ATLANTIC CITY — Mayor Bob Levy has knowingly misrepresented his military record to family, friends, reporters and the public for decades.
As an Atlantic City lifeguard and as a candidate for mayor last year, Levy claimed he had served during the Vietnam War with the U.S. Army’s elite Special Forces, more familiarly known as the Green Berets. In campaign literature distributed last year, he claimed he had won medals as a Green Beret.
None of that was true.
Levy — who has an otherwise distinguished military service record — was
never a member of the Army’s Green Berets, he told The Press this week.
On Friday, Levy said of former Green Berets who questioned his record, “I salute them. I think they’re the finest soldiers in the world. If I did anything to bring disservice to them, I apologize.”
In September, prompted by the doubts of Egg Harbor Township Vietnam War veteran James H. Simmons, The Press began examining Levy’s Green Beret claims. The National Archives and Records Administration’s National Personnel Records Center reviewed Levy’s file and noted: “There is no information in file which shows any confirmation of the veteran (Levy) being involved with ‘Special Forces.’”
Multiple veterans and veterans groups contacted for this story said that during the Vietnam era, enlisted military personnel who served with Special Forces should have a military occupational specialty code, or MOS, that ends with an “S.”
Levy’s publicly available file shows the final MOS digit is blank for most of his career. An H showed he qualified as an instructor for several years.
Levy said this week and earlier that he lived in Vietnamese villages, learning the language and going on different missions with Special Forces personnel and other who needed Levy’s communications expertise.
Levy told The Press, “I actually wore a green beret, a Vietnamese green beret. I served with one of the Vietnamese provincial reconnaissance units. Yes, it was green, with a parachute badge in front and wings on the side. ... But do I have a S identifier on my MOS? No. That’s not going to be there.”
He also said, “I’ve had problems with post-traumatic stress and have been to counseling. This (Green Berets issue) has not helped.”
Any Special Forces veteran’s record would likely include approximately a year’s worth of intense, specialized training at Fort Bragg, N.C., said Steven Sherman, a former member of Special Forces who runs the small Houston publishing house Radix Press, which concentrates on the Special Forces in Southeast Asia between 1957 and 1975.
Levy’s name does not appear on any of several rosters of Vietnam personnel compiled by Sherman and the Special Forces Association.
Earlier this month, this evidence led the P.O.W. Network, a 17-year-old Skidmore, Mo.-based military history organization, to list Levy as one of hundreds of military imposters on its Web site
www.pownetwork.org/phonies/phonies1070.htm
“We do believe he never served in the Special Forces,” said Mary Schantag,
who runs the nonprofit with husband Charles Schantag.
Levy’s friends were surprised.
Assemblyman Jim Whelan, a former mayor who grew up with Levy on Atlantic
City’s beaches initially defended him, calling people who questioned Levy’s
record “crackpots” in an Oct. 2 interview.
“I don’t know what pleasure they take in doing this, and I don’t want to denigrate their service,” Whelan said then, “but I can’t imagine many of them served longer or more honorably than (Levy) did.”
Told Friday that Levy admitted not being in the Special Forces, Whelan said it did not change their friendship. Whelan said everyone owes Levy a debt of gratitude. “Whether it was for one particular unit he was in or was not in is not really germane to his service. He served long and honorably.”
***
It is unclear why for years Levy apparently pretended to have a
qualification he did not, when his actual military record shows two decades
of decorated and honorable service.
Aside from service, conduct, training and recruiting awards, the Army twice awarded Levy the Bronze Star, its fourth highest decoration given for bravery, heroism or meritorious service. He also won the similarly awarded Combat Infantryman’s Badge, given after at least 30 days in a combat zone, and twice received the Meritorious Service Medal for outstanding non-combat service.
Levy’s military record shows that in May 1964, he left Atlantic City High School and enlisted in the U.S. Army in Newark.
After basic and advanced infantry training at Fort Dix, N.J., he went to Fort Benning, Ga. for basic airborne training in October 1964.
Levy completed an eight-week field communications course and was assigned
to
Fort Knox, Ky. as a field communications crewman. In August 1965, Levy’s
record shows he was sent to the Army’s 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division in
Wuerzburg, Germany. Wiremen are trained to lay cable, fix telephones and set
up field switchboards, among other things.
After just four months, Levy went to Vietnam, assigned to the 1st
Aviation Battalion, 1st Infantry Division.
