Validating “Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus”

We were warned. Now Retired Lt. Colonel Anthony Aguilar's embellishments stretch the credibility of his tales about war cimes to the breaking point.

Not Aguilar’ hand

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Aguilar, last seen hawking fertilizer in the lawn and garden section of Lowe’s Home Improvements, has attempted to carve out a new career for himself making the rounds of sympathetic media and left wing politicians to peddle more fertilizer. His new fertilizing project is an effort to spread his bogus claims about war crimes by Americans and the Israeli Defense Forces, and to smear his former employer¹ and the IDF as not only dishonest, but as evil war criminals. According to him, both have deliberately implemented policies that are intended to kill thousands of “starving refugees.”

Aguilar has now been exposed for what he is — a seemingly pathological fraud, in my humble view. In multiple interviews he has told the story of a young Palestinian boy whom he called “Amir.”² Evidence has now been produced, however, that indicates that his story about Amir is a fabrication, likely intended to embellish Aguilar’s own image. The true facts show that my caution about the applicability of the legal maxim, “Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus,” was prescient.

Background

When I first heard about Aguilar’s story, I was interested in his allegations about war crimes in Gaza and wanted to look into them further. Because he and I share a common background as graduates of West Point and service with U.S. Army Special Forces (popularly known as the ‘green berets’), my initial bias was to grant him a presumption of truthfulness. Regrettably, as I read the substance of his first interview with Tucker Carlson, he rebutted that presumption.

My initial analysis was published on August 5, in “Laundering Hamas Propaganda.” It primarily addressed a number of Aguilar’s incorrect and exaggerated allegations in his first interview with Tucker Carlson. These included, for example, his claim that the Geneva Conventions prohibit using so-called razor wire to control the flow of refugees and prevent GHF positions from being overrun. It also criticized his inevitable comparison of the U.S. and Israelis to the real Nazis tried at Nuremberg.

I followed that up on August 9, with “Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus,” in which I showed that more of his allegations in a follow-up interview with Tucker Carlson were complete fabrications. These included the notion that Hamas was not engaged in a war, his statements that firing warning shots was a violation of the Geneva Conventions and was not done by U.S. forces, and that U.S. troops on humanitarian missions never carry automatic weapons. Consistent with the title of that article, I cautioned readers that his incorrect statements about these and other matters could be valid reasons to reject as untruthful some or all of his additional claims.

One aspect of Aguilar’s story that I did not address in either of these first two articles, however, was his heart-rending claim of having befriended “Amir,” who was supposedly killed by the IDF shortly after he had approached Aguilar seeking food. At the time I did not think that I had enough solid facts to either affirm or dispute that story. Subsequent facts, however, have brought to light that his tale of Amir is another fabrication.

Aguilar’s claims about his “connection” with the starving boy, “Amir”

Aguilar’s first Tucker Carlson interview is available here on YouTube. A transcript is here. Here is his story about his “connection” with “Amir” (with a few non-substantive edits for clarity and to eliminate duplication):

This young little boy, His name is Amir. I know that because when he walked over from the crowd of people, he walked toward me. There was two of us standing there, two UG solutions guards standing in that area. And he was walking towards us and we thought maybe he was hurt or maybe he was asking for some more food because all he had in his arms was a small bag of rice, half a bag of flour, some lentils that he had picked up from the ground. He didn't have much. And we thought maybe he was asking for more food or maybe he was hurt.

And we motioned him over and he came up and he extends his right hand at us. And so I, you know, I kind of walked up to him and waved him over. And the guy standing next to me, this young boy grabs, holds his hand and he kisses it. And then he comes to me and he holds my hand and he kisses it. And in Arab culture, that is a very significant sign of respect. That's not something that should be taken lightly or something. That should be that, that's a big sign of respect. And we were taken aback by that. The gentleman that was standing next to me was also a military veteran, combat veteran. So he's been to Afghanistan, Iraq. And he understand he was, he was moved by it. He was touched. I was touched.

And as he was standing there, we were both looking at him. And he was very emaciated. He had no shoes on. His pants were tattered. He had a kind of a rope or string holding his pants up. Filthy, probably hasn't bathed in months. Probably hasn't eaten in days.

. . . . But he comes, he's standing there and I, and I put my arm on his, on his right on, on his left shoulder. And I look at him and I can feel the bones in his shoulder. I can feel the weakness in his arm. I can feel the vulnerability. I can feel the desperation. And I look at him and I look and I got down on my knees or I'm looking at him in the eyes. And then I say to him, I said, people care, America cares. You're not gonna be forgotten. People in the world care.

And he doesn't speak English, and I don't speak Arabic, but the connection we had in looking at each other, he felt like, he felt, he felt for the first time in a long time, that there was someone that cared. And I got down on the knee and he came and to his level and the items he had in his hand, he sets them down on the ground and he, his hands, he raises his hands. And they're small, fragile. You can, you can see bones stick, you know, just the bones through the skin. And he places his hands on my face and he kissed me. And he said, he looked at me in the eyes and he says, thank you. He said it in English, thank you.

Like, people are starving in Gaza. People are dying in Gaza. These children that are starving and dying. These, these children, you know, they look like everyday Americans. This child is picking up noodles off the ground with his bare hands because there was no food left. So he is picking up noodles to put into his backpack.

