Is Nathan Phillips Guilty of Stolen Valor?
So I’m doing some reading on Nathan Phillips, the Indian guy who claims to have been harassed by the teenagers from Coventry High over the weekend and I can’t help but think there is a serious case of stolen valor here. He claims to be a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran, but too much of his story doesn’t add up. This is a guy who has been in the news off and on for the past 20 years, but nobody seems to have checked out his background. His first interview, way back in November 2000, listed his age as 45. His most recent interview, from this past weekend, he is 64. That is consistent with someone born in early January 1955. By his own account (again, nobody has seen his DD214), he joined the Marines at age 17, but this was after a period of time working as a lumberjack.
Here’s where his story starts to fall apart. Let’s be generous and say he stepped on the yellow footprints in February 1972, graduating after 13 weeks. Let’s be even more generous and say he did not have leave after basic and reported straight to ITR. So, the earliest he could have been deployed to Vietnam as a 0311 would have been late July or early August 1972.
The last major USMC combat element, III MAF, left Vietnam in April 1971. The last USMC combat unit, 3rd MAB, left in June 1971.
You can see the problem here. Those dates mean either Nathan Phillips was the only combat Marine in Vietnam, he was assigned to the Embassy or he was one of the 60 or so advisors the Marine Corps left with the ARVN forces. The last option is least likely (a boot private without any combat experience isn’t going to advise anyone on tactics). If he were assigned to the embassy, he would likely have clarified this by stating his MOS was an 8151.
Now for where things REALLY get interesting. Phillips also claims to be a Force Recon Marine. In his own words in a Vogue interview in 2018, he actually says “I’m what they call a recon ranger.” Well, knock me over with a feather, but if I had a nickel for every recon ranger I’ve met who never even wore a uniform, I’d be a millionaire. To my knowledge, I’ve never met a Force Recon Marine in the First Civ Div. Do you know why? Because most special forces guys don’t go around advertising their training. They don’t need to.
But let’s suspend all reason and say that Phillips isn’t laying it on thicker than molasses in January. The absolute minimum training time for a Force Recon Marine is 4 months. Let’s also suppose he was selected for Force Recon out of ITR. That puts his earliest arrival in Vietnam as January 1973.
That’s still 4 months after the last US combat unit, the Army’s 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry, 196th Brigade left Vietnam in August 1972.
I suppose it’s possible Phillips forgot some dates. It’s possible he can’t recall his MOS. Anything is possible, after all, even though I’ve never met a Marine who can’t remember what his job was, the dates of his service and every time he was deployed (and where).
I hate to call him out as a fraud if he isn’t. But considering he has spent the past few years putting himself in the news and is now muckraking to the point of driving hate mobs towards teenagers, it’s time to put his veracity to the test. If you served with Nathan Phillips, let me know. If he is a Force Recon Marine, I’ll gladly retract every word of this, buy him a beer and thank him for his service. But if he isn’t, he is deserving of every bit of scorn and derision we can heap upon him.
Update: On January 23, the Marine Corps released the following statement:
“Nathan Phillips, 64, spent four years in the Marine Corps Reserve and left in 1976 with the rank of private, or E-1. Previously identified as Nathaniel R. Stanard, Phillips never deployed, but served as a refrigerator technician and anti-tank missileman.”
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