The Try-Works

This myth began as soon as the media could find a responsible token Indian to trot out in the interest of discrediting Ward Churchill. Unfortunately for the local and national media, the token Indian they managed to dig up turned out to be an all-around fraud – not that you’d hear that from them.

William Bradford was the gentleman glommed onto by the rabid right as the anti-Churchill: an American Indian combat veteran and winner of the Silver Star who was threatened with termination from the University of Indiana for refusing to sign a petition in support of Ward Churchill. The story was initially broken in the Indianapolis Star, then exploded.

As Fox News’ John Gibson describes in a June 29, 2005 segment:

William Bradford is a professor of law at Indiana Law School. He is a 39-year-old legal scholar, specializing in international law. He does not yet have tenure and probably won’t get it and here’s why:

Bradford is a Gulf War vet, who conspicuously wrote a defense of a flag displayed in public at Indiana Law after 9/11 — which eventually was taken down after some lefty professors objected.

He also refused to sign a letter sent by one of the most left wing professors on the campus. The letter was a defense of Ward Churchill for his little Eichmans remark.

. . .

When Bradford refused to sign the letter declaring support for Churchill, Roisman and others at Indy Law decided he was being “un-collegial” and that’s bad.

In fact, it’s code for: “We’re not going to approve your tenure, ‘Mr. Soldier Boy Law Professor’.”

One more thing: Bradford is a Native American and Apache. Remember Churchill’s claim that he’s Native American? Well, Bradford is the real thing. Churchill evidently smoked the peace pipe and got declared a Native American.

The Denver/Boulder media locked onto the story immediately, the most prominent coverage coming on KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman show. Mr. Bradford appeared on their show multiple times, at least according to comments made on the air, Messrs. Caplis and Silverman even petitioned Hank Brown to find Bradford a position at CU.

But there was a problem with the story, though not one you would’ve heard about in the local media or on Fox News. See, the reporter from the Indianapolis Star who’d initially broken the Bradford story checked in with an update in a December 04, 2005 column (I’d link to it, but it’s longer on the internet.  Needless to say, hard copy persists):

One of Bradford’s allies, Professor Henry C. Karlson, pointed out that Bradford was the real deal — awarded the Silver Star and a major in the Special Forces. Bradford said he was in the infantry and military intelligence. He fought in Desert Storm and Bosnia, he said. On the law school’s Web site and its Viewbook, Bradford was profiled as being in the Army infantry from 1990 to 2001. He wore a Silver Star lapel pin around campus. He had a major’s gold-leaf insignia plate on his vehicle.

After my column ran portraying Bradford as a victim of a politically correct agenda, I was contacted by retired Army Lt. Col. Keith R. Donnelly, a recent law school graduate, West Point graduate and Gulf War veteran.

Donnelly had long been suspicious of Bradford’s background, he said. What really piqued his attention was the Silver Star claim — “it is a pretty high award for valor, and not many were awarded in Desert Storm.”

Independently, Donnelly and I requested Bradford’s service record from the Army. It showed he was in the Army Reserve from Sept. 30, 1995, to Oct 23, 2001. He was discharged as a second lieutenant. He had no active duty. He was in military intelligence, not infantry. He received no awards.

Meanwhile, Bradford promoted himself. He blogged on the law school’s student Web site. He did radio interviews. He went national on “The O’Reilly Factor.” David Horowitz, a champion for conservatives, took up his cause.

Nor was that the only hitch: it turns out Mr. Bradford was also an ethnic fraud, at least by the standards Caplis and Silverman have held Churchill to. Though they repeatedly referred to Bradford as an enrolled American Indian, he isn’t an enrolled member of any federally recognized Indian nation. He can’t be. The Chiricahua Apache, with whom he claims affiliation, are not federally recognized, and though most Chiricahua Apache are enrolled with either the Fortt Sill Apache Tribe or the Mescelaro Tribe, Bradford has never claimed membership in either of those. Likewise, Bradford’s upbringing — Lansing, Michigan, according to an interview with anti-Churchill documentarian Grant Crowell — seems to preclude community recognition by the Chiricahua. Furthermore, according to discussions found on American Indian newsgroups and lists, such as Indianz.com, not a few American Indians seem to greet Bradford’s claims with more than a little suspicion.
Caplis and Silverman, however, possessing nothing like the journalistic integrity of the aforementioned Indianapolis Star reporter, are still letting Bradford’s role as good-guy Indian stand with their Denver listenership.

As are other members of the Denver media. David Horowitz, for instance, has been making the rounds of KHOW/KOA neo-con radio jocks, like Mike Rosen, in support of his new book, The Professors.  In The Professors, Horowitz still refers to the William Bradford case as the perfect counterpoint to Ward Churchill — a claim he opens his book with.

Not that anyone should be surprised.  Like the Denver/Boulder local media, Horowitz has never been opposed to ignoring an inconvenient fact or two in the broader interest of a good smear campaign.