Ron Dickey, Mississippi Candidate For Congress Lies About Being A Green Beret – Guardian Of Valor
This is a case we have worked alongside our SF brethren, Ron Dickey, a candidate running for Congress out of Mississippi made multiple claims of being a Green Beret with 3rd Group. Of course someone high-profile, making claims such as this will have people asking questions.
He refers to himself as a “Green Beret Veteran of Desert Storm” and is using this claim to garnish votes with the local veterans and public. He claims that while assigned to 3rd Special Forces Group, that he was authorized to wear the Green Beret therefore he can refer to himself as a “former Green Beret”. While the first part of this claim is true, he never went through or attempted to attend Special Forces (Green Beret) training, during the time of his claim he was assigned as a Food Specialist, 94B. All support personnel assigned to a Special Forces unit were authorized to wear the Green Beret by the Commander, USSOCOM from 1991-May1993. This policy change was implemented because qualified Green Berets were awarded the Special Forces Tab which supposedly distinguished them from the support soldiers in the units. Authorization for support personnel wearing the beret ceased in May 1993 when Gen. Wayne Downing took command of US SOCOM. Ron is not even Airborne qualified, which he has made no claims to be, except for the fact that to be a “Green Beret”, a soldier is required to be Airborne qualified first.
Ron also claims to be a Veteran of Desert Storm (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991) and that when “…he got back from the Middle East, he developed extensive skin abrasions. He still doesn’t know if he was exposed to something during the war, but his health began to deteriorate quickly (sic).” However, his records do not show authorization for either the Southwest Asia Service Medal or the Kuwait Liberation Medal which were awarded to Soldiers who actually deployed to the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm. Ronald is using the loose claim of being an Active Duty Soldier DURING Desert Storm to being a Veteran of Desert Storm.
Below are snapshots of his claims from social media, as well as articles written about him where it specifically states he is a Green Beret Veteran.
Below is his biography:
Here is a post from one of his campaign pages:
Below is a news article written that claims Dickey is a former Green Beret.
This was taken from his Facebook page, as you can see he even has his supporters thinking he is a former Green Beret.
The SF community doesn’t take it lightly when someone claims to be one of them when in fact they are not. I spoke to one former Green Beret who had a phone conversation with Dickey. In this conversation Dickey admitted he had never attended the “Q” course. He said that since he was allowed to wear the Green Beret, he could claim SF status, sorry that is not how it works.
Here are Ron Dickey’s actual military records:
As you can see by the official military records above, not only was Mr. Dickey not Special Forces, he also didn’t deploy in support of Operation Desert Storm/Shield. He served honorably, and yes did support 3rd Group, but he was never a Green Beret nor did he deploy.
You can also see other write-ups about him at the following links:
Scottys Blog
UPDATE: 20140725
Mr. Dickey has spoken out saying he never personally claimed to be SF, you can see his rebuttal in this article: Congressional Candidate Answers Questions About SF Claims
He cleansed most of his sites of the claims after the story went public, but he forgot to remove the claims from his personal FB page which we took snapshots of.
After this story broke he took down his old campaign page and started a new one, you can see it here: Dickey for Congress
Below is a gallery of more snapshots of his claims found online, thanks to the SF community once again for bringing this guy and his lies to light.
UPDATE 20141104:
Ron Dickey has lost the race for Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District, although we knew this would happen.