Ken Aden, the Democratic candidate challenging Republican incumbent Steven Womack in the 3rd Congressional District of Arkansas, withdraw from the race yesterday when it was revealed that he had lied about serving in the Army’s elite Green Berets. Though Aden was a ten year veteran of the Army who served in Iraq, an investigative report by the Arkansas Press-Democrat demonstrated that Aden’s claim that he had also been a member of the Green Berets was false. In fact, though he had attempted to join the Green Berets, Aden had washed out of the training program three times.
Dave Chace, as spokersperson for the Special Warfare Center that trains Special Forces soldiers and personnel, told ABC News that Aden failed out of the training three times — each for academic reasons — before ultimately being removed from the program in April 2008, without ever being awarded a beret.
You can see Aden making this false claim at the 1:34 mark of this February 2012 video, where he says “I finished up my time, my tour of duty, with, um, you know, Green Berets, Special Forces.”
In a press release posted yesterday on his campaign website, Aden announced his withdrawal from the race, but could not bring himself to admit that his Green Beret claim was a lie:
“Unfortunately, the ongoing saga related to my military records has created a tremendous distraction for our campaign, and I did not want this to have adverse consequences for Democrats across the district or anywhere else in the state,” Aden said.
Aden has a track record of making claims that many consider hard to believe. In January of this year, he told CNN that someone killed his campaign director’s cat:
The cat of an Arkansas Democratic campaign director was “slaughtered” and found on Sunday with the word “Liberal” scrawled in spray paint on its side, Democratic congressional candidate Ken Aden told CNN on Monday.
The cat of Jacob Burris, who works for Aden in his bid for Arkansas’ 3rd Congressional District, was found on Burris’ doorstep on Sunday in Russellville, according to Aden.
Now this claim, along with every other claim made by Aden during his ill-fated campaign is being questioned.
Though Arkansas Democrats have little tolerance for liars, Aden may still have a potential political future in another part of the country. In Massachusetts, for instance, Democratic power brokers don’t seem to care if their candidates lie about their personal and family histories.
Michael Patrick Leahy is a Breitbart News contributor, Editor of Broadside Books’ Voices of the Tea Party e-book series, and author of Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement.