Veterans for Common Sense

June 18, 2008 – The Marine Corps is concerned about your health. We ENCOURAGE all former Marines, family members and civilian employees who resided or worked aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune between 1957 and 1987 to REGISTER with the Marine Corps for information regarding past water quality.

https://clnr.hqi.usmc.mil/clsurvey/

June 17, 2008, Marion, IL – The U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs may soon find himself in the crosshairs of the Illinois congressional delegation.

Federal lawmakers from Illinois expressed anger Tuesday about a newly released federal report on poor management at the VA Medical Center in Marion.

U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Belleville, said the findings of the report by the VA’s Office of Resolution Management show disturbing mismanagement at the Marion center.

“That such flagrant violations could occur for a significant period of time again calls into question the VA’s ability to conduct quality oversight of its facilities,” Costello said. “This will be a major point of discussion when other members of the Illinois Congressional delegation and I meet with Secretary (of Veterans Affairs James B.) Peake later this week.”

Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Springfield and Barack Obama of Chicago made a joint statement.

“This new report from the VA confirms many of our suspicions about the problem that existed at the Marion VA Medical Center,” they said. “The report paints a disturbing picture – a management culture that compounded problems at the facility; management at the regional level that did not serve as a quality check on the Marion facility; and no way for employees to complain or make meaningful suggestions about problems when they arose.”

The senators said, “Our veterans and their families have made incredible sacrifices for this country, and when they return home, we owe them access to the best health care. Today’s report proves that this was not the case at the VA medical facility in Marion.”

U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville, said the proper care and treatment of veterans should be first priority.

“Some of the personal and medical conduct at the Marion VA was appalling,” Shimkus said. “The majority of the employees, however, are dedicated to the veterans they care for and deserve proper and professional guidance and management.

“Any unlawful activity should be vigorously prosecuted and new managers need to stay long enough to return a healthy work environment to the facility,” he said.

Matt Smith, VA media relations spokesman in Washington, said Tuesday that the agency assessment team’s report was one step in a process dealing with several sensitive personnel and workplace issues.

“The VA continues to ensure the assessment recommendations are fully implemented and the Marion VA can move forward in providing quality health care to our nation’s veterans,” Smith said.

An employee, Kenneth Dilbeck, said the root of most of the problems at the Marion facility is a lack of managerial accountability.

Dilbeck emphasized that his beef is not with the current set of acting supervisors but those who formerly held the top positions and a few who still work in mid-management positions.

Dilbeck said he has received excellent care from medical personnel at the hospital.

“Believe me, there are a lot of good people who work at this hospital,” he said. “I think a lot of employees like me are just sick and tired of seeing certain people dodge bullets and have others cover for them.”

“These numbers are shocking, disgraceful and disappointing and reflect poorly on VA,” said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. 

Low approval rate for vets’ chemical tests claims

June 19, 2008, Washington, DC (AP) — The Veterans Affairs Department has granted only 6 percent of health claims filed by veterans of secret Cold War chemical and germ warfare tests conducted by the Pentagon, according to figures obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.

Veterans advocates called the number appallingly low.

By comparison, about 88 percent of processed claims from Gulf War vets were granted as of last year, according to VA documents. More than 90 percent of processed claims from Iraq and Afghanistan vets were granted as of earlier this year.

During the tests thousands of service members were exposed, often without their knowledge, to real and simulated chemical and biological agents, including sarin and VX.

The tests were conducted at sea and above a half-dozen U.S. states from 1962-1973 to see how U.S. ships would withstand chemical and germ assaults and how such weapons would disperse.

The Defense Department says 6,440 service members took part in the experiments called Project 112 and Project SHAD, and 4,438 veterans have been notified of their participation. Others could not be located or have died.

As of May, the VA had processed 641 claims filed by veterans of the tests, many of whom are suffering from cancer, respiratory problems or other ailments.

Thirty-nine of the claims were granted, 56 were pending and 546 were denied.

AP obtained the figures from the VA on Thursday following a congressional hearing on the issue last week.

An agency spokeswoman had no immediate comment on why the rate of granting the claims was so low.

