Veterans Affairs officials are illegally accessing whistleblowers medical records in retaliation

 It has been quite awhile since I have written anything about the Veterans Affairs scandal but today we heard a new, and quite disturbing, accusation: Veterans Affairs officials have been illegally accessing the medical records of whistleblowers in an attempt to discredit them.

  Here is more:

An official at the U.S. Office of Special Counsel said Monday that Department of Veterans Affairs officials are known to be retaliating against VA whistleblowers by illegally going through their medical records, in an apparent attempt to harass and discredit these whistleblowers.

This surprising testimony from Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner was delivered at a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee hearing, which was called to discuss the problems whistleblowers face when they try to expose the ongoing failure of the VA to provide medical care to veterans.

In Lerner’s prepared testimony, she explained that many VA officials who try to reveal these problems are veterans themselves who are also seeking care at the VA. She said in some cases, VA officials try to retaliate by examining the medical records of these officials, and said this still happens — she called it an “ongoing concern.”

“In several cases, the medical records of whistleblowers have been accessed and information in those records has apparently been used to attempt to discredit the whistleblowers,” she said.

    Barack Obama once promised to protect whistleblowers claiming they were “the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government” and he went so far as to sign legislation which expanded protections for whistleblowers so what happened?

Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium