Ben Carson Debunked: Inside His Made-Up West Point Story

By Robert Bateman, Esquire

12 November 15

 

He claimed time and again—as recently as last Friday–that he was offered entrance to the military academy in 1969. Here's proof that he's not telling the truth.

et's re-cap what has happened in the last few days since that first explosive story came out in Politico…and was observed here by our own Charlie Pierce on Friday. To wit, the Tale of Cadet Ben Carson.

On Friday, Politico posted a sensational, but sadly incomplete, evaluation of some of Dr. Carson's claims about his past. Specifically their story asserted that Carson had not been given a "scholarship" to West Point, as he claimed in his book(s) and in multiple accounts of his past in speeches and interviews since 1990, when his first co-written autobiography appeared. Further, they said they had a real gotcha since they also claimed that Carson's campaign had fessed up to this central point as non-factual. They also hit him for being at best a fabulist and perhaps an outright liar on other points of his background. That one hit the waves, and hard. And when a wave hits the shore, it bounces back, and into other waves.

Bouncing back is what has been happening since late afternoon on Friday, in a confusing fury of splashes, since some of those who picked up Politico's ball and ran with it were conservatives. Carson himself fairly well exploded, falling back into that old mantra known so well to the political class which he has now joined, "deny, deny, deny, make counter-accusations."

I am going lay out what we absolutely know about what and when Ben Carson said about his past brush with West Point. That part is easy. Then I will help all of you along a trail of military and political history. You will then be able to draw your own fact-based conclusions with the help of some straightforward logic.

Not to keep you on pins and needles, here is the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front): First, the initial reporting was sloppy. At a minimum Politico's political reporters should have consulted with their peers who cover the military. Better, they should have consulted historians. (Best would be both of course.) Second, the counter-arguments and defenses from outraged conservatives in Carson's camp were even sloppier. Even worse: in some cases these arguments, especially those from Carson's own campaign, definitively (if accidentally) undo his own accounts. Third and finally, Ben Carson has a real and serious problem with the actual and undisputable history surrounding what he said. At best he told and continues to tell a story which demonstrates that he has a horrible memory, and cannot even remember basic facts (verifiable facts, as I will show) about his own history. More likely, the historical evidence appears to demonstrate that he is, indeed, an outright liar who has been fooling people with a self-created fabulist fictional story. Worst of all, it is a story about his own past designed to make himself look better at the utter expense of the truth.

And he made a lot of money telling that false story.

So let us first establish exactly what Dr. Ben Carson said about his origin story, particularly the part about Junior ROTC Cadet Ben Carson. For starters, here is the central and apparently initial version. In his 1990 book Gifted Hands Carson describes marching in the Detroit Memorial Day parade in May 1969:

"I felt so proud, my chest bursting with ribbons and braids of every kind. To make it more wonderful, we had important visitors that day. Two soldiers who had won the Congressional Medal of Honor in Viet Nam were present. More exciting to me, General William Westmoreland (very prominent in the Viet Nam war) attended with an impressive entourage. Afterward, Sgt. Hunt introduced me to General Westmoreland, and I had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners. Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point. I didn't refuse the scholarship outright, but I let them know that a military career wasn't where I saw myself going. As overjoyed as I felt to be offered such a scholarship, I wasn't really tempted. The scholarship would have obligated me to spend four years in military service after I finished college, precluding my chances to go on to medical school."

In his book, You Have A Brain (January 2015), writing about his meteoric rise through High School Junior ROTC to the rank of Cadet Colonel, Carson wrote,

"That position allowed me the chance to meet four-star general William Westmoreland, who had commanded all American forces in Vietnam before being promoted to Army Chief of Staff at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.…I also represented the Junior ROTC at a dinner for Congressional Medal of Honor winners, marched at the front of Detroit's Memorial Day parade as head of an ROTC contingent, and was offered a full scholarship to West Point."

In a Facebook post on August 13, 2015, still well before all of this broke, Carson again personally addressed the issue. (That question, by the way, looks like an obvious plant by Carson's own campaign to give him the chance to reiterate his "history.")

"The next question is from Bill. He wanted to know if it was true that I was offered a slot at West Point after high school. Bill, that is true. I was the highest student ROTC member in Detroit and was thrilled to get an offer from West Point. But I knew medicine is what I wanted to do. So I applied to only one school. (it was all the money I had). I applied to Yale and thank God they accepted me. I often wonder what might have happened had they said no."

