This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Phony soldiers

  • Convicted by Stolen Valor

    Blue Cyclone sent us a link by way of TSO from the New York Times about Elven J. Swisher, whose testimony against David R. Hinkson, buttressed by the Purple Heart he wore on his lapel, sent the latter to prison for 33 years in a murder-for-hire case. The problem is that the Purple Heart was phony as well as Swisher’s boasts about his murderous experience;

    Mr. Swisher had never seen combat, had killed no one and had served without distinction. The document was a forgery. Mr. Swisher has since been convicted of lying to federal officials, wearing fake medals and defrauding the Department of Veterans Affairs of benefits for combat injuries.

    But the jury knew none of this, and with Mr. Swisher’s testimony it convicted Mr. Hinkson of soliciting three murders. He was sentenced to 33 years for those crimes, along with 10 years for tax evasion, and he is serving his sentence in the maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.

    When Mr. Swisher’s lies came to light, Mr. Hinkson challenged his convictions for soliciting the murders. The jury had believed him guilty of more than loose talk, he said, only because Mr. Swisher had falsely presented himself as a battle-hardened killer.

    But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled against him last year by a 7-to-4 vote.

    Even jurors from the first trial have admitted that they would have voted differently had they known that Swisher was a big, fat phony. Hinkson’s case will go to the Supreme Court, but at least we all know how the Ninth Circuit thinks of veterans since this is the second time they’ve dismissed Stolen Valor this year.

  • Matthis at Tufts; the final chapter

    Some of you may remember the article that was written for Veterans’ Day at Tufts Daily which was a cry-fest for poor little Matthis. You may also remember the letter his father sent in response to the article. Today, to their credit, the editorial staff of Tufts Daily published a response from a Vijay Saraswat, veteran, a former marine and a student at Tufts.

    The Daily could have interviewed any number of veterans at Tufts and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy who would have given a balanced and reasoned account of military culture.

    […]

    That the Daily’s editors gave Matthis Chiroux a solitary platform in the first place is nothing short of outrageous. Even cursory research would have revealed fundamental inconsistencies between his statements, actions and service record which should have immediately tabled any consideration of a profile piece. And while Matthis Chiroux’s actual tour of duty deserves acknowledgement, his recent shameful actions and disingenuousness dishonor the legacy of service and sacrifice embodied by past and present members of the Armed Forces.

    Vijay wrote us last week and asked permission to use some of the research we’ve done in the nearly 3 years Matthis has held the spotlight on himself and he sent us a draft of this article before Thanksgiving. We heartily applaud his efforts. You should read “Setting the record straight on Matthis Chiroux“.

  • Letuli busted


    Some of you probably remember the shitbag known as SGM John Letuli (center in the photo above) that we’ve been pursuing since last April in conjunction with our friends at ProfessionalSoldier.com. Well, Sporkmaster emails that he’s been busted a stripe prior to his retirement according to Military.com;

    “I sent the picture to Special Forces Command and they came back immediately and said, ‘he’s not SF,’ ” [Retired Master Sgt. Jeffrey “JD”] Hinton said. At that point, he began using the Freedom of Information Act to secure copies of official records, including a listing of Letuli’s assignments, decorations, medals and badges.

    The record does not list a Purple Heart or Soldier’s Medal. It notes Letuli has a basic parachutist badge, but not the Military Freefall Badge.

    A bust one stripe is hardly any punishment at all. But, I guess it’s better than nothing.

    In one photo, Letuli is wearing a Special Forces patch and tab on his BDUs; in another, he is in Class As, wearing the Purple Heart and Soldier’s Medal ribbons, and a Military Freefall Badge, or “HALO wings” — none of which he earned.

    But at least the truth is out there about this clown now.

  • Kyle Barwan arrested for Fraud and Stolen Valor (Updated).

    Kyle Barwan arrested for Fraud and Stolen Valor (Updated).

    Yep the same person that was posted here for posing as a Army Officer has been arrested. Here is a photo from the side, I have seen the patch before but I cannot Id the unit off of the top of my head.

    Police in Knox County are holding Kyle Barwan of Crestwood, Illinois on charges of possession of cocaine and impersonating a public servant, and even more charges may be coming.

    I want to thank Smoke523 for bringing this to our attention. There is also a video included with the story that is too big to post.

    Just a reminder this is the Kyle posted this on August 28th 2010a few months back.

    By the way I impersonated to get into a bar and got caught I was being stupid I’ve learned from that I never stole any medals from my grandfather he earned those not me I have no right having those I have more respect then that for my family all I did was were the wrong rank no shiny medals no fake Iraq stories the army sniper blog was for my friend mike who was an army sniper who lost his life in Iraq back in 2007 I put that there for his memory I’m so sorry for all of this mess ladies and gentlemen my sincere apology to you all

    Or the people that he Scammed

    My family and friends were victims of Kyle Barwan..if that is even his name. He stayed in my house stole from me and my family, racked up debt that I can not afford to pay, and told unbelievable tales before I told him to get out. He was sleeping with underage girls and even told everyone he was going to be a daddy. I began to question when he did not have a military ID and said that his “orders” were constantly being changed at the last minute. He had multiple fake ID’s and I feel such anger that he would take advantage of people, like my family, that honor and hold all military personnel in the highest regard.