There, the records show between March 1967 and March 1968, Levy spent his
time in Vietnam assigned to the division headquarters detachment in Phu Loi,
first as a wireman, then following a promotion, a switchboard operator.
Levy returned to Fort Hood, Texas in April 1967. He became a noncommissioned officer the following year, and continued to do communications-related work with the, 1st Battalion, 6th Artillery, 1st Armor Division until August 1970.
After a leave, Levy returned for a second Vietnam tour as a village and hamlet communications systems adviser. His record shows he was designated an instructor and assigned to a regional group based in Long Binh, Vietnam.
Sherman said instructors like Levy helped individual Vietnamese villages
with their communications capabilities.
Levy told The Press Friday: “I did work with Special Operations on an
advisory team. I lived and ate with the Vietnamese” in harsh living
conditions. He had admitted earlier in the week that the green-colored beret
he wore then was from a Vietnamese provincial unit.
Levy returned to New Jersey in June 1971, and after a month leave, worked at Fort Dix as a tactical communications chief instructor for 10 months.
Following five weeks of recruitment training, Levy began working in June 1972 as a recruiter, first in Toms River, then starting February 1974 in Atlantic City. He was named the resort’s station commander four years later.
In October 1980, he was shipped out to Fort Carson, Colo., where he was promoted to First Sergeant and assigned to the 1st Battalion, 19th Field Artillery until July 1982.
He returned to New Jersey’s Fort Monmouth in September 1982. After 20 months of what seems to be training other recruiters, Levy reached his 20th anniversary and became eligible to retire.
He left the Army with an honorable discharge.
***
Despite a record that has no mention of the Special Forces, Levy has long
claimed membership with them, either through statements or by not correcting
others’ assertions.
In The Press of Atlantic City’s archives, several stories include
references to Levy as a Green Beret.
The first newspaper reference appeared on Aug. 8, 1980, when Levy was
apparently splitting time between his recruiting duties and the city’s Beach
Patrol.
A six-month-old child, Monica Marie Gardner, had stopped breathing.
“Lifeguard Bob Levy, 34, responding to the mother’s shouts for help, jumped
off his stand and sprinted to the knot of people gathered,” the article
reported.
“Levy tapped Monica Marie’s chest, hoping to get her heart beating again. Nothing happened. Then, he placed his mouth over her nose and mouth and breathed air into her motionless lungs. Nothing happened. The baby remained rigid.”
Levy gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while others ran for a second
lifeguard. Levy soon revived the child.
Levy said he heard the mother’s cries and reacted. He said “’I felt great
knowing I was part of keeping another life alive. I was a Green Beret in
Vietnam and I guess I’ve taken a few lives. It feels good to be on the other
side this time.’”
When Levy ran for mayor last year, his campaign touted his military background as just what the frequently scandal-plagued resort needed.
On March 17, 2005, Democrats rallied around Levy’s campaign. In an unpublished interview, his life-long friend Whelan told a Press reporter Levy was: “a pretty remarkable guy with tours as a Green Beret in Vietnam.”
In a subsequent May 3, 2005 interview, campaign spokesman Thomas Hickey listed Levy’s time as a “Green Beret” among his other qualifications.
Democrats also circulated at least two pieces of campaign literature making the claim. Levy’s campaign and the Atlantic County Democratic Committee separately paid for them. They ran in the run-up to Levy beating incumbent Mayor Lorenzo Langford at the polls.
In the Levy campaign ad, he touted issues on one side and his personal qualities on the other. On the personal side under “Character,” the ad read, “Born and raised in Atlantic City, Levy won two Bronze Stars as a Green Beret during Vietnam.”
In a separate mailer titled “It Takes Character,” the Atlantic County Democrats wrote that Levy was serious about reforming Atlantic City ethics.
“From his decorated service in Vietnam, where Bob served as a Green Beret,” the ad wrote, “to the beaches of Atlantic City, where he received awards for his heroism as Chief Lifeguard, Bob has spend his life in the service of others.”
“Democrat Bob Levy has the commitment to clean up our government ... and the character to get it done,” the ad concludes.
Levy told The Press this week while being pressed about his Green Beret campaign claims, “At the same time all this is happening, I’m trying to run city government. You get involved with an election and have PR people pushing you this way and that. I may have done some things I should not have done.”
