By D.E. Ford, M.S.W., Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired), and I.L. Meagher
for ePluribus Media
Part 2- AGAINST OUR WILL: RATION & REDEFINE
This article is the second of three parts exploring the impact of politics on the funding, diagnosis and treatment of the combat damaged veteran suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. This part 2 explores how institutional barriers prevent utilization despite the overwhelming public support for mandatory healthcare funding for our military and how a redefinition of medical disorders as "spiritual" may shift treatment for PTSD and substance abuse to faith based, non-medical providers.
"Our pain from seeing these slanderous attacks stems from something much more fundamental, that if one veteran’s record is called into question, the service of all American veterans is questioned… there is nothing complicated about supporting our troops, and the leaders of this nation should make it clear that the members of our military will not only be supported when they wear the uniform, but also when they return home to the land they fought to defend. Their valor and their wounds, both physical and psychological, make them heroes for as long as they live…"Max Cleland, August 25, 2004 ( letter to President Bush)
The government’s parsimonious actions toward the military are counterproductive and contrary to the will of military and civilian populations alike. A 2005 Military Times Poll demonstrated dramatic decreases in the confidence of the career-oriented military that their civilian leaders have their best interests at heart: the military rates the President at 58%, down 11 points and they rate Congress at 31%, less than half the number from one year ago. The decline is attributed to pay issues, inadequate funding of veterans’ healthcare benefits, bipartisan acrimony in the Iraq debate, and combat equipment supply problems. According to a 2004 survey conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates, 95% of all Americans think it is important to fund healthcare for veterans and that veterans should not have to wait to receive their benefits, 87% support mandatory funding, and 75% say such funding is either a top or a high priority.
Despite the Bush administration’s admonitions to "Support the Troops," veterans encounter formidable barriers to benefits and services, which constitute covert rationing strategies. Knight Ridder newspapers, in their award winning series on veterans’ struggles with the VA bureaucracy, found that more than 13,700 veterans died before their claims were resolved, that over half a million veterans may be missing out on their disability payments, and that the VA gives out completely incorrect or minimally correct information 45% of the time. Veterans’ watchdog reports claim that chronic under funding of the VA medical system has resulted in substandard care. These reports state the VA paid out more than $105 million in malpractice settlements in 2005. On Veterans Day weekend, retired Marine General J.P. Hoar, the former U.S. military commander in the Middle East, excoriated Mr. Bush for consistently under funding veterans healthcare and for repeatedly attempting to shift more of the cost to the veterans themselves, a plan veterans groups state will soon be defined as a "critical readiness issue" by those who would divert those funds to armaments.
Disorders of the Spirit
There is also evidence that the Bush administration, under the guise of the Faith Based Initiative, may be attempting to ration medical care by the enactment of the Cato Institute policy that advocates deregulation and the dismantling of the so-called "medical monopoly." The director of health policy at the libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, is none other than Michael F. Cannon, who formerly served under the chair of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, Larry Craig’s (R-ID) direction as health policy analyst in the Senate Republican Policy Committee. As the VA is the largest recipient of federal funds in the healthcare industry, Cato-inspired policymakers would then predictably target the VA to break the medical "monopoly" by opening the system up to "free market" providers such as spiritual healers.
The redefinition of increasingly prevalent, chronic, costly disorders like PTSD and substance abuse as "spiritual" disorders or "moral" issues could open the door to outsource them to unregulated faith based care providers rather than to medical treatment. Licensure strictures, oversight requirements and malpractice suits are avoided. It shifts the burden of responsibility from government to the patient, effectively rationing the medical care of the veteran who suffers from service connected disorders and putting them at risk for additional harm from unregulated providers.
