President Bush announced yesterday that he had nominated James Peake to lead the department of Veteran's Affairs. Peake, the former Surgeon General under President Clinton, would come to the VA at a critical time when the department is in shambles. The agency has faced considerable criticism for its treatment of Iraq
and Afghanistan veterans as they move from the military health-care
system to VA's, and for its chronically slow processing of disability
claims by injured or sick veterans from all eras. Critics complain
about lost paperwork, a shortage of VA caseworkers, a caseload of
400,000 pending disability claims and long waits for initial
appointments in the VA health-care system.
According to Salon.com, more than a million soldiers have been deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. About one of every eight veterans younger than 65
is uninsured, a finding that contradicts the assumption of many
Americans that all vets qualify for free health care through the
Veterans Affairs Department, says a new study.Researchers
at Harvard Medical School projected that about 1.8 million veterans
overall lack health coverage. That's an increase of 290,000 since 2000.
The researchers said most uninsured veterans are in the middle class
and are ineligible for VA care because of their incomes. Others cannot
afford their co-payments or lack VA facilities in their community.
In the October 15, 2007 of the Nation, Joshua Kors continues his coverage on the saga of Spc. Jon Ton that began back in April of this year. It's a long article, but worth reading. Jon Ton has become the human face for more than 22,000 soldiers discharged from the military with personality disorders -- a diagnosis which effectively has resulted in the denial of all disability and medical coverage.
On April 9, Spc. Jon Town was featured on the cover of The Nation,
in an article that told how he was wounded in Iraq, won a Purple Heart
and was then denied all disability and medical benefits. Town's doctor
had concluded that his headaches and hearing loss were not caused by
the 107-millimeter rocket that knocked him unconscious but by a
psychological condition, "personality disorder," a pre-existing illness
for which one cannot collect disability pay or receive medical care.
Soon Town became a national figure, the human face of the 22,500
soldiers discharged with personality disorder in the past six years.
His story was picked up by the Army Times, Washington Post Radio and ABC News's Bob Woodruff. It was dramatized in a May episode of NBC's Law & Order. And rock star Dave Matthews began discussing Town's plight at every stop in his spring concert series.
Further investigation by The Nation has uncovered more than
a dozen cases like Town's from bases across the country. All of the
soldiers interviewed passed the rigorous health screening given
recruits before being accepted into the Army. All were deemed
physically and psychologically fit in a second screening as well,
before being deployed to Iraq, and served honorably there in combat.
None of the soldiers interviewed during this eleven-month investigation
had a documented history of psychological problems.
Yet after they returned from Iraq wounded and sought treatment, each
was diagnosed with a pre-existing personality disorder, then denied
benefits. As in Town's case, Army doctors determined that the soldiers'
ailments were pre-existing without interviewing friends, family or
fellow soldiers who knew them before they were wounded in combat.
In this article you will hear from Army doctors who say wounded
soldiers are routinely misdiagnosed. One says he was pressured by
superiors to diagnose personality disorder in cases where soldiers were
physically wounded or suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder
(PTSD).
Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, acting surgeon general of the Army, was
briefed on the problems with the Army's personality disorder
discharges. Instead of correcting cases like Town's, she buried them.
The surgeon general released a series of memos filled with
fabrications. Pollock then informed wounded soldiers that their cases
had been thoroughly reviewed by an independent panel of health experts
when in fact no such review was conducted.
"This is not the way the government ought to work. It's not the way
they should be responding to veterans," says Representative Bob Filner,
chair of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. He first heard
Town's story in April and began working soon afterward to bring the
soldier to Washington. There Town would get his chance to tell Congress
everything: about his diagnosis, his discharge and the work of Surgeon
General Pollock.
'Thoroughly Evaluated and Reviewed'
Andrew Pogany, an investigator for the soldiers' rights group
Veterans for America, has been looking into personality disorder
discharges for two years. The discharge, officially known as Regulation
635-200, Chapter 5-13, is simply a loophole, he says, to dismiss
wounded soldiers without providing them benefits. Pogany says Town's
case is a textbook example of how Chapter 5-13 is being applied. Town
had no history of psychological problems and had served seven years,
winning a dozen medals, before being discharged with a personality
disorder.
The investigator was so disturbed by the Army's use of 5-13
discharges that he brought his research to Pollock. In late October
2006, he and Steve Robinson, Veterans for America's director of
veterans affairs, met with Pollock and presented her with a stack of
personality disorder cases, including Town's. The surgeon general
promised a thorough review.
On March 23, five months after her meeting with Pogany, Pollock
released her findings. Her office had "thoughtfully and thoroughly"
reviewed the personality disorder cases and determined that all of the
soldiers, including Town, had been properly diagnosed. Pollock
commended the doctors who diagnosed personality disorder for their
excellent work.
