The truth about Discovery’s Dual Survival’s Joe Teti

A few weeks ago, we wrote about David Canterbury, a member of the cast of a survival show on the Discovery Channel, “Dual Survival”. At the time, someone brought up Joe Teti, the other fellow on that show. So being the cynics that we are, we got Teti’s records, too. Here’s what Teti claims on his website;

Most of that is true. He was indeed in the USMC’s Force Recon. He spent less than 4 years in the Marines and here’s his records of assignments;

And his schooling;

He was also in Special Forces – National Guard Special Forces- for five years, ending on May 1st, 2000.

So that’s where his military records end, so he could hardly be a “combat veteran of OIF and OEF” as he claims in his bio in the way that most of us understand the term “veteran”. However, he did participate in those wars as a contractor.

I spent about an hour or so, total in about four phone calls with Joe yesterday. He stands by the “veteran” tag in regards to the war against terror, although your opinions may be different. He tells me that he didn’t reenlist after 9-11 because he was already in the pipeline for a contractor job, which seems reasonable to me, and I have no evidence to the contrary.

I don’t disparage his service because he certainly accomplished more in his nine years than I did in my two decades, well, school-wise, anyway. There are rumors about him flying around the internet and I won’t engage in hearsay. Joe has sent me volumes of his records that I have promised that I wouldn’t post. Of course, all of it reflects well on him as a warrior.

I also understand that he became a target as soon as he took the job at the Discovery Channel, for whatever reasons, that’s the downside of being a public figure. I found him to be an affable fellow, even though he called me ‘sir’ more times than I was comfortable with. And he called me a “smart guy” several times – if only he knew.

So, I may be accused of being star-struck, but, without some real evidence to the contrary, I’m inclined to come down on Joe’s side. We thought that we had a real story here when we first started out, because the first set of records we got were of another Joseph Nicholas Teti who was a helicopter mechanic in the Army back in 1983, the same time Joe said he was in the USMC, but I got a little suspicious of that first set of records, which took us back for another shot at it, and sometimes, they are who they say.

Category: Who knows