From: PATBNAAV@aol.com
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 19:18:20 EDT
Subject: THE HONORABLE HERSHEL W. GOBER, ACTING SECRETARY, VA
To: pdxavets@aracnet.com, rucon@juno.com, beclark@sprynet.com
CC: bushey@westelcom.com, AVRI@worldnet.att.net, beclark@geotec.net,
atomicvet@hotmail.com, avquest@worldnet.att.net
Dear Everyone:
Last night I FAXED to Hershel W. Gober at the following address:
The Honorable Hershel W. Gober
Acting Secretary
Department of Veterans Affairs
810 Vermont Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20420,
PH: (202) 273 4800
FAX: (202) 273 4877
and today mailed a hard copy of
a letter, with copies to Senator Wellstone and Joe Violante of the VA, in a
plea to add to the presumptives, colon, brain & CNS, and lung. He can do this
on an administrative basis with the stroke of a pen, without having to go
through legislation.
Jesse Brown had done this for the Vietnam Vets by adding lung cancer to their
presumptives, and by awarding benefits to the Vietnam Vets children if they
were unfortunate enough to be born with spina bifida. He also added lung
cancer on an administrative basis for the vets exposed to mustard gas.
Oscar Rosen and several others of NAAV and I, met with Jesse Brown on this
issue, and brought the above to his attention. He denied it, but asked Susan
Mather to get the regs to prove it. She was gone five minutes, came back,
placed the regs on his lap; he read them, and mumbled something about his
memory being faulty. Then he more or less dismissed us. Needless to say we
did not accomplish what we had set out to do.
We only have a window of several months to accomplish this goal. I' m asking
each of you to post this information on your websites, and request your
members to immediately contact Mr. Gober's Chief of Staff, Guy McMichael, at
(202) 273 6372
and/or Mr. Gober himself at (202) 273 4800. Or write to him at the above
address.
Don't make your letter too long (mine was one page), but stress the
difficulty of obtaining benefits while the President is handing out large
sums to the workers at the factories that manufactured the very bombs that
eventually killed our guys.
I enclosed the information received from the VA regarding the numbers of
claims awarded; Dr. Kizer's letter; letter from the DOJ re: the numbers of
awards made to miners, downwinders, and a few to the test site workers (which
includes vets), but the DOJ refused to break out this number for me. I also
enclosed the Marshall Islands information which included their list of
presumptive 34 diseases (including the three we would like to have added to
our list.)
The letter from Robert M. White, Assistant Director for Procedures (VA) dated
May 27, 1998 states (and here he is quoting from Under Secretary Thompson's
testimony on April 21,1998, before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs):
"As of April 14, 1998, we have received radiation-related compensation
claims from 19,885 veterans and survivors...Presumptive service connection
has been established in 498 of these cases. They are broken down as follows:
Exposure from atmospheric testing 321
Exposure from Hiroshima & Nagasaki
(including prisoners of war) 177
In the remaining 1,908 cases, our data base does not specify that service
connection was necessarily established under the criteria of 38 CFR Sec.
3.311, (P.L. 98-542), as opposed to other proivisions of statute or
regulations."
HOWEVER, in a FAX from Kathy Collier, Staff Consultant, Office of the
Director, Compensation & Pension Service, dated 4-23-96, Ms. Collier stated:
(I had asked her for the awards made under P.L. 98-542)
This information would be obtainable only through a manual review of
over
18,000 claims folders. Since historically the grant rate under this
regulation has been quite small, we believe that it currently would be fewer
than 50, but that number is only an unverified estimate.
Now it's up to you guys. I think we've got a pretty good chance. Go for
it!!!
PAT BROUDY
Legislative Advisor