Four days later the military followed up with a press release, this
one signed by Lieut. Col. Bob Tallman, the Army's chief of public
affairs. Tallman's memo provided further detail on Pollock's review. A
panel of behavioral health experts had reviewed the personality
disorder cases, Tallman wrote, and they didn't stop at the stack of
cases presented to the surgeon general. They "thoroughly evaluated and
reviewed" all the Chapter 5-13s from the past four years at Fort
Carson, where Specialist Town had been based, and determined that all
of those cases had been properly diagnosed as well.
There was a glaring problem with Pollock's review. In the five
months she spent "thoughtfully and thoroughly" reviewing the cases, her
office did not interview anyone, not even the soldiers whose cases they
were reviewing.
Asked how he could call the surgeon general's review "thorough" when
no soldiers were interviewed, Tallman said he could not. "Let me be
honest with you," he said. "I know nothing about this memo and little
to nothing about the review." Tallman said the memo bearing his name
was actually ghostwritten by Pollock's office. The lieutenant colonel
added that as far as he knew, Pollock conducted no review at all.
Pollock's office quickly admitted that it had ghostwritten the
Tallman memo but assured veterans' groups that the surgeon general had
indeed conducted a review. In an e-mail Pollock's chief spokeswoman,
Cynthia Vaughan, explained that the surgeon general did not want to
interview soldiers because she felt they had no medically valid
information to share. "Calling a soldier who underwent a 5-13 Chapter
in 2003 and asking him (in 2007) to recall his mental condition in 2003
does not hold medical validity," Vaughan wrote.
That statement angered many soldiers, including Jon
Town. "You'd think I'd remember, even today, if I had headaches and
hearing loss before the rocket attack," he says. The surgeon general
tried to quell veterans' groups by emphasizing that, as stated in the
March memos, the comprehensive review was conducted by a panel of
health experts and that those experts "did not provide the initial
evaluations." This wasn't a case of one doctor reviewing his own work,
the surgeon general said.
Both of those assurances crumbled on May 4, when Army Times
reporter Kelly Kennedy revealed that in fact there was only one
reviewer: Col. Steven Knorr. Knorr was a strange choice to be the sole
reviewer. He was far from an objective observer. As chief of Fort
Carson's Behavioral Health unit, Knorr had overseen all the original
diagnoses and, in his capacity as a psychiatrist, also diagnosed
several soldiers with personality disorder.
Months earlier Knorr had spoken out in defense of the Army's
practice of not interviewing soldiers' family or friends before
labeling their condition "pre-existing." Unlike his staff, he said,
family members are not trained to recognize signs of personality
disorder, so speaking to them would be of limited value. "The soldier's
perception and their parents' perception is that they were fine. But
maybe they didn't or weren't able to see that wasn't the case."
In the same interview, published in The Nation, Knorr said
there was a simple reason why in so many cases the lifelong condition
of personality disorder isn't apparent until after troops serve in
Iraq. Traumatic experiences, he said, can trigger a condition that has
lain dormant for years. "[Troops] may have done fine in high school and
before, but it comes out during the stress of service," he said.
Knorr's assertion was a sharp break from the accepted medical
understanding of personality disorder and provoked a flood of angry
letters from psychiatrists and veterans' leaders.
Veterans were further agitated by a vivid profile of Knorr, by NPR's
Daniel Zwerdling broadcast in late May. Zwerdling details a memo
written by Knorr in which he advises his doctors that trying to save
every soldier is a "mistake." "We can't fix every Soldier," the memo
states. "We have to hold Soldiers accountable for their behavior.
Everyone in life beyond babies, the insane, and the demented and
mentally retarded have to be held accountable for what they do in
life."
Knorr's memo, which he posted on his office's bulletin board, warns
his doctors not to take soldiers' descriptions of their ailments at
face value. "We're not naïve, and shouldn't automatically believe
everything Soldiers tell us," the colonel writes. Knorr also urges his
doctors to discharge troubled soldiers quickly--as he puts it, "Get rid
of dead wood."
"That memo made me sick," says Russell Terry, founder of the Iraq
War Veterans Organization. "It's incomprehensible that [Pollock] would
choose him to lead the review." Terry says that if she had wanted to do
a real review, the surgeon general could have organized a panel of
impartial medical experts. "By having Knorr review his own stuff,
there's no outside opinion, no one to uncover the misdiagnoses--no one
to object."
The surgeon general declined to be interviewed. But in a recent
statement, Pollock defended her office's review and showed continued
support for Knorr, calling him an "appropriate" choice to spearhead the
review.
