Vet Imprisoned for Seeking Benefits

Madison, Wisconsin—Since March 2007, Airman Keith Roberts has been imprisoned, serving the first few months of a four-year sentence for five counts of federal wire fraud.

Keith Roberts filed for disability benefits in 1999 after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by private and public medical health professionals.

Though not nearly as horrific as many, Roberts' Vietnam-era service (1968-74) affected him badly, and includes an incident in which he was assaulted by the Navy Shore Patrol in 1969, and he witnessed a fellow airman killed in a gruesome aircraft accident, also in 1969, at Naples, Italy where he was stationed.

Roberts jumped through all of the hoops that the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) makes claimants jump through, and was granted service-connected benefits for his diagnosed PTSD in 1999 retroactive to 1993 (later revised to1992), and received over $300,000 in benefits.

Roberts and his wife believed that after a paperwork-endurance ordeal in finding all supporting documents that the VA had finally come through and honored his service, and affirmed his medical condition after the long benefits application process.

As a Marine Corp Times piece notes of the benefits process (Kelly Kennedy, April 5, 2007), "'The … disability retirement system stacks the deck against injured soldiers by forcing them to prove they have post-traumatic stress disorder …,' said an Army lawyer who helps soldiers appeal their claims."

Worse than a stacked deck, the VA was headed (and still is) by Jim Nicholson, former Republican National Committee Chair (1997-2000) who sports a resume devoid of experience in veterans' advocacy and seems openly hostile to disability compensation, an appearance Nicholson tries to deflect in public statements.

"The amount of dollars involved (in veteran compensation) is huge and the lives involved are important," Nicholson said. "Our number one goal is to take care of those veterans who are deserving," referring to a 2005 VA Inspector General's report on veterans' compensation.

As Keith Roberts was battling the VA, he had no idea that a confluence of political and bureaucratic forces allied with Secretary Nicholson were about to make his previous ordeal seem a walk in the park by comparison.

Roberts collided with the US government's determination to deceive and treat this veteran like a criminal.

But they maintain reams of paper documents which appear to sustain their narrative of events in which a vet became a victim of a hostile bureaucracy and an overzealous prosecutor.

In November of 2003, Roberts said he contacted the VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) in Illinois by phone, complaining that Roberts had come to believe that the VA was committing fraud in the handling of his benefits claims, according to Roberts' sworn deposition.

The reason behind Roberts' call to the VA is not clear, but he had reportedly become somewhat paranoid, a symptom associated with PTSD.

Roberts spoke to Special Agent Raymond Vasil at the VA OIG who assured Roberts that Vasil would look into the alleged fraud, according to the sworn deposition. Roberts took Vasil's assurance at face value.

Accusing the VA of committing fraud turned out to be a bad move for Roberts' navigation through the VA bureaucracy, which a veteran's advocate called a "culture of denial of veterans' claims, where denying claims gets bureaucrats promoted."

The veteran's advocate spoke on background, out of concern for the political sensitivity of the topic.

After his phone conversation with Roberts, Special Agent Vasil and his assistant Joe Cossairt seized Roberts' VA claims file from the regional VA office in Milwaukee, according to a document in Roberts' VA file dated Dec. 12, 2003.

On March 27, 2004 Special Agent Vasil and Cossairt met with Roberts at his home in Gillett, (Oconto County), Wisconsin, according to Roberts' affidavit, and asked a string of questions that made it clear to Roberts the focus of their questions pertained to the 1969 aircraft accident at Naples, and not the alleged VA fraud.

The VA's Vasil reportedly insisted on a subsequent May 31, 2004 interview to be conducted at the Oconto County Sheriff's office.

At the May 31, 2004 interview, according to Roberts' deposition, Vasil became immediately abusive to Roberts by making a snide remark that "they brought all their paperwork," after Roberts had carried in his large file and supporting evidence.

At the meeting, Vasil asserted that Roberts' 1969 hospitalization after his Shore Patrol incidence was not a valid stressor for the purpose of diagnosing PTSD, though Vasil has no formal authority to issue such a determination, and Roberts had already been diagnosed by medical professionals on this very point. Vasil called Roberts "nothing but a drunk," and reportedly, said the documents Roberts had in possession (a Feb. 6, 1969, "Special Enlisted Personnel Performance Evaluation" pertaining to the death of his fellow airman on Feb. 4, 1969 and consistent with Roberts' said role at the scene) meant "nothing" to Vasil.