In 1996, then Governor Bush implemented "Charitable Choice" which exempted Texas faith based substance abuse treatment facilities (which treat substance abuse as a "sin" and eschew medical care) from state regulations and licensing requirements designed to protect the consumer. The experiment reportedly resulted in a lack of accountability for taxpayer funds, misleading and distorted efficacy rates, and dangerous, substandard care for patients:
Under Texas’ new, permissive regulatory structure, faith-based drug treatment centers must simply register their religious status with the state to be exempt from virtually all health and safety measures required of the vast majority of treatment facilities, including: state licensing, employee training requirements, abuse and neglect prevention training, licensed personnel requirements, provisions protecting clients’ rights, and reporting requirements of abuse, neglect, emergencies or medication errors.
By redefining the diagnoses of PTSD and substance abuse as disorders of the "spirit" in which the "medical care" may be provided by faith based providers, care is shifted away from licensed and regulated providers such as physicians, psychologists and social workers. The cost is dramatically lowered. This "shifting" may well violate medical ethics by making budgetary concerns the primary issue rather than the moral and ethical obligation of putting veterans first.
But get ready for it: Outsourcing veterans’ PTSD treatment to private faith based contractors appears to be on the national horizon. On December 27, 2005, one of the authors received an unsolicited e-mail¹ urging his help in obtaining a government contract for faith based PTSD treatment services:
Dear Fellow Veteran,
It is my privilege to announce the results of Webb & Associates Chaplaincy Consulting, operational-combat stress prevention (OCSP) pilot program, implemented with the 2nd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, and 1st Marine Division from January 2004 to June 2005. These 632 Marines deployed to Iraq for 7 months performing 1200 missions and driving nearly 1,000,000 miles.
An unprecedented 95% reduction in PTSD was achieved. This represents an ANNUAL savings of $921 Million for all troops currently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, considering only VA treatment and compensation costs. These savings will help ensure our obligations to current veterans are maintained. Help us prevent stress in our newest veterans by supporting OCSP standard.
Please click on this link [deleted by authors] and register to send a letter to Congressman Duncan Hunter, House Chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Your letter will urge funding and implementation of the Webb & Associates Operational-Combat Stress Prevention model within the entire U.S. Armed Forces.
As a veteran myself, you have my sincerest thanks for your generous efforts to support our military service members, past, present and future.
God Bless, Tom Webb
President
Webb & Associates Chaplaincy Consulting
A Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business
Webb trained at the Dallas Theological Seminary and employs a Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) model with the 2nd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment (2/11), the debriefing component of which was shown in the APA review of the literature and other studies to fail to prevent PTSD. Webb’s Executive Summary fails to describe the inclusion of mental health professionals on his team as mandated by the CISM model, even though he is listed as a faculty member at the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation. Webb’s account of his success lacks the accepted conventions of scientific study such as a detailed description of the sample, operational definitions, rigorous statistical analysis, and limitations of the study. In addition, the added value he offers the taxpayer is that "participants were linked with community members from churches and other religious groups who provided support in the form of prayer (20,000 people prayed for the 2/11 every day), recreation and entertainment, limited financial aid, emotional support, and resource referral." The financial aid consisted of buying a pair of glasses for a service member’s wife. No other examples were provided.
Webb claims to have reduced the PTSD rate from 20% to less than 1%, yet given the reluctance of PTSD victims to acknowledge their symptoms and their need for help, the often delayed nature of the disorder, the barriers to treatment, and the current culture of blame, his claims were not supported. "Recommendations" are an accepted convention in scientific study for proposed future research. However, Webb’s only recommendation is that he should be immediately funded.
Furthermore, Webb fails to document how the study itself was funded but notes that he was there "…per the invitation of the 2/11 Commanding Officer Lieutenant Colonel Mike Frazier." Webb concluded his study in May of 2005. The VHA Handbook dated March 2005 states that "The VHA does not authorize ‘volunteer chaplains’ or any volunteer to provide spiritual and pastoral care and counseling activities" and "Under no circumstances may community or Authorized Faith Representatives be used in lieu of an employed chaplain." It would seem that regulations were loosened on this occasion for Webb, who had been a Navy chaplain from 1989-2000 but who was a not a military chaplain during the time he spent conducting this study with the Marines.Oddly enough, the handbook has redefined the role of pastoral care in VA treatment facilities "…to ensure that veterans who need medical care (including counseling for their religious or spiritual needs) are referred to VHA. "[emphasis added] "Describing care as pastoral may refer to the motivation and or attitude of the caregiver. In the VA, pastoral care refers to care provided by a chaplain, professionally educated and endorsed by a particular faith tradition to provide such care." In fact, "Chaplains are responsible for ensuring that religion is not imposed on any patient."