By May the Army had a nascent PR nightmare on its hands. The story
of Pollock, Knorr and the "thoughtful and thorough" five-month review
had been picked up by news talk programs on NPR, Washington Post Radio
and ABC News. To stem the tide, officials at Fort Carson did something
odd: They released a new memo stating that fifty-six soldiers
discharged from Fort Carson with personality disorder actually had
PTSD.
It was a stunning admission. As soon as they released it, officials
tried to downplay it. Col. John Cho, former commander of Fort Carson's
hospital, quickly submitted a second statement, saying that the first
memo was not an admission of guilt. Soldiers suffering from PTSD could
be rightfully discharged with personality disorder if they had that
condition too and their PTSD was not "severe," he said. But Army
Regulation 40-501, Chapter 3-33, is clear. It states that if a soldier
is suffering from PTSD, he must be discharged by a medical board, which
can provide him the lifetime of disability and medical benefits denied
soldiers discharged with personality disorder.
Fort Carson officials provided an unintentionally comic coda to
their admission when they insisted that all fifty-six cases were
properly diagnosed, shortly after Cho admitted in writing that his
office could find only fifty-two of them. Base officials said the
remaining four cases had been lost or misplaced. They could not explain
how they knew those cases were properly diagnosed when they couldn't be
found. "It's incredible when you think about it," says Pogany. "They're
doing everything they can to cover this up--and doing a lousy job of
it."
On May 16, Army officials clarified: The four-year review of
personality disorder cases trumpeted in the Tallman memo never
occurred.
'I Refused to Diagnose as They Wanted'
By the time Dr. Michael Chen stepped down, he had been serving the
Army for more than thirty years. The psychiatrist had treated soldiers
at several bases and looked forward to continuing his work at a new
installation after being transferred.
Chen's enthusiasm was short-lived. Soon he began clashing with his
superiors. "I refused to diagnose as they wanted," he says. "They
wanted the diagnoses to be personality disorder, instead of PTSD." The
psychiatrist says the soldiers he saw weren't suffering from
pre-existing conditions; they had PTSD and traumatic brain injury
(TBI). Chen says he relayed this information to his colonel, to no
avail. "The establishment wants to hear what the establishment wants to
hear."
Chen is not the doctor's real name. Because he fears retribution
from the Army, the psychiatrist agreed to speak only if his name and
base were not revealed. He says he wasn't the only doctor pressured to
misdiagnose: Other psychiatrists were pressed as well, resulting in
numerous fraudulent diagnoses of personality disorder. "I've seen that
story happen hundreds of times," he says.
While serving at the Army hospital, Chen did diagnose personality
disorder. But eventually the absurdity of the recommended diagnoses
proved too much. The psychiatrist recalls one soldier who returned from
Iraq with a massive hunk of his right calf missing. "They thought he
had personality disorder," Chen says, the anger in his voice suddenly
palpable. "Imagine: You get your leg blown off, you get a Purple Heart
and now they say it's from personality disorder. It's absurd."
Frustrated, the psychiatrist approached the commanding general of the
hospital. Chen says he met with the official numerous times. But the
pressure to misdiagnose continued.
"It's just criminal," he says. The doctor says that at his base
wounded soldiers were treated like broken appliances: When they no
longer functioned, the command simply wanted to "throw them out" with a
pre-existing condition. "And it's appalling to me that my colleagues
would go along with it."
The psychiatrist says he doesn't blame the commanding general for
the pressure on him and other doctors to misdiagnose soldiers. Their
meetings made it clear that the general was simply taking orders from
"high up on the food chain." In some sense, says the doctor, that was
to be expected, because with personality disorder, there's so much
money at stake. The Nation
reported in April that the military is saving $12.5 billion in
disability and medical care by discharging soldiers under Chapter 5-13,
a figure drawn from a recent Harvard study by Professor Linda Bilmes.
Chen believes $12.5 billion is a gross underestimate--that from what
he's seen at his medical center, if all the wounded soldiers returning
from Iraq were properly diagnosed, the long-term cost of benefits would
be exponentially larger.
As it was, says Chen, the medical ethic at the Army hospital
followed the guidelines of the Knorr memo, which urged doctors not to
take soldiers' descriptions of their ailments at face value. The
psychiatrist's own approach was radically different. "If a soldier said
he had PTSD, I wrote up 'PTSD.' Finally I was told I couldn't see any
more soldiers because I diagnosed PTSD too much." Chen left the
hospital soon after. Today he treats patients at a nonmilitary
facility.
Dr. Brian Harrison still works for the military. Like Dr. Chen, his
years as an Army psychiatrist have been contentious. Harrison says that
at his medical center, "there has been a tradition of
'underdiagnosing.'" That means soldiers with PTSD don't always receive
that diagnosis. And their health isn't always the top concern. Foremost
on the command's mind, says Harrison, is getting soldiers back to Iraq.
