Watchdog Team
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Watchdog: House takes wait-and-see view of new VA claims backlog plan
Mark Flatten
Published: Wed, May 22, 2013
Worries that the Department of Veterans Affairs is rigging numbers without fixing problems delaying thousands of disability claims for more than two years were vented today during a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing.
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Newly released docs show inconsistencies in FBI training manual censorship
Mark Flatten
Published: Wed, May 22, 2013
Implying the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization or that al Qaeda had links to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center were enough to have documents purged from FBI training manuals, according to newly released agency documents. Other training materials that were scrubbed from...
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VA's No. 2 lawyer is agency's No. 1 bonus man
Mark Flatten
Updated: Thu, May 9, 2013
A top lawyer at the Department of Veterans Affairs got almost $126,000 in performance bonuses during a five-year period in which the agency imposed an illegal rule that drew the threat of sanctions from a federal appeals court. John H. "Jack" Thompson, deputy general counsel at VA, received...
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EXAMINER EXCLUSIVE: Failing VA officials collected massive bonuses for years
Mark Flatten
Updated: Wed, May 8, 2013
Top executives at the Department of Veterans Affairs headquarters and in regional offices across the country routinely collected merit and other bonuses for more than five years that in some cases totaled more than $100,000, The Washington Examiner has found. At the same time, performance at...
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Washington Examiner got bonus data with no thanks to VA
Mark Flatten
Published: Wed, May 8, 2013
Figuring out who is in charge at the Department of Veterans Affairs seems simple enough. But the VA refused to provide any information when The Washington Examiner sought to determine how much the directors of failing regional offices have been paid in salaries and bonuses. The newspaper...
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Watchdog: Bipartisan lawmakers ask Obama to focus on VA problems
Mark Flatten
Updated: Mon, Apr 29, 2013
Pressure is mounting on President Obama to intervene to fix the ever-worsening backlog of disability cases at the Department of Veterans Affairs or replace the head of the agency. With half VA's backlogged cases now more than a year old, a bipartisan group in Congress last week sent a letter...
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Veterans groups worry new VA plan to clear claims backlog is 'all smoke-and-mirrors' bureaucracy
Mark Flatten
Published: Thu, Apr 25, 2013
A new plan to close old cases at the Department of Veterans Affairs is raising worries the change will just make VA look more efficient instead of helping long-suffering veterans with aging disability claims. The department is under pressure from Congress, veterans groups and others to end its...
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Watchdog: Mixed reactions to VA call for 'big brain' meeting
Mark Flatten
Published: Fri, Apr 12, 2013
A desperate plea for new ideas on how the Department of Veterans Affairs can end the steadily lengthening waits that face veterans filing disability benefits claims was shrugged off as part of the agency's routine outreach to outsiders by a VA spokesman Friday. A VA statement to The Washington...
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EXCLUSIVE: VA exec calls meeting of 'big brain' folks to seek backlog fixes
Mark Flatten
Published: Thu, Apr 11, 2013
A "big brain" group of government executives, union representatives and private sector experts is needed to come up with a plan to quickly end the bureaucratic logjam that forces veterans to wait months to have their disability claims processed, a top Department of Veterans Affairs official says...