Christian fundamentalists are firing on the various military branches for endeavoring to maintain religious sensitivity and to prohibit proselytizing by the chaplains. Considerable political pressure is being exerted on the military to condone advancement of fundamentalist Christianity above other faiths. Webb’s alma mater, Dallas Theological Seminary has been identified as one targeted by evangelicals for recruitment of military chaplains to aggressively convert non Christians.
While religious counseling is commonly seen as a sometimes beneficial adjunct to medical care, it is not commonly defined as medical care per se. The influential healthcare policy analysts at the Cato Institute cite medical economists who warn against a physician cabal who use regulations and licensure to protect physicians against competition from other groups of providers. Cato advocates for a free market where unregulated herbalists, spiritual healers and others are given free reign and are predicted to dramatically lower healthcare costs.
The Texas experiment thoroughly demonstrates that the intersection of economics, politics and religion has degraded the quality of healthcare. Let the buyer beware.
Notes
1 Private e-mail to J. Huber dated 12/27/05
PTSD RESOURCES:
Soldier’s Heart
PTSD Education Page
Infinity Publishing
Military Veterans PTSD Reference Manual – comprehensive online book
National Center for PTSD
Veterans with PTSD Fact Sheet
Managing Stress Fact Sheet
The Iraq War Clinician Guide, 2nd Volume
MSN Groups
PTSD – Iraq Discussion Forum
PTSD Support Group for Family Members
Aftermath of War – Coping with PTSD Forum
THRIVEnet
Guide to Listening to War Veterans for Family Members
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
Seamless Transition – resources for OEF and OIF vets
PTSD Counseling Centers
Vietnam Veterans of America
PTSD Benefits Guide
Veterans for Common Sense
PTSD Resources Page
National Gulf War Resource Center
Self Help Guide for Post Traumatic Stress
US Marine Corps
Leaders Guide for Managing Marines in Distress
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA)
Resources for Vets – formerly Operation Truth
Kirt Love – Gulf War Veteran and Advocate
Gulflink
Kirt’s bio and contact DSBR@gulflink.org
About the Authors:
D.E. Ford, M.S.W. is a clinical social worker with concentrations in depressive and anxiety disorders, trauma, and substance abuse. She was a pioneer of humor therapy with inpatient psychiatric populations, teaching comedy improvisation techniques in group therapy settings. She has served as Utilization Management Director of a psychiatric hospital, as a managed care consultant, and as a corporate behavioral health consultant. On the ePluribus Media board of directors, she also serves as an editor, on the public relations team, and as a citizen journalist.
Commander Jeff Huber, US Navy (Retired) was a flight instructor, operations officer of Carrier Air Wing 9 and the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, and commanding officer of VAW-124, an E-2C Hawkeye squadron. Jeff’s satires on military and foreign policy affairs have appeared in Proceedings, The Navy, Military, and GlobalEar. His essays have been required student reading at the U.S. Naval War College, where Jeff received a master’s degree in national security studies in 1995. He recently co-authored an article on command and control of naval forces for Jane’s Fighting Ships. Stop by Pen & Sword. He is an editor and citizen journalist with ePluribus Media.
I.L. Meagher is an activist and citizen journalist with ePluribus Media. She holds a Highest Honors A.A. in English, and is working to complete her B.A. in Journalism at Northern Illinois University. Fluent in Hungarian, she has also completed foreign studies abroad and has traveled extensively in North, South, and Central America, Europe, and the Caribbean. She is the owner of a Midwest content development and online publishing firm and is currently researching the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (her parents fled following her father’s taking up arms against the Soviets on the streets of Budapest) as well as cataloguing cases of combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder. Her diaries on PSTD are at: ilona’s commentaries.