    Update: I got a photo from An Old Friend that shows him in ACU s as a 1st LT. It looks like he is wearing a Ranger Battalion Scroll above another unit’s ID. Because even the President’s hundred tap is being close to that big.



    Seen wearing ACUs, a beret (With 1st Lt. insignia), a combat infantry badge, ranger tab, First Cavalry patch, Jump wings, and a combat infantry badge.

    Update: goes under the following names/usernames.

    Kyle Reacher, Kyle Felucifer, Klutch, Klutch_Reborn.

  • Another phony knucklehead

    I wonder what, if anything at all, goes through their heads;

    Hillar, who has claimed to be a retired Special Forces Colonel, told a wild tale of international intrigue in his popular one-credit workshops, claiming that his own 17-year old daughter was kidnapped by traffickers in Southeast Asia, and was killed by them. He has said that he personally tracked her abductors, and claimed that the 2008 Liam Neeson film, Taken, is based on his exploits.

    In fact, the United States Army Special Operations Command has no record that William G. Hillar ever took part in special operations education and training, which are standard for special forces personnel.

    Yeah, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is based on my real life story, nimnil. How this dickweed got away with telling that story for five years is beyond me. Didn’t one student in all of those years roll their eyes a bit?

    WOTN writes that I wrote about Hillar, but I don’t remember it, but thanks to WOTN for the link.

  • Response to Tuft’s article

    Apparently, not everyone was taken by the article in Tuft’s Daily in which Matthis was interviewed. His father, Dr Chiroux, and a student took issue with the author’s inclusion of the interview with a Vietnam veteran. I’m also aware of another student who is writing an article for Tuft’s Daily largely drawn from TAH archives. But here’s the letters published in Tuft’s Daily today;
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  • “Veterans” to march against White House for Peace

    A group of anti-war veterans have signed on to march against the White House to demand peace on Thursday, December 16th, probably hoping to avoid counterprotesters who have jobs and can’t show up on a Thursday. They compare themselves to the Bonus Marchers of the last century who marched after World War One for their benefits;

    In the early thirties, WW1 vets descended on Washington, D.C., to demand their promised bonuses, it being the depths of the Depression. General Douglas MacArthur and his sidekick Dwight Eisenhower disregarded President Herbert Hoover’s order and burned their encampment down and drove the vets out of town at bayonet point.

    We are today’s bonus marchers, and we’ve coming to claim our bonus-PEACE.

    Well, here are some of the people who’ve signed on to the above statement and whom we’ve discussed over the past few years.

    Brian Becker, National Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition; as you can imagine, Brian isn’t a veteran, just a Maoist bomb thrower. He runs ANSWER along with his brother also not a veteran.

    Medea Benjamin, Co-Founder, CODEPINK for Peace; yeah, she’s not a veteran either – yet there she is listed with veterans.

    Elaine Brower, Anti-war Military Mom and World Can’t Wait; She’s not a veteran, but her son was deployed to the GWOT three times – voluntarily. She’s fond of calling soldiers “baby killers” and “murderers” but exempts her son from such caricaturization and throws her son’s service in the face of her detractors at every opportunity.

    Scott Camil, Veterans For Peace; Camil was known as Scott the Assassin during the Vietnam War days because it was his idea to assassinate politicians who didn’t oppose that war. He was also one of the Gainesville Eight who plotted to disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami by attacking the police, disrupting utilities and firebombing stores. The plot was foiled by the FBI. He was also shot once while trying to sell drugs to the DEA.

    Matthis Chiroux, Iraq War Resister Veteran; What can I say about Matthis you don’t already know. He’s not a veteran of GWOT.

    Bill Perry, Vietnam Veterans Against the War; Bill Perry was one of the original VVAW members who testified at the first Winter Soldier hearings. He admitted to me last year that his testimony at those hearings was “bullshit” to please the hippie chicks and John Kerry.

    Mike Prysner, Co-Founder, March Forward; Mike ran for office in the Party for Socialism and Justice. He ran for the Board of IVAW even though he’d left the organization to form March Forward because IVAW wasn’t radical enough for him.

    Ward Reilly, Veterans For Peace; Ward is a big fake. he walks around in boonie caps and tiger stripe uniforms to give the impression that he’s a Vietnam veteran, but his entire tour in the military was spent in Germany during Vietnam. He wears a Ranger tab on his boonie cap to give the impression that he’s a Ranger even though he’s never been to the school and wouldn’tmake a pimple on a real Ranger’s ass.

