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<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nOur buddy, Nate Thayer<\/a>, sends us his work on Imperial Wizard of the now-defunct North Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Steven Howard who claimed to be a former Marine and Iraq veteran for national media seeking to find racist veterans;<\/p>\n \u201cI lost a lot of good friends of mine fighting in Iraq for this country for nothing\u2014for nothing, all because of the U.S. government. I am way mad at the government. I got a lot of hate in me, a lot of hate for nothing. I got a lot built up in me. A lot of hurt,\u201d Howard told ABC News correspondent Cynthia McFadden in an interview aired on ABC Nightline in 2013. \u201cI became a very angry person after I served.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they strung them up on the bridge and shit, his body burning and shit, that\u2019s when I was over there,\u201d Howard told VICE News in reference to Americans who were killed near the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Howard also told VICE News he was a U.S military veteran of the war in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n On March 31, 2004 Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah ambushed American military contractors guarding a convoy carrying kitchen supplies to a U.S. military base. Four Americans were dragged from their cars, beaten, and set on fire, their corpses dragged through the streets before being hung from a bridge over the Euphrates river. In response, US Marines entered the city and intense battles resulted in the deaths of at least 40 US Marines and more than 700 Iraqis.<\/p>\n \u201cGod give us men who will not flinch at duty and will not lie! Amen?\u201d Howard exhorted Ku Klux Klansmen dressed in robes in a 2013 VICE News program titled \u2018How the KKK preys on American veterans\u2019. \u201cKlansmen! For God! Klansmen! For the United States Marine Corps!,\u201d he preached as followers repeated his words at a Mississippi cross burning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Pouring through the countless interviews, Nate found one where Howard said he was discharged in 2003 which conflicted with his claims of being in Fallujah for the Marines’ battle there, so Nate got a FOIA on Howard;<\/p>\n Official Marine Corps records from the Department of Defense Manpower Data Center and Howard\u2019s official DD-214 U.S. government military record, show Howard never served in the United States military and was expelled for drug abuse from Marine Corps boot camp within weeks of enlisting in 1998.<\/p>\n \u201cWe initiated a search of the files maintained by the Management Records & Performance Branch (MRPB), but they could not identify Mr. Howard as a member or former member of the U.S. Marine Corps or Marine Corps Reserves,\u201d said the Department of the Navy and Headquarters United States Marine Corps on January 27, 2017 in a reply to a request for Howard\u2019s military records.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, Thayer confronted Howard with the records request response;<\/p>\n After being confronted with these and other U.S. government documents, Howard said \u201cI don\u2019t want everything about my military service record to get out there,\u201d pleading with a reporter that his true military history not be made public and blaming major media television networks for luring him into lying for interviews in exchange for money. \u201cI told all that stuff about being in Iraq because that is what the TV people wanted me to say.\u201d<\/p>\n Howard acknowledged he has lied for years about his military service. \u201cI made a little fib about the military,\u201d he said. \u201cEverybody tells war stories about their service. I told all that stuff about being in Iraq because that is what the TV people wanted me to say. We won\u2019t ever get our story out if we don\u2019t get our names in public.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was kicked out of the Marines because I was on pain pills. You already got my DD-214\u2019s,\u201d he said, referring to his official U.S. government military records. \u201cI enlisted. It was not for long. I did serve my country.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yeah, the media can always find a liar who fits their preconceived notions if they look hard enough. Being a veteran wasn’t the only thing Howard pretended for the media. You should read Thayer’s excellent article and read about the media’s collusion with a meth-head to create a meme. A&E actually paid Howard to pretend to be a racist veteran for their reality show that was ultimately cancelled before it premiered.<\/p>\n