U.S. presidential candidate Carson admits tale of admission to West Point not true: report

U.S. presidential candidate Ben Carson's campaign has admitted that his account of applying and being admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point is not true, according to local media reports.

The admission, following doubts about some of Carson's other recollections of his youth, could harm the 64-year-old retired neurosurgeon's campaign, as he is now tied with Donald Trump, the GOP front runner, at the top of Republican presidential primary polls.

"He was introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) supervisors," POLITICO, the Virginia-based daily newspaper, quoted Carson's campaign manager Barry Bennett as saying. "They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in ROTC. He considered it but in the end did not seek admission."

That differed from what Carson wrote in his autobiography "Gifted Hands." In that book, he said he "was offered a full scholarship to West Point."

A West Point spokesperson told POLITICO that the academy had no record of Carson applying or being offered admission. A West Point education is free for all of its students, so there are no scholarships per se.

His main rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump, soon seized the chance to attack him by tweeting: "WOW, one of many lies by Ben Carson! Big story." "People need to be warned about that Carson figure who is not who they think!"

The revelation came just hours after Carson slammed media reports about his past as a "bunch of lies" when he faced questions regarding accounts of his violent past.

"This is a bunch of lies attempting to say I'm lying about my history, I think it's pathetic, and basically what the media does is they try to get you distracted," Carson said during an interview on TV network CNN Friday. Endit