SGM Underwood’s Stolen Valor
A few months ago, we talked a little about Sergeant Major Andrew F. Underwood, who was a CID agent and whom the Army busted for stolen valor while he was still on active duty. At the time we weren’t really sure what he had done, only that some military judges were really mad at him. Well, TSO, who heads our huge legal department, got some of the records of the proceedings and here are a couple of relevant passages;
First of all, he had only three months of deployment time in more than 20 years? And he was a sergeant major? Secondly, no one thought to check his record of assignments to see if he had indeed made those deployments before they promoted his monkey ass? Yeah, he deserved to fry. He tossed his twenty years for a couple of BS deployments.
Here’s the whole .pdf file if you’re interested.
Category: Phony soldiers, Shitbags
THREE service stars on his NDSM? What a freaking idiot!
There have only been four NDSM periods in US military history: Korea (1950-1954), Vietnam (1961-1974), Gulf War (1990-1995), and GWOT (2001-present). Three service stars on the NDSM implies service DURING ALL FOUR PERIODS.
For that alone, he deserves what he got – for sheer stupidity!
He needs to be put on one-week TDY to the Sergeants Major Academy at Bliss so his fellow CSMs and SMAs can beat the shit out of him…what a fucking disgrace…
Well, you can’t make any excuses for him or argue that he didn’t get what he deserved, but compare and contrast his BCD with no benefits for what he did as opposed to how the 0-6 who had commanded the 173rd was treated for worse
Big Chicken Dinner. HOLY CRAP. For WHAT?!?!?
I have NDSW with ONE star and this fool had 3?
How the FLYING FARK did he not think someone would NOTICE???
What kind of EGO would even begin to think you could pull this??
/boggles the mind.
68W58: no argument from me on that count. IMO Johnson the Johnson should have gotten full reduction, some serious time in Leavenworth (3 to 5 years), and been dismissed. Why in the hell his court-martial board didn’t hammer him beyond a big honking fine is beyond me.
OSBs for Bosnia? Who the hell didn’t catch that at jump street?
@4 my comment
About the BCD meant to say, “I can’t imagine *anyone* who would think they had the GALL to risk getting a BCD to do something as unbelievably STOOPID as this….and to BOOT…..MULTIPLE TIMES!!!!….”
Not insinuating that I didn’t think he didn’t deserve a BCD.
/jes saying is all.
Hah! NDSM + 3? Evidently, among many other failures, his math is not so good. At least several of us commenting around here have the NDSM + 2, and those who preceded us could have as well, but not possible to have a total of 4. So far.
While it does irritate me when the punishments are so inequitable, but not gonna cry about this clown getting his just deserts.
I still can’t get over the fact that this guy was actually so dumb that he walked around publicly claiming service during the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, and the GWOT (by wearing 3 stars on his NDSM). That’s like putting a sign reading “I’m Lying” on the pocket below it with an arrow pointing up.
Some quick math
I assume he is 43ish.
Average life expectancy is 76
So that is 33 years of retirement payments
For an E-9 with 25 years that is $3417/mo
x 33 years = $1.35 MILLION in pension payments
Hope all that BS was worth $1.35 million (and that is not assuming raises)
Sad..for his family
While this guy clearly was lying about his NDSM, is it technically possible for someone to have 3 stars on one?
It seems to me that a 17 year old who enlisted in 1952, served a few years got out and went to medical school and then went into the reserves with a few periods of voluntary active duty might rate one, based on a waiver for the mandatory retirement age for medical officers (there were guys in their 70s who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as doctors).
OWB: it’s theoretically possible for someone in the Army’s Medical or Chaplain’s Corps to have rated the NDSM with 3 stars.
By reg, officers in those career fields are allowed to serve until a relatively advanced age (66 and 68, if I recall correctly), and age/service waivers are fairly routinely granted for both so long as an individual remains physically qualified to serve. From 1954 to 2002 is 48 years; if a guy or gal started service at age 18 in 1954, they’d have been 66 in 2002.
That said, I do not ever remember hearing of someone who’d served during all 4 NDSM periods. And I think that would have made the rounds of military news circles during the early part of the GWOT if it had ever happened.
A Masters degree from the SORBONNE and this didn’t immediately raise flags in his chain of command/NCO support channel? Maybe it did. #10 is right- his lying will cost him millions in lost retirement benefits and also in potential lost civilian wages. Dirtbag.
@9 It does indicate a certain amount of intellectual arrogance, that is clearly unwarranted.
Getting the boot is appropriate, I agree with 68W58 that the disparity with the punishment of recent officers who have been found lacking the appropriate moral fiber to serve honorably is clearly illustrated for everyone to see.
