WASHINGTON — Congress is once again seeking to punish pretend war heroes who aim to profit from false tales of glory.
Both houses passed the Stolen Valor Act of 2013 just days before Memorial Day. Now it awaits President Barack Obama's signature.
The U.S. Supreme Court last year struck down a 2005 law, in effect for six years, aimed at targeting those peddling trumped up war stories on the grounds that it impeded free speech.
The new language is more narrow, making it a crime for someone to seek financial gain, property or benefits claiming they are the recipient of certain military decorations or honors. Someone could profit based on a story of heroic action on the battlefield, and as long as the liar doesn't claim to have won a Purple Heart, for example, the lie would not be a crime under this act.
Someone convicted under the measure could spend up to a year in jail and face a fine.
Samuel Wright, a retired Navy captain in the Judge Advocate General's Corps, is now director of the Service Members Law Center in Washington. He was among those who contributed to a brief asking the Supreme Court to uphold the earlier version of the law.
''We can't have people making a mockery of our military awards system by claiming to have received high awards they never received," he said.
The Supreme Court heard the case of Xavier Alvarez, an elected member of the board of directors of a water district in Southern California, who claimed to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. He said he rescued an American ambassador in Iran in the 1980s, Wright said. First off, he was years off for when the Iran hostage crisis happened and the United States had no ambassador in Iran.
Alvarez had been elected by the time of his claim, so, under the new version of the law, he could not be prosecuted for lying to get some tangible benefit, Wright surmises.
The Stolen Valor Act only prohibits false claims about the highest military honors.