Houston ripoffs of disabled vets went undetected for more than a decade

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Team VCS

Houston ripoffs of disabled vets went undetected for more than a decade

By LISE OLSEN, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Updated 01:02 p.m., Wednesday, December 21, 2011

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  • Leland Spencer, sitting, shows his Christmas tree with his mother Shirley German, left, niece Miracle Lavergne, center, and niece Krysten German, Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, in his Houston home. Photo: Houston Chronicle, Nick De La Torre / © 2011 Houston ChronicleLeland Spencer, sitting, shows his Christmas tree with his mother Shirley German, left, niece Miracle Lavergne, center, and niece Krysten German, Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, in his Houston home.Photo: Houston Chronicle, Nick De La Torre / © 2011 Houston Chronicle

Sometimes when she watched her son standing outside his personal care home, Wylma Barnett thought the disabled ex-Marine looked homeless clad in his worn and raggedy clothes, though he had plenty of money in the bank.

The picture seemed wrong, she thought, for a man who had served his country and whose ample assets for the last 20 years were entrusted to a Houston attorney by theDepartment of Veterans Affairs.

Instead, next month, Joe B. Phillips, 72, and his wife Dorothy, 71, are expected to stand trial for conspiracy to commit fraud and theft in a Houston federal court. They are accused of embezzling more than $2 million from at least 28 disabled veterans, including Barnett’s son, and allegedly carrying out the biggest rip-off ever uncovered in a VA program responsible for about $3.1 billion in disabled veterans’ assets nationwide.

But according to court records reviewed by the Houston Chronicle and interviews with those who investigated the thefts, local veterans lost even more money and the fraud persisted longer than authorities initially reported. Evidence of possible exploitation in Phillips’ own public accountings and actions were overlooked for years.

“All they would have had to do was ask,” Barnett said, referring to the government’s lack of scrutiny. “Ask anybody who had been assigned to Phillips.”

More than two dozen veterans and insurance companies have since filed civil lawsuits against Joe Phillips, who continues to practice law four years after a VA auditor first found evidence of embezzlement.

Phillips declined to comment for this story.

Money missing in 2001

Phillips, a former VA attorney, has worked as a money manager for local veterans since the 1980s. Money went missing from their accounts as early as 2001 – years before the VA’s audit, according to indictments and lawsuits filed in Harris County probate courts.

At least 28 veterans have been compensated by taxpayers for losses estimated at $3,000 to $250,000 each. Twenty won additional settlements from insurance companies. Others are pending. Barnett’s mentally disabled son received a settlement in October.

No one so far has investigated whether Phillips or his wife took more money from disabled veterans who died before the shortfalls were discovered.

18 settlements

A VA audit first found problems with Phillips’ accounts in late 2007.

Bernard Hebinck, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and attorney who also serves as a VA fiduciary in Houston, said it was the first formal audit by the VA of fiduciary records in this area in about a decade. He and his partner, Kevin Alter, subsequently sued Phillips on behalf of 20 veterans and obtained 18 settlements so far.

“I treat veterans the way I would want to be treated as a veteran – with respect,” Hebinck said.

A VA spokesman declined to comment, citing the pending prosecutions. But officials did say stricter safeguards are in place because of thefts in Houston and elsewhere. Fiduciaries, for example, are now required to provide original bank documents in annual reports.

In responses to lawsuits, Phillips blames the VA for the missing money, claiming auditors and administrators failed to adequately protect veterans’ assets.

Phillips filed for bankruptcy in 2009. But bankruptcy attorneys have been unable to determine where the vets’ money went, aside from gambling debts that Phillips accumulated at the L’Auberge du Lac Casino mainly playing the Slot machines and the purchase of a vehicle. Despite subpoenas, Phillips has failed to turn over his bank records, claiming a garage fire and a flood destroyed his files.

The evidence of possible theft and mismanagement appeared in reports Phillips submitted annually to probate courts and the VA. Court records show he sometimes failed to properly list veterans’ savings accounts. Some would inexplicably disappear in reports and reappear years later with different balances. He also failed to properly balance veterans’ checkbooks, records show.

Paperwork filed by Phillips also contained more sophisticated elements of fraud, including account balances verified with forged bank officers’ signatures and a confusing assortment of real and fake accounts in Texas and out-of-state, according to records and interviews.

Communication issues

In one case, Phillips turned in documents with the forged signature of an official at a bank where Phillips served on the board of directors.

Caregivers and relatives of veterans whose money was stolen say Phillips was unresponsive, rude or evasive when questioned about expenses or accounts.

Shirley German, whose disabled son relies on a wheelchair, said Phillips often acted like her son’s money belonged to him, resisting requests for unexpected expenses, like house repairs or appliances.

Rose Redding, a caregiver for another veteran, said Phillips was “always rude” and brushed the vet off even when he asked for copies of his bank statements: “He could have spotted (problems). He was never privileged to get that.”

Since October 1998, the VA’s Office of the Inspector General has conducted more than 315 fiduciary fraud investigations, resulting in 132 arrests across the country.

Katrina Eagle, a California attorney who represents veterans, said problems could be prevented if veterans and designated relatives were given more information about their own money.

“It seems so simple to me. The fiduciary (should be) required to provide an accounting to his client – that’s who he serves,” she said.

Chronicle reporter Lindsay Wise contributed to this story.

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Residents Oppose Planned San Diego Vet Center

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Team VCS

December 21, 2011 (Stars and Stripes) -A proposed rehabilitation facility for veterans in San Diego is garnering opposition from local residents who say they support the troops — just not in their backyard.

The head of one Washington-based veterans advocacy group called their opposition “shameful.”

“President Obama and the VA along with states are finally starting to do the right things to help veterans. It is shameful that someone would stand in the way,” Patrick Bellon, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, told Stars and Stripes. “They just may not want to come face to face with the consequences of the wars from which they have been so insulated, but our veterans  who fought in those wars need help nonetheless. It seems wrong that 1 percent would bear the brunt of these conflicts and a community would just scoff at an opportunity to repay that sacrifice.”

The building is a half-block long, on San Diego Avenue in the city’s Old Town neighborhood,  and sits vacant. It was formerly used by the Thomas Jefferson School of Law. According to the website of the local ABC affiliate, 10news.com, the San Diego City Council will vote on whether to allow it in the coming months.

