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PHONY VET SENTENCED FOR FALSIFYING A VA CLAIM

AND ALTERING DISCHARGE PAPERS -- Kicked out of

Basic after 44 days, Jesse MacBeth tried to make

himself the poster boy for the anti-war movement.

 

Jesse MacBeth

 

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Story below:

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Poster soldier for anti-war movement was a fake

By MIKE BARBER
P-I REPORTER

Jesse MacBeth never was an Army Ranger, much less a corporal, never received a Purple Heart for wounds inflicted by a foreign foe, and neither saw nor participated in war crimes with fellow U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, claims for which he became a poster-boy for the anti-war movement.

So, there was likely no way the 23-year-old Tacoma man suffered the post-traumatic stress disorder from the horrors of war and other injuries.

MacBeth was sentenced Friday to five months in jail and three years probation for falsifying a Department of Veterans Affairs claim and an Army discharge record.

At a sentencing hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik Friday, MacBeth's federal public defender, Jay Stansell, said that if MacBeth didn't have PTSD from a war, he had mental health problems and grew up in a very harsh background, homeless on the streets, surviving by seizing whatever angle or positive feedback he could get.

"I know he lived a war as a child," Stansell said.

Lasnik, weighing a standard sentencing range of between two and eight months for falsifying a VA claim and an Army discharge record, also ordered MacBeth to seek help for mental health problems, especially as they related to committing domestic violence.

MacBeth's is the latest case to be sentenced under Operation Stolen Valor, which is using the new Stolen Valor Act to go after fake veterans who often festoon themselves with awards and invent tales of longsuffering injuries, often to fraudulently acquire veterans benefits.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Friedman said the sentencing range is often linked to how much money a fake veteran bilks from the government, and MacBeth was caught before he took any.

Friedman said the government doesn't fully understand what MacBeth's motivations were. The interviews MacBeth gave were part of his effort to document PTSD, Friedman said, "but they were also symptomatic of something else."

The sentence stemmed from a plea agreement last May in which MacBeth admitted guilt to falsifying a claim for veterans compensation benefits and altering his military discharge record, which was issued after he washed out of Army boot camp after 44 days in 2003.

A thin man who sat quietly, looking down through most of the hearing, MacBeth apologized for snookering anti-war groups with his claims of murdering unarmed, helpless civilians in Iraq -- which were translated in English and Arabic and posted on the Internet -- but also to U.S. soldiers whom he "defamed."

MacBeth said he felt bad for what he did.

"I'm sorry not only for lying about everything and discrediting anti-war groups, but also for defaming the real heroes, the soldier out there sacrificing for their country," MacBeth said. "I was trying to pull a fast one, to make money to get off the streets."

MacBeth fooled peace groups and alternative media to become something of an anti-war star over the last four years. MacBeth claimed he witnessed and participated in war crimes in Iraq with other Rangers, slaughtering hundreds of unarmed men, women and children.

In a widely distributed Internet video translated into Arabic, Macbeth said "We would burn their bodies ... hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque."

Lasnik noted that the case operated in two arenas, one in the courtroom where he was sentenced specifically for the crime of falsifying records, but another "in the blogosphere and elsewhere where he became a symbol."

"Too many people with a political agenda grabbed ahold of Mr. MacBeth's story and ran with it because they wanted to believe it," he said. Any sober look should have caused MacBeth's claims to be met with skepticism and checked out, he said.

"They tried to make him a poster boy for their point of view and I think that is outrageous," Lasnik said.

Yet, while MacBeth's actions embarrassed the anti-war movement, it cannot not be argued, as other quarters of the blogosphere assert, "that all reports of abuse by Americans in Iraq are incorrect," Lasnik said. The military justice system has and continued to investigate and deal with those reports, he said.

At a noon press conference after the sentencing, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey C. Sullivan, Doug Carver, special-agent-in charge of the Veterans Affairs office of the inspector general, and B.G. Burkett, author of the book Stolen Valor about fakes claiming to be decorated veterans, spoke of the phenomenon of fakes.

Operation Stolen Valor has resulted in more than half a dozen Pacific Northwest cases against defendants pretending to be veterans. A report on National Public Radio earlier this month said there are now 50 such investigations nationwide.

Such prosecutions stem from a growing backlash nationwide against military fakes. The new Stolen Valor Act allows authorities to pursue phonies they previously could not touch. In the past authorities rarely could act unless they caught someone wearing an award.

MacBeth did spend time in a uniform, briefly. From May to June 2003 he served 44-days as a recruit. He never rose above an entry level private and washed out of basic training, discharged for performance and conduct reasons.

Stansell in court had raised the question of how MacBeth, a Muslim who wanted to serve in the Army, was recruited. Yet MacBeth was signed up and sent to basic training despite a criminal history and evidence of mental problems -- suicide attempts and self-mutilation in the form of cut marks on his arms.

"The military made a mistake," Stansell said. While MacBeth was likely not truthful because he wanted to serve, "I am confident in the pressure the get more (people) into the armed service, some people looked the other way," he said.

MacBeth is the second fake warrior locally to be sentenced in the last three months.

In July, Reggie Buddle, of Puyallup, was sentenced to two years probation and 500 hours of labor in Tahoma National Cemetery after admitting he was not a decorated U.S. Marine captain nor a combat veteran nor a military chaplain.

Buddle, 59, a retired Boeing machinist, never attempted to acquire veterans benefits as MacBeth did. Buddle had served two years as an enlisted U.S. Army soldier in the late 1960s. While posing as a Marine officer and military chaplain, however, Buddle conducted baptisms, marriages or funerals, and once opened the State Legislature with a prayer.

 

P-I reporter Mike Barber can be reached at 206-448-8018 or mikebarber@seattlepi.com.

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Larry Scott  --