But as recently as Oct 18, Levy had allowed veterans to think he was a Green Beret. He addressed the 328th Regiment Combat Team, 26th Infantry Division Association’s 56th Annual reunion and banquet at Atlantic City’s Holiday Inn.
In front of about 150 World War II veterans, association organizer George Fisher introduced Levy. Fisher called the mayor a former Ranger and Green Beret who earned two Bronze Stars in Vietnam.
Levy did not correct Fisher.
Instead Levy thanked him and added, “I’m not a hero, I’m here with heroes.
Without you, I wouldn’t have been here.”
He added, “I did the best I possibly could for my country, and now I am
trying to do my best for Atlantic City, if some people will let me.” He read
and awarded a proclamation honoring the group and left with bodyguard Joe
Bell.
***
When questions about his Green Beret claims were first raised, Levy and his
administration evaded, stonewalled or issued threats.
On Sept. 28, the Press presented his office with copies of campaign literature and some evidence that he had not served in Special Forces. In an interview the following day, Levy complained that the probe into his history was a “witch-hunt and it has nothing to do with me running this city. I know who I am and my family knows who I am. I have more important issues to deal with than political witch-hunts that come from whomever.”
Pressed, Levy evaded:
Reporter: “The only question was the issue of whether not you served in
Special Forces. Did you?”
Levy: “What do you think?”
Reporter: “I don’t know.”
Levy: “I do. Okay? Let all the detectives waste their time.”
Reporter: “Did you?”
Levy: “Let all the detectives waste their time. I have more important things
here in this city of Atlantic City. People are getting killed in our streets
and I can’t be distracted by witch-hunts.”
On Oct. 16, a reporter gave administration spokesman Nick Morici a copy of Levy’s publicly available military record and asked for another interview, saying it seemed to indicate Levy had not served with Special Forces.
Within an hour, Morici was on the phone.
“You better open up your ears, now, okay?” Morici told the reporter. “Legal
action will be taken if you proceed with this story, by our office.”
Asked why Levy avoided the question, Morici said “Mr. Levy doesn’t have to answer your questions! Okay, and for you to intrude in his life, okay, like this, going off on the whims of talk radio hosts and people who are individuals not connected with this administration and not Atlantic City business, is just totally despicable.”
Later that day, Atlantic City Solicitor Kimberly A. Baldwin faxed a two-page letter demanding that the newspaper “cease and desist from printing any article alleging or implying that Mayor Levy’s military service did not include an assignment to Special Forces. Should such article appear in your newspaper, the mayor is prepared to take swift legal action, including but not limited to a defamation action seeking monetary damages.”
The Press ignored the legal threat, but is not clear why the city solicitor was addressing an issue arguably better suited for a private attorney. Levy said this week that he did not authorize the letter. Baldwin could not be reached Friday afternoon.
Levy said Friday when he knew the paper was going to publish: “You do
what you have to do.
“I’ve devoted 40 years of my life to public service and never even gotten a
parking ticket. I’m going to continue to serve the best way I can. I
promised to bring the city together, make the streets cleaner and safer. ...
No matter what I’ve been, I’ve always been a leader and tried to lead by
example.”
Of his service record, he said, “I think I served honorably. I stand by my Bronze Star” (and other commendations.) “I volunteered for many a mission. I volunteered to go (in the service). I didn’t have to go.”
Levy was scheduled to leave today to attend a gaming conference in Las
Vegas.
Veterans contacted said they were alternately disgusted and outraged by
Levy’s claims.
Former Lacey Township Mayor Tom Waskovich runs Vetgroup, Inc., a nonprofit
organization that assists veterans. He is also the former executive director
of the Special Operations Association. In Vietnam, he was a 1st lieutenant
with the Special Forces.
After reviewing Levy’s records, he said, “He owes all of us an apology. For someone to use phony military credentials to get votes is just dead wrong.”
He also said Baldwin should be reported to the state Bar Association for threatening the newspaper. He said “that’s absolutely outrageous and an abuse of force.”
In Vietnam, Waskovich said Special Forces soldiers often worked with indigenous personnel and other American military. He said Levy’s record suggests he may have been a group’s communication’s expert.
Levy “might have worked with them, but that doesn’t make him one.”
“He should be proud enough of his 20-year service,” Waskovich concluded.
“This is theft, that’s what it is, theft, and that’s why it is so wrong for
the top public official in Atlantic City to take this” honor.
LEVY NOW CLAIMS WEARING VIETNAMESE GREEN BERET