He says doctors at his base understand that when wounded soldiers seek
treatment from them, their job is to get the soldiers back to the
battlefield, even if they are traumatized. The psychiatrist quotes his
hospital's chief of Behavioral Health as saying, "If they're not
suicidal or homicidal, they're fit to go back." If they don't meet that
standard, the doctors are to get rid of them fast. Wounded soldiers are
"seen as damaged merchandise," Harrison says. "The command wants people
like that out of their hair, out of their way."
Harrison is also a pseudonym. The doctor says he is speaking out in
violation of an e-mail from his superiors ordering psychiatrists at his
facility not to talk to the media. If he gives his name, he says, he
could be fired.
The doctor says he has never been pressured to misdiagnose. The
biggest challenge he has faced is making a correct diagnosis, given the
brevity of his appointments. Until recently, he was allowed to meet
with soldiers for an hour. But now, he says, the chief of his
department has pressed him to cut his evaluation time to half an hour
and make future appointments between fifteen and thirty minutes. "I
can't do an evaluation in half an hour," says the psychiatrist. "To
properly diagnose a soldier, you need at least an hour." Like Chen,
Harrison doesn't blame his department's chief, noting that there's
pressure on him from his superiors--"the money managers," Harrison
calls them. "Those jackasses--they don't have any clinical experience,
they've never worked with soldiers, and they don't care."
The bitterness in his voice is broken suddenly with a warm laugh.
"Maybe I'm just old-fashioned," says the elderly doctor. Harrison has
been practicing psychiatry for almost forty years and still insists on
some decidedly "old-fashioned" techniques, like interviewing soldiers'
families when diagnosing a pre-existing condition to see whether the
soldiers' troubles existed before joining the service. Other doctors at
the Army hospital "don't make any effort to do that," he says. "And
they don't have time to. They're busy herding people through."
Surgeon General Pollock declined to comment on Chen's and Harrison's
allegations. In a statement, she says she is disturbed by the idea that
"individuals [are] pressuring providers to falsify diagnoses.... Such
conduct, of course, would be totally unacceptable." Pollock advises
doctors who feel under pressure to diagnose personality disorder to
contact the Inspector General. She asks soldiers who feel they have
been misdiagnosed to approach her directly. Due to "my concern over
these issues, they may provide their information to me and I will have
the staff review their records."
Flying Blind
In May, before most in Washington had even heard of Chapter 5-13,
Senator Kit Bond was studying the discharge--and calling for its
abolition. "You have 22,000 soldiers who passed through all the tests
required to send them to Iraq, and they came back and were diagnosed
with a pre-existing condition? It just doesn't compute. We need to fix
the system," he says. "They ought not have the 5-13 as an easy way to
put these soldiers out." As the system is now, the Senator says, some
of the cases he's seen "just scream out to me: 'This person was
railroaded.'"
The Republican from Missouri helped put together a coalition of
thirty-one senators spanning the political spectrum, from Hillary
Clinton to Joseph Lieberman to fellow conservative Elizabeth Dole. In
June they wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates requesting
that he investigate the 5-13 discharge process. Bond also co-wrote a
defense authorization amendment with Senator Barack Obama and others
that would put a temporary freeze on all personality disorder
discharges. The amendment has been referred to the Armed Services
Committee.
The past year has exposed several problems in the way we're treating
veterans, says Bond. "And this 5-13 seems to be a major part of the
problem."
By July the Senate wasn't the only organization in Washington
concerned about personality disorder. The Department of Veterans
Affairs was worried too. "We wanted to prioritize injured [Iraq War]
veterans. We want to provide a seamless transition" from the Army, says
a top VA official. But with these personality disorder discharges, "you
have people now falling through the cracks." The official, who demanded
anonymity because he had not received clearance to speak, says the
problem with phony discharges like personality disorder is that they
short-circuit the VA's Red Flag system.
The Red Flag system is an informal name for the VA's method of
identifying the most wounded soldiers. The agency does this, explains
the official, by keeping its eye on the Army's medical board hearings,
where wounded soldiers are supposed to go before their discharge. The
board evaluates injured soldiers and gives them a disability rating.
Under the Red Flag system, those who leave the Army's medical board
hearings with a high disability rating are flagged and targeted for
immediate medical care.
But soldiers discharged with personality disorder are denied the
opportunity to see a medical board and thus don't get a disability
rating. As a result, they fly under the VA's radar. Those who need
immediate medical care get dumped into the stack of 800,000 cases
currently waiting to be processed by the VA. For the VA to function,
says the official, the Army has to pass wounded soldiers through its
medical boards. Otherwise, the agency is flying blind.
