By Ellison Barber

Whistleblowers from regional offices of the Veterans Benefits Administration testified before the House Veteran Affairs Committee on Monday night that the agency has been tampering with documents, manipulating records, and retaliating against employees who report problems.

Kristen Ruell, a whistleblower from a VBA regional office in Philadelphia, Pa., told the committee she received an email from an employee in triage, the location where mail is processed, telling her that clerks were setting aside incoming forms when they were not easily identifiable.

“I went down to the file room that night, after I got this email, and I wanted to see for myself what was going on and I saw these boxes that were labeled 2010 claims, 2011 claims, 2012 claims to be shredded. So I opened them,” Ruell said.

“I took pictures and I saw things in the boxes that are not supposed to be shredded. I saw DD214’s—I saw plenty of things that I could identify with a little bit of effort,” she said. “There was a total of 96 of those boxes. The VA, their answer to that was it’s military and return mail and the process for military and return mail is after you hold it for one year, you’re allowed to shred it—but the law is assuming that you tried to identify it.”

The VBA, under the umbrella of the Department of Veterans Affairs, provides a range of benefits including “financial and other forms of assistance to veterans and their dependents.”

Whistleblowers reported countless problems and attributed many of them to systemic failing in leadership at the agency. The problems add to the web of failures that have plagued the Department of Veterans Affairs in recent months.

Ruell testified that production requirements incentivized employees to set forms aside in order to receive gift cards for sorting the most mail.

Congressmen at the hearing were outraged by Ruell’s revelations.

“Tonight’s testimony proves that the problems that plague the VHA [Veterans Health Administration] also plague the VBA [Veterans Benefits Administration],” Rep. Doug Lamborn (R., Colo.) said in a statement provided to the Washington Free Beacon.

“Unlike previous testimony from VA bureaucrats saying this is an isolated incident, testimony tonight shows that there appears to be a culture of corruption existing throughout the VA,” Lamborn said. “Our veterans should not be treated like they are part of an assembly line of corrupt statistics.”

Each witness told Lamborn that they personally experienced or knew of others who experienced retaliation “in response to bringing things forward as a whistleblower in the VA.”

Ruell reported that she believes things are “getting worse.”

“A lot of employees are petrified to stand up because they see what happened to me and everyone else, and they say they don’t want to be treated like that at work. I have a family to feed,” she said. “I feel like the agency has let me down because they promised that you can come into work and have a discrimination free work place and that is not the case.”

Ruell reported finding a dent on her car one morning, telling the committee she believed management carried out the vandalism…

Continued at The Washington Free Beacon

Photo/AP

DEAN JAMES @ AMERICAS FREEDOM FIGHTERS

LIKE US ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER!

PLEASE SHARE OUR ARTICLES ON ALL SOCIAL MEDIA AND CHECK OUR HOMEPAGE FOR MORE PATRIOT NEWS!