An innocent and reportedly depressed Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1968-71) suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and serving a four-year sentence for wire fraud since March 2007, has for reasons unclear been moved and caged in solitary confinement in a federal prison in Minnesota for almost a month, according to the veteran's wife.
Roberts was targeted by the US Dept of Veterans Affairs (VA) in 2003-05, and became the central figure in an Alice-in-Wonderland tale, after U.S. Attorney Stephen Biskupic of Wisconsin and top VA officials schemed to convict Roberts’ of fraudulently receiving VA benefits (by wire transfer as the VA requires).
Despite hostility from high quarters of the VA, Roberts may be again granted the benefits for which he is federal prison for receiving.
U.S. Atty Biskupic is the same U.S. Atty who infamously prosecuted an innocent Wisconsin woman in a political prosecution, and several innocent Wisconsin citizens for voter fraud in apparent service to the needs of the national GOP.
The honorably discharged Roberts, from Gillett, Wisconsin (Oconto county)veteran, has a criminal appeal pending before the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and simultaneously has an administrative appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims’ (CAVC) on his VA disability case, litigating the same set of facts before two judicial forums.
Roberts and his veteran allies hope for a decision this sometime this year.
Roberts’ U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs (VA) claim for his diagnosed PTSD (granted and since challenged repeatedly and denied by the VA) is related to, among other stressors, trying to save his friend, Florida native Airman Gary Holland, from being crushed to death by a C-54 airplane while stationed at a naval air base in Naples, Italy in 1969.
The U.S. Dept. of Justice, in the office of US Atty Stephen Biskupic, made the unusual argument of contending (and convincing a jury in federal court) that Holland and Roberts were not friends (an assertion knocked down) and that Roberts was not part of an unsuccessful rescue effort to save Airman Holland, though Roberts was on line duty at the time and the base equivalent of general quarters had sounded as Holland slowly was crushed to death.
Roberts' wife, Delores, sent the following e-mail to this writer over the weekend.
There is nothing at my end of the world to relate to anyone that is good news. Keith has been in solitary for well over a month, no word yet as to why he is there, he can not make telephone calls and when we visited him one month ago he had just been placed there and no word as to why. He is allowed to make one telephone call per month. … He has not heard from the 7th nor from the CAVC. … If you know anyone that would be interested in going to national news on TV or otherwise, that would probably help. Don't know what to do or what to think. (Too) damn depressed, just (to) do the daily functioning, go to work, eat, sleep and occasionally clean house only when needed. Nothing else to report, the rest of the story is too damn depressing to even talk about.
Veteran-advocacy groups deride the delivery of health care and disability benefits to our veterans today as just another example of Bush administration incompetence in administering government services and entitlements to which it is ideologically hostile, a la FEMA and disaster relief.
Roberts had hounded the VA to distraction and when he accused the VA of outright fraud in 2003, one VA Special Agent Raymond Vasil retaliated against this Vietnam-era veteran for seeking retroactive PTSD-related disability benefits—administrative events by Vietnam-era veterans that are politically unpopular with the American Enterprise Institute and the Bush administration.
It is in this context that Roberts was reportedly argumentative and insulting to the VA, accusing the VA of fraud.
“[T]he only reason Airman Roberts was ever prosecuted was because he was a ‘belligerent ass’ who kept insisting that he get paid back to discharge. He was demanding an appeal in Washington,” said the source at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee who e-mailed the Lee Rayburn radio show in Madison in early June 2007 about the Roberts affair. “I'd have to say that you guys are TOTALLY (uppercase in the original) right about Roberts' conviction being bullshit ...”
On August 16, 2004, the VA halted the benefits being paid to Roberts based upon Vasil’s investigation; Roberts appealed the decision on September 14, 2004, and was indicted seven months later.
The case has also drawn the attention of Harper's magazine contributor and human rights attorney, Scott Horton:
(T)ake a look at another prosecution brought in Wisconsin against a wounded vet, whose claims for benefits was turned into a criminal prosecution for wire fraud. As Wisconsin Public Radio reports, Keith Roberts, a Navy veteran got into the U.S. attorney’s crosshairs by filing a claim for benefits related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) diagnosed as occurring because he witnessed and tried to prevent his friend from being crushed to death by a C-54 airplane while stationed at a Naval air base in Naples, Italy 1969, and unrelated assault by the Navy Shore Patrol—granted and then denied, has not yet been decided by the CAVC. But the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) after being accused of fraud in 2003 by Roberts ignored the CAVC process and investigated and asked that Roberts be prosecuted for fraud by the US Attorney’s office.
