Passage Two
Even before Historian Joseph Ellis became a best-selling author, he was famous for his vivid lectures. In his popular courses at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, he would often make classroom discussions lively by describing his own combat experience in Vietnam. But as Ellis’s reputation grew—his books on the Founding Fathers have won both the prestigious National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize—the history professor began to entertain local and national reporters with his memories of war. Last year, after The Boston Globe carried accounts of Ellis’s experience in the Vietnam war, someone who knew the truth about Ellis dropped a dime. Last week The Boston Globe revealed that Ellis, famous for explaining the nation’s history, had some explaining to do about his own past.

“Even in the best of lives, mistakes are made,” said a wretched Ellis. It turned out that while the distinguished historian had served in the Army, he’d spent his war years not in the jungles of Southeast Asia, but teaching history at West Point. He’d also overstated his role in the antiwar movement and even his high-school athletic records. His admission shocked colleagues, fellow historians and students who wondered why someone so accomplished would beautify his past. But it seems that success and truthfulness don’t always go hand in hand. Even among the distinguished achievers, security experts say, one in ten is deceiving-indulging in everything from empty boasting to more serious offenses such as plagiarism, fictionalizing military records, making up false academic certificates or worse. And, oddly, prominent people who beautify the past often do so once they’re famous, says Ernest Brod of Kroll Associates, which has conducted thousands of background checks. Says Brod: “It’s not like they use these lies to climb the ladder.”

Then what makes them do it? Psychologists say some people succeed, at least in part, because they are uniquely adjusted to the expectations of others. And no matter how well-known, those people can be haunted by a sense of their own shortcomings. “From outside, these people look anything but fragile,” says Dennis Shulman, a New York psychoanalyst. “But inside, they feel hollow, empty.”