Justin McCauley

Navy discredits sailor's story of being a SEAL in Afghanistan

By Don Bosley -- Bee Staff Writer - (Published February 7, 2002)

Justin McCauley armed jets with bombs and other munitions on the deck of the carrier USS Kitty Hawk as the United States began its air campaign in Afghanistan.

But McCauley, a Navy aviation ordnanceman, 21, liked the idea of being a Navy SEAL better. Though he never had qualified for even a single day of SEAL training, he told his mother and three brothers in Roseville that he was a rising member of the Navy's elite Sea-Air-Land special forces. And in doing so, he joined the growing number of people who publicly claim military status and valor that are not rightly theirs.

And so it was that, on Jan. 20, The Bee chronicled the family story of a Navy SEAL impostor. McCauley posed for family photos in a military jacket with a Navy SEAL patch on the breast, said he suffered slight shrapnel wounds while on the ground in Afghanistan, talked of a 9 ½-month SEAL training stint in San Diego

This week, his family and The Bee learned the truth from a watchdog group of retired Navy SEALs and, subsequently, Navy officials at the Pentagon and on the Kitty Hawk itself:

McCauley is not a SEAL. The jacket patch is a fake. He was never on the ground in Afghanistan nor injured by a fragment grenade....