“These numbers are shocking, disgraceful and disappointing and reflect poorly on VA,” said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense.

“This is ridiculous,” said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. “These guys were there. They all have cancer. Take care of them.”

Filner’s committee last week held a hearing on legislation by Reps. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., and Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., that would grant coverage to project veterans without them having to prove a link between their problems and their participation in Projects SHAD/112.

The bill is patterned after legislation passed in 1991 to help people exposed to Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant used by U.S. forces in Vietnam that was linked to cancer and other ailments

Filner said he hoped to vote the bill out of his committee by July 4.

The VA and Pentagon both oppose the bill, arguing that there’s no clear scientific evidence linking the Project SHAD/112 experiments to the illnesses veterans are experiencing.

The Pentagon only began to disclose details of the tests in 2001, after pressure from veterans and lawmakers. Two years later Defense officials stopped looking for additional project participants, despite criticism from the Government Accountability Office, which said untold number of veterans and civilians could remain unaware of their potential exposure.

June 17, 2008, Washington, DC – The Army official who managed the Pentagon’s largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable charges to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other services to American troops.
The official, Charles M. Smith, was the senior civilian overseeing the multibillion-dollar contract with KBR during the first two years of the war. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Smith said that he was forced from his job in 2004 after informing KBR officials that the Army would impose escalating financial penalties if they failed to improve their chaotic Iraqi operations.

Army auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records for more than $1 billion in spending, so Mr. Smith refused to sign off on the payments to the company. “They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn’t justify,” he said in an interview. “Ultimately, the money that was going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn’t going to do that.”

But he was suddenly replaced, he said, and his successors — after taking the unusual step of hiring an outside contractor to consider KBR’s claims — approved most of the payments he had tried to block.

Army officials denied that Mr. Smith had been removed because of the dispute, but confirmed that they had reversed his decision, arguing that blocking the payments to KBR would have eroded basic services to troops. They said that KBR had warned that if it was not paid, it would reduce payments to subcontractors, which in turn would cut back on services.

“You have to understand the circumstances at the time,” said Jeffrey P. Parsons, executive director of the Army Contracting Command. “We could not let operational support suffer because of some other things.”

Mr. Smith’s account fills in important gaps about the Pentagon’s handling of the KBR contract, which has cost more than $20 billion so far and has come under fierce criticism from lawmakers.

While it was previously reported that the Army had held up large payments to the company and then switched course, Mr. Smith has provided a glimpse of what happened inside the Army during the biggest showdown between the government and KBR. He is giving his account just as the Pentagon has recently awarded KBR part of a 10-year, $150 billion contract in Iraq.

Heather Browne, a spokeswoman for KBR, said in a statement that the company “conducts its operations in a manner that is compliant with the terms of the contract.” She added that it had not engaged in any improper behavior.

Ever since KBR emerged as the dominant contractor in Iraq, critics have questioned whether the company has benefited from its political connections to the Bush administration. Until last year, KBR was known as Kellogg, Brown and Root and was a subsidiary of Halliburton, the Texas oil services giant, where Vice President Dick Cheney previously served as chief executive.

When told of Mr. Smith’s account, Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said it “is startling, and it confirms the committee’s worst fears. KBR has repeatedly gouged the taxpayer, and the Bush administration has looked the other way every time.”

Mr. Smith, a civilian employee of the Army for 31 years, spent his entire career at the Rock Island Arsenal, the Army’s headquarters for much of its contracting work, near Davenport, Iowa. He said he had waited to speak out until after he retired in February.

As chief of the Field Support Contracting Division of the Army Field Support Command, he was in charge of the KBR contract from the start. Mr. Smith soon came to believe that KBR’s business operations in Iraq were a mess. By the end of 2003, the Defense Contract Audit Agency told him that about $1 billion in cost estimates were not credible and should not be used as the basis for Army payments to the contractor.

“KBR didn’t move proper business systems into Iraq,” Mr. Smith said.

Along with the auditors, he said, he pushed for months to get KBR to provide data to justify the spending, including approximately $200 million for food services. Mr. Smith soon felt under pressure to ease up on KBR, he said. He and his boss, Maj. Gen. Wade H. McManus Jr., then the commander of the Army Field Support Command, were called to Pentagon meetings with Tina Ballard, then the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for policy and procurement.