The proposed 40-bed center, with single rooms, would be intended for veterans who need a place to live for one to six months. The facility would also have in-house medical and psychiatric care.

Neighbors say they don’t want it, and they insist that they’re mostly against it for the vets’ own good.

“For the vets, I don’t think it’s a suitable place. They need wide open spaces. They shouldn’t be in a residential neighborhood,” said Janet Houts, whom the website described as “a longtime Old Town resident.”

Neighbors also said they think the fact that there are bars, liquor stores and loud noise in the neighborhood.

“These all could be very impactful to somebody recovering from post-traumatic stress,” resident Lisa Mortensen said.

“We have been called unpatriotic,” Houts said. “We’re anything but that. We have a VA facility down the street. We have a mental facility [on a nearby street].”

Local veterans don’t buy it. The news report points out that the building Houts refers to, apparently the Vietnam Veterans Village of San Diego, is separated from the neighborhood by Interstate 5.

“So many of us served, and to come back and see our community not want us to be part of it is very [disheartening],” said Navy retiree Tara Wise. “It makes you feel like your service was for nothing.”

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A Hard Homecoming

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Team VCS

Budget battles and a stagnant economy greet America’s soldiers as they return from Iraq and Afghanistan

December 15, 2011 (The Economist) -BRETT QUINZON did two tours in Iraq before leaving active duty in May. Originally from Minnesota, Mr Quinzon now lives in Thomaston, a small town around 65 miles south of Atlanta. A grey December morning found him filling out forms in Atlanta’s large veterans’ hospital, seeking treatment for depression. Since returning from Iraq, he says he has “more anger issues”, and finds himself “more watchful and on-guard in public situations” than he was before he deployed. That is not unusual: many soldiers return from the battlefield with psychological scars. Between January and May, as he prepared to leave active duty, Mr Quinzon applied for hundreds of jobs. The search proved difficult: like many veterans, he enlisted right after high-school, and lacks a college degree. But persistence paid off. He is now an apprentice at a heating and air-conditioning company, and is being trained as a heavy-equipment operator.

Not all recent veterans are so lucky. Around 800,000 veterans are jobless, 1.4m live below the poverty line, and one in every three homeless adult men in America is a veteran. Though the overall unemployment rate among America’s 21m veterans in November (7.4{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}) was lower than the national rate (8.6{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}), for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan it was 11.1{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}. And for veterans between the ages of 18 and 24, it was a staggering 37.9{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}, up from 30.4{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} just a month earlier.

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If demography is indeed destiny, perhaps this figure should not be surprising. More soldiers are male than female, and the male jobless rate exceeds women’s. Since so many soldiers lack a college degree, the fact that the recession has been particularly hard on the less educated hits veterans disproportionately. Large numbers of young veterans work—or worked—in stricken industries such as manufacturing and construction. Whatever the cause, this bleak trend is occurring as the last American troops leave Iraq at the end of this year, and as more than 1m new veterans are expected to join the civilian labour force over the next four years.

And of course it is also occurring in fiscally straitened times, though it looks as though this will affect veterans’ services less than other parts of the federal government. Though there have been some small fee increases for veterans covered by Tricare, the military health-insurance programme, significant cuts to veterans’ benefits are unlikely, and for good reason. Military pay is far from generous, and the benefits are comprehensive but hardly gold-plated or easy to navigate. Not for nothing is a popular online forum for veterans wending their way through the bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) called HadIt.com.

Still, even if services are not cut, they are unlikely to improve as steeply as they did in the last decade, when between 2003 and 2010 the VA’s budget more than doubled. Jeff Miller, who chairs the House Veterans Affairs Committee, says he and veterans’ organisations are “in a position of defence” against any potential cuts, and says he worries about the effects of the big and supposedly mandatory defence cuts occasioned by the supercommittee’s failure last month to reach agreement on the deficit. For the next year at least benefits are safe: the VA is funded two years in advance, and after a slight dip from 2010 to 2011, in 2012 its budget will increase.

But its costs are also rising. Despite the influx of young returning soldiers, America’s veteran population, like the general populace, is ageing and living longer: the number of veterans aged 85 or older is forecast to grow by 20{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} in the next decade. Improvements in military medicine have thankfully reduced mortality rates for soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan as compared with battlefield injuries in previous wars, but those soldiers often require specialised, long-term mental and physical care. The VA has done a lot to make access to its services easier, as of course it should, but this has resulted in rising numbers of claims. And then there is the problem of joblessness, which keeps unemployed veterans on VA health care rather than getting it from a private insurance programme offered by an employer, as most Americans do.

A wide array of government programmes have failed to get veterans back to work. The Post-9/11 GI Bill, signed into law by George Bush junior in 2008, has at least helped veterans go back to school: it pays for education and training for all veterans who served more than 90 days in the armed forces after September 11th 2001. Barack Obama created a Council on Veterans Employment in 2009, and the federal government hired over 70,000 veterans in both 2009 and 2010. On November 21st Mr Obama signed a bill offering tax credits to employers who hire unemployed or disabled veterans. Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, the vice-president’s wife and the stepmother of a soldier, have launched a campaign on behalf of veterans and military families. The Department of Labour offers an online employment service, as well as counselling for veterans at its 3,000 career centres dotted around the country.

Still, commissions, initiatives and incentives can only go so far. The transition from a regimented military life to the unstructured vastness of civilian life is difficult. Susan Hampton, who helps returning veterans at one such centre in Corbin, Kentucky, says that soldiers often have trouble translating their military skills into marketable civilian ones. Besides which, says Glenn Campbell, a Marine veteran who now helps match returning soldiers with employers and job openings in eastern Kentucky, “résumés scare a lot of people”—particularly soldiers, accustomed to being told where to go and what to do, and suddenly having to figure out, rather than being told, what employers want.

