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The Insignia of the Veteran's Administration Office of the Inspector General
The Department of Veterans Affairs, after its Inspector General conducted an investigation, has had to discipline a hospital director, and did not want this released to the public. Consequently, the Washington Post had to file a Freedom of Information Act request to write the article which I am partially posting below. The full original can be seen by clicking here.
VA: Hospital Head Abused Travel, Purged Files
POSTED: 03:11 PM ET, 10/10/2008 by Derek KravitzTAGS:
"Washington Watchdogs," a periodic feature of the Post's Investigations blog, looks at the findings of the federal government's official investigators.
Dr. Robert W. Ratliff, the former director of the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System, could not be reached for comment today. Staff at the Birmingham hospital said Ratliff no longer worked as director at the facility, where he was employed as recently as last month. Jeffrey Hester, a spokesman for the Birmingham hospital, said he was unsure if Ratliff was still employed by Veterans Affairs.
Ratliff had previously run government medical centers in Orlando, Daytona, Fla., Canandaigua, N.Y., and central Texas, according to his online biography.
The most serious allegations in the report from the VA's inspector general are that Ratliff and Shirley Bealer, the acting director of the Central Alabama health care system, obstructed the government investigation by destroying potentially incriminating computer files and telling employees to provide them with confidential information from investigators.
In April, while the inspector general was investigating his spending habits, Ratliff told another employee that he wanted to have a "spring cleaning" of his hard drive, according to the inspector general's report.
"The thought never occurred to me until my recent issues...So now that I am truly paranoid I am going on a regular scheduled hard drive erasure," he wrote in an e-mail.
Ratliff told investigators that he did not erase the hard drive to hide evidence of misconduct but rather wanted "to avoid just what we are doing right now; to avoid somebody coming in and going through all this stuff; looking at every little thing; and asking you to explain every little thing you did."
Investigators called the Ratliff's action "completely intolerable and unacceptable." ...............(for the full article, also click here).
How extensive are problems like this at the VA? According to whistleblowers currently in or formerly employed at the VA, extensive enough that they have created an intricate website called "VA Watchdog dot Org" at http://vawatchdog.org/. You might want to check it out to see what they are talking about. They also offer assistance to Veterans.
Is there a Good Ole Boy network within the VA, and should there be more accountability and transparency at the VA?
