Ex-Soldier Denies Medals Accusation

WASHINGTON — A year to the day after the Navy’s top admiral committed suicide in the face of charges that he was wearing medals that he hadn’t earned, the soldier-turned-journalist who blew the whistle denied Friday that he was guilty of a similar breach of military tradition.

Retired Col. David Hackworth, syndicated columnist and Pentagon gadfly, conceded that he had two questionable awards among the welter of medals that have made him one of the nation’s most highly decorated soldiers. But he asserted that the mistake was made by the Army, not by him.

Hackworth, 67, insisted there were no similarities between his case and that of Adm. Jeremy “Mike” Boorda, the former chief of naval operations who killed himself less than two hours before Hackworth was scheduled to question him about two pins that he wore on his chest full of ribbons.

“I have never worn anything that was not awarded to me by the Army,” Hackworth said Friday in an interview with the cable channel MSNBC. He suggested that he was the victim of a Pentagon vendetta.

“I spent all my time as a military journalist beating up the Pentagon to make sure that young soldiers are not stuck in Vietnam, not stuck in Somalia, not stuck in body bags,” he said.

Nevertheless, Hackworth said, he has removed any mention of a second Distinguished Flying Cross and a Ranger patch from a list of his almost 280 military decorations posted on his personal Internet Web page.

He said the Ranger patch, worn on the shoulder of the uniform of elite infantrymen, was mistakenly awarded by the Army to a unit that he served with in Korea. As for the Distinguished Flying Cross, he said the Army inadvertently sent him two in 1988 when it sent him a full set of all his decorations. He had given up his medals years earlier to protest the Vietnam War.

Hackworth said he never wore the second Distinguished Flying Cross because he retired from the service in 1971 and has not worn a uniform since.

Hackworth implied that it is understandable that he might not remember how many Distinguished Flying Crosses he had earned because “for an infantryman like me, that is not a very big deal.”

Boorda’s supporters, however, say the admiral’s violation was similar to Hackworth’s. Boorda, too, said he wore the disputed decorations thinking that he was entitled to them, and removed them when questions were raised.

Boorda wore two small bronze “V” pins, which designate “valor” in combat, on his Vietnam service ribbons. Boorda said he understood he was entitled to the pins because of his wartime service.

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Hackworth, then a columnist for Newsweek magazine, was instrumental in challenging Boorda last year. “It is simply unthinkable an experienced officer would wear decorations he is not entitled to, awards that others bled for,” he wrote after Boorda’s suicide. “There is no greater disgrace.”

Hackworth repeated the criticism Friday, asserting that the admiral “wore two ‘V’ awards that were not on his record.”

Now a columnist for King Features Syndicate, Hackworth has become increasingly unpopular with senior military officers for his incessant criticism of the Pentagon and his role in the Boorda affair.

CBS-TV news, which first reported that Hackworth was claiming decorations he had not earned, attributed the information to a Vietnam veteran, Terry Roderick.