Over 2m soldiers served in Iraq and Afghanistan. That may sound like a lot, but it accounts for less than 1{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of Americans. Many soldiers return to find themselves the only people in their towns or communities who served. Jon Soltz, who spent the last year serving in Iraq as a major advising the Iraqi army and before that headed a left-leaning veterans-advocacy group called Votevets, went to the bank a couple of days after he returned home. He told the teller he no longer lived at the address on file, and had spent the last year in Iraq. “She asked me if I was there on vacation…People aren’t going to understand. People aren’t living it. It was a chosen war, and the country was never really engaged in it.” Perhaps. But as unpopular as the war became, at least its opponents have not vented their anger at returning soldiers, as many did after Vietnam. As Mr Campbell notes, “veterans get more honour and respect than anybody” in his part of the world. And that is largely true elsewhere too: returning veterans do have a distracted nation’s gratitude. But gratitude alone never paid a bill.

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Inconclusive Report Does Little to Cool Down Burn Pit Controversy

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Team VCS

December 2011 (US Medicine) – Whether exposure to war zone burn-pits causes long-term health issues has created heated debate among military officials, veterans, Congress members and currently deployed troops.

Unfortunately, a long-awaited report does little to provide definitive answers or cool down the controversy.

A recent Institute of Medicine (IoM) report done at the request of the VA concluded that it could not say whether troops’ exposures to emissions from open-air burn-pits cause ongoing health effects. The report leaves open the possibility that the burn-pits or other sources of air pollution could be causing respiratory problems in deployed troops, which some researchers maintain is occurring.

Among the reasons for the IoM’s inconclusive results were “insufficient data” on troops’ exposures to open-air burn-pits as well as high background levels of ambient pollution from other sources and lack of information on the quantities and composition of wastes burned in the pits, all of which “complicate interpretation of the data,” according to the authors.

“In light of its assessment of health effects that may result from exposure to air pollutants detected at [Joint Base Balad in Iraq] and its review of the literature on long-term health effects in surrogate populations, the committee is unable to say whether long-term health effects are likely to result from exposure to emissions from the burn pit,” the report summary stated.

While the IoM committee could not come to a conclusion about the health effects of the burn-pits, it did state that, “a broader consideration of air pollution than exposure only to burn pit emissions,” might be associated with long-term health effects in Iraq and Afghanistan, “particularly in highly exposed and/or susceptible populations, mainly because of high ambient concentrations of [particulate matter].”

The report recommended that further study be conducted to evaluate the health status of troops from their time of deployment to Joint Base Balad into the future to determine health problems that might not show until many years later.

“We didn’t find a smoking gun,” IoM committee report member Mark Frampton, MD, of the University of Rochester Medical Center, told U.S. Medicine. “The monitoring data that was done by the military at the Balad Pit didn’t show huge differences from what we know is in air pollution in polluted cities around the world. There was a high level of particulate matter, certainly higher than air quality standards around the world, but much of that didn’t seem to be coming from the burn pit. It was from other sources around the base and from windblown dust. What we can’t be sure about is whether something was missed.”

Frampton said that, while the committee did not find evidence “implicating the burn-pits,” he explained this “doesn’t mean that they are not having long-term health effects.”

“The only way to really answer that question is to study the people that have been exposed, and that hasn’t been done so far,” he said.

Burn-pits a Health Hazard?

The health impact of burn-pits has been a hot-button issue. Troops and veterans have expressed concern that their respiratory and other ailments are linked to exposure to those areas, where materials such as chemicals, paint, medical and human waste, aluminum cans, munitions and other unexploded ordnance, petroleum and lubricant products, plastics and Styrofoam, rubber, wood or discarded food are incinerated. Some researchers also have raised concern, particularly when it comes to respiratory issues. In a study published in September, VA researcher Anthony Szema, MD, noted that what he and other researchers have dubbed “new-onset Iraq/Afghanistan war lung injury” (ILI) is common, and rates of symptoms leading to a diagnosis requiring spirometry are high. His research suggests that dust, aeroallergens and uncontrolled burning of trash in Balad burn-pits without the use of incinerators prior to November 2009 may be among the causes of ILI.

In June, Matthew King, MD, a pulmonologist who has been examining respiratory issues among troops and veterans, spoke on behalf of the American Thoracic Society at a congressional hearing. He said pulmonologists are “deeply concerned” about the respiratory issues that some military personnel are suffering, such as constrictive bronchiolitis (CB). He also cited the burn-pits, noting that troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are faced with a barrage of respiratory insults, “ranging from dust storms to inhaled smoke from burn-pits to aerosolized metal and chemicals from exploding IEDs, blast overpressure or shock waves to the lung, outdoor aeroallergens such as date pollen and indoor aeroallergens such as mold aspergillus.”

DoD, however, has maintained that its studies have not found that the burn-pits pose a health risk to troops. DoD officials told U.S. Medicine in a written statement that the IoM’s findings “reflect similar findings of the DoD in the continued attempts to find an association between burn-pit emissions and health consequences.”

Moving forward, the military will “closely review and evaluate the IoM’s findings and recommendations” for ways it can work with the VA “to better answer the questions regarding health risks associated with burn-pit emissions or with the high levels of airborne particulate matter,” DoD officials wrote.

Paul Ciminera, MD, codirector, of VA’s Environmental Health Program, said in response to the report that the VA will form a workgroup to provide recommendations. “Among those recommendations will be the overall structure of the research approach,” he told U.S. Medicine. “We will be working closely with DoD to make sure we understand the IoM recommendations and come up with an approach in the most efficient and effective means possible.”

Terry Walters, MD, deputy chief consultant for VA’s Post-Deployment Health, said she felt that an important part of the IoM report is that it “may not be burn-pits,” but the increased particulate matter or pollution in the air in both Afghanistan and Iraq that may be of interest.

“Burn-pits get all the press because you can see it, you can smell it, there is obvious smoke coming from a point source. But, one of the major important things about this study was that it’s probably pollution — think Pittsburgh in 1950 — rather than just burn-pits,” she told U.S. Medicine.

IoM Findings

For the IoM study, the committee analyzed data on air-monitoring at Joint Base Balad (JBB); health-effects information on chemicals detected in more than 5{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of the air-monitoring samples at JBB; and health-effects information on populations considered to be surrogates of military personnel exposed to combustion products from burn-pits.

The committee analysis of the raw data from DoD’s air-monitoring efforts at JBB concluded that levels of most pollutants of concern were not higher than levels at other polluted sites worldwide. The air-monitoring data suggest that the pollutants of greatest concern at JBB include a “mixture of chemicals from regional background and local sources — other than the burn pit — that contribute to high PM,” according to the report.