Jon Town knows firsthand the price of that blindness. He submitted
an application for VA medical care shortly before leaving the Army.
Seven months later he was still waiting for his first doctor's
appointment.
Without medical treatment, Town struggled alone with deafness,
memory loss, insomnia and a headache that was still raging three years
after the rocket attack. The specialist tried to take a few jobs, but
each time he was fired after his health proved too much of an issue.
His wife, Kristy, had to keep the family of four afloat with her
minimum-wage job on the assembly line at Filtech, an oil-filter
manufacturer in their hometown of Findlay, Ohio. Soon the family was
teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. In May, the phone company shut
off their service because the Towns couldn't pay their bill.
The media took note. In April came the Nation article, followed by the Law & Order
episode, which introduced Town's story to 9 million viewers. When
musician Dave Matthews saw the article and began discussing it in
concerts, his enraged fans took up a collection for Town, which raised
$3,000. The guitarist followed up by posting a petition on his website,
urging Congress to hold hearings on personality disorder. Within weeks
the petition was signed by 23,000 people.
"There are times when an injustice is so clear, it's not a matter of
opinion," says Matthews. "Nobody would argue that what's happening to
Jon Town is right. And to think that it's happening over and over
again...it's just astounding. It's a crime against these young people
that's so profound--and it's happening right now. I had to ask myself,
'Does America think this is OK?'" People won't think it's OK once they
learn what's going on, says Matthews. "We can fix this catastrophe.
It's just a matter of getting people to know about it."
Soon Nation readers, NBC viewers and Matthews fans were
reaching out to Town en masse: e-mails, phone calls, small personal
checks. The local chapter of Veterans of Foreign Wars organized a
motorcycle ride to honor his service. A veteran from Boston offered
Town his disability pay until the specialist could secure his own.
Strangely enough, Town's big break came not from Matthews, NBC or even Senator Bond but from Lou Wilin, a reporter at the Findlay Courier, Town's hometown paper (circulation 23,000). After reading Town's story in The Nation,
Wilin wrote a profile of the soldier, which ran in the newspaper's
April 16 edition. The article caught the eye of an admiral in the VA
who happens to live a few miles east of Findlay. The admiral flagged
Town's case, kicked it to the Cleveland VA, which passed it to the
Dayton VA, where case manager Janine Wert was ready to take action.
Wert received Town's case the morning of April 19 and had the soldier
in her office before the end of lunch. She listened to his story and
cried.
"His childhood, high school and military history--none of it
supports a personality disorder. When you're a teenager, there are
certain things that pop up that are vividly obvious, red flags for
personality disorder. Those aren't present in Jon's history," says
Wert, a social worker with a master's degree in mental health. Wert
says Town's PTSD and TBI symptoms were obvious from their first
meeting. She was struck by the absurdity of the Army's diagnosis. "I
have never in my life heard of personality disorder causing deafness,"
says the counselor.
Wert arranged an immediate doctor's appointment for Town and
scheduled an evaluation by a VA medical board. On June 11 the VA ruled
that Town was in fact wounded in combat. The agency declared him 100
percent disabled.
Town's VA rating guaranteed him disability and medical benefits for
the rest of his life. The VA also provided the disability pay that Town
should have received in the months following his discharge. On June 25,
just weeks after his family's phone had been shut off, the specialist
received a check for $20,000.
"I almost started to cry," says Town. "They were ready to repossess
everything. And now I knew we weren't going to lose our cars to
bankruptcy, that we'd have food on the table for years to come....
There isn't a word for what I was feeling."
The diagnosis was a remarkable victory for the Town family--and a
pointed defeat for the Army, which to this day insists that Town was
not wounded in combat and that his health problems stem from a
personality disorder. He still has not received any of the benefits
owed him by the Army.
"This is a scandal," Representative Filner said in May. And members
of his VA Committee would be interested in pursuing it, "but right now,
they just don't know anything about it." With the uproar about Town,
Filner saw an opportunity to change that. On July 12 he announced that
his committee would hold a hearing on personality disorder. To do it
right, he said, "we definitely want to hear from soldiers."
Filner had a particular soldier in mind.
'This Would Be Wrong'
July 25. By 10 am, it's standing
room only at the Cannon House Office Building, the hearing room
swimming with men in uniform, veterans with camouflage accessories,
protesters in bright pink sporting handwritten placards demanding
justice for soldiers. A row of photographers crouch beside the CBS News
camera; reporters for ABC News, NPR and the New York Times have set up shop behind the soldier at the witness desk.
