I have never been involved in "veterans' issues", and I find it revolting
to see the media coverage given to "Viet Nam vets" who display themselves
in camouflage that was not even issued until 1980.  These men are often
"wannabees", who steal honors they never earned, discredit men who did
what they lacked courage to do, and try to blame the failures of their lives
on the fiery mold of a terrible war that many did not even see.  Most of
their "memories" and stories are cliches taken from movies and stories by
people who never saw it either.

Other "fake vets" actually served in Viet Nam, but find it necessary to
revise and embellish, to achieve notoriety or prove a point they want to
make.

In January of 1997, a friend showed me the story of "A Miracle At The
Wall", written by a dear friend of his.  It was the story of how a newly
ordained Methodist minister had been the man who ordered the napalm
bombing that led to the famous photo of the little naked girl burned at Trang
Bang. It was the story of their chance meeting at The Wall, and her
forgiveness for his actions that led to her accidental injury.

I read the story from the perspective of a retired Army officer, who
participated in numerous air strikes in Viet Nam.  As I read it the first
time, I knew the story to be untrue, but I did not realize how much of a
fraud it would prove to be.

I told my friend that the claims were very much exaggerated, because
Americans, especially those in the Army, did not order Viet Nam Air Force
(VNAF) strikes.  I was also convinced that his friend had been in such a
low level position on the staff of Army advisors, that he would not have
been allowed to "order" anything but coffee.  He was hurt by that, and
said that if the minister really believed the story to be true, that was good
enough for him.  This man is my friend, and I did not want to hurt his
friendship with his other friend.

He convinced me to participate in an Internet group of former helicopter
pilots and crewmen who had flown in Viet Nam, and it still amazes me to
consider all the memories that group was able to bring to the surface. 
Overwhelmingly, those memories are good ones, of young men doing exciting
jobs that we believed in.  More than anything else, we believed in each
other, and we learned then that men do not die for their country.  They
die for their friends, for their wingmen, and for strangers they have never
met, but who need their help.

We went from that amazing bond that few ever experience, to our own
country, to read and see the fabrications presented about us in the
American news and entertainment media.  Those fabrications have replaced
the truth over the years, and have turned many proud veterans into
cynical, and even somewhat embittered men.

To experience a little of that bond again, and to bring those memories to
the surface, I was willing to remain silent about the minister's claims,
because he was a member of the net group, and very much supported by the
owner of the net, and his advisory council.  He had performed the
marriage vows for several on the net, and I did not want to cause conflict.

Unlike the reverend's supporters, I actually read the words in the
articles he wrote, and carefully listened to the words he used on his interviews
with Nightline and the Canadian produced documentary.  I noted changes in
the story, that were not just changes that could be expected from sloppy
reporting.  In addition, the reverend's posts on the net group were
different in tone from what was seen by the public.  I remained silent,
and considered that he might be confused in his memories.

In September, I decided I would leave the net, rather than hear the
praise for his message of "forgiveness" during the Veterans Day weekend.  Then a
friend posted to ask him questions about the incident, and his answer
stayed away from any real issues.  So I very respectfully posted specific
questions, and after a delay of two weeks, he responded with semantics
and inaccuracies.  He praised the job the media had done in getting his
message of peace and forgiveness to the public.  The short exchange continued
until the net's owner told me to take any questioning of his minister friend
off his net.

I continued to search for the truth, and two weeks later, on November 1,
I received a call from retired Lieutenant General James Hollingsworth, the
commander of the unit on whose staff the minister had worked during the
incident.  He had even called his Operations Officer from the time, who
also retired as a general.  The General was very, very specific that the
staff officer could not have done what he claimed.  That was solid
testimony that I was convinced changed the nature of the minister's
claims, and I posted his comments to the net.

The minister responded that the General was wrong, and that he had never
even heard of the man who the General said was his Operations Officer.  I
noted that the two generals had retired with a total of five stars, and
had absolutely nothing to gain or lose by the minister's story.  I questioned
whether I should believe two generals, or a man the Army decided would
not be retained as a captain.

For that "attack" on the minister's integrity, I was kicked off the net
group.  Although many members protested that action, the net continued to
defend the minister.  Only two men really stood publicly by me at that
point, through the power of the Internet; one on the west coast, and one
in England.  Others stayed silently in reserve, because the three of us took
some very heavy hits from the helicopter net, and finally all were
suspended from it.

On Veterans Day weekend, the commercials for the A&E documentary promised
to show "the American commander" who ordered the bombing of Trang Bang,
and the burning of Kim Phuc.  Newspaper articles told of Kim Phuc's
appointment as UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, and most of those greatly embellished the
terrible story of how she was burned.