Ms. Ballard urged them to clear up KBR’s contract problems quickly, but General McManus ignored the request, Mr. Smith said. Ms. Ballard declined to comment for this article, as did General McManus.
Eventually, Mr. Smith began warning KBR that he would withhold payments and performance bonuses until the company provided the Army with adequate data to justify the expenses. The bonuses — worth up to 2 percent of the value of the work — had to be approved by special boards of Army officials, and Mr. Smith made it clear that he would not set up the boards without the information.

Mr. Smith also told KBR that, until the information was received, he would withhold 15 percent of all payments on its future work in Iraq.

“KBR really did not like that, and they told me they were going to fight it,” Mr. Smith recalled.

In August 2004, he told one of his deputies, Mary Beth Watkins, to hand deliver a letter about the threatened penalties to a KBR official visiting Rock Island. That official, whose name Mr. Smith said he could not recall, responded by saying, “This is going to get turned around,” Mr. Smith said.

Two officials familiar with the episode confirmed that account, but would speak only on the condition of anonymity out of concern for their jobs.

The next morning, Mr. Smith said he got a call from Brig. Gen. Jerome Johnson, who succeeded General McManus when he retired the month before. “He told me, “You’ve got to pull back that letter,”’ Mr. Smith recalled. General Johnson declined to comment for this article.

A day later, Mr. Smith discovered that he had been replaced when he went to a meeting with KBR officials and found a colleague there in his place. Mr. Smith was moved into a job planning for future contracts with Iraq. Ms. Watkins, who also declined to comment, was reassigned as well.

Mr. Parsons, the contracting director, confirmed the personnel changes. But he denied that pressure from KBR was a factor in the Army’s decision making about the payments. “This issue was not decided overnight, and had been discussed all the way up to the office of the secretary of defense,” he said.

Soon after Mr. Smith was replaced, the Army hired a contractor, RCI Holding Corporation, to review KBR’s costs. “They came up with estimates, using very weak data from KBR,” Mr. Smith said. “They ignored D.C.A.A.’s auditors,” he said, referring to the Defense Contract Audit Agency.

Lt. Col. Brian Maka, a Pentagon spokesman, disputed that. He said in a statement that the Army auditing agency “does not believe that RCI was used to circumvent” the Army audits.

Paul Heagen, a spokesman for RCI’s parent company, the Serco Group, said his firm had insisted on working with the Army auditors. While KBR did not provide all of the data Mr. Smith had been seeking, Mr. Heagen said his company had used “best practices” and sound methodology to determine KBR’s costs.

Bob Bauman, a former Pentagon fraud investigator and contracting expert, said that was unusual. “I have never seen a contractor given that position, of estimating costs and scrubbing D.C.A.A.’s numbers,” he said. “I believe they are treading on dangerous ground.”

The Army also convened boards that awarded KBR high performance bonuses, according to Mr. Smith.

High grades on its work in Iraq also allowed KBR to win more work from the Pentagon, and this spring, KBR was awarded a share in the new 10-year contract. The Army also announced that Serco, RCI’s parent, will help oversee the Army’s new contract with KBR.

“In the end,” Mr. Smith said, “KBR got what it wanted.”

June 18, 2008 – At the end of a boisterous House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing in which lawmakers lambasted Veterans Affairs Department and Pentagon officials for not meeting various deadlines for improving care for wounded combat troops, Disabled American Veterans dropped a quiet bombshell.

The Pentagon “knowingly violated the law and ignored the intent of Congress” in implementing a provision of the 2008 Defense Authorization Act that lawmakers designed to enhance disability severance pay for wounded and injured service members, wrote Kerry Baker, associate national legislative director for DAV.

Baker argued that Congress created Section 1646 of the 2008 Defense Authorization Act with the intent that service members injured in combat, in a combat zone, or performing tasks related to combat — such as training — would not have to pay back any disability retirement severance pay they receive from the Defense Department before becoming eligible for VA disability compensation, as has been the case under long-standing policy.

