“Lost Opportunity: With Wars Winding Down, VA’s Brain Research Failed to Launch”

Austin American-Statesman  
September 07, 2014 

2014 Showcase Honorable Mention – Judges’ Comments: The Austin American-Statesman, following a tip, ultimately exposed the failure of an expensive initiative brought by the Veterans’ Affairs Administration to central Texas that was supposed to help veterans in new ways to address disabilities related to their service. The American-Statesman demonstrated an understanding of the complicated science that is at the heart of the issue. This is original reporting and not simply a disclosure of a government investigation. It reveals incompetence on an almost mystifying scale. Other attributes are the inclusion of multi-media elements in the digital presentation of the story, such as a time-line in slide-show format and the upload of raw documents that surfaced from FOI requests. The American-Statesman’s enterprise identified serious problems in an important national subject with specific Texas ties.

Submission:

Despite the growing scandal that engulfed the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2014, the VA’s well-funded research arm for the most part has flown under the radar. Jeremy Schwartz’s September investigation into the Waco Center of Excellence changed that in a big way and for the first time revealed deep, systemic problems within a center officials bragged would make huge advances in treating war trauma.

Schwartz spent 10 months cultivating whistleblowers, pursuing a well-focused FOIA request and tracking down former employees of the center. The result was a devastating look at a failed brain research program that badly squandered a chance to study PTSD and traumatic brain injury among returning soldiers just as such injuries were exploding among returning service members.

Schwartz’s investigation didn’t just measure the center’s dismal results; it used internal emails to reveal the bitter in-fighting and dysfunction that seized the publicly-funded effort shortly after it obtained a cutting-edge mobile MRI that at the time was the world’s most powerful portable such machine. Schwartz put the failures into context: The Waco disaster continued a decade of ineffectual VA brain research in Central Texas, and represented $20 million in public funds with no results.

More maddening was the unique historical opportunity the VA missed. When the department purchased the MRI, nearby Fort Hood was the busiest deployment hub in the country. Tens of thousands of potential test subjects were passing through the Army post every year, many of them coming home with TBI or PTSD, the signature wounds of the war.

Schwartz’s report, which included the online publishing of hundreds of pages of internal emails, reports and budget documents, sparked outrage among veteran groups and lawmakers. The House Committee on Veterans Affairs demanded answers from the VA and scheduled hearings into the VA’s research activities. “This report brings about the change we need,” U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett said of the investigation.

If not for the report, the VA would have been able to sweep the ugly chapter under a series of self-serving internal reports. Instead, VA officials have had to answer for their mismanagement of a program that should have improved life for countless wounded war veterans, and significant changes to the center’s management should be forthcoming. Despite the growing scandal that engulfed the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2014, the VA’s well-funded research arm for the most part has flown under the radar. Jeremy Schwartz’s September investigation into the Waco Center of Excellence changed that in a big way and for the first time revealed deep, systemic problems within a center officials bragged would make huge advances in treating war trauma.

Schwartz spent 10 months cultivating whistleblowers, pursuing a well-focused FOIA request and tracking down former employees of the center. The result was a devastating look at a failed brain research program that badly squandered a chance to study PTSD and traumatic brain injury among returning soldiers just as such injuries were exploding among returning service members.

Schwartz’s investigation didn’t just measure the center’s dismal results; it used internal emails to reveal the bitter in-fighting and dysfunction that seized the publicly-funded effort shortly after it obtained a cutting-edge mobile MRI that at the time was the world’s most powerful portable such machine. Schwartz put the failures into context: The Waco disaster continued a decade of ineffectual VA brain research in Central Texas, and represented $20 million in public funds with no results.

More maddening was the unique historical opportunity the VA missed. When the department purchased the MRI, nearby Fort Hood was the busiest deployment hub in the country. Tens of thousands of potential test subjects were passing through the Army post every year, many of them coming home with TBI or PTSD, the signature wounds of the war.

Schwartz’s report, which included the online publishing of hundreds of pages of internal emails, reports and budget documents, sparked outrage among veteran groups and lawmakers. The House Committee on Veterans Affairs demanded answers from the VA and scheduled hearings into the VA’s research activities. “This report brings about the change we need,” U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett said of the investigation.

If not for the report, the VA would have been able to sweep the ugly chapter under a series of self-serving internal reports. Instead, VA officials have had to answer for their mismanagement of a program that should have improved life for countless wounded war veterans, and significant changes to the center’s management should be forthcoming.

LINK to story online

Submitted by John Bridges.