Lie detectors

Larry Bailey, Chuck and Mary Schantag, Steve Waterman and others are on a nationwide mission to expose those who exaggerate or falsely claim military service.

                    By Dan Fesperman
                    Sun Staff
                    Originally published July 5, 2001

                    Times are tough for fake soldiers.

                    Latest casualty: Distinguished historian Joseph J. Ellis, exposed as a phony Vietnam veteran, besmirching an otherwise brilliant career as an author and professor.

                    Other notables among the recently fallen: a Pennsylvania schools superintendent who claimed to have been a decorated Navy SEAL; a retired police chief in Ohio who told stories of Green Beret heroism and brutal captivity as a prisoner of the Viet Cong; a leader of Wal-Mart's executive security detail who claimed to have been not only a SEAL but also a master killer, supposedly dispatching one of his 16 victims with a rolled-up newspaper; a major league baseball manager who told his players hair-raising tales of Marine missions in Vietnam.

                    Impostors, one and all....

                    Copyright © 2001, The Baltimore Sun