DATE: Saturday, May 17, 1997                TAG: 9705170288

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   57 lines

HACKWORTH BLAMES ARMY FOR FLAP OVER DECORATIONS IT'S NOT LIKE BOORDA'S CASE, EX-OFFICER SAYS.

A year to the day after the Navy's top admiral committed suicide in the face of charges that he was wearing medals that he hadn't earned, the soldier-turned-journalist who blew the whistle denied Friday that he was guilty of a similar breach of military tradition.

Retired Col. David Hackworth, syndicated columnist and Pentagon gadfly, conceded that he had two questionable awards among the welter of medals that have made him one of the nation's most highly decorated soldiers. But he asserted that the mistake was made by the Army, not by him.

``I have never worn a decoration or any other kind of military insignia that was not on my service record and that was not awarded to me by the U.S. Army,'' Hackworth said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

Hackworth, 67, insisted there were no similarities between his case and that of Adm. Jeremy ``Mike'' Boorda, the former chief of naval operations who killed himself less than two hours before Hackworth was to question him about two pins that he wore among his chestful of ribbons.

Hackworth suggested that the claims being made against him were the result of ``payback time'' from the Navy.

``I spent all my time as a military journalist beating up the Pentagon to make sure that young soldiers are not stuck in Vietnam, not stuck in Somalia, not stuck in body bags,'' Hackworth said Friday in a separate interview with the cable TV channel MSNBC.

Nevertheless, Hackworth said, he has removed any mention of a second Distinguished Flying Cross and a Ranger patch from a list of his almost 280 military decorations posted on his personal Internet Web page.

He said the Ranger patch, worn on the shoulder of the uniform of elite infantrymen, mistakenly was awarded by the Army to a unit that he served with in Korea. As for the Distinguished Flying Cross, he said the Army inadvertently sent him two of them in 1988 when it sent him a full set of all his decorations. He had given up his medals years earlier to protest the Vietnam war.

Hackworth said he never wore the second Distinguished Flying Cross because he retired from the service in 1971.

``I have not worn a uniform in 26 years,'' Hackworth told AP.

Hackworth implied that it is understandable that he might not remember how many Distinguished Flying Crosses he had earned because, ``for an infantryman like me, that is not a very big deal.''

However, Boorda's supporters say the admiral's violation was similar to Hackworth's. Boorda, too, said he wore the disputed decorations thinking that he was entitled to them, and removed them when questions were raised.

Boorda wore two small bronze ``V'' pins, which designate ``valor'' in combat, on his Vietnam service ribbons. Boorda said he understood he was entitled to the pins because of his wartime service. MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The Los Angeles Times and

The Associated Press.

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