Dear Derek;

            Congratulations, Derek. I am glad Bob Levy, the Mayor of Atlantic City, has finally come clean and apologized to us in Special Forces for posing as one of us, except for one major thing; you did NOT do the story. Don and Harry Hurley did the story. Your editors did not have the balls to do the story and wanted to sit on it. I don’t know if you yourself did not have the balls to fight them for the story, or if your bosses are too unreasonable for you to even try to. But now that somebody else in your community, the Hurley twins, had the chutzpah and courage to risk harassment, or whatever attacks, to simply do what was right, it is very presumptuous to take the credit for what they did. They deserve all the credit, as do Chuck and Mary Shantag of pownetwork.org who did the research and uncovered the mayor’s real record. It is not cool for you to now do in a smaller way what you gladly reported the mayor was guilty of, steal the honor of others. I am glad the mayor finally decided to stand up and admit he had stolen the honor of those of us who wear or wore the Green Beret. It was his first wise decision in some time, but it was also his only decision. As I said many times, he was going to apologize to SF, period. He had no other real options, and he knows it. I also hope other phonies who want to claim to be Green Beret war heroes for personal gain will take note of this case. For we the men who have worn the Green Beret will not stand for it anymore. If you are a thief and go to any community in the United States and find out where the real former-Special Forces operators live, the local sheriff or chief of police could tell you, “Son, that is the very last house in this county you should ever consider trying to break into.” People who want to steal our honor should remember that wise advice, because it is still trying to steal from the wrong group of people. It is good that Mayor Levy came to his senses. Everybody in SF will soon know he apologized to all of us. Now, he needs to spend several years making it up to his wife and family. He also needs to apologize to his citizens who trusted in him. You ought to do a story thanking and praising the Hurley’s. I am sure at some point Mayor Levy will read this, and I want to thank him on the eve of Veterans Day for his service to our nation. Be proud of who you are and what you have done, not what you would like to be.

De Oppresso Liber,