Finally, on the Charlie Rose show not long before all this blew up he put it this way,

"I had a goal of achieving the office of city executive officer [in JROTC]. Well, no one had ever done that in that amount of time … Long story short, it worked, I did it. I was offered full scholarship to West Point, got to meet General Westmoreland, go to Congressional Medal dinners, but decided really my pathway would be medicine."

This seems to be a fair cross section of Carson's statements on the issue prior to Friday. If Carson was not running for President, would it really matter if this was the truth? Probably not. There are plenty of harmless Stolen Valor types out there who make more audacious claims about their past. But here is the key point: none of them are running for President in part due to their biographies. Carson is, and therefore it matters.

Doubt that his 1990 book saw much light after it was first published? You would be wrong, on a couple of levels. First, it started making Carson rich. Second, it was repeated verbally and in interviews along his rise to political fame. And third, it was copied almost verbatim in one of the most influential political journals for conservatives in the nation, National Review.

Here is how they wrote about it in February 2013:

"[Carson] was a medal-winning marksman and a dining companion of General William Westmoreland. Despite having joined high-school ROTC a semester late, Carson was a superstar cadet, racking up medals in drill and riflery. He flew through the ranks, moving from private to second lieutenant in a year and change and then so thoroughly acing his field-grade exams (he set a new record) that he leap-frogged straight to lieutenant colonel, and then became one of three full-bird colonels in all of Detroit. In recognition of his achievement, a 17-year-old Carson was given the opportunity to dine with General William Westmoreland, the top U.S. commander in Vietnam, and was offered a full scholarship to West Point."

We have established what Dr. Carson actually said, and how those things he said helped launch him on his road to the Republican nomination. But now we need to go back in time.

To understand this story, and the conclusions that logically fall out from them, we have to dig deep. Like really deep. Back to the Founding Fathers. It all starts there. So this will be a long story, hang on for the ride.

On March 16, 1802, Congress officially passed a law creating the United States Military Academy (USMA) and directing that it commence operations at a place known to few Americans known as "West Point." That origin story is deeper, and fascinating, but we will leave that for some other time. Suffice it to say that there was not a little irony in the fact that the President who signed the law was one of the most anti-standing-military presidents in our history, Thomas Jefferson. (A politician since age 25, by the way, even though he did not actually WRITE the Declaration of Independence until he was 33, despite some assertions to the contrary.)

So Jefferson left office in 1809 and James Madison entered. Madison used his Secretary of War to make actual appointments, and Dr. William Eustis and Madison both distrusted the idea of a standing military, so they starved it. In 1809 Eustis appointed only four cadets, and the year after that just two, then none in 1811. This, as you might guess, would bite America in the ass come the War of 1812, because fighting a war without people trained to fight a war can be difficult.

By early 1812 Congress itself took the bull by the horns. On April 29 ​of that year, Congress passed a bill into law that established the maximum size of the Academy (250), and significantly stated that cadets would be sent to West Point "at the discretion of the President of the United States as students to the military academy." Got that point? It is important. The civilian political leader of the nation controlled who would be a cadet. Military Subordination to Civilian Authority is a pretty key point in our national history; it's right there in the Constitution for example. Here it was again, reinforced by that same first generation of Founding Fathers.

That Act of 1812 also set standards, such as a minimum and maximum age for entry, a modicum of academic qualifications, and some physical ones. But these were often ignored by those same civil authorities, because, well, politics. So it was that the Military Academy once had a cadet aged 12, appointed in the year 1814, and a one-armed cadet a few years later, and one with one eye at around the same time. This sets up the second dynamic: the continuing efforts of the professional folks at the military academy to try to get the standards (physical, age, mental, educational) not only raised, but actually adhered to by the people making the appointments. Raising and adhering to standards, while subordinate to the Civil Authority is the second important point to keep in the back of your head.

Initially, with the Academy hovering at year-class sizes of about a dozen, it was not a big deal for the President to control all the appointments. But over the next few decades, as America grew and expanded, Congress increased the size of the Army and with that came the need for more officers. More officers = more appointments = more work for the President. So naturally, the Presidents started delegating that to the Secretary of War. Those men, also being civilian politicians, were not fools. They started the tradition of asking various congressmen for their recommendations. Remember, at the time we are still only talking about a few dozen per year.

Then, in the early 1840s, Congress expanded West Point just a little more, and in response that process became a little more formal still. Congressmen were now allocated a nomination. Well, actually, they took what had been an informal arrangement and, by the power of the purse string, legally made it their own. Now that is appropriations. (If you are really wanting to geek out, here is the actual text of the bill, from March 1, 1843.)

