Mike Fitzgerald writes in the Belleville News-Democrat, the Belleville, Illinois daily paper, that an Iraq War veteran lied his way to a Purple Heart and $750,000, the Belleville, Illinois daily paper, that an Iraq veteran, National Guardsman Lt. Darryl Lee Wright, lied his way to a Purple Heart. What a piker! L. Ron Hubbard, also a lieutenant, but in the US Naval Reserve, lied his way to TWO.
Wright didn’t stop with a Purple Heart, but also lied his way to a Combat Action Badge. That’s nothing! Hubbard didn’t stop with two Purple Hearts. He lied his way to OVER TWENTY more medals he never earned.
In truth, Hubbard wasn’t even awarded his medals. At least Wright did enough and was honest enough to actually be awarded his unearned medals.
Wright got his medals for phony actions and wounds in a place he had really served in, Iraq. Hubbard obtained medals for wartime service in countries he had never even been to, France, the Netherlands, Britain, the Philippines, and a medal for whole continents he had never seen, the European African Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, plus a Bronze Star. Wright got his unearned medals in the mail from the proper issuing authority. Hubbard bought his from some poor veteran, or some pawn shop. Or he stole them from some vet.
To support his efforts to acquire his medals and money, Wright apparently submitted a photo of a damaged combat vehicle where he claimed to have been wounded. The bad black and white photo in the Washington Post looks like a HMMWV of one version or another. Fail! Hubbard claimed to have been on board the USS Edsall when the Japanese attacked and sunk it near Java in 1942. He claimed at different times that his legs were injured in the battle, he then swam ashore, lived alone in the jungle for some time evading the Japanese, took a machine gun round in the back, then sailed a life raft to Australia where a destroyer picked him up. He also claimed to have sunk two Japanese submarines off Oregon, and just before the war to have tracked down a German saboteur in Alaska who was going to cut off its communication lines from the forty-eight states.
It isn’t clear from the reports I’ve read, including Justice Department statements, what injuries Wright lied about sustaining to claim his Purple Heart. They couldn’t possibly, however, be as serious as Hubbard’s fake injuries. He claimed to have been “crippled and blinded.” In fact he claimed his injuries were so severe that at war’s end he “was abandoned by family and friends as a supposedly hopeless cripple and a probable burden upon them for the rest of my days.”
The News-Democrat says, “The war story helped Wright bilk the federal government out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.” How frigging niggard! Hubbard scammed billions. Wright cheated the US Government that has trillions to waste. With his tall war stories, Hubbard not only snowed the government for a disability pension, he hustled and ripped off unsuspecting private citizens around the world, most of whom could not afford it, and many of whom he ruined utterly.
The prosecuting US Attorneys, according to the News-Democrat, wrote in their sentencing memorandum that Wright “built an entire myth system on these two awards.” That’s so picayune! Hubbard started a religion. The IRS gave his religion tax exemption, and the State Department defends his fraud-based religion internationally and condemns any country that dares to call Hubbard and his religion on their fraud.
There is no evidence I’ve found that Wright ever vilified or assaulted anyone who challenged his injury, Purple Heart or Combat Action Badge claims. What a wimp! Hubbard preached that anyone who criticized his claims was an enemy and a criminal, and he had his fraud church followers target these critics as what he called “fair game.” He stated in his scripture that such critics may be “deprived of property or injured by any means by any [church member] without any discipline… May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed. ”
I knew Hubbard personally. I read and listened to many of his claims of wartime injuries, medals and heroism, and I joined his religion in 1969. I believed his lies and gave him and his religious organization money and years of my life. Then I found and read a bunch of his documents he had hidden from church members like me, researched his history a bit, and determined he had lied. He had lied about things in his life that were significant to me, had drawn me into his religion, and had kept me there for years. He lied about his military career, his injuries, medals and his heroism. He stole valor galore.
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Rest of Gerry's article here:
Your Purple Hearts will tell on you...