SULTANA

Sultana, Graig E.
aka Sultana Craig E.
aka Sam Wade

"You will always remember the face of the person who saves your life.
That will be with you for the rest of your life and you will always be grateful.
You will remember every detail and every date."
                                                                                                                                                           a soldier who served in Afghanistan

POW claim of Colfax VFW leader called fraud
Sultana stands by story now denied by Pentagon

By: Carol Feineman, Gold Country News Service
Thursday, July 7, 2005 12:05 AM PDT

Graig Sultana, who was quoted in a Colfax Record story last week saying he was a prisoner of war, spoke falsely, according to the Pentagon.

Sultana, 54, stands by his statements and is adamant he was held prisoner in Laos during the Vietnam War.

The story was about Sultana being named the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States' "Captain of the All-State Commanders" and included several paragraphs about his POW experiences.

The Colfax resident, who talked about being held in captivity in Laos from 1970 to 1973, was never a prisoner of war, said Larry Greer, Pentagon POW/MIA office spokesman.

Sultana is commander of the Colfax Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States Post 2003 and also the Sierra Vista Community Center's president, Colfax Planning Commissioner, Colfax Veterans Memorial Building board of trustee member and a Colfax Pride member.

In a Colfax Planning Commission application dated August 2003, Sultana lists himself as retired and formerly working as an "investigative reporter" with The Sacramento Bee. A human resources department representative at The Bee said Friday, however, that Sultana worked only in the circulation department during the 1990s.

Sultana vehemently denied that he was lying about his U.S. Armed Services record and said he was forbidden to discuss details of his top-secret mission.

"This is all hush-hush. I signed a thing with the government not to go into this," Sultana said Tuesday. "The Marines rescued me in 1971; they came in on a special operation. I don't remember that stuff about who rescued me or when."

Larry Greer, the Pentagon's POW/MIA office spokesman, said Friday that any secret-mission explanation from Sultana is unfounded.

"That's not the truth," Greer said. "Officially, on behalf of the U.S. government, there's no mission from the Vietnam War that he can't talk about."

"Nobody by that name (Sultana) is listed in governmental records that he was a POW," Greer added. "This database includes names of people held as POWS in Vietnam, those held in Laos, those held one day, those held seven years. The list shows people who worked for other agencies of the government, shows civilians, missionaries, civilian contractors and the military. It shows people on secret units in Laos. There's nobody with a last name of Sultana."

The official U.S. governmental listing of Vietnam War MIAs/POWs (which is on the Department of Defense's Web site at www.dtic.mil/dpmo/pmsea/files.htm) was compiled by U.S. units reporting daily on the troops' status during the war, Greer said. Agencies such as the CIA, State Department and non-governmental organizations added the other names during the war.

"This listing has been challenged dozens of times over the years and has never been proven inaccurate of omitting names," Greer said.

The Sultana-POW controversy began when the Colfax Record received an e-mail last Thursday from Retired Navy Capt. Mike McGrath, a former Vietnam War prisoner of war, stating that Sultana was a "POW wannabe."

A few hours later, Sultana unexpectedly called The Record office and said "people out there will say I never was a POW."

When asked last Thursday why someone would make such a claim, Sultana replied that he "isn't supposed to talk about the secret mission."

McGrath is past president and the current historian of NAM-POWs, a nonprofit organization for the POWS of Vietnam. Membership is open to only those who were POWs in Vietnam. McGrath, who lives in Colorado, first heard about Sultana four years ago when the POWNETWORK contacted him.

Based out of Skidmore, Mo., the POWNETWORK records the Vietnam POW history, according to the organization's fraud investigator Mary Schantag.

Twelve hundred "POW wannabes" are listed on the POWNETWORK's Web site at www.pownetwork.org/phonies/phonies.htm.

"We had several people since 2001 asking about Sultana," Schantag commented. "They said, 'he's not listed on the (government's) POW list, can you check him out?' They literally reported him because he had been telling everyone he was a POW and was even given special recognition by schools back in 2002."

"Sultana has been doing this for a long time. His statements are all based on fiction," Schantag said.

Schantag says her "wannabe" POW list (where Sultana is listed as a fraud) is 100 percent accurate.

"For all those names up on our Web site, you have to realize, should we be wrong, we can lose our home, we can lose our nonprofit established in 1989 and we can lose our reputation," she explained.

Since Schantag questions whether Sultana even served in the U.S. Army, she has requested Sultana's military records from the National Personal Records Center in St. Louis, Mo. She expects to receive those public documents within a month.

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Sultana, Graig E. aka Sultana Craig E. aka Sam Wade

Sultana, Graig E.
aka Sultana Craig E.
aka Sam Wade