Alexander Kemos' credentials -- a natural listener with a knack for grasping cultures and impressive academic and business experience -- were perfect to guide a globalizing Texas A&M focused on becoming better, those who know him said.
His skills landed him a post at the university in March 2009, and he soon became the interim president's chief of staff and then the 49,000-student campus' No. 3 administrator.
Kemos' meteoric rise in academia crashed recently.
He resigned June 18 amid revelations of false claims of being an ex-Navy SEAL and having a master's degree and doctorate.
But friends and former colleagues call him a kind, hardworking man who made a terrible mistake that cost him a $300,000-a-year job he loved.
"I think Alex is the kind of person who really, really felt he could offer a real contribution in a role like that," said William Nunn, owner of Nordic American Group, where Kemos worked before joining Texas A&M.
"That was a role just suited to his background and what he could do, knew how to do, and liked to do. I suspect that opportunity to actually plug into a position in life just so perfectly suited for you got the better of him. Perhaps it was simply a fear that he wasn't good enough."
Kemos, 50, faces potential legal trouble, as falsely claiming to be an ex-SEAL is a federal misdemeanor punishable under the Stolen Valor Act by up to a year in prison. The offense is rarely prosecuted.
At Texas A&M, the incident exposed the differences in degree confirmation faced by faculty members -- whose credentials are supposed to be verified -- and staff and administrators, who are not governed by such rules. Texas A&M President R. Bowen Loftin has launched a review of hiring practices.
"It highlights some kind of an institutional gap that probably shouldn't have taken place," Nunn said.
Assumptions at each level
Perhaps the lies could have remained hidden had Kemos remained a mid-level administrator.
But last year's shakeup in which Texas A&M President Elsa Murano resigned set him on the path to eventually become an administrator just a notch below the provost.
Kemos came to Texas A&M in March 2009 as associate executive vice president for operations following a search. He was hired by his friend, H. Russell Cross, then executive vice president for operations.
He was a consultant for Texas A&M starting in 2007 while with Nordic American and helped with key initiatives, including being a facilitator for the Academic Master Plan steering committee.
Cross -- who now is replacing Kemos in the interim and declined to comment for this story -- said on the day that Kemos resigned that he never thought to go back and check credentials.
In June 2009, Cross resigned from his executive vice president role the same time as Murano. When the smoke settled, Kemos found himself as chief of staff to the new interim president, Loftin.
"Perhaps they assumed he had been vetted the first time around, and he was able to avoid detection," said Bob Bednarz, last year's Faculty Senate speaker.
In March, Kemos was selected by Loftin -- after being picked as a finalist by a search committee headed by Jeffrey Seemann, vice president for research -- to fill the newly created position of senior vice president for administration, which served as the top adviser to the president and oversaw non-academic operations such as facilities, business auxiliaries, university police and risk and compliance.
Clint Magill, a committee member, said he assumed that someone outside the committee would have vetted candidates' resumes. "Don't assume that credentials are going to be checked," he said in hindsight last week.
'Extremely knowledgeable'
What made detection harder was that Kemos, by several accounts, performed well. He was described as a problem solver.
"I think everyone you talked to would say he was a very competent guy," said Joseph Newton, dean of the College of Science. "I'll be frank with you. I didn't care one way or the other if he was a Navy SEAL or a Ph.D. I just wanted him to do good things. And as far as I could tell, he was doing good things."
When a severe cold snap hit the area in January, Kemos did "yeoman's work" to fix a major heating problem in a chemistry building, Newton said, including working outside of regular office hours and coordinating efforts to tackle the problem.
"I thought he was extremely knowledgeable, easy to work with and anxious to get things done," Newton said.
Though Kemos admitted when confronted by Loftin to not having a doctorate or a master's from the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, as he had claimed, he was a student in the master's program there from September 1987 to May 1989 and in the doctoral program from September 1990 until December 1994, records show. He did not complete either program's requirements.
A tragedy, Nunn and others said, was that Kemos' résumé was stellar and he didn't need to pad it.
He had been a teaching fellow at Harvard University while enrolled in Tufts' doctoral program -- both schools are in Massachusetts. He even received certificates for distinction in teaching three consecutive academic years from Harvard's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, according to an official from the center.
In addition to his time at Nordic American, officials confirmed, Kemos held business management positions in the 1990s at AginfoLink Global in Longmont, Colo., where he managed and operated international agriculture information software, and the Monitor Co. in Cambridge, Mass.
'One well-thought-out mistake'
Kemos' most brazen deception was his ex-SEAL claim. Officials say he has no military service.
It's unclear exactly when the lie started, but Nunn, who had known Kemos since the early-to-mid 90s, said he never heard Kemos make the claim, and was surprised when he saw it the first time Monday as he read a story e-mailed to him about the resignation.
However, at Texas A&M -- known for its military history and its reverence toward veterans -- Kemos mentored prospective SEALs, told detailed stories about his supposed exploits during his time with the elite fighting unit, and in April even spoke at a dinner for cadets about ethical dilemmas he faced while he was a SEAL, students said in interviews with The Eagle.
"These people are my heroes, my role models. That's what I want to be, and he just lied about it -- that's what made me the angriest," said Jeff Legg, who graduated from Texas A&M in December and is now in Coronado, Calif., training to be a SEAL. "I know people make mistakes, but this was one well-thought-out mistake."
Legg had met with Kemos and requested a letter of recommendation from him for SEAL training. Kemos agreed but kept delaying, and never sent the letter, Legg said.
"He said he was being considered for a job to go back as a captain or some B.S. like that," Legg said. "So he couldn't write a letter because it would be bias or something like that. He sounded credible at the time."
Adam Unger, the commanding officer for student group SEAL Platoon within the Corps of Cadets, was upset at Kemos, he said. But most of all, he said, he found the situation funny.
That's because he thought of Michael Johnson, who has graduated but was a member of the platoon last year. Johnson was playfully brushed off by the group because of a belief he disclosed to them following a brief interaction with Kemos: The guy was faking.
"He was trying too hard and using terminology from books," Unger said, explaining Johnson's views. Johnson, who is currently in Navy boot camp north of Chicago, could not be reached for this story.
The conviction became a running joke among the platoon, but no one ever thought to alert anyone, Unger said. Officials have not said how Loftin found out about questions regarding Kemos. The Eagle had been looking into Kemos' background weeks before his resignation and was preparing a story, but the newspaper had not alerted Texas A&M officials as of June 17, the day Loftin said he confronted Kemos.
'Deeply saddened'
Loftin has launched a review of hiring practices and said that administrators should be held to "the same level of accountability" as faculty members on degree verification. Some faculty members, meanwhile, lamented a lack of stability since the departure of former Texas A&M President Robert Gates in 2006.
"We just don't seem to keep our top administrators in place for any length of time," said Bednarz, the former Faculty Senate speaker.
Loftin has been on vacation and was not made available for this story but has agreed to an interview Monday, his first day back. Kemos did not respond to messages for this story.
Nunn, Kemos' former boss and friend, said his first reaction -- before he read further into the story -- was to not believe it. He said he understands the reality of how Texas A&M needed to respond, but that Kemos will remain a friend.
"He's a very good person," Nunn said. "I guess I don't know anyone who doesn't have a flaw here or there. I'm deeply saddened by this one."
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