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Disabled Retirees Claim Fraud in Department of Defense Report
By Thomas D. Segel
July 18, 2002

The battle between disabled military retirees, the Department of Defense and the United States Congress has been ongoing for almost 113 years. It started with a disputed law that denied benefits to Confederate soldiers while granting consideration to Union veterans. It ended in legislation being passed which denied parties the right to receive retired pay and disability compensation. Even today, disabled retirees of our armed forces have one dollar of their retirement pay deducted for each dollar of disability compensation they receive. Retirees want this law changed. The Department of Defense and to a large degree Congress strongly opposes such action.

There has been some tepid legislation, which would grant relief to the most severely disabled who hold VA designations in the 60% to 100% category. Though it has been offered up as compromise legislation, the funding and a guarantee of signing it into law is still questionable. The Department of Defense still continues to attack the cause of these men and women who became disabled while protecting the lives and property of all Americans.

Defense has traditionally fought any measure that would require it to fund any benefit to retired members of our armed forces.

The Agency has battled fiercely against providing quality earned health care for its retirees, as promised for twenty or more years of faithful service.

It has done nothing to advance the cause of correcting hurtful legislation which penalizes widows of retirees by requiring their survivor benefits be offset by 55% once they fall under Social Security.

Defense has also been very quiet on its position about repeated demands to reform the poorly written Former Spouse Protection Act. In many cases this law transfers the majority of a disabled retirees VA compensation check to a former marriage partner. Under this bill the ex marital partner continues receiving compensation, even after remarriage. The Agency is now suggesting some changes might be made, but has not requested such legislation from Congress.

Though the Department of Defense has been hostile, obstructionist, or completely unsupporting on almost everything involving the enhancement of military retiree benefits, it has been most vitriolic on the issue of ending the law on what it calls dual compensation and the disabled retiree community refers to as concurrent receipt.

This issue is really quite simple. Defense is fighting the repeal of concurrent receipt, because it would cost that agency money which it views as wasted. This retired community of men and women with multiple disabilities no longer has any value to the Agency.... And it would mostly likely be required to pick up the check.

So, Defense fights the issue with everything it can muster. First there is Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who is perhaps the most powerful cabinet officer in the current administration. Many people, both in and out of Congress fear him. So, what Defense wants...Defense usually gets.

By extension, other officials such as Dr. David S. C. Chu, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness are given great deference on the Hill.

Chu, a former RAND corporation executive and head of its Washington office has denied the government has any responsibility to change the regulations which require a dollar per dollar off-set of retired pay from disability compensation. To fortify the Department of Defense position he recently had the GSA contract an outside analysis group to examine the issue. The SAG Corporation filed its report on March 25, 2002. recommending no changes should be made in the current legislation which bans concurrent receipt.

According to the senior leadership of the Uniformed Services Disabled Retirees, "The report appears to be written by Dr. Chu's office and signed off by SAG. They started with a preconceived negative position and followed it on a straight line to its objective", says USDR national commander Paul A. Puskar of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

There are others who find fault with the SAG Report. Retired Navy Captain Gene Kesler is a former program manager in an analysis organization. He also has postgraduate credentials and Washington experience in the field. Says Kesler, "These companies, populated in large measure by retired officers, are contracted and paid by some OSD entity to do independent analysis. The results always reflect the preconceived notion of the one doing the contracting and directing the study, as well as reviewing the preliminary results. The analysis technique generally starts with a set of conclusions, preselected or screened data. These analyses are reverse engineered to get the desired result, then bounced off the director for approval. The collection of data is hardly unbiased...most frequently heavily skewed toward obtaining the desired result."

The Captain's final words on the subject are, "This study is biased, rused, flawed, and should be disregarded." Of course, Dr. Chu and the Department of Defense didn't disregard it. It was immediately published to prove their position.

Shortly after the report was filed and military organizations started commenting on its bias, a letter supporting Dr. Chu's position was written to The Retired Officers Association by Lee Mairs, a retired Navy Commander from Romney, West Virginia. He said in part, "Sure the guy who really got banged up in combat or suffered a "real" service connected accident should be compensated. But, please, let's not whine about the rest of the disability cases..." He concluded saying", Congratulations to Dr. Chu for getting it right!"

Interestingly, Mairs, who appears to have a relationship with Chu, founded SAG Corporation 17 years ago and remains director and majority stockholder of that firm.

Unfortunately, the disabled community does not have the deep government purse to reach into when it is attempting to prove its case in front of those who write our laws. Instead, those who spent their lives defending this country end up being poorly served by the very people they protected. What is even worse, the Department of Defense, which is their agency and should be their champion, walks that extra mile just to deny support for the issue so important to those who battled under our flag.