CHICAGO
- The story that Richard Barr Cayton has told of his Vietnam War
service features a torturous march through the jungle in January 1971,
his arms tied to a branch across the back of his neck and shoulders. He
was a prisoner of war, he said, until a bombing distracted his captors,
and he and a fellow soldier escaped.
Cayton recounted the episode for a Texas newspaper in 2002, saying
that he and the other Army Ranger, David Meyer, traveled by night and
hid during the day until they were found.
For all its drama, Cayton's story of captivity and a flight to
freedom is not supported by military records or interviews with his
fellow soldiers. Records show that Cayton was a soldier but never a
prisoner of war, and he admitted that in an interview with the Chicago
Tribune.
"I made a mistake," Cayton said. "I did something wrong and apologized for it."
Cayton's tale is perhaps one of the more dramatic examples of
someone who falsely maintains that he was a prisoner of war. Such
claims are so common that a cottage industry of sorts has emerged to
expose phony POWs, Navy SEALs, Green Berets and others falsely claiming
that they served in elite military units.
A recent Tribune investigation highlighted a similar problem that is
just as pervasive: false claims of earning the military's top medals
for valor, a lie that also is now a criminal offense.
The private watchdogs who investigate such claims are vigilant and
aggressive. This summer, an Oklahoma newspaper published the story of a
man who claimed he was a former SEAL who, during Vietnam, was held in a
bamboo cage for four years. Former SEAL Steve Robinson, who wrote a
book about exposing phony SEALs, immediately suspected the man was a
fraud. He checked a database of real SEALs to confirm his suspicions,
then wrote the newspaper to say it had been hoodwinked.
"When I read the story," said Robinson, "right away I'm thinking something is up."
Less than a week later, the man admitted to the newspaper that he had lied.
The POW watchdogs who exposed Cayton are retirees who work out of their home in the tiny Missouri town of Skidmore.
By their count, Mary and Chuck Schantag of the P.O.W. Network have
exposed close to 1,900 impostors since 1998, when they began to check
POW claims. They say they have exposed another 2,000 men who claimed
they were in elite units.
"It's taken over our lives," said Mary Schantag. "We check reports
of phonies when we get up in the morning and before we get to bed at
night."
Their motivation is simple. "The lies are changing history. It's
wrong. It causes the real heroes to be grouped with the phonies and
frauds," she said. "The integrity and honor should be given to those
who really earn it."
Their job is made easier because, compared with World War II, the
Vietnam War produced relatively few American POWs - 766 - and the
military has thoroughly documented them, said Larry Greer, a spokesman
for the Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.
Consequently, it takes only a few keystrokes to determine whether
someone claiming to be a POW is telling the truth; the names of
prisoners from the Vietnam and Korean Wars are posted online.
On their Web site, the Schantags detail the cases they make under
the heading "Phonies & Wannabees," with stories of the frauds and,
sometimes, apologies from soldiers and sailors who lied.
Similarly, online sleuths in recent years have sought to expose people claiming to be Navy SEALS.
Recently the Tribune did its own analysis to gauge the frequency of
such fabrications. Whether found in Who's Who, obituaries or news
articles, nearly half of the 89 people identified as having served in
the Army's Special Forces or the Navy's SEALs had no association with
those elite warriors, according to their official military files.
In addition to barring false claims to medals awarded for bravery,
the broadly worded federal law known as the Stolen Valor Act prohibits
claiming, either orally or in writing, a false entitlement to any
"decoration" or "badge" worn by the Armed Forces. According to the FBI,
people have been prosecuted under the act for falsely claiming to have
served as a SEAL or a Green Beret.
Making a bogus boast of POW status, however, is not against the law, though many in the military consider it equally offensive.
"They can brag all they want. They can say that they were held in
the worst possible conditions," Greer said. "But that's not a crime.
Those people, well, they're just bigmouths."
The Schantags first heard about Richard Cayton in 2002, after an
article in the Killeen Daily Herald in Texas detailed how victims of
various hardships survive. One of those victims was Cayton.
"They did degrading, inhumane things to us," Cayton said of his purported captors.
Cayton was a decorated soldier who retired in 1995 with the rank of
command sergeant major after more than three decades in the Army,
according to his military records.
But the Schantags, who have come to know many POWs, did not
recognize Cayton's name. They checked online; Cayton was not listed, so
they wrote to the Army.
That prompted an investigation by the Department of Veterans
Affairs, the Army's Criminal Investigation Division and a review by
federal prosecutors. That investigation, according to documents and
interviews, found probable cause for the belief that Cayton had
falsified his military documents to show he was a POW.
As part of a pretrial agreement in September 2006, Cayton agreed to
stop making those claims and to correct his military records, according
to Army documents.
In fact, during the time Cayton claimed to the Killeen newspaper
that he and David Meyer were POWs, their Ranger unit was involved in a
jungle firefight and rescue that resulted in the death of Meyer and
another soldier, Barry Berger.
When the Rangers returned to the base, some of them went to their
commanders - Richard Epting, the platoon leader, and Mark Hansen,
company commander - to complain. Several Rangers believed Cayton's
actions had unnecessarily provoked the firefight, according to
interviews and military records.
Epting and Hansen, in separate interviews with the Tribune, said
that because Cayton's men were refusing to work with him, they called
him in and asked about the soldiers' concerns.
"He never once said, 'Wait a minute, sir. Someone is lying on me,'"
said Epting, who retired as a colonel after 26 years in the Army. "He
never objected."
Shortly after the firefight, Hansen shipped Cayton out of the unit
"because he lost the confidence of his fellow soldiers and leaders,"
according to Hansen's interview with military investigators. Hansen, a
West Point graduate who retired from the Army as a colonel in 1998, and
his fellow officers concluded that Cayton "had manipulated the
situation during (the) firefight so as to appear heroic to his
comrades," a military investigative report said.
"This was a shameful event," Hansen said in a recent interview.
Cayton declined to discuss the firefight and what happened in the unit.
Two days after the firefight and rescue - during the time Cayton
claimed he was a POW - soldiers gathered for a memorial service for
Meyer and Berger.
All the soldiers who attended signed a sheet of paper, a copy of
which was sent to the families of Meyer and Berger. Meyer's sister,
Patricia Heddens of Charles City, Iowa, has a copy.
Cayton's name is on it.