VA Chief Lies About Service in Special Forces

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald excitedly boasted he'd served in the military's elite special operations forces in a "boneheaded" lie caught on videotape, The Huffington Post reports.
McDonald blurted out the assertion last month in Los Angeles during a nationwide count of homeless veterans videotaped by a CBS-TV news crew following him as he talked with a homeless vet who'd been in special forces.

"Special forces? What years? I was in special forces!" McDonald excitedly told the vet.

Special operations forces highly trained troops from each military service, and include the Green Berets, Army Rangers, Delta Force and Navy SEALs.

McDonald, a retired corporate executive who took over the VA last June amid the agency's delayed-care scandal, spent his military service with the 82nd Airborne Division, the Huffington Post reports.

The news website reports that McDonald graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1975 and completed Army Ranger training, qualifying as a senior parachutist and airborne jumpmaster. But he never served as a Ranger.

"I have no excuse," McDonald told the website. "I was not in special forces."

The Post also reports that McDonald’s remark was initially noticed by several retired military officers — ironically, just days after NBC News anchor Brian Williams was suspended for fabricating stories about reporting experiences in Iraq.

McDonald told the website he "wanted to clear up the confusion I probably created — I did create," admitting his assertion "is not right. I was not in special forces. What I said was wrong."

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