The committee concluded that research on other populations exposed to complex mixtures of pollutants, “has not indicated increased risk for long-term health consequences such as cancer, heart disease and most respiratory illnesses among these groups.”

However, the committee also cited shortcomings in the data it analyzed. For example, there was a lack of specific information on the wastes burned and on other sources of background pollution.

It also was hard for the committee to determine whether the experience of surrogate populations they studied could apply to troops stationed at JBB. The IoM team also indicated that the monitoring data provided by DoD was lacking and that its measurements did not include ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide or sulfur dioxide.

Pointing to the gaps in the data and the IoM’s conclusion, Robert Miller, MD, a pulmonologist at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, TN, said he was not “reassured that the burn-pits are safe.”

Miller and King authored an article published in July’s New England Journal of Medicine that showed soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from severe respiratory issues. That study found that, of a cohort of 80 troops, 38 were found to have CB. In this group of soldiers, 28 had served in northern Iraq in 2003 and reported having been exposed to smoke from a sulfur-mine fire near Mosul, and many had reported exposure to dust storms and open burn-pits.

One of Miller’s concerns is that returning troops from Afghanistan and Iraq are experiencing serious respiratory issues that may not be caught if physicians rely on X-rays and pulmonary-function testing alone.

“We know that there are at least 10{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} to 15{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of soldiers who complain of respiratory issues,” he told U.S. Medicine. “We think there are a number of guys like ours [at Vanderbilt] that might be dismissed as normal because their conventional workups are normal. In our case, it took a lung biopsy to prove these guys were affected,” he said.

Miller said he also would like to see soldiers undergo a baseline pulmonary-function testing before they deploy.

“We would like their physical testing to be a part of their medical record, so we could know exactly what they could do and when they could do it,” he said. “We want to know a little more about the exercise capacity and the pulmonary function capacity of the population being deployed.”

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Veterans Fight in 9th Circuit for Better PTSD Treatment

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Team VCS

December 14, 2011 (Courthouse News Service) – Veterans appeared before the full 9th Circuit on Tuesday to secure better treatment for service members with mental health issues.      In May, a three-judge panel of the court took the rare step of ordering the Department of Veterans Affairs to implement sweeping changes in the way it handles referrals and claims that are too often “mooted by death.”      The court agreed that long delays in the treatment of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health issues violate soldiers’ constitutional rights.      But the judges vacated that decision last month, agreeing to rehear the case before the full court.      At the hearing on Tuesday, an attorney for the veterans said that “more than 85,000 veterans languished on waiting lists for mental health care,” when the original complaint was filed in 2007, despite a statute requiring the VA to conduct mental health assessments within 30 days of a patient request.      These delays effectively negated treatment access, a systemic problem that requires intervention by the federal courts, Gordon Erspamer with Morrison Foerster told the judges.      Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for United Truth sought a permanent injunction in 2007 to force the VA to reform its claims process, but U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti found that such an order was beyond his power.      One member of the 9th Circuit agreed back in May, dissenting from the majority that overturned Conti’s decision.      Chief Judge Alex Kozinski had said that his colleagues overstepped the court’s power, issuing a decision that “tramples over … strict jurisdictional limits.”      ”The majority hijacks the Department of Veterans Affair’s mental health treatment and disability compensation programs and installs a district judge as reluctant commandant-in-chief,” he wrote.      But the panel majority noted that up to 18 veterans commit suicide everyday, many of them while awaiting a health care referral that can take months.      ”When the government harms its veterans by the deprivation at issue here, they are entitled to turn to the courts for relief,” according to the majority opinion authored by Judge Stephen Reinhardt.      About 60 people gathered in the gallery for the rehearing Tuesday, with a quarter of them wearing “Veterans for Peace” shirts or the garrison hats worn by members of the group Veterans of Foreign Wars.      Arguing for the Veterans Affairs Administration, Charles Scarborough echoed Kozinski’s dissent, saying that Congress had divested the courts of jurisdiction over decisions made by the secretary of Veterans Affairs that affect the provision of benefits.      A systemic challenge based on a claim of unreasonable delays in providing benefits must be based on individual cases, and individual veterans have an avenue for such redress through the VA’s appeals process, Scarborough said.      ”The best reading of [the statute that bars federal review of VA claims] that we have is the one that Judge Kozinski explained, which is when you’re asked to look at whether the VA acted properly in determining claims and benefits … you can’t avoid [the statute] by stating your claims at such a high level of generality that they don’t appear to implicate any specific case,” Scarborough told the court.      Even if you can get around the statutory bar, Scarborough told the court that “you run into a standing issue.”      No individual veteran is injured by “average delays,” he added.

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Hidden in Plain Sight: Inside a Secret CIA Prison

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Team VCS

December 8, 2011 (MSNBC) – In northern Bucharest, in a busy residential neighborhood minutes from the heart of the capital city, is a secret the Romanian government has long tried to protect.

For years, the CIA used a government building — codenamed “Bright Light” — as a makeshift prison for its most valuable detainees. There it held al-Qaida operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, and others in a basement prison before they were ultimately transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006, according to former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the location and inner workings of the prison.

The existence of a CIA prison in Romania has been widely reported, but its location has never been made public. The Associated Press and German public television ARD located the former prison and learned details of the facility where harsh interrogation tactics were used. ARD’s program on the CIA prison is set to air Thursday.

The Romanian prison was part of a network of so-called black sites that the CIA operated and controlled overseas in Thailand, Lithuania and Poland. All the prisons were closed by May 2006, and the CIA’s detention and interrogation program ended in 2009.  

 Unlike the CIA’s facility in Lithuania’s countryside or the one hidden in a Polish military installation, the CIA’s prison in Romania was not in a remote location. It was hidden in plain sight, a couple blocks off a major boulevard on a street lined with trees and homes, along busy train tracks.

The building is used as the National Registry Office for Classified Information, which is also known as ORNISS. Classified information from NATO and the European Union is stored there. Former intelligence officials both described the location of the prison and identified pictures of the building.

In an interview at the building in November, senior ORNISS official Adrian Camarasan said the basement is one of the most secure rooms in all of Romania. But he said Americans never ran a prison there.