    He once questioned me on how I could justify my CIB since I earned it in Desert Storm. He was wearing a Ranger tab at the time. Hypocite.

    Cindy Sheehan, Founder, Peace of the Action; Not a veteran, just an old hag in the final throes of her fame.

    David Swanson, author; Swanson is professional crybaby. He founded AfterDowningStreet which has morphed into an Arrest Bush and Cheney organization. Mostly he whines that the Left isn’t Left enough. He’s not a veteran.

    Debra Sweet, National Director, World Can’t Wait; Sweet is everywhere a lame protest erupts. Lately, she’s taken to following Matthis around NYC-area schools. She’s not a veteran.

    Col. Ann Wright, Veterans For Peace; she famously resigned from the Bush State Department to protest the invasion of Iraq. She’s a liar, when it suits “the cause” and she alternates between Code Pink and Vets For Peace. You can see her service record at the link.

    Doug Zachary, Veterans For Peace; Zachary was booted from the USMC before he could be deployed to Vietnam, but, like Reilly, he plays the part of a Vietnam veteran. Imagine how screwed up you have to be to kicked out of the Marines in 1968. Zachary loots every anti-war cause he can get his grubby paws near.

    There are more signatories, most of whom I don’t recognize by name. I only saw a few IVAW members on the list, but I’m sure they’ll be there.

  • Matthis at Tufts

    For some pointless reason, Tufts Daily, a student newspaper at Tufts University (which for some reason I thought was a conservative, traditional college), published an article by Alexa Sasanow entitled “Veteran Matthis Chiroux speaks out against the US military“. Notice it’s not wars he “speaks out against” anymore.

    You can read the whole article for yourself and you’ll recognize they newest Matthis line that it’s the military that’s the problem now, not the wars. Probably because he can’t speak to the war anymore, since it’s been proven that he’s never seen a war. But that doesn’t stop from making people believe he’s been to one without saying he has;

    Chiroux enlisted in the army soon after he graduated from high school, but not because he wanted to: He got into trouble with the police and was given the choice between being prosecuted as an adult in federal court or enlisting.

    “I always say, I’m living proof that we do not have an all?volunteer army,” he said.

    Yeah, he volunteered – he had a choice whether he should sell drugs at a grade school playground or not, and then he had a choice whether he wanted to take responsibility for selling drugs and go to jail, or volunteer to join the Army. A lot of kids his age (18 so how else would he have prosecuted if not as an adult?) don’t get the opportunity to choose.

    After his five years in the army, during which he served as an army strategic communicator and journalist, touring in Japan, Germany, Afghanistan and the Philippines, Chiroux returned to the United States in 2007. He got an apartment in Brooklyn with the one person he knew in New York, a fellow veteran. The two engaged mostly in reckless behavior after returning to civilian life, Chiroux said.

    “I was drinking excessively and being very physically impulsive,” he said. “One Sunday morning, I’d been up all night with a couple of women I was hanging out with — it was around 9 a.m. — and somehow we managed to get up on top of a skyscraper right next to Ground Zero. I was wasted and I remember standing on the edge of that building and looking down at the ground and seeing the wall stretch down from the tips of my toes to the sidewalk, 68 stories and the wind blowing. I went off like a rocket and it took me a while until I finally realized I may be having a good time, but there’s something wrong with me.”

    Such self?awareness is difficult for many veterans to manage, Chiroux said, particularly if they’re dealing with post?traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as a reported 319,000 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are. Chiroux’s New York apartment?mate is one of them.

    Yeah, PTSD put him on the roof edge. Even though he’d never witnessed a traumatic event that would cause PTSD. That’s why earlier he mentioned that everyone in the military has PTSD, so you could some sympathy for the ledge-balanced clown. Previously, he’s said that his PTSD was from interviewing real soldiers and hearing their stories. I guess he’s refined his condition.

    He continues on blaming TAH for IVAW booting his scrawney ass;

    While Chiroux had served for a year on the board of Iraq Veterans Against the War, he has since parted ways with the organization after receiving a lot of backlash from military communities for last March burning an American flag in Lafayette Park at an anti?war rally.

    Actually, he left because he’d succeeded in alienating a large number of IVAW members with his behavior for more than two years. I mean if you alienate guys like TJ Buonomo and Geoff “Stolen Valor” Millard, you’ve really pissed a lot of people off.

    “They buried my friends under the flag and that’s why I burned it. That flag killed my friends; soldiers had that flag on their arm when torturing people at Abu Ghraib,” he continued. “The military, they get to give you a symbol, tell you what it means and send you off to die with it. They’re going to wrap your story in that and burn the truth beneath it — why wouldn’t I burn it?”

    I’m sure Matthis had friends buried with the flag. And if he did, he’d know that’s no way to honor their memory. But it all so much more about Matthis and his Ward Reilly image.