The prosecution smacks of retaliation and a plan to suppress veterans claims—Roberts was prosecuted for tenaciously pursuing a claim for benefits, which VA resisted and which is still in the benefits review process. It may be that the veteran is making claims which shouldn't’t be granted, but the decision to resist them by a criminal complaint is very heavy handed. What happens if the Veterans’ Appeals process rules for Roberts? As I read these papers, that seems possible. ...
Legal questions and legal comments can be e-mailed to Robert Walsh at: rpwalsh@sbcglobal.net.
[Much of the above piece has been previously published in numerous veteran advocates' media.]
Veterans' advocates ask that you please contact the following members of Congress expressing your objection that Roberts was:
- Singled out by the VA and prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney because he spoke out against the fraudulent and slow VA
- Was prosecuted for wire fraud while his VA disability benefits claim was and is still being adjudicated in the VA claims process
Rep. John Conyers, Jr
Chair, House Committee on the Judiciary
E-mail: John.Conyers@mail.house.gov
(Phone) (313) 961-5670(Fax) (313) 226-2085
Rep. Tammy Baldwin
Member, House Committee on the Judiciary
E-mail: Field: http://tammybaldwin.house.gov/get_address.html
(Phone) (608) 258-9800
(Fax) (608) 258-9808
Contributions can be sent to:
Keith A. Roberts Defense Fund, Inc.
c/o Kentucky Neighborhood Bank
201 E. Lincoln Trail Blvd.
Radcliff, KY 40160
Media on Keith Roberts
- National VA Director Pushed US Atty Biskupic to Indict Wisconsin Veteran
- New Evidence in Jailed Vet Case, Witness Contradicts Prosecution in E-Mail
- More Evidence Clears Innocent Jailed Wisconsin Veteran
- Jailed Wis Vet Makes Due Process, Evidence Arguments in Appeal
- Fighting the US DoJ and the VA in Two Courts at Once
- DoJ Memo Conflicts with U.S. Atty Biskupic Address at Oral Arguments for Jailed Wisconsin Vet
- Harper's Magazine. Scott Horton: US Attorneys' scandal - US Atty Stephen Biskupic
- Wisconsin Public Radio News (May 10, 2007)
- The Lee Rayburn show (June 29, 2007)
- Keith Roberts' Atty. on the Lee Rayburn show (June 6, 2007)
- The Lee Rayburn show (May 24; 2007 begins at 44 min., 24 sec.)
Oral Arguments in U.S. v. Roberts
Access oral arguments. [Enter 07-1546 in the Case Number's fields by entering 07 in the "Year," and entering 1546 in the "Year Fragment's" field. Give the file some 45 seconds at least to load.]
Below is a piece from June 7, 2007 disconfirming much of the US Atty's case against Roberts.
June 7, 2007
More Dismantlement of Case Against Jailed Wisconsin Veteran
By Michael Leon
Madison, Wisconsin—An analysis reveals more corroboration of the account of a Vietnam-era airman who witnessed a colleague's death in a gruesome C-54 aircraft accident in 1969 at a Naval Air Facility in Naples, Italy and is now imprisoned for wire fraud.
The crushing death of Airman Gary Holland in the wheel well of the C-54 set in motion a chain of events that 36 years later led the US Veterans Administration (VA) and the US Atty for the Eastern District of Wisconsin in 2006 to indict and convict a veteran, Airman Keith Roberts (1968-71), diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), on charges of wire fraud, arguing that Roberts fabricated his role at the death scene and his relationship with Holland, defrauding the VA.
Roberts is currently is serving 48 months in federal prison.
The US v. Keith A. Roberts indictment on mail fraud (April 26, 2005) and later superseded by an indictment on wire fraud alleges in part that Roberts in his “(s)cheme to (d)efraud” the VA “falsely represented material information to the VA” including “that Roberts and airman Gary (Holland) were close friends and roommates.”In fact, an analysis obtained from Roberts wife, Deloris Roberts, of the service histories Gary Holland and Keith Roberts reveals parallel military careers that would make it unlikely that Holland and Roberts were not at least friendly in their relationship, and that contradicts the prosecution’s indictment and trial statements.
