Three Department of Veterans Affairs whistleblowers described to a House committee on Monday the hardships they continue to face for speaking out, including demotions and verbal abuse, despite the department refocusing efforts to crack down on such retaliation.
According to the whistleblowers testifying before the House VA subcommittee, no disciplinary actions have been imposed on any of the VA officials accused of retaliating against the whistleblowers. Lawmakers sitting on the subcommittee lambasted VA officials for failing to seriously address the retaliation problem, reported The Daily Caller.
Dr. Christian Head, a head and neck surgeon at the Los Angeles VA, said it's "shameful" that he has dealt with continual abuse after testifying to Congress last July about improper record keeping and submitting complaints about various issues, such as the mass deletion of patient appointments.
"They take the whistleblower and isolate them, then defame them, then push them out," Head explained, The DC reported. "Then they try and go back and rewrite history. They send out their surrogates to suggest that that person is a bad person, not a good doctor."
Head said that he was demoted, humiliated in front of his patients, and even moved to a "tiny, dirty" office.
"Moving me to a storage bin makes me feel bad, but they are sending a message," Head said, according to CNN. "They are trying to intimidate. They are trying to suppress [whistleblowers'] willingness to try to make a better life for these veterans."
"A lot of times, these investigations are more about us" than about the initial issue raised, he added.
Carolyn Lerner from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel said that more whistleblowers come forward from the VA than from any other federal agency, and the numbers are still rising. Lerner said that all too often, whistleblowers themselves become the focal of investigations, rather than their complaints.
Richard Tremaine spoke of how he was removed as associate director of the Central Alabama VA for speaking out against wrongdoing. After he reported scheduling manipulations in 2014 that occurred under former director James Talton, he was forced off campus, had his leadership responsibilities stripped and was subjected to suspicious questioning.
"Retaliation - that seems to be the first step whenever a whistleblower comes forward," Tremaine said.
One of the neurologists at the Wilmington, Delaware VA medical center, Dr. Maryann Hooker, said the VA was infested with a culture of "personal manipulation at all levels." She claimed that she witnessed employees be relieved of their duties, have their clinical records scrutinized and their performance ratings reduced after blowing the whistle on managerial problems.
"The story of VA is a story of two different organizations," Hooker said, reported Delaware Online. "There is the VA that takes care of veterans, and there is the VA that takes care of itself."
Meghan Flanz, director of the VA's Office of Accountability Review, which was established in 2014 to promote accountability, said on Monday that the office is currently handling 15 cases involving whistleblower retaliation, yet only three senior VA managers who were involved with whistleblower retaliation have been fired.
Democratic Rep. Kathleen Rice said that her "blood is boiling." "This is a disgrace. Why is it that it's easier to come to the determination that whistleblowers are wrong in a faster way you can say that these retaliators are wrong?"
"It seems to me that if you want to send a message that wrongdoers are going to be held accountable, you actually have to hold one accountable," Rice said, TheDC reported.