Everyone is theoretically equal under the law, it’s the premise behind everything we do and teach our young people.
However, it’s also quite disconcerting at that moment when you realize that the premise of equality under the law is entirely filled with bullsh1t, and always has been and most likely always will be. That’s the kind of thing that aids folks in becoming crotchety old cranks who are p1ssed about everything.
I would never suggest Underwood should get less than he did, but it would be nice to some GOs get f$cked hard for the same or worse sh1t. Loss of pension, loss of rank, and BCDs indicating what sh1tbags they really are. The leaders of men, the keepers of the law should always be held to the highest standards, not the lowest common denominator with a get out of jail free pass from their sh1thead buddies.
This jack wagon is a serious idiot, after reading the PDF about his court martial appeal it looks like the base reason he lied was for improving his promotion chances. This a-hole might have cost someone else a promotion. If he really wanted to improve his promotion chances why didn’t he volunteer for more rigorous assignments? The real karmaic bitch is that his real record may have been good enough for the promotions anyway.
I do have one question though… how the hell did he get that bullshit by three different selection boards? Nobody on those boards noticed? Not saying much for the quality of those boards.
A career faker who managed to get his promotions based on lies… As much as I hate to say it, I suspect he isn’t the only one….
@1-Hondo-nobody said E-9’s were smart. My Chief Recruiter was PROUD of the fact he cut a 29 on his ASVAB and still made Master Chief.
@17 A 29? That’s Marine territory there..
*Runs and hides….
A CID agent in confinement. That made my day.
Sadly, that’s the Navy CRF mentality. CRF meaning “Can’t Remember Fleet.”
And yeah, if that kind of shit went on with the Army E-7/8/9 selection boards, makes ya wonder how the CPO/SCPO/MCPO boards went.
What runs through the mind of someone who cuts a 29 on the ASVAB? Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breath out… And I thought that the submarine TMs were “special”.
@17 – Very funny. 29 on an ASVAB? Really?
A BCD was pretty harsh, but considering he certified his awards in the promotion photos submitted to the promotion boards lends enough proof that he knew what he was doing was wrong at the time, and by him doing so, it would likely get him promoted… which equals CA$H in his pocket. He just didn’t think he’d get caught.
Stolen Valor presents itself with different motivations behind it.
Sucks to be him.
Kinda Old ET1: an Army centralized promotion board typically views and considers literally thousands of records. Each board member views and scores each record. The net result is that each record only gets a few minutes of scrutiny; the DA photo, probably a few seconds.
If the ribbons are all in order and seem to match the rollup documentation (primarily the ERB or ORB), there’s a good chance an extra campaign star/service star/campaign medal might slip by. (Extra OLCs might get caught, as there should be an order or cert for each in the file.) And due to time pressure, each eval only gets a really quick look. A bogus assignment in-theater on the ERB/ORB might get missed.
Bottom line: the guy probably crafted his ERB to make it say what he wanted, then put on the ribbons and overseas bars he thought matched (obviously he screwed some of that up). The boards missed it due to lack of time to delve deeply and do enough cross-checking between the rollup (ERB) and his actual evals – there are no orders for campaign/service medals. If he hadn’t made some truly outrageous mistakes that ended up being questioned by his colleagues he could easily have gotten away with it.
I feel bad for the guy who got passed over because of this liar took the SGM’s promotion slot.
IMO this is no different than someone padding their ERB with diploma(s) from those online diploma mills, like a certain SMAG from a Drill school did. The very fact that he had ONE 90 day deployment in his whole career may or may not have held him back, but clearly he felt it was going to. Did the extra fruit salad help put him over the top for those last two promotions? Maybe, maybe not.
I have to agree with the folks that have pointed out “how did this slip through?”. I know that when all those SGMs are passing around the packets at the E7 board they get something like an average of 2-3 min to look at them before they pass them to the next person (glance at the DA photo, look at the blow up of the ribbons, look at the last NCOER, then pass), but you would think as you move up with fewer candidates for promotion to E8 and E9, there would be more time to vet the packets.
Hell, maybe we should start making E8s testify (testilie?) before congress like officers do when they are up for promotion to the higher ranks.
@22-A BCD was pretty harsh
Disagree. Consider that more likely than not he might well have stayed at SFC and retired at 20. Any pay and benefits after that is gravy, as well as any extra retirement pay for making E-8/9 and the longevity pay on top of that.
It adds up to some pretty serious coin very fast, and if someone straight up stole that amount at one shot, a BCD (or DD) would have certainly been in order.