Holland and Roberts:
- Took two weeks-long classes together while stationed together in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968
- Were quartered in the same barracks at Lakehurst, NJ where they also trained together for weeks
- Went into the Naval Air Force base in Naples, Italy together as two young airman
- Slept in close quarters (feet away from each other) while at Naval Air Station base in Naples, Italy
- Worked in the same and only base air hangar together
- Took an advancement test together on the morning of the day Holland was killed on Feb. 4, 1969
“I’d say there was a pretty good chance that Keith Roberts and Gary Holland were friends,” said Deloris Roberts. “The prosecution must know this fact.”
Very little exculpatory information was introduced at Roberts’ trial by his court-appointed attorney, and much exculpatory information was not introduced.
VA Policy
After being diagnosed with PTSD and granted disability benefits, Roberts had no idea that political and bureaucratic forces allied with (then) VA Secretary Jim Nicholson in 2004-05 were determined to adopt the policies of the rightwing think tank, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), ultimately resulting in Roberts’ prosecution after Roberts phoned the VA and complained that the VA were engaging in fraud in processing his PTSD disability claim.
Roberts's phone call and accusation of VA fraud sounded the alarm bells at the VA.Under the Bush administration, the VA is using propaganda to defend a reduction in benefits to veterans with PTSD, and redirect blame towards the troops themselves, often dismissing the PTSD as a mere pre-existing personality disorder, not requiring VA disability benefits, as 100,000s of troops return home form Iraq and Afghanistan damaged and forgotten.
Roberts’ benefits were ultimately cut after his phone call, and US Atty Stephen Biskupic's office used the VA benefits-severed administrative fact as a means of prosecuting Roberts in a criminal process.
Biskupic is the enforcer of a new VA policy adopted from the AEI that veterans suffering from PTSD wallow in a "culture of trauma" and do not deserve "entitlements;" and what Roberts attorney calls "a VA culture of claims denial that has turned into a criminalization of the disability claims process."
Roberts remains a warning to other Vietnam-era veterans suffering from PTSD to not file for PTSD benefits.
MALContends blog
Monday, April 7, 2008
Keith Roberts update
Friday, April 4, 2008
Senator Boxer supports new " Purple Heart Stamp"
Dear Friend:
I am pleased to let you know that I am supporting an effort to have a new “forever stamp” issued honoring our veterans who have been awarded the Military Order of the Purple Heart. “Forever stamps” are a new class of stamps that meet first-class postage requirements even when postage rates increase.
It is very fitting that recipients of the Purple Heart, the oldest military decoration in the world that is still in use, be honored with this new class of stamps. First established by General George Washington in 1782, the Purple Heart is awarded to members of the armed forces who are wounded or killed in an action. More than 1,700,000 Americans have been awarded the Purple Heart in our nation’s history.
The original Purple Heart postage stamp was first issued by the United States Postal Service in 2003, and issuing a new “forever stamp” will continue to honor the sacrifices of the brave men and women who have been awarded the Purple Heart.
Sincerely,
Barbara Boxer
United States Senator
McCain to Meet With Secret Service
McCain to Meet With Secret Service
Who's Blogging» Links to this article
By DAVID ESPO
The Associated Press
Friday, April 4, 2008; 12:55 PM
MEMPHIS -- Sen. John McCain intends to meet with Secret Service officials in the next several days in preparation for accepting security protection for the final several months of his White House bid, campaign officials said Friday.
These officials said no meeting had yet been arranged.
They made the disclosure one day after the head of the Secret Service, Mark Sullivan, took the unusual step of discussing McCain's lack of government security at an open meeting with members of the House Appropriations Committee.
The campaign aides said they did not know precisely when McCain would agree to accept the protection. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they did not want to pre-empt events.
The Arizona senator has effectively wrapped up the Republican presidential nomination.
"Statutorily, he is not required to take protection," Sullivan said when asked about McCain's security during a hearing on the agency's budget. "As far as an actual request, we have not gotten one. We have no involvement at this point."
McCain has said previously he does not want Secret Service protection, fearing it would interfere with his brand of intimate campaigning with voters. McCain also has said he'll try to last as long as he can without it.
"I've never done it. After we won New Hampshire in 2000, they really tried to get us, but we said no," McCain said last November while campaigning in Concord, N.H. "It's an invasion of your ability to have contact with voters."