Over the years, as America's military needs continued to grow with her increasing security concerns, the size of West Point grew. With it, of course, the number of cadets expanded as well. A process was hashed out and refined, which formalized (eventually in law) the two-step process. Every potential cadet had to have a political nomination and to actually meet the physical, age, mental/educational standards and pre-selection tests set for admission. And then, West Point could select from among the pool of political nominees which ones would be offered admission.

Remember, West Point is not a civilian school. You don't just mosey on in one fine September day, unpack your stuff from Mom and Dad's station wagon and go to New Student Orientation. No, "Reception Day" (the official first day that new cadets must arrive) is in late June, and immediately that entire new class starts what is called today "Beast Barracks." (It has been called many things over the past 215 years, "Summer Encampment", "Plebe Summer," etc., but it is commonly known as Beast now.) That is correct, new students at West Point show up in late June. Remember that point as well.

What all of this means is that prospective cadets are encouraged to start the application process in the spring of their junior year in high school. After all, they must start an application, then take the physical (medical) exam, then take a pre-qualifying (and proctored by the military) physical fitness test, then also start applying through their Congressman, Senator, or other appointment route (there are reserved appointments, for example, for the children of those who have earned the Medal of Honor, as well as a percent of enlisted soldiers in both the Reserves, National Guard, and Active Duty). In the fall of Senior Year they submit an official transcript (and for the past 30 years SAT or ACTs), then get their nomination…all of this before West Point can offer an appointment. It takes a long time, but all of that is the logical extension of the dynamic of those first two points.

Here is the current West Point recommended timeline for application. Pretty impressive eh? Look at all that. Oh, obviously but I guess I should mention this, applying to West Point is free. Jumping through all the other hoops may cost time, and involve some travel, but nothing anybody in a major urban area could not do via public transportation.

I started my process of application to West Point in the spring of 1984, as suggested, during my junior year of High School. That's just how it was, just as it is today, a really complex and involved system. But in case you might be wondering, "Yes, but was it like this back in the 1960s, when, for example, future-doctor Ben Carson would have been exploring these things? Weren't things simpler and quicker then?" Thanks to the wonders of the Internet we can see that it was pretty much the same, but yes, it was a little quicker. Here is a link to Ebony magazine's June 1966 edition magazine's June 1966 edition. Note on the bottom of page 74 it is pretty explicit. "High schoolers should apply in the late spring of their junior year and graduating seniors should seek admission early in the fall. Applications should be made at least eight months prior to enrollment." (This link is, ironically, provided by Dr. Ben Carson's presidential campaign.)

So even in 1966 they point out that applying usually takes more than a year, no less than eight months. Yes, if you are an All-American football player you can get away with the eight months side of things. This means that the drop-dead date for an application to be completed was, (and confidentially, still pretty much is) in the late-November time frame of the prior year. (By the way, I was not accepted. In April of 1985 I learned that I was an "Alternate." I never attended West Point.)

Now we have a firm grip on the historical foundations: Civil control of the military through control of appointments to West Point, military efforts to have the standards raised (and adhered to) for admission, and how long it takes to complete the application process, both now and in the past. There is your foundation for understanding what has been missing in all the analysis and sloshing around in this meta-story. Onto what went wrong with Politico's story.

Basically it was sloppy in that the journalist did not know all of the above, leapt at precise definitions, and overstated his case…while entirely missing the really important bits that could have led to some good journalism.

Much of the controversy since Friday has revolved around the definition of the word "scholarship," and the various ways one can interpret "offered" in the English language. The counter-arguments and defenses have been working the angles to present evidence that West Point offers a de facto, if not de jure, "scholarship" as most people would think about it. They have also played heavily on the idea that the High School senior Ben Carson could reasonably be taken at his word when he described things he says were said to him as "an offer," regardless of if he had actually applied to USMA or not.

One of Carson's other defenders, The Daily Wire put it this way:

"But Carson never said he applied. He said he was extended a full scholarship offer. What's more, West Point doesn't offer scholarships: all admission is free contingent on serving in the military afterwards. It thus seems probable that Westmoreland or another military figure tried to recruit Carson, telling him that he wouldn't have to pay for his education – and that Carson read that as a "full scholarship," and never applied."