Other ePluribus Media contributors include: Zan, Stoy, Cho, Standingup, Vivian, JeninRI, lilnubber, kfred
If you like what ePMedia’s been doing with research, reviews and interviews, please consider donating to help with our efforts.
The unsolicited e-mail from Webb put me through the roof. It was my first knowledge that the government was trying to outsource PTSD treatment to faith based outfits.
A heads up to anyone on active duty who plans to claim any sort of disability: don’t trust the military or the VA to diagnose you. Go to an independent agency (I used Disabled American Veterans and highly recommend them). And if it all possible, go to DAV or someone like them before you separate from service. Having your claim in while you’re still on active duty will make a big difference in the time it takes VA to process your claim.
I actually suggested the DAV in part one. They are a very good start. Does one ever expect this administration to do anything other than go to doing harm to the vet. Accept Christ or you are on the wrong side of this!!!?? They are absolutely wrong here. So very wrong!
Blaming the vet has always been political, except for the vet.
It is not a funny thing to be a vet and have fun made of the condition of which one suffers. Whether it be physical or mental. To me both go hand in hand!
I am not putting anyone down here with this comment, but if some one has not suffered from PTSD, then one need not qualify in statements. To qualify for this, in the VA system, one has to bare all from every stance of one’s live, pre and post military. They have to meet antiquated protocol on/in questionnaire. One has to have documented proof of things like that is gonna happen! Not until something happens to bring forth the problem in the he first damn place. It is something that one doesn’t say I have until something happens to say so. Something could be hidden for a long time, until something brings it out all of a sudden. Sometimes is it just hidden and not identified. I know I seem to be rambling, but that is why it is called PTSD for a vet., anyhow. Sometimes they just do not want to go in the system to do things that is humiliating to them as a person. There are many reasons for things..as a vet anyhow..
This may not have anything to do with this diary, it is just one vets opinion.
Some combat veterans seem unwilling to speak because it would hurt people they love to hear what they say. For example, my friend had to kill a six-year-old girl who was pointing a gun at him in Vietnam. When he told his grown son, the son abandoned him on his deathbed!
Why can’t I imagine him telling some pretty, young social worker on the payroll of a religious group? Why was his PTSD and depression listed as “noted but not treated”?
Why do we put people in this situation?
Oh, wait. I know. It’s the money, isn’t it?
cotterperson, I think you and I would talk for hours on end if we ever had the chance. Yes Indeed if some only knew……..
It is not easy addressing such things…and yes the pretty young social worker or the other one a young man who has not seen combat to try to guide a combet vet. I remember the days of old whent hey would send in an oriental to do the job and then watch the bricks fall….
Working in an ER in a small town in southern Illinois and a combat vet got all drunk on NYeve and came in in shakles for tricking out for something, no one really knew what, and then to send in an oriental dr to tend to him…I think not. I stopped the dr and explained the situation and asked if he could have someone else do that care that would not further along the agitation of the vet. PPL just do not think first….oh well, you know where I am goign with this..To even have the church or the christians to do this for the vet and expect him/her to give allto them and adhear to their nomenclature is just plain outright hypocricy and nonsense.
Have you seen the movie Article 99? It’s a rousing story about doctors, nurses, and veterans who take over a VA hospital, lock out hospital security, and treat the patients with all the resources at the hospital.
I’m not a movie critic, but it was a joy to see!
I didnt remember the name as such, but yes I saw it. Very reveling, IMHO. However, I am not one who is a lover of the VA system anyhow. It has been a very long time ago that I saw it. Maybe I should get it again and watch it for old time sake…The fact that they would shun the veteran society and not allow them for treatment is worse than anything. I thought it funny how they camped outside and made the position clear…very clear…The fact that you have to first prove your worthiness is what is a crime in my opinion. They ask for blood they get blood but when it comes time for getting help they do not respond. All the protacol one has to go through is shameful…
and thanks to all who contributed to this important work. “Don’t trust the military or the VA to diagnose you,” you said. I say, “amen.”