The Methodist minister's insertion of himself as a key player in the
tragedy gave legitimacy to the myth of American participation, which was
reported as fact, then other details were added as invented by the
various writers.  There was an account of nerve gas being used in the attack. 
Most accounts said Kim was burned when the pagoda in which her family was
hiding took a direct hit.  Many accounts said her brothers were killed in the
bombing, others said two brothers and two cousins.  Most accounts said
the village was targeted, or came under "intense aerial bombardment". 
Virtually all the accounts credited the US with conducting or ordering
the bombing, but none of these exaggerations were true.  Words of
participation and responsibility again came from the minister's lips.

This time, net members watched and read these lies with their eyes open,
and a new understanding, and compared them with what the minister himself
had said on their net.  Many openly questioned the net's support for the
myth they had just seen.  To maintain their grasp, the net administrators
threatened that anyone who even mentioned Trang Bang, or anything about
the subject, would be suspended for 30 days.  Many men suspended themselves
in protest of that censorship, and others quit the net entirely.

Most of them joined another net of former helicopter combat crewmen,
because that net's owner did not censor the net's members, or support any
side of the issue.  Heli-Vets was supportive of the truth, while
encouraging the minister to tell it, and published accurate statistics
and facts about the war on their home page.  I wrote a report, The Myth Of
The Girl In The Photo, which was posted there, and on several veterans'
Internet sites. 

The claims were too outrageous for most of his supporters to accept, and
polite questions were asked.  After praising their reporting in October,
the minister turned on the "media maggots" in November.  Even though the
words had been his own, he said he had not meant what they said.  He told
his supporters that he would schedule an interview with the same
Associated Press reporter who broke his story of forgiveness earlier in the year, to
correct the wrong impressions.  At the same time, he started a vigorous
defense of my assertion that his story could not have happened the way he
said.

At that point, I was convinced that public action had to be taken to
counteract the exaggerations that were being heaped upon the minister's
false claims, and I began to contact news agencies, and Accuracy In
Media.

A&E defended their documentary, taking phrases and facts out of the
context in which they were presented, to show that their documentary had been
accurate and truthful.  They did not respond to what was said by the
documentary's commercials and introductions.  Their defense appeared to
rely on extracting certain words and phrases, and ignoring anything else
that was said.

UNESCO was more forthcoming, and provided their original press release,
to show that it did not say what many of the newspapers changed it to say. 
They also understood that the minister's insertion of himself into the
incident was controversial, at the very least, and agreed to eliminate
any reference to him in future releases.

The original Stars & Stripes edition was located, and I was surprised to
find it written by Peter Arnet, the noted CNN correspondent.  He and a
UPI television correspondent, who was an eye witness, reported the story
correctly when it was published on June 10, 1972.  Not only was it an
all-Vietnamese operation, with the VNAF dropping the bombs in support of
the South Vietnamese Army, but there were also South Vietnamese soldiers
killed by the same bombs.  Those soldiers, who were fighting to defend
Kim's village from the invading Communists, asked and offered no
forgiveness.

The man who was the intermediary in the meeting between the minister and
Kim Phuc, a poet with a fiercely passionate love for the country that has
given him a home, was heartbroken by the way that meeting was used.  When
the minister and his supporters fervently claimed that the meeting had
not been planned, but was "an act of God", he provided the letters and e-mail
that helped set up their meeting.  He asked, "Educate me where in a
history book that I can find the story of a Jewish Girl who once came to
America's capitol to forgive the Americans and allies for accidentally hurting the
children while liberating the Holocaust victims...

I would love to have been the one to arrange it, but it was another
friend who contacted the Washington, DC Bureau Chief of the Baltimore Sun.  My
call with the details was expected, and an investigative reporter was
assigned to track down the truth about The Girl In The Photo.  Tom
Bowman's investigation resulted in such a confidence level on their part, that the
Sun's front page headline was "Veteran's admission to napalm victim a
lie."

Stung by the scoop in their own front yard, the Washington Post and
Associated Press responded with follow-up reports that, while not giving
full credit to themselves for their earlier reports on the minister's
"miracle", generally reflected the same results for their new
investigations as the Baltimore Sun.

Most people would realize that the game is over, but the minister
continues to insist that he has always used the words "coordinated" and "ordered"
interchangeably, and still grasps more of the responsibility for the
event than his superiors say was even physically possible.

His followers ask what this man could possibly have gained by knowingly
embellishing his participation in an event that has resulted in such a
miracle.  For a new minister of a hundred member church, who has
addressed more people in the year since inserting himself into The Myth Of The Girl
In The Photo, than he addressed in his entire life up to that point, the
answer should be clear.

Did the minister have help with his fabrication?  Investigation reveals
an intertwining of relationships with members of the VVM and the Kim
Foundation.  It appears that Kim's introduction at The Wall was in no way
meant to honor veterans, but was part of the marketing plan for her
message of forgiveness.  Hopefully, this kind of personal use of the memorial
will receive more of the attention it deserves, and a serious investigator
will "follow the dollar" to the source.

Ron N. Timberlake, Major, U.S.Army Ret.