VA Consultant: "Hold the line. No C-123 claims!"

VA Agent Orange Consultant Email to Mr. James Sampsel, August 12, 2013

That's pretty stern advice, coming from the VA's principal Agent Orange consultant. Very stern, when one understands his advice on August 12, 2013 is that VA must, despite any evidence offered by the veterans and other federal agencies to the contrary, take the dramatic and saddening step of refusing life-saving medical care for Agent Orange illnesses suffered by Air Force veterans.

Especially stern, when one also realizes his advice was against numerous expert opinions supporting the veterans from the CDC/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the NIH, the US Public Health Service, dozens of independent physicians and scientists, university researchers, and...as we learned last week, even the Department of Defense confirmed the C-123 veterans' exposures but their input was considered unacceptable to certain VA staffers. There was no evident concern for the Veterans Claims Assistance Act, for the requirements of VAM21-1MR, or for Due Process.

"Hold the line" indeed, because there is such a plethora of evidence for the veterans' exposures, and a paucity supporting the VA's decision to oppose them. (besides the consultant, Dow and Monsanto sponsored input against the C-123 veterans.) Somehow, facing the storm of experts disagreeing with it, VA's Agent Orange desk was still insisting to veterans, the media, and especially VA claims workers that the department possessed "an overwhelming preponderance of evidence" against the veterans.

That means VA was saying it had more than enough medical and scientific evidence, so much as to compel its "unfortunate decision" to deny the disability claims of Air Force veterans, ordering them to go elsewhere for their cancers, heart disease, ALS and other Agent Orange ailments. And also, according to the Director, Compensation and Pension per the conference in his office on 28 Feb 2013, tell the veterans nothing they could ever do would bring the level of their argument to the "benefit of the doubt" VA is required by law to extend in disability claims.

Per VA, there was no possibility of doubt, which seems now to have been more an unofficial policy position of certain VA staffers, than a scientific and legal basis to let C-123 veterans suffer and die. Per the Institute of Medicine, the VA was wrong. Per Secretary McDonald, he agrees.

VA's Agent Orange consultant, one of the few voices supporting VA (and generously paid $300,000 a year for the effort in his two year, no-bid sole source unsolicited consulting contract) writes to his contact at the Agent Orange desk "to hold the line against emotion and political pressures." Emotional, certainly, because the consultant was discussing the Washington Post's 8 August 2013 article about the victory of Paul Bailey of Bath, NH who appealed VA's denial of his claim and won. Bailey's death followed shortly thereafter, ending his struggle with VA's Agent Orange desk and its Agent Orange consultant.

$600,000 to tell VA "hold the line against emotional and political pressure?" $600,000 for "scientific advice" from a consultant so firmly against the subjects involved, whom two years earlier he slandered as "trash-haulers, freeloaders looking for a tax-free dollar," he insists the line be held against them? $600,000 to be the voice of VA before the Institute of Medicine C-123 Committee?

VA Consultant to VA on C-123 Claims

Today, looking back with the Institute of Medicine C-123 Committee's confirmation of exposures and Secretary McDonald's own acknowledgement of it, perhaps we see that $600,000 paid to the consultant to encourage VA to refuse life-saving medical care for veterans eventually determined fully eligible for care...was C-123 a bad decision based on bad input leading to a terrifically miserable outcome for 2100 men and women who flew and maintained these former Agent Orange spray transports.

"Hold the line against C-123 veterans" just doesn't work with VA's standard phrase, "each claim is considered on a case-by-case basis." It is the policy of a few VA employees, not law or medicine. It certainly isn't the objective science claimed by the consultant in his reports.

Why has no C-123 veteran's claim ever been honored by VA?

AGENT ORANGE DESK           Regional Claims office         

Easy answer: because with encouragement from its outside consultant and instructions from VHA Public Health, the VA HQ Agent Orange desk orders all our claims to be denied.

Here's VA's deception.

For years, VA has insisted on their website, in communications with Congress and the media, and with all the veterans' organizations, that C-123 claims are evaluated on a"case-by-case basis." VA objected to our use of the phrase "blanket denial," insisting each claim receives a full, fair, impartial evaluation.

Nuts. VA bosses might somehow consider ours a case-by-case evaluation only in that each C-123 claim is individually stamped "DENIED" and then tossed into VA's trash heap with 100% of all other C-123 applications. Vigilant VA gatekeepers have insured that not a single C-123 claim got approved on their watch!

VA's rule book VAM21-1MR, requires claims from veterans who didn't serve in Vietnam but who claim Agent Orange exposure to be forwarded from the regional offices to VBA's Agent Orange desk.

And that's where all C-123 veterans' claims are denied through an automatic negative "advisory opinion." VA's Agent Orange desk has already determined that none of the C-123 veterans were exposed. They misinterpreted the 1991 Agent Orange Act and the burden veterans no longer have regarding proving medical nexus for illnesses already recognized by the Institute of Medicine and the Secretary of Veterans Affairs as among the "presumptive illnesses."

Here, VA's Agent Orange consultant is respected, very highly thought of, and his influence clearly seen. In fact, the consultant while an Air Force officer was assigned to VA's Agent Orange desk. The consultant's no-bid sole source $600,000 VA contract (2012-2014) would have its greatest impact on encouraging the Agent Orange Desk to continue rejecting C-123 claims.

Thus, personal policy at the VBA Agent Orange desk where administrators predetermined all C-123 claims were to be denied trumped the VA's assurance to Congress, veterans, and the media that each claim is evaluated on "a case by case basis."

• How can this be when the evidence shows 100% of C-123 veterans' claims are denied?

• How can this be true when VA's own paperwork trail shows, as in the Agent Orange Desk email below, that VA's Agent Orange desk informs VBA, VHA and the regional offices that "there is no basis for service connecting AO disabilities" for our veterans? Golly...why bother applying?