The VA killed my Vietnam veteran friend by delaying treatment of his cancer. The doctor said it was because of “scarce resources.” Five months after diagnosis, he got his first chemotherapy. Five weeks later, he died. (His PTSD was listed on his chart under “noted but not treated.” WTF does that mean?)
The next week, my great-niece has severe brain damage because someone at the hospital in Landstuhl decided not to do a c-section. She got stuck in the birth canal and was deprived of oxygen. Otherwise, she’s perfect on the outside. She’s breathing on her own, so now …?
Many of the individuals working in these hospitals seem nearly as frustrated as the patients and their families.
Veterans, military folks, please take care. Apprarently, no one’s got your back.
would like to stop this before it happens to more people. jimstaro’s excellent diary shows how to work against future cases of PTSD.
to talk about ones PTSd, it is personal! not eveyone is gonna go for help cuz it is personal!!!! see where I am going? This is why it is buried deep inside…it is just plain personal..he/she knows the system is twofaced…and it is personal after all…We do not want it out in the open for everyone to see…We would rather not thank you very much! Cuz it is personal…
Suffer from PTSD untill, in many cases, Years after. All it takes is a Trigger/Occurance to set it off, sometimes mildly other times Extremely Deeply!!
I don’t suffer from it, but I do get mind pictures, as that’s pretty much how mine works, that come up when a Chopper, ussually more thn one flying together, goes overhead! That ‘Sound’ just brings out the memories of long ago hearing/seeing!!
Jim, I hear ya on that one. Once I was at my Aunts house in Kansas, not far from Salina, and the reserve was doing their duty and flying under radar. NO one told me about this occuring. When they flew over her house, I found myself under her table. Everyone else looking amused at me. I used to do transfers via helio from the same small southern Il town. It was all I could do to do this. Only a few ere qualified to do it. I can tell you, it is a hard thing to deal with at times. For me the smell of blood is a reminder of such. I have to just say to myself it is over and to go on. But that smell and the death of life is not good for me. :o( I hardly ever talk about such thing. I just deal with it. Only vets who know, hear from me. That is all. I deal with it..but some can’t. Maybe someday I will not be able to deal with it any longer.
When once I was under general anestheia, It was reported I was saying “in-coming” over and over. The nurse asked my daughters if they knew what it meant. When I was fully recovered, they asked me..and of course I said as little as possible..but explained the best as I could to them. Don’t mean nothing…I would always say. But as you see, it does come out when we most least expect it to. So I do hear ya.
who just came to see us all there. He could never explain to people why he decided to outrun the police with his kids in his car over a routine traffic stop and many other things that would just kick in and take over. He seemed relieved to know that it could be explained. By the way he cried I could tell that it had plagued his soul and heart terribly.
These small minded greedy people have no idea what demons of the soul they are attempting to swindle. PTSD in many instances can/is fatal and often it doesn’t just take the sufferer but also plenty of innocent bystanders! Seldom did we ever get a glimpse of the horror that lived within my Uncle, but it was malignant, deadly, and fatal! Get out the body bags if there are any left after New Orleans!
The impact of PTSD is like a pandemic running throughout the population. What angers me is that the military is dissuaded from acknowledging it and then when they do, there is just continued distress from the system set up to help them. Brenda, it is intensely personal and requires tremendous courage to openly admit to experiencing PTSD. The powers that be have an agenda to minimize both psychological and physical damage from the Gulf Wars, OIF etc because if the public knew of the infections, lung ailments, digestive disorders, genetic anomalies etc- they wouldn’t get anybody to go and help implement their failed policies through the use of military force. So you are screwed coming and going.
I know that PTSD is just the tip of the iceberg and we, at ePluribus Media are not finished exposing the many ways our military is used and abused.
