Veterans Records Stolen by Tim Bates

Today we heard the story of millions of veterans records being stolen
from the home of a data analyst employee. The employee of the
Department of Veterans Affairs took the information home without authorization and against the Department policy. The employee that has not been identified has been placed on leave pending review of the incident. The Department of Veterans Affairs will be sending out a letter notifying all the affected vets. This includes all veterans discharged after 1975, some of their spouses and anyone that has submitted a claim after 1975.

This means almost all veterans have had their personal information
lost. The Washington Post states “The theft represents the biggest
unauthorized disclosure ever of Social Security data…” If the truth is known,
the information lost is probably much more. Fox News reported that
“The material represents personal data of all living veterans who served
and have been discharged since 1976, according to the department. The
information was included in the veterans’ discharge summary that goes
into a government database.” This almost sounds like the information on a
DD 214, for all the non-military that’s Department of Defense Form 214
or your discharge record. If it was the DD 214 files, that includes
much more than just name and Social Security number. The reason I
believe it may be much more than is being said is the “VA’s Notification
Letter to Veterans” states “The data contained identifying information
including names, social security numbers, and dates of birth for up to 26.5
million veterans and some spouses, as well as some disability ratings.”

My DD 214 states my FULL name, Social Security number, date of birth,
address of record, type of discharge, length of service and date of
discharge, job title, type of security clearance, medals, blood type,
training and more. With this much information you could become me.
Several cases of “misplaced information” have happened in the past. In
2004, ChoicePoint Inc. sent several thousand records to people in the
LA area posing as a debt collection agency. Many people had their
addresses changed to reroute mail like checks and credit card offers. In
the ChoicePoint case, the company offered credit reports and credit
monitoring for one year.

Fox News quoted Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a veteran himself, as saying
he would introduce legislation requiring the VA to provide credit
reports to the vets. My question to Sen. Kerry is for how long do we get
free credit reports and if something goes wrong shouldn’t the VA
supervisors be responsible to correct the problem?

Could this be just a slight of hand to focus our attention elsewhere?
As I researched for this article I went to Veterans Against the Iraq
War, www.vaiw.org and much to my dismay, the House of Representatives is
voting on cutting the VA budget! The headline reads “Republicans Seek
To Slash VA budget!” In the second paragraph it states the House
Budget Committee is reducing President Bush’s proposed budget by about $844 million in health care and an additional $463 million in benefit programs including disability compensation, vocational rehabilitation, education survivor’s benefits and pension programs in next years budget. In addition, the Good Old Party is planning to cut $15 BILLION over the next 10 years from veterans programs. Can you say “Support The Troops”?

All the staunch Republican Conservatives who decried President Clinton
bombing a pharmaceutical factory to draw attention away from his sex
scandal are now hurting the veterans they sent into this illegal, immoral
war. Edward Heath, National Commander of the Disabled American
Veterans stated this could mean the loss of 19,000 nurses. This is equal to
6.6 million outpatient visits or more than three-quarters of a million
hospital bed days. All of this comes at a time when 209,000 Gulf War
veterans have submitted claims to the VA for disability.

Now back to Sen. Kerry and his legislation to require the VA to supply
credit reports to the affected veterans. If the credit reports are
only $5 each mailed to the vet each time, the first round of reports will
cost $132,500,000! Take that much more away from the slashed budget
and the vets will be lucky to get one aspirin at government rates!
This could be slight of hand or maybe have an even more ominous cause.
Many more recently discharged military personnel have told me of the
DNA database compiled to identify bodies. Could this be a plot to get
all the vets in a biometric database? So many of our Servicemen are so
disabled they can’t work to get any other healthcare. This captive
audience may even have to be even chipped to get what little this
government will allow them to have. The retired vets that want the pension they earned will have to submit to the Big Brother database just to get what
is theirs.

And now to the really scary part. This may be just a way to make all
the vets sign up for benefits again and do an evaluation on them. This
is the best way to force all servicemen to update their information.
This gives the government the chance to obtain even deeper profiles to
ensure identity theft can’t happen again. By the way, do you know that
a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C.
ruled that the government does NOT owe free lifetime medical care to World
War Two and Korean War veterans? This ruling saved the government
Billions in health care costs. When do you think the fair and unbiased
black-robed tyrants will rule the same way for all other vets? The court
majority said “Because [the law] at most authorizes space available
treatment and not free health insurance for life, we hold that the Air
Force Secretary lacked the authority in the 1950’s when plaintiffs joined
to promise free and full medical care.” Now just extend this to today
with the budget cuts and you may die before there is space available at
the VA center 500 miles from your home.

With the Depleted Uranium, experimental vaccines and all the diseases
and illnesses we expose our troops to, when will we demand that the ones
that declare war must fight the war? When will we stop big business
from getting rich from the lives of our young men and women? When will
we stop invading other countries just so the bankers can steal our
life’s blood? This must stop here and now! Tell your representatives to
turn around or pick up a gun and fight the war themselves!


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Original Investigative Journalism from the
Columnist Guild News Bureau