In a highly unusual case involving a veteran who claimed he had PTSD caused by a friend of his being killed in Italy when an airplane engine dropped on him. He filed the claim and it was approved, but the veteran felt he was owed back pay to an earlier effective date.
He raised the issue repeatedly to everyone who would listen and even to those who wouldn't, he even went to the VA office's Inspector General (IG) and filed a complaint, rather than investigate the issue with the handling of his paperwork the VA decides to investigate his PTSD claim and revokes his compensation. Then it only gets worse.
This is where US Attorney Biskupic enters the picture, they decide to prosecute Keith Roberts for "wire fraud" he obtained money from the government by wire transfer, all VA payments are "wire transfers" to the bank of your choice.
The problem with this is, Keith Roberts filed all the proper forms with the VA to appeal their determination to cut off his benefits. He appealed it to the BVA and the Court of Veteran Appeals.
The US Attorney should have waited for all of this to run it's course, because they could very well end up owing Keith Roberts approximately 30,000 a year for the years they stopped paying him.
This is very unusual to prosecute a veteran while the case is pending review by an administration board of the VA, it has never been done before.
Michael Leon has an extensive blog about this case among other things, but this issue just grabs me the wrong way, not only has US Attorney Biskupic had other problems, prosecuting this guy because some people in Washington DC want him prosecuted is just flat wrong. There is one name in the story that caught my attention 2 really one is a really decent person Debi Bevins, she is one of the nicest people I have ever had to deal with at the VA, the other is well less say she is less than totally honest, she accepts baseless facts as being truth and runs with it. Renee Szybala took a lie about my Edgewood experience and called me a liar, the difference is I had the documents to prove what I was stating, she didn't, she took the word of some low level clerk over the phone and she told her lie in writing to Senator Larry Craig, then Chairman of the Senate VA Committee and myself.
I know who I believe in this mess and I think Keith Roberts should be released from jail immediately.
9/03/2007
National VA Director Pushed US Atty Biskupic to Indict Wisconsin Veteran
Madison, Wisconsin—The Bush administration has refused to prosecute even one case of contractor fraud despite the multi-billion-dollar swindling and war-profiteering scandals in Iraq, but pursues a vigorous enterprise to marginalize, investigate, and prosecute veterans receiving disability benefits in an attempt to fabricate a fraud crisis among veterans who were injured and traumatized during their service to their country.
One administration initiative to investigate 72,000 cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was halted in 2005 after a storm of outrage from veterans’ groups and democrats.
In the PTSD case of U.S. Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1968–71) the U.S. Dept of Justice in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Stephen Biskupic, decided to indict a Wisconsin Vietnam-era Navy veteran (who was diagnosed with PTSD by at least five different mental health professionals), using the power of his office to convict and jail the vet on trumped-up charges of wire fraud in 2004-2005.
The case has potentially vast repercussions because if Roberts’ criminal conviction and denial and reduction of benefits stand, every veteran who has a disability case pending in the VA bureaucracy is theoretically in legal jeopardy.
Who or what prompted the U.S. Atty’s office is a puzzle to many readers who have followed the case of Airman Keith Roberts who has been serving 48 months in a federal prison since last March, as well as incurring associated costs of some $500,000.
But several VA e-mails point to top officials in the VA engineering a criminal prosecution while gaming the veteran’s VA benefits adjudication, and subsequently putatively financially assaulting the veteran’s family.
The only law enforcement agency used in the Grand Jury testimony securing the indictments was the regional VA Inspector General’s office, not a professional law enforcement agency, but an office that operated vindictively in the person of Special Agent Vasil and his colleagues; and was run at the executive level by ex-VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, a former Republican National Committee chairman with no veteran advocacy experience, in an administration taking its cues from the veterans’ benefits-hostile American Enterprise Institute scholar, Dr. Sally Satel.
Renee L. Szybala and VA Officials Plot to Take Down Roberts
But at the VA, lawyers and regional counsels are the good guys, the professionals who adhere to the law and administrative regulations that on paper are supposed to protect veterans from arbitrary and capricious VA personnel, the yes-men who climb the ladder in the denial-of-claims culture of today’s politicized VA.
One yes-person, former VA General Counsel attorney and VA national Director of Compensation and Pension Services, Renee L. Szybala, authored the VA’s response to Robert's letter, and evidence suggests engineered the prosecution of Roberts by US Atty Biskupic.
Please go to Michael Leon's blog and read the entire article and what has transpired over the past year, it will shock most of you, but in the meantime Keith Roberts sits in jail.....
This is an abuse of prosecutorial power by the government, and a PTSD veteran is in jail, the last place he needs to be.
If you have a few minutes there is an address for Keith and with all the time he has on his hands, I am sure he would enjoy a letter, or even a note. This is not a request for funds, thats not my style. But some verbal support would be a great thing.
UPDATE Michael Leon will be on the Lee Raybum show at 8:00 EST tonight talking about this case online radio click on earphones under countdown clock