But Baker said David S.C. Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, sent out a “directive-type memorandum” March 13 instructing that only those injured in a combat zone in the line of duty or as a direct result of armed conflict do not have to pay back their severance money.

“This action has intentionally read ‘hazardous service,’ ‘conditions simulating war,’ and ‘instrumentality of war’ completely out of the law,” Baker wrote.

Chu’s action, he wrote, “forces one to question his true resolve to care for those he sends into battle, or orders to train for battle.”

Baker said he believes the decision was purely monetary.

“We can think of no other conceivable reason … to circumvent the law as he has done here,” Baker wrote. “To answer the question of ‘why,’ Congress need only determine in whose budget the disability compensation is deposited once offset by VA. We believe the answer to that question is the [Defense Department] budget.”

Defense Department spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said that was not Chu’s intent.

“Rest assured that saving money was not the driver in the implementation,” she said in an e-mail. “The statutory intent of [the law] clearly and appropriately focuses the ‘enhanced disability severance’ to those service members where the unfitting condition is a result of direct participation and performance of duty in the war effort.”

But Baker said the memo intentionally leaves out people clearly included in both the law’s definition of “combat-related disability” and the Defense Department’s own definition of “combat-related,” and that Congress had made clear its intent that anyone with a combat-related disability should be included.

The memo is important, he said, because a service member who breaks his back in a helicopter accident at Fort Bragg, N.C., while training to deploy to Iraq still must pay back his severance before qualifying for VA disability compensation.

“It can take 20 years” to pay back the severance, Baker said. “We do not view this as an oversight. We view this as an intentional effort to conserve monetary resources at the expense of disabled veterans.”

The 2008 Defense Authorization Act states: “No deduction may be made under paragraph (1) in the case of disability severance pay received by a member for a disability incurred in line of duty in a combat zone or incurred during performance of duty in combat-related operations as designated by the secretary of defense.”

Baker said it is the second part of that sentence — “incurred during performance of duty in combat-related operations” — that has been misconstrued.

According to the 2008 Defense Authorization Act, a “combat-related disability” occurs “as a direct result of armed conflict, while engaged in hazardous service, in the performance of duty under conditions simulating war, or through an instrumentality of war.”

The Defense Department has defined “combat-related” as being “attributable to the special dangers associated with armed conflict or the preparation or training for armed conflict.”

That includes hazardous service, such as flight duty, parachute duty, demolition duty, experimental stress duty and diving duty. An instrumentality of war is a weapon, a combat vehicle, or a sickness caused by fumes, gases or explosion of military ordnance.

But Chu’s memo states that “incurred during performance of duty in combat-related operations” will be defined by paragraph E3.P5.1.2 of Defense Department Instruction 1332.28 — “armed conflict.”

Chu’s narrower definition includes injuries “as a direct result of armed conflict,” Baker wrote, or “in the line of duty in a combat zone,” leading to questions of whether someone playing basketball in the Green Zone would qualify. The Defense Department had not answered that question.

Baker, who submitted written testimony but did not appear before the committee for questioning, said the memo has not affected many veterans yet, but it has the potential to affect “tens of thousands.”

It applies only to service members medically retired after Jan. 28, 2008, with disability ratings of less than 30 percent from the Defense Department.

Baker said the net result is that troops injured during training for combat — situations that Congress meant to cover with the recent change in law — will not be covered, and troops injured in those situations will still have to repay their severance money before they can get VA disability payments.

Lainez said Congress left it up to Pentagon officials to decide the definition of “combat-related operations.

“Clearly the statutory intent is to provide wounded warriors enhanced disability compensation,” she wrote. “Saving money was not a policy development factor … rather, [it was] ensuring proper compensation for those service members who are wounded, ill or injured as a result of armed conflict in the combat zone.”

Baker disagreed, urging Congress to revisit the issue to prevent defense officials “from continuing such blatant disregard for the law and for the livelihood and welfare of those who stand up to defend the country.”

June 17, 2008, San Antonio, TX – His lifelong dream of becoming a soldier had, in the end, come to this for Isaac Stevens: 28, penniless, in a wheelchair, fending off the sexual advances of another man in a homeless shelter.

