I just received the attached letter from Senator Leahy and the Green Mountain PAC. Senator Leahy and the 3,000 members of the Green Mountain PAC have succeeded in doing something that will help the veterans and active duty personnel whose identities were stolen from the VA due to the criminal negligence of their personnel and Secretary Jim Nicholson. Veterans will now have one year of free credit monitoring to help them cope with this problem.
Follow me below the fold to join, contribute, or read the whole text of the letter:
However, I do not see in the letter any method for telling veterans that they have this service. Since my experience with the VA is that they don't even want to tell you what medical services your are entitled to, I believe they won't tell the veterans. I'm posting it as a diary here on DailyKos to reach the largest audience I can. I hope I can also get a shout-out of approval for Senator Pat Leahy who is showing again how to be an effective representative without being part of the majority party. And may I also recommend Green Mountain PAC, as an organization with a relatively small enrollment, which is also proving very effective!
If you'd like to either join or contribute to Green Mountan PAC, the links are below the fold:
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The last diary on Kos dealing with this situation that I could find for your reference is:
Dear Veteran: A letter from the VA; Diary byLousiana Fury
Here's the letter from Senator Leahy, in it's entirety:
Your emails made a difference!
Thanks to you and more than 3,000 members of the Green Mountain PAC community, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson announced on Wednesday that he would agree to provide one year of free credit monitoring services to the 28 million veterans and active duty personnel whose personal data was stolen last month.
All I can say is, better late than never! This is an important victory for our nation's veterans and for the brave men and women still in uniform. But clearly, you and I and the Green Mountain PAC community's collective powers of persuasion can be a powerful catalyst for change, and we've helped change Secretary Nicholson's mind on an issue that affects millions of veterans and their families.
As you recall, sensitive personal information of more than 26 million veterans and 2 million active duty military personnel was stolen from a VA employee's laptop in May. Secretary Nicholson withheld this information from Congress and the public for 19 full days after the security breach -- and, in fact it wasn't until 2 weeks ago that we learned that active duty military personnel were also affected.
Providing these 28 million Americans with free credit monitoring services is the least we can do to give them some peace of mind and prevent identify theft.
I welcome Secretary Nicholson's belated decision to do right by our veterans and military personnel, and I thank you so much for your help in making Secretary Nicholson see the light!
Sincerely,
Patrick Leahy
U.S. Senator