PTSD War Veteran Who Claimed Benefits in Prison

Jailed Wisconsin Veteran Awaits Court Decision, in Fed Prison for Claiming PTSD Benefits  
by Mal Contends

Madison, Wisconsin – Keith Roberts awaits the decision of his appeal before a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit as he sits in a federal prison in Minnesota because the United States government said he did not tell the truth about his service in the Navy.

Veterans are assumed under the Veterans Judicial Review Act of 1989 to be (as they often are) in an diminished capacity to tell the full truth of the circumstances they encountered that contributed to their suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The many stressors that would lead to the granting of disability benefit payments need to be rigorously documented to the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) satisfaction, thus the VA claims process propagated under administrative rules is non-adversarial and paternalistic for the veterans.

And that’s why obtaining VA benefits is a claimant-friendly system. It’s more paternalistic than the Social Security benefits adjudication system (per the Veterans Judicial Review Act). But ask any veteran and he/she will tell you it does not work out that way…

Wisconsin Navy veteran Keith Roberts (1968-71) remains in a federal prison (since 2007), effectively fined $100,000s, for allegedly not telling the whole truth about about the circumstances in which his fellow Navy Airman was crushed to death by a C-54 aircraft in 1969.

Roberts was charged with wire fraud for receiving VA disability benefits by electronic deposit, as all vets are mandated to receive payments.

The government, in the agency of United States Attorney Stephen Biskupic and the VA, admitting that the Navy Airman worked together at the same airbase, says the fraud is predicated upon what they determine is not a close friendship that existed between the two (a ludicrous allegation) and an exaggeration of Roberts’ role in the attempt to save his friend from being crushed to death, though Roberts was on line duty at the time of the death and the base equivalent of a general quarters alarm was sounding.

United States Attorney Stephen Biskupic spoke at oral arguments in October 2007 in the case of the United States v. Keith A. Roberts (07-1546) before a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, calling the Roberts’ affair "a simple, straight-forward" case.

Biskupic said at oral arguments: "You (veterans) have to be truthful," and claimed that Roberts was not truthful.

Roberts’ attorney, Roberts Walsh, attacked the "lack of intent" by Roberts.

Intent is needed to prove fraud. Walsh pointed out that Roberts was diagnosed by numerous medical professionals with PTSD.

Walsh attacked the prosecution’s relying on the statements of the veterans when VA procedures require documentation and not personal recollection as the dispositive factor in deciding PTSD cases.

The VA needs a medical diagnosis and verifiable stressor and not a recollection, and a recollection is virtually irrelevant in the VA’s deciding PTSD cases.

Thus personal recollection, often imperfect, ought not cause a veteran to be accused of fraud, asserted Walsh.

But Keith Roberts is a cautionary tale.

There is a huge backlog of some 600,000 VA cases (AlterNet: The Army Times, 2007), and the VA and US Atty Biskupic decided to go after the innocent Roberts because Roberts upset some VA folks by "tenaciously pursuing a claim for benefits," and US Atty Biskupic was eager to do the bidding of the Bush administration and it peculiar ideas on veterans’ benefits that adopt the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI)/Dr. Sally Satel ethos that veterans need to just get over it, and not be enabled in a ‘culture of trauma’.

Look here for a decision to be reported in the coming months.

The Chief Judge hearing the U.S. v. Roberts oral arguments in late October is the same judge who wrote the opinion that freed the innocent Wisconsin state worker, Georgia Thompson, court transcripts show.

Frank H. Easterbrook, Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in freeing Thompson, pushed U.S. Atty Stephen Biskupic into the spotlight, and the Thompson case and Biskupic have become the subjects of congressional committee hearings as the U.S. Attorneys’ and the U.S. Dept. of Justice scandal continues.

Easterbrook is regarded as an independent and brilliant judge.

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