Not surprisingly, Town didn't sleep the night before. His headache is
still raging; his eyes look a bit bloodshot. But his blond bangs are
combed, and his favorite red-striped Old Navy shirt is gone, as is the
brown ball cap and reflective sunglasses, replaced with a well-pressed
navy suit and crimson tie. Town holds his dog tags in his hand and rubs
them nervously between his thumb and forefinger as he looks up at the
committee, his voice defiant and jittery.
"I want to state that I did not have a personality disorder before I
went into the Army, as they have stated in my paperwork. I did not
suffer severe nonstop headaches. I did not have memory loss. I did not
have endless, sleepless nights. I have posttraumatic stress disorder
and traumatic brain injury now due to the injuries I received in the
war, for which I received a Purple Heart," he says. "I shouldn't be
labeled for the rest of my life with a personality disorder, and
neither should my fellow soldiers who also incorrectly received this
stigma."
Filner looks down at the specialist with paternal eyes. When the
applause dies down he says, "Thank you, Mr. Town. You did not sign up
to have to do this. But you are helping a lot of people, and we thank
you for your courage."
Two hours later Surgeon General Pollock's psychological consultant,
Col. Bruce Crow, sits at the witness desk. Pollock herself was called
to testify; her name appeared on the original witness list. But today
she's nowhere to be found, a fact that angers several of the
Congressmen. Speaking in her stead, Crow says, "Questions have been
raised about whether Army psychiatrists and psychologists are
misdiagnosing soldiers with personality disorder instead of correctly
diagnosing PTSD or traumatic brain injury." If they are misdiagnosing
soldiers, says Crow, "this would be wrong."
Pollock's consultant says that the surgeon general is reviewing the
cases of 295 soldiers discharged with personality disorder. Pollock
will conduct the review, says Crow, by having "a team of senior mental
health providers" look over the soldiers' paperwork.
Filner shakes his head, baffled. "The first panel shocked me," says
Filner, referring to Town's testimony. "You guys shocked me even more."
The allegation "that there's a systematic and policy-driven
misdiagnosis of PTSD as personality disorder to get rid of soldiers
early, to prevent any expenditures in the future, which were calculated
in the billions of dollars...it's a pretty serious allegation." Crow
looks back at Filner. He says nothing. "And if you think that we're
going to believe an evaluation of 295 cases, whichever ones you happen
to pick--that we're going to believe what you say--I'll tell you now,
I'm not going to believe it. So why bother?" says the chairman. "Let's
have an independent evaluation."
When the hearing ends, Crow exits. Several Congressmen walk toward
the gallery to shake Town's hand. The hearing went well, says the
soldier. He was glad to hear support on both sides of the aisle for the
Bond/Obama amendment to freeze 5-13 discharges and its companion
legislation in the House, HR 3167, put forward by Congressman Phil Hare
and others.
Now that Town has gotten his VA benefits, his eye has turned toward
the national issue of 5-13 discharges. That is where there's a lot of
work left to be done, he says. Town points out that still today, not a
single person has been held responsible for the 5-13 discharges--not
Surgeon General Pollock, not Colonel Knorr, not even the Army
psychologist who diagnosed his personality disorder, Dr. Mark Wexler.
And there hasn't been any effort to go back through the files and
find the thousands of Jon Towns who are struggling right now without
benefits or the media spotlight. "The Army needs to go back and find
these guys," says the specialist. "They need to show up and say, 'We
apologize--and we're here to rectify the situation.'"
Until that happens, he says, his work is not done.
People everywhere want the war to end, but Washington has failed to take decisive action. 
When U.S. peace activists Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright were refused entry into Canada, it sent a chilling message to activists everywhere. As Medea writes in the Huffington Post:
"We were "inadmissible". If we ever wanted to enter Canada, they warned us, we would have to go to a Canadian consulate and try to get "criminally rehabilitated." The charges? Three convictions: one for unlawful assembly at the White House on International Women's Day 2002; one for speaking out during a Congressional hearing in 2003; and one for trespassing when a group tried to deliver 152,000 anti-war signatures to the US Mission to the UN in March 2005.
By Medea Benjamin
As a young hippie in the mid '70s hitch-hiking across Europe and Africa, I encountered tremendous hostility towards Americans because of US foreign policy. My government was killing people in Vietnam, supporting the white racists in South Africa, and had just overthrown Salvador Allende's democratic government in Chile. Ashamed, I looked northward and saw the enlightened Canadian government of Pierre Trudeau. When I heard John Lennon say that "if all politicians were like Pierre Trudeau there would be world peace," I was sold. Sight unseen, I adopted Canada as my spiritual homeland. I drew a maple leaf on my backpack, added "eh?" at the end of my sentences, and started calling myself a Canadian.
