Ben Carson Campaign Calls Politico Report on West Point Scholarship 'Outright Lie'
Ben Carson's campaign refuted Friday that they admitted to Politico that he lied about being offered a "full scholarship" to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
"The campaign never 'admitted to anything,'" a spokesman for Carson told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
"The Politico story is an outright Lie," Doug Watts told TheDCNF.
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The Christian Post reached out to Carson's campaign for further comment Friday but had not received a reply at the time this report was published.
Politico reported Friday that Carson's campaign admitted his claim of applying to and getting accepted into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on a "full scholarship" was fabricated.
Responding to questions from Politico about the story Carson told in his inspirational book, Gifted Hands, that he was introduced to Gen. William Westmoreland in 1969 and was later offered a full scholarship to West Point, the academy said they have no record of Carson's application.
"In 1969, those who would have completed the entire process would have received their acceptance letters from the Army Adjutant General," Theresa Brinkerhoff, a spokeswoman for the academy told Politico.
She said West Point doesn't even have records showing that Carson ever started the application process.
"If he chose to pursue (the application process) then we would have records indicating such," she said.
Politico claims they confronted Carson's campaign with the evidence and they conceded Carson's story was false.
"Dr. Carson was the top ROTC student in the city of Detroit," campaign manager Barry Bennett told POLITICO.
"In that role he was invited to meet General Westmoreland. He believes it was at a banquet. He can't remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson's performance as ROTC city executive officer.
"He was introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC supervisors," Bennett went on. "They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in ROTC. He considered it but in the end did not seek admission."
In his January 2015 book You Have a Brain — a book geared toward teenagers — Carson recalls his rapid rise through his high school's ROTC program to become the top student officer in the city, says Politico.
"That position allowed me the chance to meet four-star general William Westmoreland, who had commanded all American forces in Vietnam before being promoted to Army Chief of Staff at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.," he wrote. "I also represented the Junior ROTC at a dinner for Congressional Medal of Honor winners, marched at the front of Detroit's Memorial Day parade as head of an ROTC contingent, and was offered a full scholarship to West Point."
Carson said he turned down the supposed offer of admission because he knew he wanted to be a doctor and attending West Point would have required four years of military service after graduation.
"An application to West Point begins with a nomination by a member of Congress or another prominent government or military official. After that, a rigorous vetting process begins. If offered admission, all costs are covered; indeed there are no 'full scholarships,' per se," added Politico.
Carson's credibility was forced under the microscope this week after a CNN report questioned whether the GOP 2016 presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon had tried to stab someone as a youth as he claimed.
"Those claims are absolutely true," Carson told Fox News' Megyn Kelly on Thursday. He, however, modified his initial story about the stabbing saying it wasn't a friend but a "close relative" who was the target of that assault.
Carson recounted the anecdote in his book Gifted Hands saying he threw a knife at a friend named Bob in the book. On Thursday he said he changed the person's name to protect their identity then noted that it "was a close relative of mine."
"I never use the true names of people in books, you know, to protect the innocent," Carson told Kelly. "That's something that people have done for decades, for centuries. That's something that's commonly done. The person that I tried to stab, I talked to today and said, 'Would they want to be revealed?' They were not anxious to be revealed, and it was a close relative of mine. I didn't want to put their lives under the spotlight."
Carson called CNN's investigation into the story "silly" and the network was trying to smear him as "a pathological liar."
"Do you think I'm a pathological liar, like CNN does, or do you think I'm an honest person? And I'm going to leave it up to the American people to make that decision," Carson said.