From a more personal angle, I want to say that even though I have not been a member of the military, I disagree that no one can be of assistance to you unless they have served in the military. Social work, like soldiering, is not in reality the way it is portrayed on TV or in films. I have seen plenty of violence perpetrated against innocents, and have been the victim myself of knife assaults, stalking, and plenty of threat. I’ve been pulled out of bed repeatedly in the middle of the night while on call just to rush to the hospital to see a baby die from massive head injuries, or limbs detached, decapitations, and sexual trauma that would make you puke-all inflicted by its Mom’s boyfriend, or father or drug addled neighbor. I’ve seen patients shoot themselves, stab themselves and overdose right before my eyes and then spent hours and days, months and years at their bedside in hospital trying to will them back to life, while comforting the anguish in their kids and family members, only to have them successfully off themselves later. The screams of the psychotic. The haunted cry of the teen as he/she slices into their skin with a razor just so they can feel something again. I’ve faced the end of a shotgun held by a disgruntled, laid off worker who meth’ed himself into psychosis and had no weapon other than my wits and compassion to protect me from his unfocused wrath.
Just because I have not served in the military does not mean that I have not seen enough of the dark side of life to be able to relate and help you heal. The mental health workers, emergency first responders, law enforcement officers and other healthcare workers on the front line have had lives that many of you would not believe. I don’t often speak of it for the same reasons members of the military find it hard to regurgitate their aversive experiences. We’ve all seen and done way too much to come away unscathed. Saying goodbye to our Doris Day and John Wayne dreams is something that many of us have in common. We are stronger if we band together to help one another than if we exclude those who wish to help us based on stereotypes and misconceptions. Nobody goes into the helping professions because it is easy money. And you might be surprised by the commonalities of our experience. It is the extension of one compassionate human heart to another that helps to restore faith in life and helps it heal. No matter what the scenario. Compassion works. It is not a magic medical cure but it there is a little magic at work nevertheless. You know how you can be inspired by a person? Well, that can work with “psychological” trauma too- you can be “re-enchanted”(see The Reenchantment of the World by Morris Berman) by a person who helps you filter out the incoming darkness so you can live without it constantly tugging at your sleeve and poking you in the gut. Thanks for telling your story so eloquently here. Your feeling charges out of your words.
Beautifully put. Thank you.
and this is why the general population seems asleep right now. I think all of us were traumatized on Sept 11 but some of us had the skills we needed to process the trauma. We had been able to let ago of enough denial about feelings and beliefs in the past that we had avenues available to us to process the 9/11 trauma mentally and emotionally and spiritually…..and I didn’t see that it all happened overnight for many of us but it did happen. Sometimes I feel like I’m on the outside looking in and watching the “others” among us reenacting violence and death and fear and hatred over and over again attempting to come to terms with what happened on September 11…………and they seem clueless to understand that going about things in this fashion will never resolve anything and will only injure their spirits and souls even more and breed more damaged/maimed people exponentially! I also don’t believe that only the military can treat the PTSD of war. My husband did one year in Iraq and blah blah blah…..we payed for him to go to a private facility when his symptoms became very clear about 6 months after his return. I still don’t know many of his “things” and I probably never will but I know that 5 or 6 other guys know it all and he came home and he has been able to heal a lot. My Uncle though was a Vietnam Vet and afterwards very successful in his career life, had a nice everything and a beautiful wife. Iraq kicked off and in early June last year he shot himself in the heart in a VA parking lot with an enlarged framed photo of himself surrounded by the smiling children of a village in Vietnam sitting next to him in the seat of his truck. He was one of the most beautiful people I ever knew and he took a piece of me with him that day!