Over the years, I have reconciled myself to being a U.S. citizen and have dedicated my life to making my government one I can be proud of. But I continue to have a soft spot for Canada. I admire Canada's commitment to health care for all. The government's rational policy towards Cuba allows Canadians to vacation in Varadero while Americans are prohibited from "bathing with the enemy." Peace-loving Americans are forever grateful to Canada for accepting Vietnam war resisters and for spearheading the international treaty against landmines. And when Canada refused to join George Bush's Coalition of the Willing to invade Iraq, the US peace movement showered the Canadian Embassy with flowers and thanks.
While I no long self-identify as Canadian, my ties to Canada are deep. The fair trade organization I cofounded, Global Exchange, has joined Canadian NGOs and labor unions to oppose NAFTA and other trade policies that hurt the poor and the environment. We organize cross-border strategy sessions on how to make businesses greener and more socially responsible. We pressure the auto companies to produce more fuel-efficient cars. We jointly visit factories from Mexico to China to improve conditions for workers making goods sold in our stores.
When I cofounded the women's peace group CODEPINK to prevent war with Iraq, we were honored to have Canadian parliamentarians stand with us in front of the White House during our four-month vigil. After the invasion, we joined with Canadians to set up an Occupation Watch Center in Baghdad. And with more and more US soldiers from Iraq seeking refuge in Canada, we work with Canadians to support this new wave of war resisters.
It's not just war resisters making a beeline north. Some of our best peace activists, beaten down by the Bush administration, have immigrated to Canada. Others of us, determined to stay and struggle on our home turf, keep in the back of our minds that if the situation in the U.S. gets really bad, Canada will be our "exit strategy."
But my whole idea of a tolerant, independent Canada that we could retreat to came crashing down on October 4. With my colleague Ann Wright, a retired US Army Colonel and career diplomat who resigned in opposition to the US invasion of Iraq, I was going to Toronto to meet with the Stop the War Coalition. We crossed the border at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls. While most U.S. visitors are simply waved through with no screening, Ann and I were selected for a background check.
Let me preface what happened next with some context about the war itself and the U.S. peace movement. We have watched in horror as our leaders took this nation to war based on lies, since Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction and was never a threat to the United States. We have agonized over the death of some 4,000 U.S. soldiers. We have been heartbroken over the destruction of the cradle of civilization, with this war leaving some one million Iraqis dead, over 4 millions refugees, a wrecked infrastructure and a crumbling economy.
To counter this ongoing tragedy, many Americans, including Ann Wright and myself, have been working non-stop to bring our troops home. We left our homes and families to crisscross the country educating and mobilizing the public. We organized demonstrations, vigils, email blasts, call-in weeks, lobby days, media campaigns. And we turned to the ballot box to elect a new Congress in November 2006 with a mandate for peace.
But nothing worked. Despite having the majority of the public on our side, the Bush administration upped troop levels and the new Congress continued to fund the war.
So we took a page from the hallowed tradition of non-violence civil disobedience -- a tactic used by the civil rights movement, the suffragists, the gay rights activists, the disability movement, the environmentalists, the animal rights folks. It's a critical part of our heritage, our culture, our social change toolbox.
We organized mass arrests in front of the White House. (All you have to do to get arrested in front of the White House, by the way, is just stand there.) We did sit-ins in the offices of elected officials. We laid down in the streets, actions called "die-ins", to mourn the tragic deaths of US soldiers and Iraqis. For these protests, we have been arrested and convicted of minor misdemeanors. We are always peaceful -- remember, we're a peace movement -- and we have even developed a camaraderie with the DC police who understand our aims and respect our right to protest.
So, here we were at the Canadian border. The border officer checked our passports on a computer, and told us to sit down. More and more border guards gathered in a huddle, intensively discussing our situation. Then they called us, one at a time, to review our "criminal records."
I was shown a two-sheet print-out that had three convictions: one for unlawful assembly at the White House on International Women's Day 2002; one for speaking out during a Congressional hearing in 2003; and one for trespassing when a group of us tried to deliver 152,000 anti-war signatures to the US Mission to the UN in March 2005. Ann was also questioned about her arrests, all of which were minor misdemeanors -- the equivalent of parking tickets -- for which she had paid fines.
How, we wondered, did the Canadians obtain these records? They told us that the information came from an FBI database called NCIC or National Crime Information Center. This database was created to assist U.S. law enforcement agencies in finding fugitives, convicted sex offenders, missing persons, and members of terrorist organizations and violent gangs. Its purpose is to track dangerous criminals, not peace activists. And Canada is the only foreign country that has access to this database.
