As a child, he felt his "heroes were not sports figures like Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays but the fighter pilots who had blasted the Luftwaffe out of the sky".

[3] Burkett says he decided to write the book now known as Stolen Valor after hearing too many news reports about Vietnam veterans characterized as mentally unstable.

Burkett began fact-checking whether such identified people were veterans by applying for their military records through Freedom of information process.

[6][7] It has been credited for inspiring the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 passed by Congress, making it a crime for an individual to falsely claim to have been awarded military medals.

[2] Yandle, who was serving a life-sentence for killing a liquor store attendant during a robbery in 1972, had claimed he had turned to drugs and crime after returning scarred from two tours of duty in Vietnam.

[3] It focused on concerns "regarding the validity of combat exposure reports of veterans seeking treatment for combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder".