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VA Destroys Files: Vets' Records Gone Forever!

By VVAW

Late in July, the CBS affiliate in Chicago broke another scandal in the Veterans Administration. This was the same station that originally broke the Agent Orange story in March, 1978.

After a lengthy investigation the Chicago reporters determined that the VA has been and is continuing to destroy millions of veteran's records and files.

What's so interesting, you may ask? The VA has publically stated that they've been doing it for years—non-active files, they say. The twist comes with the information that many of the files belong to World War II, Korean and even Vietnam-era veterans who are still alive and who subsequently are unable to get benefits and/or medical treatment because their records have been fed to the shredder.

The VA, of course, denied everything, then admitted to the allegations, then clammed up and wouldn't comment further.

The investigation by reporters from the TV station's "Fact-Finder" unit is a story in itself. When the reporter went to D.C. to question Max Cleland, head of the VA, she was stalled and put off by VA officials. Cleland finally denied that records were destroyed. Returning to Chicago, reporters turned up documents that admitted that the VA was in fact destroying records—some 3 ? million in the last few years.

Cleland was on the sport and admitted that the records were indeed destroyed, but that the VA was stopping the practice. The reporters began to assemble their case only to find that almost all the Cleland tapes had been "accidentally" erased. Added to this was pressure from higher CBS echelons to let the investigation slide and die a "natural" death.

The reporters persisted, broke the story and then began to battle to keep the investigation going. They took their fight out to the vets themselves asking individual vets and vets groups, including VVAW, to spread the word and bring whatever pressure they could to keep the investigation open.

The VA, with a long history of records losses, fires as in the Army Records Center in ST Louis, or local fires like the one which conveniently destroyed "Agent Orange" files in Chicago, has put a lid of public statements. No doubt they hope the whole thing will blow over.

Not likely! One way or another the investigation will go on. We've been pointing this—and many other—abuses out for years. VVAW members and friends who've worked at the VA talk not only about the haphazard filling methods and purposely misplaced records, but also about hours spent feeding the shredding machines. VVAW will continue to expose these crimes against veterans by the very agency which is supposed to help. We will support the "Fact-Finders" in their attempt to keep their investigations going, or anyone else who takes up the fight to make it that much harder for the VA to attack the vets it's supposed to serve. To date, the investigation remains open. A recent segment underlines one of the problems caused by records destruction: a World War II vet, only in the last couple of years beginning to feel the effects of exposure to radiation, is challenged by the VA to produce proof of disability; in the kind of Catch-22 situation the VA seems to enjoy, the vet is faced with having to produce records which were on file at the VA but which have been destroyed proving, to the satisfaction of the VA bureaucracy, that the vet cannot be disabled!