After almost three hours, we were escorted into a back room where three officials told us the grim news. Canada does not allow anyone into the country who has committed a criminal offense, no matter how minor the offence, they said. The border guards were almost apologetic, telling us that they knew we were not "bad people," but the law is the law: We were "inadmissible". If we ever wanted to enter Canada, they warned us, we would have to go to a Canadian consulate and try to get "criminally rehabilitated."
It turns out, as we later learned at the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC, that the request for "criminal rehabilitation" is a long, complex process that entails getting court records, police records, fingerprints, verification of residence for 10 years -- 18 pages of information. But don't even bother, the head of the Consulate advised us, because we wouldn't be eligible. You have to be clear of all offenses for five years before applying.
Wow! It was hard to believe that the country that had, for decades, welcomed Vietnam war resisters with open arms was closing its doors to peacemakers protesting a war that is not supported by either US or Canadian citizens. George Bush, who is responsible for so much needless death and destruction, is wined and dined by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. And we, the peacemakers who hold all life sacred and cry out to stop the violence, are deemed a danger to Canada!
Yes, it is outrageous that the FBI is placing peace activists on an international criminal database -- a blatant political intimidation of US citizens opposed to Bush administration policies. But the Canadian Border Service should not be using this FBI database as its Bible. We have seen in the case of Maher Arar the tragic consequences that can result from the unquestioning use of these databases.
Fortunately, the grassroots response to our ordeal has been heartwarming. The day we posted a petition on our website, thousands of people on both sides of the border began signing and posting comments expressing their outrage. The Canadian press took the government to task. Typical was the October 6 Toronto Star editorial calling us middle-aged activists who specialize in "chanting 'Give peace a chance' in inappropriate places." Canada should be on the lookout for "brazen criminals, not brazen peace activists," it concluded.
Members of Parliament contacted us immediately. MP Olivia Chow sent an angry letter to the Canadian Consul General in Buffalo, NY. "I am alarmed to learn that Canadian border police are enforcing rules that have been determined by the FBI and other U.S.-based agencies," she wrote. "In Canada, peaceful protest is not a criminal activity, despite how some U.S. agencies may regard it."
Another Member of Parliament, Alexa McDonough, called to apologize on behalf of Canadian citizens. Determined to change the policy, she is working on an invitation for us to speak before the Canadian Parliament.
As we pointed out to the Canadian press and Parliamentarians, if Canada's policy of excluding anyone with a misdemeanor conviction were truly enforced, the results would be absurd.
* Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez would never have entered the country.
* Dolores Huerta of farmworker fame would be barred for her 22 arrests for workers' rights.
* Actor Martin Sheen, the President in the TV series West Wing and a devout Catholic, would be blacklisted for his 70 arrests promoting struggles from a living wage to nuclear disarmament.
* Singer Bonnie Raitt would be expelled for protesting the clearcutting of forests.
* Actress Daryl Hannah would be inadmissible for trying to save an urban garden in Los Angeles.
* Eighty-year-old California Congressman Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor and chair of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, would be banned for his 2006 arrest outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington to protest genocide in Darfur. So would 12 other Congresspeople, including Barbara Lee, the only one who voted against a violent response to the 9/11 tragedy with her prescient plea that we "not become the evil we deplore."
* Americans arrested for protesting the Iraq war, and therefore "inadmissible", would include Nobel Prize winner Jody Williams, writer Alice Walker, Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, peace mom Cindy Sheehan, as well as thousands ordinary schoolteachers, nurses, retirees and college students.
At a press conference outside the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC the day after our ouster, I mentioned that Canada is the only foreign country using this FBI database. A journalist sidled up to me afterwards and said, in confidence, "If I were you, instead of saying Canada is the only country, I'd say Canada is the first to use the U.S. database. Canada is a bellwether. If it gets away with this, other countries, under U.S. pressure, will follow. And your world will become smaller and smaller."
When I cofounded the organization Global Exchange almost 20 years ago with the goal of building people-to-people ties between nations, I pictured a world moving beyond nationalist divisions to a world of global citizenship with human rights for all. I never imagined a post 9/11 world where my country would attack other nations "preemptively", saturate the border with concrete fences and armed guards, and imprison people without charges, indefinitely. And I certainly never thought that I would be barred from seeking advice and solace from our neighbors to the north.
With the U.S. gripped by fear, overwhelmed by militarism, and indifferent to the protection of individual rights, we -- U.S. peace activists -- need Canada. We need Canada to be a bastion of tolerance and common sense. We need Canada to counterbalance to our nation's hysteria. We need Canada to inspire us. We need Canada to embrace us when we feel like strangers in our own home.
We come in peace. We come with humility. Please don't forsake us in our time of need.
Medea Benjamin is cofounder of the human rights group Global Exchange and the women's peace organization CODEPINK. You can sign the petition at www.codepinkalert.org/canada.