Singing vet gave ’America’s Got Talent’ a photo of another soldier

defense.gov

A photo of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Norman Bone from the U.S. Dept. of Defense website was wrongly submitted by Timothy Poe as himself and shown on "America's Got Talent."

By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

Troubles continue to pile up for Timothy Michael Poe, the U.S. Army veteran whose successful singing audition was shown on NBC's "America's Got Talent" Monday night.
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When the segment about Poe ran on the show, photos were shown supposedly illustrating Poe's time in Afghanistan. But the main photo, of a helmeted soldier toting an M4 carbine in front of mountainous terrain, wasn't Poe at all. It was Staff Sgt. Norman Bone, and it was indeed taken in Afghanistan, but in 2006 -- Poe's time in Afghanistan was one month in 2009.

NBC

Timothy Michael Poe on "America's Got Talent."

Poe himself provided the photo of Bone to "America's Got Talent," the show confirmed to TODAY.com."We sincerely apologize to U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Norman Bone for using a photo of him in our story on Tim Poe," the show's producers, FremantleMedia, said in a statement. "It was supplied to us by Tim and used on the show in good faith. It has now been removed and will not be used again."

The photo of Bone is downloadable from the U.S. Department of Defense website, but it is not clear where or why Poe submitted the photo.

In a lengthy interview with the You Served military podcast on Tuesday night, Poe admitted that he had in the past claimed medals he did not earn, and was unable to explain why the Minnesota National Guard says it has no record of him being injured by a grenade in Afghanistan. More >>