"How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits"

Joshua Kors, an investigative reporter for The Nation, won a 2008 Casey Medal for his work uncovering a veterans' benefits scandal.

How did you learn that soldiers wounded in Iraq were being inappropriately diagnosed as having personality disorders and consequently denied benefits?

I was doing a series of profiles about soldiers returning from Iraq.  Specialist Jon Town was supposed to be the fifth, but his story didn’t make any sense: He said he was knocked unconscious by a rocket in Iraq … so they diagnosed him with personality disorder.

I remember that conversation very well. There was an awkward pause.  And I said, “A rocket wound due to … ‘personality disorder’?” I don’t think Town knew just how weird his words were. Certainly neither of us knew this would lead to a widespread scandal. It was almost like that scene in the beginning of “Erin Brockovich,” where the woman casually mentions that she keeps getting these cancerous lumps and says, “but don’t worry, the water company pays my medical bills.”

As a journalist, you’re trained: when something doesn’t make sense, that’s where you dig. So I dug. When I found out that 22,500 soldiers like Town had been discharged in recent years for preexisting personality disorders — and that those discharges were saving the military over $12.5 billion in disability pay and medical care — I knew I had a story.

How were you able to gain access to Army medical records and reports? 

The data on the 22,500 discharged soldiers came directly from the military. Gaining access to the military’s discharge figures was easier than you’d imagine. It’s a strange scandal in that way: The military doesn’t deny doing this. It’s just that nobody has stopped them.

I looked at dozens of cases. To get medical and discharge paperwork, I had to first earn the trust of the soldiers. I have to say, once word got out that I was shedding a light on this problem, soldiers started coming to me, offering their private medical papers. These guys have gone through hell and feel like the military and VA have turned a deaf ear to them. They want America to hear their story.

Senators Barack Obama and Kit Bond introduced a bipartisan bill in July 2007 to halt these fraudulent PD discharges (S.1817).  But the bill hasn’t received much coverage, so there’s little public knowledge of it and thus no public pressure on Congress to pass it.

Was it difficult to get interviews with high-ranking Army officials? 

It was, but persistence is key to all these investigative stories. The Surgeon General of the Army, for example, I must have called her 43 times and left, like, 36 messages before I got her office to respond.

Other times it took a bit of ingenuity. I remember one doctor wouldn’t talk to me at the military base, but I found out that his family ran a fitness center in town. So I called the fitness center. Seconds later, we were doing the interview.

Did you feel pressure to back off the story?

Never. And in the whole time I’ve been reporting on this story — going on 22 months now — I’ve only received one hate letter from a disgruntled reader. Soldiers who read the series have been tremendously supportive, as have many on Capitol Hill.

Was there a turning point in the course of your reporting, a major break at some point in your investigation?

I think I reached a real turning point when I discovered that the Army Surgeon General’s investigation was a sham. She conducted what she called a “thoughtful and thorough” review of several PD cases and determined that the soldiers were all properly diagnosed and discharged. 

With more reporting, I discovered that during her five-month review, never once did she speak to the soldiers whose cases she was reviewing.  All her office did was contact a doctor who oversaw many of the original, false diagnoses. They asked him if the original diagnoses were correct. He said yes, and the Surgeon General shut down the review.

What impact did the series have on policy, procedures, other injured soldiers and the general public?

The biggest change has simply been elevating the issue of fraudulent PD discharges from a nothing to a something — putting it on the national radar. As I mentioned, Senators Obama and Bond introduced bill S.1817, which would halt these fraudulent discharges. A House version of the bill, H.R. 3167, has been put forward by Representative Phil Hare of Illinois. 

In June 2007, 31 senators sent a letter to the Secretary of Defense, urging him to investigate the personality disorder discharge system. A few months later, President Bush signed the Personality Disorder Amendment, part of the Defense Authorization Act, requiring Secretary Gates to conduct a study. Gates’ study on PD discharges was released recently.  We’ll see where things go from here.

For a lot of the soldiers whose cases I’ve looked into, change has thankfully come a lot faster. Following the media spotlight, Town got the VA to step in and declare him 100 percent disabled, even though the Army still insists he’s not disabled at all — despite the rocket wounds, hearing loss and the Purple Heart.

Has this story been a springboard to another project?

It has. I just returned from San Francisco, where a veterans’ group is suing the VA for denying care to wounded soldiers. I’ll be reporting on that and some related issues in the coming months.