Here's how one of the first sources to go viral hit these main counterpoints:

"Ben Carson was a brilliant student who had already shown an interest in the military and had demonstrated leadership skills. It would be weirder if West Point hadn't tried to recruit him than tried to recruit him. This doesn't happen to us journalists, for obvious reasons, but exceptional students are recruited by top colleges and universities all the time."

OK, break. Time to insert another point. West Point does not actually "recruit" anyone but athletes. They provide information, at school fairs, through media outlets, and through the volunteer activities of their graduates and networks. But they don't actually send people out to "recruit" anyone. None of the Army does that. It cannot afford to, and in the case of West Point, does not need to. Enlisted or Officer, the backbone of "recruiting" is pretty much the same, provide as much information as broadly as you can (information tables at Job Fairs, etc.), and then see who walks in through the door of the office all on their own. But that's a minor sidebar correction to the correction.

Other than that, the section above is not incorrect. Politico did overinflate and overstate.

But on one point the Politico story did catch something with hard evidence, and here is where Carson's own campaign has hurt him, and his statements of the past weekend will likely haunt him. Remember that original Carson passage from his book where he wrote about the Memorial Day 1969 Parade in Detroit, saying, "Afterward, Sgt. Hunt introduced me to General Westmoreland, and I had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners. Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point." They did catch him out on that one, consulting with Army history to determine that, no, Westmoreland was not in Detroit in May 1969, he was in DC. Ohhh, "gotcha!" Sorta. For this too there was some wiggle room.

CNN opened the door to that rebuttal.

"But Politico goes on to note that there was a similar banquet event in Detroit in February of that year that the General did attend, and that "Carson, a leader of the city's ROTC program at the time, may have been among the invited guests at the $10-a-plate event."

The Detroit News put the nail in that one. According to their own archives, and research, they identified this as quite potentially the true origin. Carson's campaign leapt at the gap, changing their narrative and offering February 1969 as the date when Carson met Westmoreland:

"The Army records and The Detroit News archival records show Westmoreland was in Detroit on Feb. 18, 1969, for a dinner honoring a Vietnam War veteran. The banquet was for Congressional Medal of Honor winner Dwight Johnson, a Detroit African-American who risked his life "beyond the call of duty," according to a website about black participation in the Vietnam War."

Carson spokesman Doug Watts could not immediately explain the discrepancies in Carson's published account of meeting Westmoreland on Memorial Day 1969 and the general being in Washington that day.

"Dr. Carson was the top ROTC student in the city of Detroit," Watts said in an email to The News. "In that role he was invited to meet General Westmoreland. He believes it was at a banquet. He can't remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson's performance as ROTC City Executive Officer." Carson's spokesman could not pinpoint whether Carson met Westmoreland in February 1969 in Detroit or on Memorial Day 1969 as detailed in his memoir. "We believe he met Westmoreland at the banquet," Watts told The News.

Now, we can get down to timelines and brass tacks. These are the facts:

1. Carson was a senior in the 1968-1969 school year. That year he was promoted in the Junior ROTC program to Cadet Colonel and made the "Executive Officer" (in military parlance this is "XO," in other words the second highest ranked person in an organization).

2. He applied to attend Yale that Fall of 1968. And only Yale, because he said that was all he could afford. (Remembering, USMA costs nothing to apply to, and even as a Junior, especially in JROTC, he would have had access to that information in his cadet detachment.)

3. There was a banquet that he may have attended and where he could have met General Westmoreland, a four-star general and at the time America's most famous military commander. That was in February 1969. Carson's supporters, and then his campaign, and now Carson himself, say that it was probably actually at this point that Carson met Westmoreland.

4. Carson said, in 1990 and numerous points in-between, that it was after the Memorial Day Parade in Detroit in May of 1969, that he met General Westmoreland. He was wrong. Westmoreland was not there.

This is what we know from Carson himself and his staff. Now, superimpose over this the official West Point timeline for application for today, as well as that pointed out in the 1966 Ebony magazine article supplied by the Carson campaign.

A. Cadets should start the application in the Spring of their Junior year of High School. For Carson that was the Spring of 1968.

B. In Spring of 1968 Westmoreland was still finishing off the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and its aftermath as the Commander, Military Assistance Command–Vietnam. He was not in Detroit at all.

C. In the Spring of 1968 Carson was not a "Field Grade" cadet. He was still working his way up.

D. The West Point deadline, in the late 1960s, was no later than eight months prior to when a prospective cadet would have to arrive at the Academy the following year.

