Robert McDonald, the secretary of Veterans Affairs who took over the agency while it was embroiled in scandal last year, has admitted he falsely claimed he served in the Army Special Forces.
McDonald did serve in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in the late 1970s — but during a tour of a Los Angeles neighborhood during a nationwide count of homeless veterans in January, he wrongly claimed he served in the special forces.
“Special forces? What years? I was in special forces!” McDonald told a homeless man who told him he had served in the special forces, according to the Huffington Post.
The U.S. special operations forces are composed of highly trained military members from each military service — such as Navy SEALS — but not the 82nd Airborne.
“I have no excuse,” McDonald told the Huffington Post Monday.
The comments were broadcast during a Jan. 30 CBS News story and later picked up by several military officers who noticed the incorrect comment.
McDonald told the Huffington Post that he “wanted to clear up the confusion I probably created — I did create” in the conversation with the homeless man. The claim “is not right. I was not in special forces. What I said was wrong.
“I have great respect for special forces,” McDonald said, adding, “as I thought about this later I knew this [claim] was wrong.”
Since Veterans Affairs was overrun with scandal last summer, McDonald has been able to keep the agency relatively out of the news.
