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Report: Marines exaggerated Medal of Honor winner’s story
The Marine Corps exaggerated the story of Cpl. Dakota Meyer that earned him the Medal of Honor, according to a McClatchy investigation.
The newspaper investigation found that the parts of account publicizing Meyer’s heroic acts during a 2009 ambush in Afghanistan were “untrue, unsubstantiated or exaggerated.”
The story, written by a correspondent embedded with the unit during the ambush, says that sworn statements provided by Meyer and others in the battle indicate he didn’t save the lives of 13 U.S. service members or “personally kill at least eight Taliban insurgents,” among other discrepancies.
Meyer was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Obama in September, the first living Marine to receive it since the Vietnam War.
While the investigation concludes Meyer’s story was exaggerated, it notes that Meyer probably could have received the Medal of Honor without any embellishments: “What's most striking is that all this probably was unnecessary.”