Subsequently, after several months of complex machinations through the VA bureaucracy, Roberts' benefits were severed in November 2004.

While Roberts was appealing the decision through the VA channels and was set to appeal to the VA Appeals Court—the US Court of Appeals for Veteran's Claims in Washington D.C.—empowered by federal statute to hear the case, the United States Department of Justice, in the office of the US Atty for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Steven Biskupic, indicted Roberts in April 2005 on six counts of mail fraud.

In September 2005, a superseding indictment changed the charges to five counts of wire fraud.

No investigative agent from the Treasury Department, Secret Service or FBI investigated the allegations of federal mail or wire fraud against Roberts.

Only the VA's Special Agent Vasil conducted an investigation. Though his position title is "special agent," Vasil has no formal law enforcement training or benefit adjudication experience.

Said one hostile veteran advocate, "A cop Vasil is not, just an idiot with a badge."

In one exchange from Vasil's Grand Jury testimony indicating his knowledge of the VA benefits process, upon which the indictment is predicated, Vasil appears weak on his familiarity with VA processes:

Question: "Is that part of your training that you have to know the basics of how these programs work?"

Vasil's Answer: "Yeah. I was briefly kind of instructed when I was hired, and then just while working for them, you have to learn it to investigate the cases."

But Biskupic's office took Roberts to trial, secured a conviction, and this Vietnam-era veteran has been locked up since March.

According to Deloris Roberts, at the trial Roberts' attorney was both unable and apparently disinclined to present any of the exculpatory evidence in Roberts' files to prove his innocence, legal representation that has been criticized by those working with Roberts now.

Biskupic's office says that Roberts "fabricated" his version of events pertaining to the death of his fellow airman.

A phone call to the press offices of the US Atty for the Eastern District of Wisconsin on this story was unreturned.

US Atty Biskupic has recently taken heavy criticism for stretching federal statues to bring federal prosecutions in public corruption cases (one already infamous case tossed out of an appellate court in April and described as composed of evidence that is "beyond thin") and voter fraud cases (similarly criticized by observers).

With the extraordinary federal indictment and trial of Roberts while the VA issue of Roberts' alleged "fraud" was and is still pending administrative action before the VA, and as of August 30, 2005 pending adjudicative action before the US Court of Appeals for Veteran's Claims in D.C. (which has exclusive jurisdiction over VA claims, per United States Code), Biskupic appears to be responding to the Bush administration's hostility to PTSD claims.

In other words, Congress gave the responsibility for the adjudication of VA claims to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, not the Attorney General of the United States.

In its press release noting the sentencing of Roberts, Biskupic's office quotes John W. Brooks, the Special Agent-in-Charge at the VA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in Chicago. "The VA Office of the Inspector General is mindful that fraudulent claims which take money from deserving veterans cannot be tolerated. …," said Brooks, sounding a lot like VA Secretary Nicholson and one American Enterprise Institute scholar, Dr. Sally Satel

One of many reasons that most vets distrust the va is that you have to prove yourself to them & NO benifit of doubt goes to the vet. Also the va regional directors got to split over 5 million dollars in bonuses for saving the va money. I have been diganosed with ptsd and other problems after being run over by an illigal alien [in Yuma, AZ] abd it took over 7 years to get my monies coming in, even after we were homeless for a year & a half.

I even ended up on the domestic terror watch list for a while after I threated to turn the va office center into a somldering crater! [This was well before 9/11 but after OK.City]
So do I trust the va. Just about as far as I can throw the office building that they house themselves in!

I use the dav, but all of the national service officers [who suppose to represent the vet] are on the payroll of the service orig. and the va. This leads me to believe that there is a conflict of interest against the vet’s! So I believe that it is in the interest of the va for the vet to pass away and only have to pay a death benefit to the family at one time instead of taking care of the vet’s who were changed in ways that will never be understood!

We gave up our tomorrows for every bodies elses todays!

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