E. Cadets show up for "Beast Barracks" in late June, or by the first day or two of July, so the drop-dead date to complete both a nomination process getting a political nomination, and the Academy application would be late November of the prior year. In Carson's case that would be November 1968.

Now, some reasonable assumptions and additional facts.

I. No "West Point officers" would initiate an application process after the drop-dead deadline for completion had already passed.

II. Military officers in the field cannot offer appointments, then or now. That rests with a centralized board. Not even the Chief of Staff of the Army can do that. And none would because that would undercut Congress and civilian control of the military, since the nomination must come first.

III. Appointments are made only after a political nomination has been made, usually by a Congressman/Senator, but sometimes using the slots reserved for the President (which he delegates). (Civilians rule the process, remember.)

IV. No military officer at all would make an offer, by any definition of the word, to attend West Point in 1969 in February of that year. Nor would any make any suggestion that such an appointment was even possible. This would be "obligating the government" falsely and could end a career.

V. No military officer would risk his career to make such a statement to a 17-year-old he had never met.

VI. Presenting information to a person, and encouraging them to apply, is not the same as "offering a scholarship." When one attends a college fair and picks up information brochures from 17 tables they do not go home and say, "Mom, I got offers from 17 colleges!"

V. Any officer talking to Ben Carson in 1969 would have, at best, suggested he apply for a position in the summer of 1970.

VI. It does not cost anything to apply to West Point. (Though the costs of completing all travel and associated exams associated with the application process may cost.)

VII. There was no formal recruiting (ie. Going out and finding prospects and then making them offers) operating out of West Point for anything but athletes in 1969.

VIII. "Recruiting" for most of West Point, and all the rest of the Army, consists of spreading information. There were no teams of USMA officers meeting promising students in the Spring of their senior year, trying to entice them to attend West Point in a few weeks' time.

Got all that? Now, apply reason. This is what falls out.

Ben Carson did not receive any offer of a scholarship, or an appointment, or whatever you might want to call it. Not spoken or even implied. When he says that he did (and he has not backed off of this part of the story) he is not telling the truth. There is another word for that. It is apparent from everything listed above that he was not assured of acceptance, or anything like it, by any military officer. When he makes assertions to the contrary he is pitting his solitary word against the multi-century tradition of military subordination to civil authority and the honor of 240 years of oaths from the entire officer corps of the United States Army. Not to mention the legal proscriptions of the Acts of Congress dating all the way back to March 1, 1843.

In effect he was making up a story deliberately designed to show that not only could Ben Carson cut it in Detroit Junior ROTC as a military member; he could have been at West Point (a national institution) if he felt like it. This has become part and parcel of his personal myth as evidenced by the multiple times the story has been repeated by him over the years (and especially in the past few months). It steals from the honor of those who actually get in to West Point, let alone those who graduate, to make up such a story. Right now the ghosts of more than two hundred years of USMA graduates should be rising from their graves and shaking in rage that someone would tell a story about how he could have been one of them if only he had wanted to, just to advance himself personally.

Ben Carson did not tell the truth about meeting General Westmoreland on Memorial Day. Perhaps he was confused. Today he is claiming that all of this was so long ago. Who can remember such details?

Are you kidding? Ben Carson wrote the book that started all of this in 1989 (it was published in 1990), just 20 years later. Carson could not remember where/when he met the most famous American general, the Chief of Staff of the entire US Army, just 20 years later? It appears unlikely in the extreme.

Because Carson welded the first and the second together when he wrote about it back in the '80s, he gave the impression that they were related. Was that intentional? I leave that for you to decide.

Does any of this matter? Yes. Actually, it does.

As I said, we often deal with issues of Stolen Valor such as Ben Carson perpetrated, but usually the stories are larger and more outrageous. Most of those stories, however, occur in bars and are merely designed to puff up the thief's reputation to the others drinking beside him, most of whom know nothing of the military and therefore can't check his story. Other times, Stolen Valor perps get caught because they screw up and go out, boasting of their actions in public, and get caught by those who know what they are hearing is bullshit.

This is one of those times. But this time a lot more than a little ego is on the line.

Carson did not use his story to cage a beer or sweet-talk a lady. No, he has used it to help launch his "brand" and then elevate that brand on to ever higher heights.

Remember that very first non-Carson retelling of the tale to a broad political audience, the one in National Review, the one which essentially helped launch him as a potential candidate? "Five Things You Didn't Know About Ben Carson," and that was number four, in February 2013. Since then he has repeated it again and again and again.

Ben Carson did, in fact, fabricate this story.