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  • 2022-12-14 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a 'Bunker Boys' Vietnam Vet Group Write a Letter to Brittney Griner? (de)
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  • On July 19, 2022, a Facebook user named Marilyn Smith Hancock posted what looked to be an open letter from a group of U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War that was addressed to WNBA player Brittney Griner. The aim of the letter appeared to be to teach Griner about both war and what the veterans who were referenced viewed as the importance of respecting the U.S. national anthem. Earlier in the year, on Feb. 17, Griner was arrested in Russia after authorities said they found vape cartridges containing marijuana concentrate hashish oil in her luggage, CBSSports.com reported. She was later released on Dec. 8 in a prisoner exchange for a convicted Russian arms dealer named Viktor Bout. The release appeared to reignite interest in Hancock's Facebook post that featured the letter. Readers asked us to look into the matter, as the post with the letter was on track to be shared more than 500,000 times by the end of the year. A Google search for the text in the letter led us to a reply on the Copytechnet.com forums, which pointed to a user named Gerald Hege as having posted it before Hancock. That one reply on the message board helped us locate what turned out to be the source of the letter. We found Hege's post from July 11, which was eight days before Hancock copied and pasted it on her own feed. Other users also copied and pasted the same post. We refer to this type of sharing as copypasta. Hege's Facebook profile matched some of the details in the letter, which initially indicated to us that he may have been one of its authors. Both the letter and his Facebook profile mentioned living in North Carolina. Also, he appeared to have posted pictures of himself and other U.S. service members during the Vietnam War, as well as present-day photographs with signage that mentioned a place known as Bunker Boys Ranch. Hege told us via Messenger that the Bunker Boys is a group of 74-80 year old war veterans that meet and feed veterans at the Bunker Boys Ranch located in Pilgrim, N.C., just outside of Lexington, N.C. Shortly after the open letter to Griner was posted on Hege's account, he made another post that talked more about Bunker Boys Ranch. In addition to Hege's post with the open letter to Griner, we also found that it had been shared on Reddit, the Long Island Firearms forums, and other websites. The text of the Bunker Boys letter to Griner read as follows: The letter claimed that Griner had previously requested that the national anthem not be played at WNBA games. We confirmed this to be true in one of our past stories. Note: The letter that was shared on Facebook had no affiliation with BunkerBoys.com, a website that just happens to share the same name. (en)
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