Tale of the secret Army tape

Salon reporters Mark Benjamin and Michael de Yoanna may have ended up finally giving justice to our troops and veterans. Think about what has been going on, what the men and women coming home with PTSD have been going thru, while it seemed as if no one would ever make any of this right for them. You've read too many of their stories on this blog and you've also read what is still happening to Vietnam veterans still owed a debt that should have been paid over 30 years ago. Back then, it seemed no one really cared but the Vietnam veterans and their own families. Today, the nation has a chance to prove they care by forcing congress and the military to get this right, punish the people behind all the wrong that was done so that the sacrifices of the men and women are truly honored, above all, provide justice for the wounded we allowed all of this to happen to.

Tale of the secret Army tape
After a soldier taped a psychologist saying he'd been pressured not to diagnose PTSD, the Army launched an investigation. Read the details of how the Army declared itself innocent.

Editor's note: Read about Sgt. X's tape -- and listen to a segment of it -- in the first story in this series, "I Am Under a Lot of Pressure to Not Diagnose PTSD." Read a summary of the Army's internal investigation, in which it determined that it was not exerting such pressure, here.

By Mark Benjamin and Michael de Yoanna

April 9, 2009 In a story published yesterday, Salon reported on a surreptitious tape recording of an Army psychologist telling a patient last June that he had been pressured not to diagnose soldiers as having post-traumatic stress disorder. The soldier, whom Salon dubbed Sgt. X to protect his identity, recorded the Fort Carson, Colo., psychologist, Douglas McNinch, twice describing pressure to label soldiers with "anxiety disorder" instead of PTSD. The diagnosis of anxiety disorder could result in improper treatment and lower disability payments if the Army discharges a soldier from the military. "It's not fair," McNinch said on the tape. "I think it's a horrible way to treat soldiers."

But neither the U.S. Senate nor the Army apparently agrees with McNinch's assessment of the treatment that returning soldiers are receiving. By early July, news of the tape recording had made its way to both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the upper reaches of the Pentagon. Despite prodding from Sen. Kit Bond, the Senate Armed Services Committee declined to investigate the tape's implications. A veterans' advocacy group then had a combative July 14 meeting at the Pentagon with the Army's vice chief of staff, at which the vice chief was reportedly dismissive. Two weeks later, the Army issued the results of an internal investigation and absolved itself of any wrongdoing.

Today's article describes the contentious meeting at the Pentagon, how the tape got to the Senate and the secretary of the Army in the first place, and which Senate aide determined it was not worth investigating. It also details how the individuals assigned by the Army to investigate the tape were connected both to the individual who had allegedly pressured McNinch not to diagnose soldiers as having PTSD and to earlier questionable in-house investigations of Army medical care.

Georg-Andreas Pogany and Maj. Gen. Mark Graham
Pogany told Salon that he found the tape shocking. On July 2, he handed it over to the Fort Carson's post commander, Maj. Gen. Mark Graham.

In a telephone interview, Graham refused to name Pogany as the man who gave him the tape, but confirmed that he had received it and that it set off alarms. "Anytime anyone brings me information regarding the health and welfare of our soldiers, I take it very seriously, as I did this," Graham said, adding that he has not yet seen the results of Army's internal investigation.

After receiving the tape, Graham forwarded it up the Army chain of command, where it ultimately wound up in the hands of Gen. Richard Cody, then the Army's vice chief of staff.

......................It appears, however, that investigators did not question the Army officer who Douglas McNinch said had pressured him not to diagnose PTSD. In an interview with Salon, McNinch said the pressure to misdiagnose soldiers came from the psychiatrist who used to head the Department of Behavioral Health at Fort Carson. "His name was Steve Knorr," McNinch said. When asked if he told Army investigators this information, McNinch responded, "Yes, I did." Though the extensive redaction makes it difficult to say for certain, there is no sign in the report that Knorr was contacted or interviewed by Army investigators.

McNinch also said he was afraid to talk. He himself suffers from medical issues and, as a civilian employee of the Army, is going through the process of getting government benefits. "I am going through a disability process right now," he said, "and quite frankly, I would not put it past the Army to, you know, fuck me over, to be blunt."

McNinch's naming of Knorr is particularly intriguing, given that Knorr's name has come up before in connection with internal investigations of possibly questionable Army medical care. In a 2007 article for the Nation, journalist Joshua Kors documented a shocking coverup of Army misdiagnoses. The Army was apparently diagnosing soldiers as having "personality disorders" instead of combat-related stress. Since "personality disorders" supposedly preexist military service, they cannot be attributed to combat, meaning veterans are potentially ineligible for proper benefits. Kors reported that Knorr conducted a review of cases on behalf of the Army's acting surgeon general and determined that no one in the Army had done anything wrong. Within a year, in response to the Nation article, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, released a report questioning why 2,800 war veterans had been diagnosed as having "personality disorders."

Contacted by Salon, Knorr said, "I don't talk with media. Good day," and hung up.

Salon has learned that one of the officers conducting the investigation of the tape is a junior officer to Knorr at their shared Army post. Lt. Col. Kris Peterson, chief psychiatrist at Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, Wash., assisted Col. Bruce Crow in the investigation of the tape. Knorr is now a health consultant at Madigan.

Crow, meanwhile, was also implicated in the "personality disorder" scandal. As Knorr was writing up his review back in 2007, the Army dispatched Crow to Congress to "set the record straight," as he told the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs on July 25, 2007. Crow said the Army would study soldiers dismissed with personality disorders but suggested the Army was doing nothing wrong. He said soldiers with a diagnosis of personality disorder only "feel" they have been wrongly separated from the Army. "I want to assure the Congress that the Army Medical Department's highest priority is caring for our warriors and their families," he told the panel.
go here for more
http://www.salon.com/news/special/coming_home/2009/04/09/ptsd/index.html
Tomorrow: Salon explores the possible motivations for the Army to avoid recognizing the size and scope of psychiatric injuries among American ground troops, and examines the case of one soldier the Army seems to have misdiagnosed.