“No, no. Impossible, impossible,” he said in an ARD interview for its “Panorama” news broadcast, as a security official monitored the interview.

The CIA prison opened for business in the fall of 2003, after the CIA decided to empty the black site in Poland, according to former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the detention program with reporters.

Shuttling detainees into the facility without being seen was relatively easy. After flying into Bucharest, the detainees were brought to the site in vans. CIA operatives then drove down a side road and entered the compound through a rear gate that led to the actual prison.

The detainees could then be unloaded and whisked into the ground floor of the prison and into the basement.

Imported Halal meatThe basement consisted of six prefabricated cells, each with a clock and arrow pointing to Mecca, the officials said. The cells were on springs, keeping them slightly off balance and causing disorientation among some detainees.

The CIA declined to comment on the prison.

During the first month of their detention, the detainees endured sleep deprivation and were doused with water, slapped or forced to stand in painful positions, several former officials said. Waterboarding, the notorious interrogation technique that simulates drowning, was not performed in Romania, they said.

After the initial interrogations, the detainees were treated with care, the officials said. The prisoners received regular dental and medical checkups. The CIA shipped in Halal food to the site from Frankfurt, Germany, the agency’s European center for operations. Halal meat is prepared under religious rules similar to kosher food.

Former U.S. officials said that because the building was a government installation, it provided excellent cover. The prison didn’t need heavy security because area residents knew it was owned by the government. People wouldn’t be inclined to snoop in post-communist Romania, with its extensive security apparatus known for spying on the country’s own citizens.

Human rights activists have urged the Eastern European countries to investigate the roles their governments played in hosting the prisons in which interrogation techniques such as waterboarding were used. Officials from these countries continue to deny these prisons ever existed.

“We know of the criticism, but we have no knowledge of this subject,” Romanian President Traian Basescu said in a September interview with AP.

The CIA has tried to close the book on the detention program, which President Barack Obama ended shortly after taking office.

“That controversy has largely subsided,” the CIA’s top lawyer, Stephen Preston, said at a conference this month.

‘Years of official denials’But details of the prison network continue to trickle out through investigations by international bodies, reporters and human rights groups. “There have been years of official denials,” said Dick Marty, a Swiss lawmaker who led an investigation into the CIA secret prisons for the Council of Europe. “We are at last beginning to learn what really happened in Bucharest.”

During the Council of Europe’s investigation, Romania’s foreign affairs minister assured investigators in a written report that, “No public official or other person acting in an official capacity has been involved in the unacknowledged deprivation of any individual, or transport of any individual while so deprived of their liberty.” That report also described several other government investigations into reports of a secret CIA prison in Romania and said: “No such activities took place on Romanian territory.”

Reporters and human rights investigators have previously used flight records to tie Romania to the secret prison program. Flight records for a Boeing 737 known to be used by the CIA showed a flight from Poland to Bucharest in September 2003. Among the prisoners on board, according to former CIA officials, were Mohammed and Walid bin Attash, who has been implicated in the bombing of the USS Cole.

Later, other detainees — Ramzi Binalshibh, Abd al-Nashiri and Abu Faraj al-Libi — were also moved to Romania. A deceptive al-Libi, who was taken to the prison in June 2005, provided information that would later help the CIA identify Osama bin Laden’s trusted courier, a man who unwittingly led them the CIA to bin Laden himself.

 Court documents recently discovered in a lawsuit have also added to the body of evidence pointing to a CIA prison in Romania. The files show CIA contractor Richmor Aviation Inc., a New York-based charter company, operated flights to and from Romania along with other locations including Morocco and the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

For the CIA officers working at the secret prison, the assignment wasn’t glamorous. The officers served 90-day tours, slept on the compound and ate their meals there, too. Officers were prevented from the leaving the base after their presence in the neighborhood stoked suspicion. One former officer complained that the CIA spent most of its time baby-sitting detainees like Binalshibh and Mohammed whose intelligence value diminished as the years passed.

The Romanian and Lithuanian sites were eventually closed in the first half of 2006 before CIA Director Porter Goss left the job. Some of the detainees were taken to Kabul, where the CIA could legally hold them before they were sent to Guantanamo. Others were sent back to their native countries.

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Editorial on Houston VA Cemetery: A Family’s Wishes

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Team VCS

VCS Agrees with New York Times: Keep Forced and Unwanted Religious Proselytizing Out of Our VA Cemeteries

September 7, 2011 (New York Times Editorial Board) – Four years ago, the Bush administration issued a regulation to protect families of veterans distressed by the intrusion of volunteer honor guards offering unsolicited prayers and recitations at national cemetery funeral rites.

The administration chose the only sensible course, directing that the family of the deceased — “and only they” — would identify any text to be read, not outside groups, however much they invoked God and country.

That regulation is being challenged in the Texas courts by some honor guards and a conservative legal group, the Liberty Institute. They have backed it up with a video and propaganda assault via the Internet against President Obama, not Mr. Bush. They claim, falsely, that the Obama administration has banned the mention of God and decreed “Jesus is not welcome” at veterans’ burials.

The truth is that all manner of ritual — from religious to secular — is being honored by the Department of Veterans Affairs, but only according to each family’s preference. Yet the lawsuit oddly invokes religious freedom in challenging the Houston National Cemetery’s attempt to follow policy.

The Veterans Affairs procedure under the regulation is to have funeral directors tell families that volunteer honor guards are available for services but that they are free to decline. Other veterans groups do not quarrel with this, as James Dao reported in The Times.

No one denies that honor guard volunteers, marching as dedicated veterans themselves, have offered great comfort to many families over the years. But the honor guards enjoy no claim to primacy at graveside. The wishes of a grieving family should never be overridden by outsiders, however well intentioned.

Additional Related Articles

July 9, 2011, VCS Letter to VA Secretary Shinseki denouncing Liberty Institute and Tea Party for interfering with the rights of veterans’ families.

August 30, 2011, New York Times article about religious extremists who want to force proselytizing, even against the wishes of family members, at the Houston VA cemetery.