February 12, 2006 latimes.com : Opinion : Commentary
For one Marine, torture came home
By Ann Louise Bardach, ANN LOUISE BARDACH writes the Interrogation column for Slate and is the author of “Cuba Confidential, Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana.” Her article on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ties to the t
ABOUT A YEAR and a half ago, a 40-year-old former Marine sergeant named Jeffrey Lehner, recently returned from Afghanistan, phoned and asked to meet with me. Since his return he had been living with his father, a retired pharmacist, in the Santa Barbara home where he was raised. I first heard about Jeff from an acquaintance of mine who was dating him and who told me that he was deeply distressed about what he had seen on his tours in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East.
We met for lunch at a restaurant on Canon Perdido in downtown Santa Barbara. Jeff was focused, articulate and as handsome as a movie star. He was quite wound-up, but utterly lucid.
There was no way I could have known that day the depths of Jeff’s unhappiness, no way I could have predicted the tragedy that would follow. I listened closely to his story and, while I was surprised by what I heard, I had no particular reason to disbelieve him.
He had joined the Marines enthusiastically, he told me, and served as a flight mechanic for eight years. Not long after 9/11, he began helping to fly materials into Afghanistan with the first wave of U.S. troops.
In the beginning, Jeff supported the administration’s policies in the region. But over time, that began to change. As we talked, Jeff brought out an album of photos from Afghanistan. He pointed to a series of photographs of a trailer and several huts behind a barbed-wire fence; these were taken, he said, outside a U.S. military camp not far from the Kandahar airport. He told me that young Afghans — some visible in blue jumpsuits in his photos — had been rounded up and brought to the site by a CIA special operations team. The CIA officers made no great secret of what they were doing, he said, but were dismissive of the Marines and pulled rank when challenged.
Jeff said he had been told by soldiers who had been present that the detainees were being interrogated and tortured, and that they were sometimes given psychotropic drugs. Some, he believed, had died in custody. What disturbed him most, he said, was that the detainees were not Taliban fighters or associates of Osama bin Laden. “By the time we got there,” Jeff said, “the serious fighters were long gone.”
Jeff had other stories to tell as well. He said the CIA team had put detainees in cargo containers aboard planes and interrogated them while circling in the air. He’d been on board some of these flights, he said, and was deeply disturbed by what he’d seen.
Was Jeff telling me the truth? As a reporter who writes investigative articles, I get calls frequently from people with unusual stories — sometimes spot-on accurate ones, sometimes personal vendettas and sometimes paranoid, crazy stories. Jeff seemed truthful, and he had told the same stories almost verbatim to several friends and family members. But I was worried because at the time, I hadn’t heard about such abuses in Afghanistan, and Jeff’s stories were hard to verify.
More worrisome, Jeff was seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, and I wondered whether he could withstand the scrutiny his allegations would generate.
PTSD’s symptoms can include anxiety, deeply frightening thoughts, a sense of helplessness or flashbacks. Jeff’s case apparently stemmed, according to Jim Nolan, a fellow veteran and a friend from Jeff’s PTSD support group, from witnessing the “unspeakable,” and from his inability to stop what he knew to be morally wrong.
His case was compounded, his friends said, by strong feelings of “survivor’s guilt” involving the crash of a KC-130 transport plane into a mountain in January 2002 — killing eight men in his unit. He’d been scheduled to be on the flight and had been reassigned at the last minute. As part of the ground crew that attended to the plane’s maintenance, he blamed himself. Afterward, he went to the debris site to recover remains. He found his fellow soldiers’ bodies unrecognizable. He also told me he was deeply shaken by the collateral damage he saw to civilians from U.S. air attacks — especially the shrapnel wounding of so many Afghan children.
Jeff told me that he often couldn’t sleep at night, thinking about what he had seen and heard. He had gone to Afghanistan a social drinker but came home, like so many veterans, a problem drinker. And he admitted self-medicating with drugs. He was seeking help — and just days after we met, he drove 100 miles to enter a treatment program in Los Angeles. But the Veterans Affairs hospital’s PTSD ward was full, he told me, so he was placed in a lockdown ward for schizophrenics, which only aggravated his isolation and despair.