@26, what’s sad Sparky is that if he had retired as a SFC he would still have been doing better than a lot of 20yr folks. I was always told that something like 80% of the enlisted that retire at 20 do so as E6s. Of course this could just be another urban myth of the Army.
@27, I see most people in the Army retiring at either E7 or E8. I retired after 21 years at E8 and a co-worker who did 20 retired at E7. To be honest, I have only seen a few people retiring at E-6, but that is personal observation and I do not know what the overall numbers are.
Andy: even for E8 and E9, the numbers are daunting.
For the FY 2012 E8 board, over 18,000 soldiers were considered.
For the FY 2012 E9 board, over 4,600 soldiers were considered.
For raw numbers, see the “Board Menu” pages here (if you can log into AKO):
https://www.hrc.army.mil/TAGD/Enlisted%20Promotions
Numbers are lower on the Officer side of the house, but they’re still high. I couldn’t find as good a source of data for Officer boards (the same kinds of memos exist, but HRC doesn’t have them in an easily-findable location.) However, according to the Army Times, for FY2011 the O6 board considered well over 1000 files. MAJ and LTC boards considered substantially more files than that. (My impression is that historically the LTC board sees 2-3x as many files as the COL board and the MAJ board sees around 4-5x as many.)
Above is for the active component. The USAR has somewhat smaller numbers for their central boards, but they’re pretty large numbers too.
The bottom line is that boards don’t and never will have time to review each and every file in exhaustive detail unless the US military becomes very damn small again. I don’t see that happening any time soon, and would be exceptionally worried if it ever does.
Hondo, Thanks for the information. I can see why the ranking has to be done quickly, but it does make you wonder why they don’t take a closer look at the selectees.
And now I really have an insight into why they call getting ready for promotion “ticket punching”.
I can’t play the “I feel sorry for him” game. A CSM in USACID and he screwed the pooch in more way than one. He flung the criminal case review door wide ass open. Now CID may have to review cases he processed, testified in court on and even if they are rock solid cases, could end up having them tossed out because of his conduct. Think I mentioned something along these lines here in the past few days.
Not only has he fucked himself royally for any civilian or federal LEO slots, he’ll be lucky to work as dog catcher let alone parking cars at a cathouse. This guy would have been a prize catch for any agency until this was found out.
Fuck him. In the ear, with a frozen trout.
@27 Andy
Your “average” military retiree is an E-7 with 22 years of service on the enlisted side and an O-5 with 24 years of service on the officer side
That covers about 90% of all retirees
@3. In the case of the former commander of the 173rd ABCT, there was a method to the madness. By allowing him to retire at O-6 with full benefits, the Army opened the door for his ex-wife to get her hands on them in the divorce. Remember the story: While running around with his arab mistress, he trumped up a case against his then-current wife and had her (and his son) sent back to CONUS under “Early Return of Dependents” so he could move his mistress into his quarters.
When the wife sued for divorce in the US he started a smear campaign against her, saying she was unstable and an unfit mother, etc etc. Then the full story came out about HIS shenanigans.
The good (former) Colonel won’t be seeing very many of those retirement bennies AND he gets to deal with the VA the same as the rest of us.
@33
Actually, former bird COL was bumped down to LTC in retirement. His dad being a retired LTG and fmr commander of the 82nd i’m guessing probably played a big role in saving JJ’s butt from being dismissed from the Army and maybe shipped off to the DD for an extended stay.
Hondo: Good to know on the Army side. When I retired, the max in USAF was 63. And the physical for those waivers was done very carefully.
OWB: max for other Army specialties is lower – age 60 for anyone who’s not a GO, as I recall, plus there was a years of commissioned service limit for O4 (20), O5 (28) and O6 (30). Age could be waived, but it took exceptionally high-level approval. (I don’t think years of service limits could be waived except for Medical and Chaplain, but I could be wrong.) It was pretty rare to see any officer outside the medical or chaplains community who wasn’t a GO who was 60 or older. Not unknown, but rare.
I believe the Army max age for WOs and enlisted was 62 (AC/USAR); ARNG had a slightly higher one (64). RCPs came in to play as well, limiting the amount of time most could spend in-service depending on grade. In general, only E9s could stay for/past 30 if I recall correctly.
In could be off a bit on all of these; I haven’t looked them up in a while. But I’m fairly sure I’m pretty close if not exactly correct above.
I’d guess Medical and Chaplain officers got the higher age limit (and from my perspective a rather liberal age-waiver policy) because of the difficulty in keeping those career fields up to strength. The physical demands of those career fields are also arguably somewhat less than most others.
F’tard.
Loser.