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VCS Book Review ~ The Tragic Impact of Bush’s Torture Order on Veterans and Survivors

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Team VCS

None of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture Written by:  Joshua E. S. Phillips

March 3, 2011, Washington, DC (Veterans for Common Sense) – After suffering between 50 million and 70 million deaths, World War II also revealed the inhumane, cruel and gruesome nature of torture perpetrated by the Germans and Japanese against both civilians and prisoners of war.

Seeking to prevent torture in future wars, the Geneva Convention stipulated terms of agreement for treatment of prisoners of war.  The Geneva Convention defines torture as the:

Willful killing or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health.  Taking any measure as to cause the physical suffering or extermination.  Murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment, any other measures of brutality whether applied by civilian or military agents.

Unfortunately, U.S. political leaders ordered torture days after 9/11.  On September 16, 2001, in a violent, illegal, and vicious manner, Vice President Richard Cheney told viewers of NBC’s Meet the Press, “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will.”  And the horrible legacy of torture initiated under the direct orders of President George W. Bush began.

Since October 2003, Veterans for Common Sense continues working closely with the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups to uncover documents about torture.  Using the Freedom of Information Act and the court system, a massive set of documents are now available that will shock and disturb you.

Now we have a sequel to one our nation’s darkest chapters: what happens to our soldiers who were ordered to commit torture and the survivors of such illegal brutality?  What happens when they come home?

In his grueling book, None of Us Were like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture, reporter Joshua E.S. Phillips investigates the causes, conduct, and consequences of the torture inflicted by Americans on enemy prisoners of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, starting on 9/11, the date when the gloves came off.  That’s when some of us became the monsters we hunted.

There is a good chance this book is not on your reading list when the words “American” and “Torture” are both in the title.  This seminal historical book, although difficult to read, should be part of our collective social awareness so we learn about the actions of our government during war. Absolutely, torture is very heavy material.

While Phillips delves deeply into the subject matter, he also examines the severe and long-lasting human toll – the physical and psychological devastation and scars for both prisoners and interrogators.

None of Us Were like this Before shares the intimate and rare interviews with a wide range of people directly involved.  Phillips speaks with government officials, Iraqi detainees and their families, as well as soldiers directly and indirectly involved in the interrogation and torture, and their families.

In an extremely detailed exploration, Phillips’ quest for information takes him on a journey across the world, conducting risky interviews, constantly putting his life and the lives of others in extreme danger.  This book is not for the faint of heart, as it exposes the cruel, brutal, and deadly underbelly of war seldom covered by the mainstream press.

As a result of this extraordinary access, Phillips explores the degree of interrogations in some of the American prisons in the Middle East.  He reaches the unabashed truth of torture and how it has gotten so out of control as a result of a failure from the chain of command.

Phillips conclusion: Already under severe stress, provided with little to no direction from superiors and higher ups, and under intense pressure to get immediate answers, our soldiers responded with any means necessary, resulting in acts of torture on enemy prisoners of war.

Phillips’ book remains the first and best heartbreaking tale not only of the abuses taking place within our military prisons, but also the negative, long term and in many cases fatal psychological affects it is having on both interrogating soldiers and interrogated enemy prisoners of war.

This book gets a top rating because of the valuable facts about torture collected from invaluable sources. The material is urgent and profound.  This book should become an necessary read for all, as well as an essential tool for mental health professionals seeking to aid soldiers and veterans as well as survivors.

The moral lessons are of immense value to current and future military officers so they understand the legal, moral, and mental health impact of torture, and so they can prevent torture.  Torture doesn’t work, it undermines our credibility, and it creates additional animosity toward our country and our troops in the war zone.

Even though we highly recommend Phillips’ book, we urge you to proceed with caution. The stories and information put forth are extremely emotionally tolling and at times nauseating. It removes any and all humanity from war.  This outstanding book should provoke urgently needed and highly meaningful conversations about who we are as well as what we thought our military and our political leaders should be.

This book is an absolute an eye-opener for anyone who thinks war is “over there” or that the use of torture has no impact on our society.  The devastation brought home from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars continues escalating, with 313,000 mental health patients already treated at VA hospitals after serving in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (out of 625,000 total patients from the combat zones).

One area VA must become sensitive to is the fact that some veterans who need treatment remain highly reluctant to seek mental healthcare from the very government that issued illegal orders to torture fellow humans.  In too many cases, VA remains woefully unprepared to listen to or provide services to our veterans who changed so dramatically, in body and spirit, due to President George W. Bush’s illegal order to torture enemy prisoners of war.

We here at VCS have spoken with a few of those veterans involved in torture.  Some were so devastated and distraught with anguish and grief they needed our immediate assistance to obtain emergency mental healthcare in order to avoid suicide.

After 20 years of endless war in Southwest Asia, the closing lesson for Americans is obvious: we have fallen very far from the days in April 1945 when American troops liberated Nazi death camps and rejected torture.  In contrast, in late 2001, we sank to a place where our leaders lacked a moral compass, started offensive wars, and ordered our troops to commit torture.

We are just now starting to see the light at the end of Vice President Cheney’s bitter journey to  the dark side. VCS agrees with retired Army Major General Antonio Taguma: We still need a commission to investigate and hold accountable those responsible for these illegal acts.

And while we do that, allow us to pause and recognize that the journey and recovery from war will always be the longest and most difficult for veterans and survivors.

Review by:  Kristina Brown and Paul Sullivan, Veterans for Common Sense

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CIA Won’t Face Sanction for Destroying Tapes

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Team VCS

ACLU – VCS Lawsuit Update

October 6, 2011 (Courthouse News) – The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups cannot sanction, or find out who is responsible, for the Central Intelligence Agency destroying at least 92 interrogation videotapes of suspected al-Qaida leaders, a federal judge ruled.

Co-plaintiffs include the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. Several government agencies are listed as co-defendants.

“Unbeknownst to plaintiffs, this court, and the world, between April and December 2002, the CIA had recorded, on a least ninety-two videotapes, interrogation sessions with two detainees, Zayn AI-Abidin Muhammad Husayn (‘Abu Zubaydah’) and Abd AI-Rahim Al-Nashiri,” U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein summarized.

Ninety of the tapes related to Abu Zabayda, two to al-Nashiri. The interrogations reportedly took place in Thailand, and 12 of the tapes depicted so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” widely considered to be torture.