Aguilar also gave an interview to an organization called UnXeptable. In that interview he described the boy as having “these frail skeleton emaciated hands,” and he repeated that “he puts them on my face and he kissed me. He kissed me and he said, ‘Thank you’ in English.”

What a false picture!

There are multiple exaggerations, omissions and outright false statements in Aguilar’s story about what he calls his “connection” with “Amir.” They become apparent upon reviewing a video posted by Kassy Akiva on “X” on behalf of The Daily Wire. I have not yet mastered the art of incorporating videos from “X” into Substack. But for those of you who have “X” her video can be accessed here: https://x.com/kassyakiva/status/1954734286785200569?s=10 (you may have to scroll down a little). It also is available in The Daily Wire article at this link: https://x.com/kassyakiva/status/1954734286785200569?s=10 . Take a look at it — it is instructive. And if you do not have “X,” download a free link. It will be worth your while even if you later delete it.

What Kassy Akiva shows is videos from a body cam worn by Aguilar and a body cam worn by another security contractor. Akiva displays them side-by-side and synchronized so that at any particular moment you are seeing the same scene from two different angles. They also include crucial audios.

Now, look and listen again to the video. The story it tells bears little resemblance to the fertilizer Aguilar is hawking on his media tour:

• There is no “very emaciated,” “skeletal,” “starving” child. The boy appears to be relatively healthy, not fat, but little different than normal 10 year-olds I have seen from Montana to Switzerland.

• The boy does not comes to Aguilar, hold his hand and kiss it.

• He never places his “skeletal” hands on Aguilar’s face and kiss him.

• He also is not “picking up noodles off the ground with his bare hands . . . . picking up noodles to put into his backpack.” Not only is that not shown in the video, but the video does show that he is not even wearing a backpack.

At some point, an objective observer has to ask if Aguilar’s serial misstatements are pathological.

In a follow-up interview with the Daily Wire, Aguilar confirmed that the videos showed “the full extent of the interaction.” But, when confronted with the videos, Aguilar appear to dispute The Daily Wire’s conclusions and tells a different, inconsistent story.³ He claims that the proof of his story “transpired off camera, and that the hand shown being kissed was his.”

The other security contractor wearing the body cam told The Daily Wire that Aguilar’s story is “fabricated.”

“The hand in his picture is my hand, . . . I have discolored pigment from a burn on that hand, and I see the blood under my fingernail growing out from smashing it at home before coming here. The boy disappeared back into the [crowd] after Tony walks off from him. There is no profound English dialog, kneeling at his level, nor does the boy drop his [head] to kiss Tony and say ‘thank you’ to him in English. Tony completely fabricated this story.”’.

I should also note that the videos show Aguilar wearing a watch on his left wrist. But in the video of the boy kissing a hand, there is no watch on the left wrist. See also the photo at the top of this article. So the hand being kissed unquestionably is that of the other security contractor, not Aguilar.

The biggest deception of all?

For me, the biggest deception in Aguilar’s many interviews is his omission of what really happened in when he and “Amir” met. When the boy approached him, instead of the warm connection with kisses that Aguilar describes, Aguilar first said to his companion security contractor, “This little young man here, obviously pretty young, he has food.” He then turned to the boy, touched the side of his face and ran his hand down his arm, and said, “Go home. Go home. Okay? Thank you.” The boy’s entire interaction with Aguilar himself consisted of those seven words that lasted eight seconds.

And look at the video again. Do you see a boy who, in Aguilar’s words, looked into his eyes and “felt for the first time in a long time, that there was someone that cared”? I think not. I think you will see a boy looking up at a larger man shoos him away with,“Go home. Go home. Ok?”

Conclusion

When I was a practicing trial attorney, one thing I learned fairly early was that, even in a deposition when they should keep their mouths shut as much as possible, con men like to talk. They don’t lack for self-confidence and think that if they talk enough, they can convince you of anything. The legal maxim, “Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus,” reminds us that oftentimes, those who would mislead us do not stop at a single lie. If they talk more they may mislead more. So, if you find that someone has misled you about one thing, be skeptical about other things he has told you and probe further.

In the case of retired Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar, I raised this caution because I thought that many of his accusations were false, but I was not in a position to attempt to address them all. Now, however, with the new videos released by Kassy Akiva and The Daily Wire, a story that was central to his self-embellishment has been shown to be questionable (to put it mildly). That discovery reinforces the wisdom of the above legal axiom.

The barbarians who perpetrated the horrors of October 7 have few peers in the pantheon of evil. But there also is a special place in you-know-where for anyone who falsifies stories about a dead boy in order to embellish his own credentials, and gain publicity and grift for himself. You be the judge of to whom this may apply.

1. Aguilar was employed by UG Solutions, which was a security sub-contractor for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). GHF is the target of his crusade, and I will refer to it as his employer, although his contract was under it with

2. “Amir” is a made-up name apparently bestowed by Aguilar.

3. GHF and the IDF also dispute Aguilar’s charges, and Aguilar disputes the responses to his claims. It is not my intent here to delve into all these charges and counter-charges, other than with the narrow focus in this article. The opinions in this are my own. Aguilar will likely dispute them and you may draw your own conclusions.