Navy awards are also hindered by a longstanding institutional reluctance to publicly disgrace an officer.
The Navy’s decision to suppress the NCIS investigation report is unfortunate. Have other well-connected officials also manipulated a flawed system to enhance their credentials? Wade Sanders held a significant office under the Secretary of the Navy and later played an important role in a Presidential campaign. The public deserves to know what the Navy found out about his Silver Star to take the extraordinary step of revoking it.
