B. G. Burkett

B. G. Burkett is a retired Army officer and financial advisor. He is best known as co-author of the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998), written with journalist Glenna Whitley. It received the Colby Award for military writers in 2000.

B.G. Burkett (right) with U.S. Rep. John Salazar
B.G. Burkett (right) with U.S. Rep. John Salazar
BornB.G. Burkett
Notable worksStolen Valor

Early life

Burkett was the son of an air force colonel and his wife, and grew up on military bases. As a child, he felt his "heroes were not sports figures like Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays but the fighter pilots who had blasted the Luftwaffe out of the sky". Burkett states that life on a military base imbued in him "an understanding that the military was the guardian of the freedoms enjoyed by the civilian population."[1]

Career

As a young man, Burkett enlisted in the US Army in June 1966. He joined the 199th Infantry Brigade and fought in the Vietnam War. After returning from the war, he started a career in finance.[2] Burkett has a Master of Business Administration.[3]

Burkett says he decided to write the book now known as Stolen Valor after hearing too many news reports about Vietnam veterans characterized as mentally unstable. Burkett began fact-checking whether such identified people were veterans by applying for their military records through Freedom of information process.[2][4]

Burkett says he checked over 3,500 people's claims to have served in Vietnam,[2] and found 1,700 of them had fabricated their stories.[4][5]

According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the self-published Stolen Valor gained a "cult status" among military members.[3] The book was awarded the Colby Award in 2000.[6][7] It has been credited for inspiring the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 passed by Congress, making it a crime for an individual to falsely claim to have been awarded military medals.[2][3]

Burkett was instrumental in returning a man named Joe Yandle to prison.[2] Yandle, who was serving a life-sentence for killing a liquor store attendant during a robbery in 1972, had claimed he had turned to drugs and crime after returning scarred from two tours of duty in Vietnam. Yandle's story was covered by Mike Wallace for 60 Minutes. Sympathy for his account was credited with his gaining a commutation of his sentence and being released on parole. While researching his book, Burkett learned that, while Yandle had served in the military, he had never been deployed to Vietnam. Burkett took his evidence to 60 Minutes, who subsequently re-interviewed Yandle. After the veteran admitted he had lied about Vietnam, his parole was revoked in August 1998 and he returned to prison.[8]

In 2005, Burkett co-authored a paper with B.C. Frueh, J.D. Elhai, and J.D. Monnier that was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.[3] It focused on concerns "regarding the validity of combat exposure reports of veterans seeking treatment for combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder".[9]

See also

Bibliography
  • Burkett, B. G., and Glenna Whitley. Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History. Dallas: Verity Press, 1998. ISBN 0-9667036-0-X (self-published)

References
  1. Burkett, B. G., and Glenna Whitley. Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History. Dallas: Verity Press, 1998. ISBN 0-9667036-0-X Page 4.
  2. Lawrence, J.P. (11 March 2015). "The War Against Stolen Valor Is Still Raging in Colorado — Where It Started". Westword.com. Archived from the original on 9 February 2019. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  3. Working, Russell (December 2009). "A Failure of Skepticism". Columbia Journalism Review. Archived from the original on 9 February 2019. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  4. Owens, Mackubin Thomas (February 1999). "NBC's "The Sixties": Slandering an Entire Generation of Warriors". Ashland University. Archived from the original on 6 May 2015.
  5. Webb, Jim (15 July 1998). "The Media's War on Vietnam Vets". JamesWebb.com.
  6. "Colby Award Winners at the Pritzker Military Library". Pritzker Military Museum & Library. 24 October 2003. Archived from the original on 20 June 2017.
  7. "The Colby Award". Norwich University. Archived from the original on 22 December 2013. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  8. Goldberg, Carey (August 27, 1998). "His Vietnam Tale Exposed as a Lie, a Killer Is Back in Custody". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 27, 2015.
  9. Frueh, BC; Elhai, JD; Monnier, J (2005). "Documented combat exposure of US veterans seeking treatment for combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder". British Journal of Psychiatry. 186 (6): 467–72, discussion 473-5. doi:10.1192/bjp.186.6.467. PMID 15928355. S2CID 3658912.
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