McCain to meet with Secret Service
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I guess he finally came to the conclusion to "look Presidential" you need the Secret Service detail "The President" has, so if you are going to play on the same playing field as Senators Clinton and Obama it's time to start charging the govt for letting SS agents ride your airplane and stay at your house.....
Veterans Of Top Secret Project Still Await Care
Veterans being shafted by the government
Veterans Of Top Secret Project Still Await Care
Reporting
Anna Werner SANTA ROSA (CBS 5) ― It sounds like a bad dream. You suspect that your job made you sick, but if you tell anyone—even your doctor—the government will send you to prison.
That's the real-life dilemma faced by thousands of military men who worked on a hazardous, Top Secret experiment called "Project SHAD," which stands for "Shipboard Hazard and Defense." It was part of America's race against the Russians in the 1960s to develop biological and chemical weapons.
Now, many of the men who worked on Project SHAD are sick, and asking why the U.S. government won't take care of them.
Our video report has more.
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
http://cbs5.com/services/popoff.aspx?categoryId=129&videoId=32832@kpix.dayport.com&videoPlayStatus=false&videoStoryIds=32832@kpix.dayport.com&videoTime=&
Thursday, April 3, 2008
VA fails at PTSD care, lawsuit charges
PTSD Lawsuit
VA fails at PTSD care, lawsuit charges
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Apr 3, 2008 10:13:27 EDT
Veterans for Common Sense is suing the Department of Veterans Affairs because, the group says, VA is so thoroughly bogged down with a backlog of 600,000 benefits claims that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder are not receiving the care they need.
The trial begins April 21 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The lawsuit, which names VA Secretary Dr. James Peake as defendant, — is a class action filed by a large group of veterans who allege “a system-wide breakdown” in the way the government treats veterans with PTSD. They say several suicidal veterans have unsuccessfully sought VA mental health care.
Representatives from veterans service organizations, VA and mental health experts are expected to testify.
According to Gordon Erspamer, an attorney representing the veterans pro bono, the lawsuit challenges a backlog in handling claims, “appellate delays of five to 10 years” for disability ratings, waiting lists and the “inadequacy of VA care for PTSD.”
The suit asks for immediate medical help, as well as screening for suicidal thoughts, for troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
At a House Veterans Affairs health subcommittee hearing Tuesday, Ira Katz, VA’s deputy chief patient care services officer for mental health, said 60,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have received a preliminary diagnosis of PTSD.
In the past two and a half years, he said, VA has hired 3,800 new mental health workers. In February, VA announced plans to open 23 new vet centers and establish mental health counseling by phone.
However, several service members have slipped through the cracks, often tragically. In one case, former Marine Lance Cpl. Justin Bailey killed himself while in VA’s residential substance abuse program. His father, Tony Bailey, testified that his son didn’t see a psychiatrist while he was in the program, even though he had been diagnosed with PTSD.
Another veteran, former Marine Lance Cpl. Jonathan Schulze, tried to check himself into mental health care because he said he was suicidal, but VA representatives told him they’d have to put him on a waiting list. He also killed himself.
The waiting lists themselves have gained notoriety. Though Peake has said waiting times have been shortened, he said at a hearing in February that VA still needs to work that issue.
“In April 2006, there were over 250,000 unique patients waiting more than 30 days for their desired appointment date for health-care services; that’s not acceptable,” Peake told the House Veterans' Affairs Committee at a Feb. 7 hearing.
“As of Jan. 1, 2008, we had reduced the waiting list to just over 69,000. Our budget request for 2009 provides the resources necessary ... to virtually eliminate the waiting list by the end of next year.”
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It's not so much they fail at the treatment of the veterans, once a veteran is in the VA Mental Health treatment system, it works, and it works well, I know I have been in it since Jan 2003, I can call my shrink and get a walk in appt anytime, I am 100% SC for PTSD though so I am in the top treatment category, so I don't know if the guys not rated or with lower rating awards are treated differently, I imagine they are, the true problem lays in the compensation claims process, it can really take years if not a decade or longer to get a proper rating, they put your file on what many of us call the "hamster wheel" from the Gerional Office to the Board of Veteran Appeals they remand it to the RO for additional C&P exams, or another opinion, etc, then the RO again denies or low balls the claim requiring the veteran to again appeal to the BVA and wait years for a hearing and then they do it all over again. I know one lady that just won a mental health award from the Appeals Management Team that goes back to 1987, and may end up going back to 1969 shen she was discharged and VA failed to get her treatment records from the Navy. The games they play are ridiculous.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Woodruff, Dozier Get Peabody Awards
Bob Woodruff and Kimberly Dozier win Peabody Awards for their Reports on Iraq War Injured
ATLANTA (AP) — Stories about wounded Iraq veterans, reported by war-wounded TV journalists, won Peabody Awards on Wednesday.