Stevens’ descent from Army private first-class, 3rd Infantry Division, 11 Bravo Company, began in 2005 – not in battle, since he was never sent off to Iraq or Afghanistan, but with a headfirst fall over a wall on the obstacle course at Fort Benning, Ga. He suffered a head injury and spinal damage.

The injury alone didn’t put him in a homeless shelter. Instead, it was military bureaucracy – specifically, the way injured soldiers are discharged on just a fraction of their salary and then forced to wait six to nine months, and sometimes even more than a year, before their full disability payments begin to flow.

“When I got out, I hate to say it, but man, that was it. Everybody just kind of washed their hands of me, and it was like, `OK, you’re on your own,'” said Stevens, who was discharged in November and was in a shelter by February. He has since moved into a temporary San Antonio apartment with help from Operation Homefront, a nonprofit organization.

Nearly 20,000 disabled soldiers were discharged in the past two fiscal years, and lawmakers, veterans’ advocates and others say thousands could be facing financial ruin while they wait for their claims to be processed and their benefits to come through.

“The anecdotal evidence is depressing,” said Rep. John Hall, D-N.Y., who heads a subcommittee on veterans disability benefits. “These veterans are getting medical care, but their family is going through this huge readjustment at the same time they’re dealing with financial difficulties.”

Most permanently disabled veterans qualify for payments from Social Security and the military or Veterans Affairs. Those sums can amount to about two-thirds of their active-duty pay. But until those checks show up, most disabled veterans draw a reduced Army paycheck.

The amount depends on the soldier’s injuries, service time and other factors. But a typical veteran and his family who once lived on $3,400 a month might have to make do with $970 a month.

Unless a soldier has a personal fortune or was so severely injured as to require long-term inpatient care, that can be an extreme hardship.

The Army, stung by the scandal last year over shoddy care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, has been working to help soldiers during the in-between period, said Col. Becky Baker, assigned to injured soldier transition at the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office.

In a change in policy that took effect last August, the Army is allowing wounded soldiers to continue to draw their full Army paychecks for up to 90 days after discharge, Baker said. It is also sending more VA workers to Army posts to process claims more quickly, and trying to do a better job of informing soldiers of the available benefits and explaining the application process.

“We make certain that we’ve covered all the bases before we discharge the soldier,” Baker said.

She acknowledged, however, that the changes have been slow to take hold across an Army stretched by war. “It’s definitely a practice that is new. It takes awhile for new practices to be institutionalized,” the colonel said.

Stevens was moved to the Operation Homefront apartment after a social worker at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii, acting on her own initiative, rescued Stevens from a homeless shelter there.

“This is a situation where someone used their common sense and they did the right thing, versus saying, `This is the rules. We can’t do this,'” Tripler spokeswoman Minerva Anderson said of the social worker.

Typically, the first 100 days after discharge are spent just gathering medical and other evidence needed to make a decision on disability, VA officials say. If paperwork is incomplete, or a veteran moves to another state before the claim is decided, the process can drag on longer. Disagree with the VA’s decision, and the wait time grows.

“The claims are a lot more complicated than people think,” said Ursula Henderson, director of the VA’s regional office in Houston.

Amy Palmer, a disabled veteran and vice president of Operation Homefront, which helps newly disabled servicemembers, said: “Nobody’s assigned to them. You’re on your own once you get out.”

Hall is pushing legislation that would force the VA to use compatible computer systems and more consistent criteria and to reach out to veterans better.

“A veteran goes and serves and does what the country asks them to do,” the congressman said. “But when they come back they’re made to jump through these hoops and to wait in line for disability benefits.”

Simon Heine served three tours in Iraq as a tank mechanic before he was discharged with severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

His wife quit college so she could figure out how her four children could live on less than $1,000 a month. Eventually, she moved the family of six into an Operation Homefront apartment so they could finish navigating the bureaucracy and wait out the arrival of Social Security and VA benefits.

“It is like giving you a car and taking the steering wheel off. They say, `There is the gas and the brake. Just go straight,’ and hopefully, you are going in the right direction,” Heine said.