Yesterday, I reported that Ken Stone of Times of San Diego posted a video in which Assemblyman Randy Voepel claimed to have served as a forward gunner on a Patrol Boat River (small craft), with Task Force 117 in the Mekong Delta in 1969 and 1970.
Voepel’s office offered this reply today, in an article written by Ken Stone in Times of San Diego:
On Tuesday, Voepel said in a statement that in 1970, he served on the USS Gurke, “which participated in support operations with Task Force 116 and Task Force 117 within the Mekong Delta region and other coastal areas.”
He said: “Those operations included supporting SEAL Team inserts, PBR operations and other activities in the area. During that time period, in multiple instances, I would man a single .50-caliber machine gun under supervision of our gunner mates for defense and possible offense.”
Voepel, in his statement to Times of San Diego, said earlier attacks on his service record have been shown to be false by multiple media outlets. (They include reports by NBC San Diego, KGTV-Channel 10 and The San Diego Union-Tribune.)
“When my opponents were given evidence that contradicted their claims, they stated that evidence was altered,” he said. “When given additional evidence supporting my record from the Pentagon, they claimed it was the Navy that was wrong, not them. Last week, they dug up videos of committee hearings, recorded three months apart, and ran them together in order to allege I had made claims I never made. With prior false accusations falling flat, they are throwing whatever they can at the wall and hoping it sticks.”
Voepel said he was proud of his service record, and “I won’t be responding to further attempts to discredit my service.”
At first glance, that seems reasonable, but in the article I wrote yesterday, it was clear that Voepel could not have served with or served on a ship which supported Task Forces 116 and 117. Voepel enlisted six months after those task forces were discontinued. He spent the months of August 1969 through July of 1970 (when he reported for service on the USS Gurke) in basic and advanced training.
Mobile Riverine Force Association veterans said the same thing in Stone’s article:
“As far as I know, no destroyers were ever part of 117 and sure never worked with insertions, ambushes, search and destroy missions,” said Ralph Bigelow of Livonia, Michigan.
In the late 1960s, Bieglow said he was with River Assault Squadron 13 (RAD 13), River Division 131 (RivRon 13) on Tango Boat T-131-8.
If Voepel’s released service record is true, Bigelow said via email, “It would seem his speech [raises] some questions.”
Don Blankenship of Ramona, secretary of the association, said: “It seems we may have a wannabe in Mr. Voepel. He mentions he was on a Patrol Boat River, which is also referred to as a PBR. PBRs were a part of Task Force 116, not 117, which was the Mobile Riverine Force, or MRF.”
However, Blankenship said too many question marks exist to declare Voepel guilty of stolen valor. He said he wanted more facts than the video provides.
“By the way, TF 117, and I believe TF 115 Swift Boats and TF 116 PBRs, were all turned into Task Force 194 under the direction of Admiral Zumwalt in the summer or fall of 1969,” he said — contradicting Voepel’s contention he served in Task Force 117 in 1970.
MCPO Terence Hoey, USN (Ret), Voepel’s original accuser, said that the USS Gurke could never have served in support of operations in the Mekong Delta. “It’s a simple math problem. The maximum allowable draft in the Mekong Delta is 10 feet and the USS Gurke’s draft was 16 feet. She would have grounded had she tried to operate in the Mekong Delta.”
Wikipedia reports that the USS Gurke’s draft was 14 feet 4 inches but that was probably without fuel and personnel aboard. Either way, both Wikipedia’s and Hoey’s figures exceed the maximum allowable draft for Voepel’s statement to be true.
Hoey summarized Voepel’s response to the East County Tea Party video by saying, “Voepel is lying about the lies now. That should trouble every constituent in his Assembly district.”
Voepel’s response to yesterday’s article has been called inaccurate by both his original accuser and two Riverine Boat veterans. Voepel never addressed his claim that he served in the Navy’s “infantry” (from the video). Every Navy veteran I questioned said the Navy has never had nor does it have an “infantry”.
Later this week, I’ll point out what the mainstream media are missing about Terence Hoey’s original accusations and why I think they “dismissed” them without proper research.
Comments 1
Your article is otherwise so well-sourced that I’m a little embarrassed that it contains “Wikipedia reports…” without any hint of irony. But that is academic nitpicking. It seems pretty clear that Voepel has gotten away with stolen valor for quite some time now, and there’s not walking this back.