We were sent Lief “Bill” Arousell by one of his friends. He was claiming to have been a Green Beret in Vietnam. With one look at his pictures, we knew he was probably a fraud. It took us a while to find his records, but once we did, we confirmed his place of birth with his family and knew we were on the correct guy.
We reached out to Bill over the phone. The conversation was about 10 minutes long. In it, he claimed that he never said he was SF. We aslo contacted his two daughters and they said he did claim to have been a GB. The phone conversations can be found at this link Bill and daughters on the phone. He also said he was only “attached” to an SF unit in Vietnam. We’re not sure his records support his claim of being attached to an SF unit either.
He spent a good number of years in the service and got out an E-4. That part of the conversation, and his disciplinary issues were removed from the audio as it had nothing to do with his SF claims.
When we called him, he was ready for our call. Sometimes these cases move much slower than those involved expect them to. A person close to him, that was asked to not alert him, did indeed ask him if we had contacted him. That negated our ability to catch him off guard and he had his answers planned. It is what it is.
That’s why we asked his family to go on the record as having heard him claim to have been a Green Beret.
The phone quality is poor so we also include text from the family also.
Lief “Bill” Arousell, you’ll now be added to Guardians of the Green Beret Hall of Fakes, Frauds, and Phonies.