A local veteran is raising concerns about whether some war stories being recorded in the Library of Congress are true. He's worried about a Library of Congress project we covered earlier this week.
The 2005 Stolen Valor Act made misrepresenting your military service illegal. There's no reason to think that's the case with the Veterans History Project, but if it did happen we might never find out.
Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Attorney General. admitted Tuesday that he had not told the truth about his Vietnam War service. It put a national spotlight on what some see as a growing problem: people lying about their military service.
"It bothers me because there are still too many people out there telling untruthful stories about their valor, their heroism and their experiences in the military," said Mike Boston, a retired U.S. Navy pilot.
Boston has concerns about the Veterans History Project, where American Red Cross Volunteers collect the personal accounts of American War veterans which will then be preserved forever in the Library of Congress.
"There's no process that I'm aware of that they were able to explain to me that they actually vetted or try to confirm in one way or another that the information was accurate," said Boston.
"It's not up to us to validate," said Mary McKellips, with the American Red Cross of Central Texas.
McKellips points out that the Library of Congress archives fiction and non-fiction and...
"The Library of Congress has a disclaimer on their brochure that these are not verified stories these are stories told in the words of people that say they were there," said McKellips.
"If historical data is not honest, if it's not truthful then to me it's not historical," said Boston.
"You shouldn't not do good things because some people might take advantage of the system, so if they break those laws, that would be sad but, um, we really believe it's worth it to collect this vast amount of oral history," said McKellips.