The ACLU submitted Freedom of Information Act requests in October 2003 and May 2004.

After the civil libertarian group filed a federal complaint, an anonymous cable sent from CIA headquarters asked that the tapes be destroyed.

Jose Rodriguez, serving as the CIA’s deputy director of operations at the time, responded: “DDO approves Ref A request to destroy [redacted] video tapes as proposed Ref A and for the reasons cited therein.” (Brackets in original)

A reply cable dated Nov. 9, 2005, confirmed that the tapes had been destroyed.

“At 5:48 p.m. the next day, November 10, 2005, an individual whose identity has been redacted sent an email to Kyle Dustin ‘Dusty’ Foggo, then the CIA’s Executive Director. The email’s sender apparently had been present for an ‘update’ from the Directorate of Operations, and the email recounts the internal discussions that had followed word that the videotapes had been destroyed,” according to the recent order.

“According to the email, that ‘[g]uidance,’ i.e., approval to destroy, had been ‘cleared by IG [Inspector General], DDO [Jose Rodriguez] and [redacted]‘ and then sent, and the videotapes had been destroyed,” the order states. (Brackets and redactions in original.)

The email’s author said that CIA general counsel John Rizzo was upset by the news, and a later email said that former White House counsel Harriet Myers was “livid.”

CIA Director Michael Hayden on Dec. 6, 2007, admitted to his employees that the agency destroyed the tapes in a statement.

“CIA’s terrorist detention and interrogation program began after the capture of Abu Zubaydah in March 2002,” the statement read. “Under normal questioning, Zubaydah became defiant and evasive. It was clear, in the President’s words, that ‘Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking.’”

In 2008, Judge Hellerstein heard oral arguments on proposed sanctions, which were delayed for two years because Special Prosecutor John Durham told the court that contempt proceedings would interfere with a criminal investigation into the tapes’ destruction.

Durham announced that he concluded his investigation and would not press charges.

The judge revisited the sanctions motion on Aug. 1 and ruled against the motion on Wednesday.

“The evidence suggests that the individuals responsible for processing and responding to plaintiffs’ FOIA requests may not have been aware of the videotapes’ existence before they were destroyed,” Hellerstein wrote.’

“Nor can I say that the individuals who destroyed, or who approved the destruction, of the videotapes, were aware of court orders requiring identification or production of the videotapes,” he added. “However, the lapses of individuals cannot excuse the failures of the Agency. The CIA, qua agency, had the obligation to identify or produce the videotapes, and the CIA cannot be excused in its dereliction because of particular individuals’ lapses.”

Although the tapes can no longer be recovered, the CIA turned over documents describing them, according to the court.

“It is true that the interrogation videotapes, having been destroyed nearly six years ago, cannot now be produced,” he wrote. “But the CIA has remedied that failure by a massive production of paragraph 3 and paragraph 4 documents-records that describe the contents of the videotapes, corresponding in time to their creation, and records that relate to the videotapes’ destruction, in particular, the persons and reasons behind the destruction, corresponding in time to both the videotapes’ creation and destruction.”

New CIA protocols will stop the agency from destroying videos again, the order states.

“In my opinion, contrary to plaintiff’s view, the CIA’s new protocols would have a remedial and deterrent effect should a CIA official think to destroy documents,” he wrote. “The protocols should lead to better communication and more complete written records within the Agency and across the government when an issue of document destruction or retention arises within the Agency. The CIA’s new protocols should lead to greater accountability within the Agency and prevent another episode like the videotapes’ destruction.”

Those protocols are under seal.

Hellerstein added that he would not allow the ACLU to pursue depositions and further discovery to find out “if CIA officials destroyed the videotapes after they had notice of court orders requiring the videotapes to be identified or produced (or making a requirement to identify or produce likely).”

The CIA agreed to reimburse the ACLU for the costs of the FOIA request.

The ACLU did not immediately respond to a request for comment made after business hours.

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Top Air Force Official Issues Religious Neutrality Policy in Wake of Truthout’s “Jesus Loves Nukes” Exposé

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Team VCS

September 14, 2011 (Truthout) – A top US Air Force official, in an attempt to ensure the Air Force adheres to the Constitution as well as its own regulations and policies, issued guidelines that calls on “leaders at all levels” to take immediate steps to maintain “government neutrality regarding religion.”

In his policy memorandum dated September 1, but sent Tuesday to all major commands, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz said, “Leaders … must balance Constitutional protections for an individual’s free exercise of religion or other personal beliefs and its prohibition against governmental establishment of religion.”

The First Amendment establishes a wall of separation between church and state and Clause 3, Article 6 of the Constitution specifically prohibits a “religious test.”

The memo was issued a month after Truthout published an exclusive report revealing how, for two decades, the Air Force used numerous Bible passages and religious imagery to teach nuclear missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons, a decision that one senior Air Force officer told Truthout last month should have “instantly” resulted in the firing of the commanders who allowed it to take place.

The Air Force immediately suspended the mandatory Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare training immediately following the publication of Truthout’s report. David Smith, a spokesman for the Air Education and Training Command told Truthout last month the ethics training “has been taken out of the curriculum and is being reviewed.”

“The commander reviewed it and decided we needed to have a good hard look at it and make sure it reflected views of modern society,” Smith said.

The decison angered Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) who fired off an angry letter to Secretary of the Air Force Michael B. Donley criticizing the move and demanding Donley provide him with a report detailing “actions taken” by the Air Force that led to the suspension of the ethics training.

But the Air Force went further, pulling all of its training materials “that address morals, ethics, core values and related character development issues” pending a “comprehensive review,” Smith told the Air Force Times.

That decision was made after a Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) instructor, who read Truthout’s report, sent the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a civil rights organization, copies of ROTC leadership training materials, which also contained Christian-themed citations from the Bible. The PowerPoint slides in that presentation the unnamed instructor sent MRFF are used in all colleges and universities that have an ROTC program.

While Schwartz does not state what prompted him to issue the memorandum, it would appear the media attention surrounding the revelations about the ROTC leadership training and the “Jesus loves nukes” ethics course, which is how one former nuclear missile officer who took the course referred to it during an interview with Truthout, played a significant part.

