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Bill introduced to create medals database

As he promised, Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., introduced bipartisan legislation Thursday to create a publicly accessible database with the names and citations of service members who have been awarded the Medal of Honor or any other military medal.

Salazar is calling his bill, HR 3769, the Military Valor Roll of Honor Act. The Army veteran and member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee said he has 24 original co-sponsors in the House.

The legislation would require the Defense Department to establish a searchable database containing names and citations of military personnel who have been awarded the nation’s highest military honors.

There is no comprehensive database of such records. Supporters of the legislation say a database would make it much more difficult for “fakers” to claim awards they have not received, including the Medal of Honor.

“Having a readily accessible and public database will not only give the tools to law enforcement to prosecute fraudulent claims, but will properly recognize those who have been honored with these citations,” Salazar said in a statement.

Now that the bill has hit the hopper, “we’re going to start pushing it really hard,” Salazar told Marine Corps Times in a telephone interview following the legislation’s introduction.

But there “might be some” pushback from other lawmakers over privacy concerns, Salazar said.

Copies of the original records of Army and Air Force awards exist, but many remain in storage at the National Archives and are filed by command, number, and date, Salazar said.

Each record usually has the names and citations of a dozen or more recipients, but there is no index searchable by name. A family member or researcher must request a citation by those criteria — which they usually have no way of knowing — or pay a researcher to sort through tens of thousands of pages.

Even when the information is known, records often must be requested under the Freedom of Information Act, which can take a year or more.

Awards to members of the Navy and Marine Corps are preserved on nearly 500,000 index cards housed at the Navy Yard in Washington, where access to the general public is limited.

The issue of fakers claiming unearned awards came to the fore recently amid revelations that the Library of Congress’ Web site for the Veterans History Project lists hundreds of unsubstantiated war stories and medals.

Salazar also was the driving force behind the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, for which he rallied more than 100 co-sponsors. That law, enacted last December, makes false written and verbal claims to unearned decoration illegal.

With support for the database coming from both Democrats and Republicans as well as veterans groups such as the Military Order of the Purple Heart and the Tuskegee Airmen, Inc., Salazar said he believes the database concept “is going to have some momentum.”

Salazar said he is confident Rep. Susan Davis, D-Calif., will support the bill too. She chairs the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee, which likely will be the first congressional panel to consider the bill.

Salazar considers the Military Valor Roll of Honor Act the natural follow-on to his Stolen Valor legislation because the 2005 act gives law enforcement officials the authority to prosecute frauds, and the latest would make it easier to identify them in the first place, said Salazar spokesman Rick Palacio.

No similar bill has been introduced in the Senate, but Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, a World War II veteran and current chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, has said he is “deeply distressed” by the prevalence of awards imposters.

“While I realize that creating a database of those who have received medals of valor would be a huge undertaking [for the Defense Department], something must be done to curb this abuse,” Akaka recently said.