Richard Strandlof said he survived the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon. He said he survived again when a roadside bomb went off in Iraq killing four fellow Marines. He’d point to his head and tell people he had a metal plate, collateral damage from the explosion.
Crowds ate up his story. He canvassed Colorado appearing at the sides of politicians. Inspiring and seemingly authentic, he spoke on behalf of veterans at the state Capitol.
It turns out the whole thing was a lie. He wasn’t at the Pentagon. He was never a Marine. He never served his country. He never graduated from the Naval Academy. He claimed his name was Rick Duncan.
He formed a group called the Colorado Veterans Alliance, and the FBI is now investigating whether he embezzled money as a result.
Where was he on 9/11, the day he said he witnessed heroism firsthand?
“I was in San Jose, California, watching it in horror on TV with a few other people,” Strandlof told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
He was at a homeless shelter at the time.
Strandlof denies being a pathological liar. He says he suffered from “some severely underdiagnosed mental illness” and that he got caught up in the moment around “people who are passionate and loved what they did.”
He told CNN he had put on a “production, which I’m sorry for.”
“Hopefully the people that I hurt can in some way gain closure from that, and I myself don’t know what I can do short of leaving them alone and not being in their lives, to make that happen,” Strandlof said.
He said he’s not sure exactly how he’s hurt people. “It’s not for me to say, and time will tell,” he said.
Hal Bidlack, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel, is one of those people. He ran for Congress as a Democrat and had Strandlof appear with him. Bidlack isn’t too happy.
“Once one lie fell apart, the whole series of things … just cascaded into an ocean of lies,” he said.
Bidlack was at the Pentagon when it came under attack on September 11, 2001. He now realizes that Strandlof stole portions of his own story.
“Now that we know he’s a lying fraud,” Bidlack said, “I think he was just parroting my own story back to me.”
“There are an awful lot of things that he kept straight to try to fool an awful lot of people for an awful long time.”
(Source: CNN)
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5 Responses
hey, you can fool:
some of the people some of the time,
some of the people all of the time,
all of the people some of the time
but not: ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME!!
azi, if it’s true that he never benefitted from the money and he did help veterans, then in the point -of-view of former president clinton, he is doing good, it doesn’t matter that he lied, he only tried prove a point. (president clinton said that when caught saying a couple of lies, like, he took the number 7 train harlem or yankee stadium, or la guardia, i can’t remember exaclty the (fiction) the facts of the lie)!!
I think this guy should definitely run for President. He has the qualifications, and the publicity. If he runs against Barack he will probably win, unless Barak comes up with an even bigger lie down the road.
TO ISHA KASHIRA #2:
Now YOU are are fooling the people with your statement. IT WAS LINCOLN WHO MADE THAT STATEMENT.
“You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can’t foll all the people all the time.”
TO #2 AND 5
I SAW A MAGNET:
“YOU CAN FOOL SOME OF THE PPL. ALL OF THE TIME AND ALL OF THE PEOPLE SOME OF THE TIME, BUT YOU CAN’T FOOL MOM!”