Schwartz said commanders and supervisors, “must avoid the actual or apparent use of their position to promote their personal religious beliefs to their subordinates or to extend preferential treatment for any religion.”

“Commanders or supervisors who engage in such behavior may cause members to doubt their impartiality and objectify,” Schwartz added. “The potential result is a degradation of the unit’s morale, good order and discipline.”

Furthermore, he advised Air Force leadership who may have concerns “involving the preservation of government neutrality regarding religious beliefs” to speak with a chaplain and staff judge advocate “before you act.”

Mikey Weinstein, MRFF’s president and founder, referred to Schwartz’s memorandum as a “damn good line drive single to potentially start a rally of Constitutional religious freedom compliance, which has been scandalously lacking in the entire Defense Department for decades.” (Full disclosure: Weinstein is a member of Truthout’s Board of Advisers.)

Weinstein had provided Truthout with copies of the PowerPoint presentation used during the nuclear ethics training taught by chaplains at Vandenberg Air Force base in California, which were obtained by an Air Force officer under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and turned over to MRFF.

Weinsten said Schwartz is the “most senior Pentagon official to date to ever send this strong a mandate of Constitutional religious compliance to our United States armed forces members.”

“While MRFF wishes that such a letter had been sent by the Chief of Staff of the Air Force a very long time ago, the old adage ‘better late than never’ most certainly applies,” Weinstein said in an email. “Gen. Schwartz has the Air Force at least now ‘talking the talk.’ Whether the Air Force can ‘walk the walk’ will depend upon many factors, not the least of which is whether ANYONE in the Air Force is EVER punished for violating its clear mandates of Constitutional recognition for BOTH the No Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the Bill of Rights’ First Amendment.” (Weinstein’s emphasis.)

Systemic Issues

That Schwartz, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was forced to issue such an edict underscores how widespread the problems have been within the Air Force related to commanders endorsing religion, particularly fundamentalist Christianity.

Indeed, some examples over the past few years include an email circulated in 2009 by military command and staff officers to all personnel stationed at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada inviting them to attend a Bible study class in which the topic of discussion referred to Jews as “whiners.”

Air Force Capt. Melissa Danley, the military personnel chief at Creech, sent the initial announcement from her official government email account at the request of a chaplain. The 432nd Wing Commander’s Office sent out another announcement soon after.

In December 2008, Chris Rodda, MRFF’s director of research, reported that a presentation titled “Purpose Driven Airmen,” which incorporated the teachings of megachurch leader Rick Warren and creationism as a means of suicide prevention, was sent by commanders from an official government email account to 5,000 servicemen and women stationed at RAF Lakenheath, the largest US Air Force base in England.

In January 2009, senior command officers again used a government email account to send an announcement, at the request of a chaplain, to base personnel asking them to attend a screening of the Christian movie “Fireproof.”

When commanders use their official government email accounts to send out such announcements, it implies that the events are officially endorsed by the United States Air Force.

No one was held accountable in either of those cases and Schwartz doesn’t say whether Air Force commanders and supervisors who violate the policy would be punished or held accountable.

Schwartz does, however, state that while commanders are responsible for certain Chaplain Corps programs, “including activities such as religious studies, faith sharing and prayer meetings … they must refrain from appearing to officially endorse religion generally or any particular religion.”

“Therefore, I expect chaplains, not commanders, to notify Airmen of Chaplain Corps programs,” he wrote.

Chaplain’s Column Scrubbed

But, like the nuclear ethics training course taught by chaplains, there are other instances in which chaplains appear to be speaking on behalf of the Air Force, even unintentionally. For example, last month, some Air Force officers complained to Truthout and MRFF about a column they read written by a chaplain, Lt. Col. Curtiss Wagner of the 179 Airlift Wing, that was posted on the command’s official web site.

The August 16 column, “The Dignified Transfer,” centered around Wagner’s six-month deployment to the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations at Dover Air Force Base. A portion of Wagner’s column discussed the pain he saw in the eyes of family members who went to Dover to witness the return of their loved ones’ remains. Wagner wrote that during his “deployment to mortuary affairs he was reminded … just how important faith and a spiritual foundation is.”

“It was very apparent who had a strong faith and who didn’t.” Wagner wrote. “Of course those who had a strong spiritual foundation still grieved at their loss, but they had hope and strength through that difficult time because of their relationship to God. I am reminded what the Apostle Paul stated in 1 Thess. 4:13 when he said that those who are Christ followers do not ‘grieve like the rest of men,’ who have no hope.”

Several Air Force officers who contacted Truthout said they were deeply offended by the Biblical passage, “those who are Christ followers do not ‘grieve like the rest of men,’” because it suggests family members of other faiths who do not worship Christ, as well as nonbelievers, “have no hope” and unless you accept Christ you grieve differently. Moreover, because it was published on an official government web site, it led them to believe that the Air Force endorsed Wagner’s position.

Truthout contacted Holli Snyder, a spokeswoman for the Air Force’s 179th Airlift Wing based out of Fort Campbell Kentucky, about whether Wagner’s use of the Biblical passage in a column published on a government web site amounted to a policy violation. Snyder responded a week later and said Wagner column was “removed” from the170th Airlift Wing’s web site “upon realization that his comments could be perceived as offensive and hurtful.”

A link to the column, now goes to a page not found. Wagner’s column was also removed from Google’s cache and can no longer be found on the web.

“Our most sincere apologies go out to any of those individuals who were offended by this commentary and will [sic] ensure in the future that statements published on our website could not be perceived as such,” Snyder said. “With that being said, one must take into consideration that Lt. Col. Wagner was writing a commentary, a personal narrative, meaning it was his own thoughts and beliefs, on his tour of duty at Dover Air Force Base. Wagner was not expressing the thoughts and beliefs of the 179th Airlift Wing, the U.S. Air Force, or the Department of Defense, but I can see how that could have been misconstrued by being posted on the official base website for the 179th AW. There should have been a statement attached with his commentary that stated the following:

The views expressed in this commentary are the views of the individual and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the U.S. Government, the Department of Defense, the Air Force, the 179th Airlift Wing or Airmen assigned to the 179th AW.

Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, goes on to say in his memo that chaplains are “trained to provide leadership on matters related to the free exercise of religion and to help commanders care for all of their people, regardless of their beliefs.”

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