Phony 4-star ID’d by POW Net

Jonn Lilyea | July 7, 2009

1stCavRVN11B and Olga both sent me this article from the Marine Corps Times about a number of folks who were inflating their bios in the Marine Corps Association’s directory. the biggest boob was listed as a 4-star Marine General;

Questioned about his past, Laisure, 80, initially insisted it was all legitimate. But when pressed, he said he was never an officer and served less than a year on active duty before leaving the service as a private. California records also show he was once married to convicted murderer Susan Atkins, the ex-wife of serial killer Charles Manson, and Greenville officials say they have no record of his company ever existing.

“I guess I just wanted to be something I wasn’t,” he said. “I’ve just always admired the Marine Corps, and I hope I’ve done no harm.”

It was our pals at POW Net that started the wheels rolling to clean out the defective directory;

Mary Schantag, co-founder of the P.O.W. Network, expressed outrage that MCA published the directory, available to members through a third-party organization, without proper background checks.

“It negates the true honor of the Marine Corps when you’re filling up your membership with phonies,” she said.

Association officials say that’s blowing things out of proportion. Tom Esslinger, MCA’s chief operating officer, said some entries are wrong simply because of data entry mistakes.

Now, it seems to me that an organization that calls itself the Marine Corps Association would be more familiar with the words “honor” and “faithful” and they’d try a bit harder to get their directory right.

The article quotes a spokesperson of the association that claims they don’t want to embarrass their members – what about how embarrassing it is to all of us that there are fakes wandering around pretending to be generals and who, when they finally admit it, say “Oops, sorry. Can’t we all just get along?”.