OAK RIDGE, N.C. — Well before he became commandant of North Carolina's only military boarding academy, William Northrop regaled people with stories of serving in the jungles of Vietnam — how he was wounded in battle, how some comrades committed suicide, how he used amphetamines on patrol.
But his war stories may be pure fiction.
There is no record Northrop ever served in the military, let alone Vietnam.
Northrop, 66, left as commandant at Oak Ridge Military Academy last fall after just a few months on the job, the same day a parent formally asked school officials to look into his background.
He refused to discuss his past or explain the discrepancies in his record to an Associated Press reporter. The academy's president would not discuss Northrop's background either.
If his claim of wartime service proves false, it will be the latest and one of the most audacious to emerge in recent years, and comes as the courts grapple with the constitutionality of a 2006 federal law that makes it a crime to pose as a war hero.
The academy, with an enrollment of about 125, had hired Northrop to oversee the cadets even though there had been long-standing suspicions about him, including a 1998 book on military impostors, "Stolen Valor," that pronounced Northrop a "pretender."
Northrop claimed in a 1992 book profiling veterans that he served as a Special Forces officer in Vietnam and Laos and also saw duty with the Israeli military.
In response to a request from the AP, the National Archives said it could find no record of Northrop's military service after extensive searches and a check with the FBI. The National Archives manages a big records center for those who served in the military.