GREENE: A VETERAN OF WAR WITH THE TRUTH

Kevin Grimsinger came forward this summer as a special forces veteran
who had lost parts of his legs in Operation Enduring Freedom. I wrote
about him in July when he led the movement in Colorado to qualify
veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder for medical marijuana.

As it turns out, the double-amputee didn't serve in Afghanistan and
wasn't injured by a land mine, as he claimed. Records show his
military service ended a decade before he said he was hurt fighting in
Kandahar in 2001.

He was, in fact, paralyzed as a civilian in a crash on a mountain road
in Southern California where, as he now tells it, he was trying to
kill himself.

"OK, so I claimed one tour that I wasn't there for. I wasn't in
Kandahar. I didn't trigger a land mine," he admitted Friday. "I'm not
laying no guilt trip or anything. But it's just another nail in my
coffin. I probably won't make it through this if you write this."

I hate writing this.

Partly, I admit, because I was duped.

What's worse was hearing him twist his story when asked about military
records that show he's not a combat veteran and recipient of two
purple hearts.

"I'm exactly who I said I am. Any man in green will stand right next
to me and vouch for it," he said at first.

"I'm highly offended that all this nonsense is in my face right
now."

For his aunt in Northglenn - the first to speak out about his history
- - it's a classic case of stolen valor.

"It's not right that he's living his life pretending to be some kind
of war hero," said Linda DeBruyn, whose husband and son are war veterans.

"He's always been sort of a liar," added Walt Grimsinger, his
father.

Slingers, as the 42-year-old likes to call himself, moved to Denver
some time around 2003. He since has misrepresented himself to the
Denver Mayor's office, which appointed him to a special commission. He
pulled one over on state lawmakers when testifying earlier this year.
And he hoodwinked medical-marijuana advocates who were all too eager
to wheel him forward as a valorous poster guy.

He has misled about 200 people participating in a veterans outreach
program he runs at Budding Health, a pot dispensary in Denver. Most
folks there and at VFW Post 1 - where Grimsinger was a quartermaster -
know him as the guy whose legs were blown off in Afghanistan.

"Holy crap. Holy crap," VFW commander Izzy Abbass said when learning
Grimsinger's history. "This just detracts from what everybody else
endured and suffered."

In 2006, George W. Bush signed the Stolen Valor Act, which
criminalizes false claims like Grimsinger's. That law is being debated
as unconstitutional on free-speech grounds. The argument goes that
nobody's really hurt by embellishing war stories.

"It's fraud. And it's wrong," says Doug Sterner, the military awards
historian whose wife, Pam - both formerly from Pueblo - helped write
the law.

Grimsinger at first denied being related to his mother, father,
brother, aunt and uncles. Then he said they're all dead. Later he
clarified that they're dead to him.

Lying is his reality. And his bogus history "is the only way anybody
knows me here," he said. "It's the life I gave myself to keep from
losing my life."

It's a struggle to know which parts to believe in Grimsinger's sad and
revisionist autobiography. And after a while, quite frankly, it's
tough to care.

But this, at least, I think to be true: "Between my pain and my brain,
it's hard to keep things straight," he said. "I have my scars."