Thirty-five recipients of the 67th annual George Foster Peabody awards for broadcasting excellence in news and entertainment were announced by the University of Georgia ahead of a ceremony in New York City on June 16.
Peabodys went to "Wounds of War — The Long Road Home for Our Nation's Veterans," a series of reports by ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff, and to "CBS News Sunday Morning: The Way Home" for Kimberly Dozier's piece about two women veterans who lost limbs in Iraq.
Dozier and Woodruff survived near-fatal attacks while on assignment in Iraq.
Another CBS News series, "60 Minutes," won a Peabody for Scott Pelley's report, "The Killings in Haditha."
"The range of genres, the variety of topics and the consistently high quality of submissions for Peabody consideration indicated again that amazing work is being done in electronic media," Peabody Awards director Horace Newcomb said in a statement.
Awards also went to Discovery's "Planet Earth," which used HDTV technology to showcase natural wonders of the world; "Independent Lens" for "Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life," a portrait of Duke Ellington's musical collaborator; "NATURE: Silence of the Bees," an inquiry into the decline in the world's honeybee population from Thirteen/WNET; and WGBH-Boston's "Design Squad," an engineering competition for young people.
Awards for entertainment series went to "30 Rock," Tina Fey's send-up of TV sketch shows and her own network, NBC; and "Project Runway," Bravo's fashion-designer competition.
Peabodys also went to "Mad Men," AMC's drama set in the world of 1960s New York advertising, and "Dexter," Showtime's drama about a serial killer who preys on other sociopaths. "Nimrod Nation" also received a Peabody.
Other recipients included Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" and "A Journey Across Afghanistan: Opium and Roses," a documentary from Bulgaria's Balkan News Corporation.
"Whole Lotta Shakin," the Texas Heritage Music Foundation's public-radio series chronicling the 1950s heyday of rockabilly music received a Peabody, as did "Univision's Ya Es Hora," a public-service campaign that taught legal aliens how to apply for American citizenship.
The University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication has administered the Peabodys in Athens, Ga., since the program's inception in 1940. The awards ceremony in New York will be hosted by NBC news anchor Brian Williams.
On the Net:
Peabody Awards: http://www.peabody.uga.edu/
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As a totally disabled veteran myself I am extremely pleased to hear that these wounded journalists have earned these honors for reporting on the treatment of other war injured people, they could have taken their "fame" and retired in honor, instead they came back before the camera's and told these true American war stories SALUTE
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Father of Ohio soldier missing since 2004 says Army confirms son's death in Iraq
SGT Matt Maupin's remains found
Associated Press - March 30, 2008 7:43 PM ET
BATAVIA, Ohio (AP) - The father of a soldier listed as missing-captured in Iraq since 2004 says the military has informed him that his son's remains were found in Iraq.
Keith Maupin says an Army general told him Sunday that DNA was used to identify the remains of his son, Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin, who went by "Matt."
Matt Maupin was a 20-year-old private first class when he was captured April 9, 2004, after his fuel convoy was ambushed west of Baghdad.
Arab television network Al-Jazeera aired a videotape a week later showing Maupin sitting on the floor surrounded by five masked men holding automatic rifles.
That June, Al-Jazeera aired another tape purporting to show a U.S. soldier being shot. But the dark and grainy tape showed only the back of the victim's head and not the actual shooting.
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As a disabled Infantry Staff Sergeant I am glad that he will now be able to come home the be buried as he deserves, either at home in Ohio or at Arlington, his family has been thru hell during the past 4 years, while he has remained missing, most of us had assumed he had been killed, but you never really know until the body is found. Sometimes the bodies are never found, there are still soldiers from WW2, Korea and Vietnam that have never been brought home, and their families have never had closure. The Maupin family has earned this entire nations respect and admiration for the stoicism and their loss, they're son's loss belongs to all of us as a nation. I SALUTE SGT Matt Maupin, I am glad your family now has closure, welcome back......
