William Northrop, liar and fraud, from pp. 393-395 of Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History by BG Burkett BG and Glenna Whitley.
Richard 
The book
Saigon to Jerusalem by Eric Lee is the story of Jewish Americans who fought in Vietnam them emigrated to Israel. Lee, an anti-war activist, said in the foreword that he required DD-214s from his sources. “In only one case did I have the feeling that some of what I was being told might be a tall tale and, accordingly, that tale doesn’t appear in this book,” Lee wrote. Unfortunately, another pretender did end up in Lee’s book and a subsequent story in Vietnam magazine.
Lee told the story of
William Northrop, a Citadel graduate who
claimed he was an officer in the 5th Special Forces who served in Vietnam and Laos from February 1967 until he was wounded at the famous battle of Lang Vei a year later. Then a journalist in Israel, Northrop told Lee he used drugs – “
speed” – while on patrol in Vietnam. “You bet,” Northrop said. “I wouldn’t go out without it.” He described catching a fifteen-year-old student at a Catholic in Khe Sanh laying down “mechanical ambushes” that caused some American casualties. Northrop did not shoot the boy; he pushed him into the “MA”, which did the job for him. (It should be noted that there is no Catholic school in Khe Sanh.)
Lee quoted
Northrop’s description of going on cross-border missions into Laos. “There was an artillery regiment of goners that moved into the C.O. Rock,”** Northrop said. “We would infiltrate in, set up mechanical ambushes, booby traps – or call air strikes down on them. Claymores, grenades, anything we could lay our hands on. I used to do a real cute trick with detonation.” Or they would ambush NVA coming off the Ho Chi Minh Trail at night, blasting them with shotguns provided by the Baltimore Police Department. “We’d paint ourselves up real pretty with war paint,” Northrop said. “And all of a sudden you jump out of the darkness – my friend, you were the bogey man!”
Northrop’s major tale concerned the battle of Lang Vei on February 7, 1968. The fight is well known as the first documented time the North Vietnamese ever used tanks, which overran the Green Beret camp at Lang Vei. Northrop claimed to be in the middle of the fighting. The Green Berets held their ground against impossible odds. Northrop said he was badly wounded. Virtually every officer at the camp – alive or dead – received valorous decorations. A DD-214 Northrop provided to Lee indicated he was awarded, among others, the Silver Star, Bronze Star Medal with V device, “Croix de Guerre,” Air Medal, Purple Heart, Combat Infantryman Badge (second award), “Ranger Badge,” and “National Defense Medal.”
But Northrop’s tale doesn’t fit the facts. The battle of Lang Vei is well-documented. Only two Special Forces first lieutenants were present during the attack: Miles Wilkins and Paul Longgrear, both of whom received Silver Stars. According to the historical record, Lt. Northrop wasn’t there.
Then there was Northrop’s DD-214 itself, which is fraught with errors. The most basic mistake is that the document is typed on two typewriters (although some units use DD-214s with preprinted generic material, such as the name of the unit). Northrop’s total period of service does not match his entry and discharge dates, and the acronyms and medals are wrong. His record lists his job title as “
SF LDR,” or
Special Forces Leader; no such designation exists. In addition, the military has no decoration called the “
National Defense Medal” (It’s the National Defense Service Medal). No “
Ranger Badge” (It’s called a Ranger Tab). To have received a second CIB, as Northrop claimed, he had to receive the first one in Korea, when he was about ten years old.
The Citadel refused to verify whether Northrop graduated or not. According to an arrest record, Northrop had been taken into custody in El Paso in 1974 for illegal importation of firearms. In 1983, another warrant was issued for his arrest in El Centro, California, on charges of grand theft; Northrop was taken into custody in Phoenix, Arizona.
Northrop, who’s now living in Oklahoma City, popped up again in July 1996 in The Dallas Morning News as the “military advisor” to a woman named Suzanne Migdall, who is writing a book about female Gulf War veterans. He was
described by the reporter as a Special Forces Vietnam veteran with “vague CIA and Israeli intelligence associations.”
** FYI - Co Roc lay to the West of Lang Vei and was an extremely hazardous target area for CCN - several CCN RTs were lost running missions in that AO.