Jeff left the hospital after a day. He got in touch with Dr. Sharon Rapp, who is the only psychologist trained in treating post-traumatic stress for all returning veterans who live between L.A. and San Francisco, according to the Santa Barbara VA office. Rapp, who is by all accounts a gifted and dedicated therapist, placed him in a PTSD group with about 10 Vietnam veterans who took Jeff under their wing. But it became increasingly clear that he, like so many veterans, needed far more than outpatient and group therapy.
At the time Jeff told me his story, I didn’t quite know what to do with it. Such allegations were not yet being reported — and many Americans would probably have found his accusations unimaginable. For multiple reasons, I put his story on the back burner. I continued to stay in touch with Jeff — and occasionally spoke with his father, Ed, who invariably answered the phone — as I ruminated on his troubling tale.
However, late last year, details about secret prisons began to appear. Human Rights Watch, for instance, reported that a number of men being held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had given their lawyers “consistent accounts” of being held and tortured at a secret American-run prison in Afghanistan. I decided it was time to call Jeff and meet again.
It was early December. Jeff was still living in his father’s home off Old San Marcos Road. He’d broken up with my friend and another woman to whom he had been briefly engaged, and he was struggling to stay sober.
But by the time I called, it was too late. The day I phoned, Jeff had quarreled with his father. That afternoon, they held an unscheduled counseling session with Rapp. According to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department, Rapp was so concerned after their meeting that she phoned the Lehner house about 6 p.m. Ed answered, spoke with her and then called his son to take the phone. At that point, the line suddenly turned to static. Fearing the worst, Rapp called the police.
The worst proved to be the case. The police found two bodies, and quickly labeled the case a murder-suicide. Ed Lehner, they said, had died from multiple gunshot wounds, and Jeff from a single, self-inflicted wound to the head.
The irony was that after eight years in the military, the first and only person Jeff Lehner killed was his father.
Nolan, who said he returned from Vietnam in emotional tatters, was not entirely surprised by the turn of events. According to Nolan, Jeff’s relationship with his father, a soft-spoken man with diabetes, had strains predating his Marine years, and it had deteriorated as Jeff’s dependency on him deepened. “He had talked about suicide a couple of times during our meetings,” Nolan said, “as all of us had at one time or another. It’s about a loss of respect. When you lose respect between family members, there’s nothing but anger left, and that’s how the rage works in you.”
There are ways to deal with the rage, of course, but treatment of returning veterans is woefully inadequate, owing to a lack of funding. Although the VA acknowledges PTSD as a serious problem for returning veterans, VA hospitals around the country have sharply reduced their inpatient psychiatric beds, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Suicide, meanwhile, is an enormous and growing concern. Statistics are hard to come by, but some estimate that although 58,000 veterans died in combat in Vietnam, more than that took their own lives after returning home. In a 1987 CDC study, the suicide rate for Vietnam vets was 65% higher than that of civilians. The Army estimates that the suicide rate among Iraq veterans is one-third higher than the historical wartime average, owing to the psychological strains of no-holds-barred insurgency warfare. That means we’re looking at a future blizzard of suicides without an adequate VA program in place to address the crisis.
Without Jeff and the further details he could have provided, I doubt I will ever know for certain whether all his Afghanistan stories are true. But no matter what you believe when you read this, the story of Jeff’s life and death raises issues we must grapple with if we’re going to continue sending troops into insurgencies and guerrilla war zones. Thirty years after Vietnam, we seem to have learned very little.
Of course, I feel badly now that I didn’t spend more time with Jeff or try harder to get his story published while he was alive.
He had such a dazzling smile — the type you knew was destined for great things.
I’ve said something like this over at E Pluribus Media but will repeat it here: this issue is precisely the right issue for people in the same generation as these soldiers to articulate, push forward, relentlessly and in every way possible.
These are your brothers and sisters. They need your help.
My gratitude and admiration to the people on this team who have done such great work so far, as well as to my contemporary who draws that Doonesbury thing, and to the volunteers with the GI Rights Network who help soldiers work through the system to get the medical care they deserve.