Congress sees US soldier suicides cover up

Middle East Online First Published 2008-05-07

US lawmakers accuse Veterans' office of covering up American soldier suicides post Iraq invasion.

By Karin Zeitvogel - WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON - US lawmakers accused the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on Tuesday of being out of control and of covering up the high suicide rate among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

"The VA healthcare system has been pushed to the edge in dealing with the mental health care needs of our veterans," Bob Filner, chairman of the House of Representatives' Committee of Veterans' Affairs, told a packed congressional hearing about the issue of suicides among veterans.

The hearing came five months after a first round of testimonials on the same topic, and weeks after a series of internal VA emails about suicides among veterans were brought to light by a documentary on US network television.

In one of the emails, sent in February, Dr Ira Katz, deputy chief patient care services officer for mental health at the VA, wrote: "Shh! Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see."

He added: "Is this something we should address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?"

The figure was at odds with the 144 known suicides among veterans from 2001, when the US launched its war against terror by bombing Afghanistan, through the end of 2005, which Katz had cited in his December testimony, Filner said.

"The emails ... seem to indicate they were trying to manipulate the data instead of sharing the data," Filner said. "If we hadn't called this hearing, we probably still wouldn't know the figures."
"What we see is a pattern that reveals a culture of bureaucracy," he told the VA officials at the hearing.

"The pattern is deny, deny, deny and when that fails, it's cover up, cover up, cover up -- there is clear evidence of a bureaucratic cover-up here."

Continued . . .