BATTLE CREEK, MI – Robert Walsh isn’t just another attorney. His practice is largely centered on veterans, especially those he thinks have gotten a rotten deal from the government.
He knows something about this. Walsh, who is now 72, was a combat infantryman in Vietnam with the fabled 101st Airborne Division. Later, as a civilian, he worked in telecommunications for the U.S. Army during the first Gulf War. He didn’t graduate from law school until he was 40, and then worked as a staff attorney for the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs, better known as the VA.
Now, he tries to help those who he feels have been mistreated by the VA — especially victims of PTSD — Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. After George W. Bush was elected president and started the Iraq War, Walsh said, “Karl Rove and Dick Cheney declared war on PTSD. They wanted to deny there was any such thing.”
The VA, which administers veterans’ needs and benefits, suddenly started not only denying claims, but accusing and prosecuting thousands of veterans already receiving them.
Walsh said that according to records he has sought out, there were 3,403 criminal arrests of veterans for fraud, many of which he believes are totally unjustified — especially, perhaps, a man he has represented for years without being paid, Keith Roberts.
“What they have done to him is just unspeakable,” Walsh said. Roberts, who is now 73, is also a Vietnam-era veteran who served in the U.S. Navy from 1968 to 1971. While stationed in Naples, Italy, he said he witnessed the horrendous death of a fellow sailor and friend, Gary Holland, who was crushed to death in the wheel well of a plane he was servicing, killed thanks to mistakes and sheer negligence on the part of others present.
Roberts said he had tried to save him but was not allowed to help, something he says haunts him still. He said he was later physically assaulted by a Navy shore patrol, and left with lasting injuries. Eventually, after a heart attack and years of depression, he applied for both pension and compensation benefits.
After being repeatedly turned down, he finally was granted benefits, retroactive to 1990. But Ray Vasil, a special agent with the VA, decided to investigate Keith Roberts.
The agency then decided that his claims were phony, and said he wasn’t even at the scene at Holland’s death. He was prosecuted and convicted on four counts of wire fraud, sentenced to four years in federal prison, and ordered to pay $262,943.52 in restitution.
He served the time, and today lives a dismal existence in the small town of Gillett, Wisconsin, near Green Bay. But his mother talked to Walsh, who smelled a rat. The lawyer managed to locate Commander Don Hathaway, who had been the officer in charge on Feb. 4, 1969 when Holland was killed.
The officer had no idea what had happened to Keith Roberts, and was shocked and angry when he heard of his conviction. During a four-hour deposition in April, 2019, and in a signed affidavit, he completely corroborated Roberts’ story. “The death of Gary Holland was not an ‘accident.’ It was the direct consequence of negligent conduct by officers and enlisted men … some of these same individuals testified against Keith A. Roberts at his trial.”
In other words, there was a conspiracy of silence, and a cover-up. Despite this, attorney Walsh has not yet succeeded in getting a new trial for his client, who is now not in good health.
“This is what the VA does – they stonewall you,” he said. Walsh did manage to get 70 percent of his client’s benefits restored.
But for three years that didn’t do much good for Mr. Roberts, who the lawyer said is now living in near poverty, has had another heart attack and a stroke and is unable to work.
The money didn’t help him because the VA was just keeping it and applying it to the debt they said Roberts still owed. His attorney finally got them to stop, but he is still fighting to get his client’s name cleared.
“I think I’ve put in at least $100,000 of (unpaid) work on this case,” Robert Walsh said, adding that he isn’t about to quit.
Beyond Keith Roberts’ case, what concerns him most is the high-handedness and arrogance of the Veterans’ Administration. He isn’t alone: A blog called Mal Contends, run by award-winning Wisconsin journalist Michael Leon, has documented other such cases.
“American veterans have been cheated, abused and ignored for 200 years,” said Walsh. “But the VA hit a new low when Congress promulgated new regulations for how (alleged) fraud cases for both contractors and individuals were to be adjudicated.”
“The VA ‘leadership’ decided that the new regulations were too onerous,” so they just ignored then. “Contractors get due process. Veterans get railroaded.”
Robert Walsh, a proud veteran himself, thinks a massive investigation is needed. “This is a story that can shake our confidence in American values. It is unfair, unlawful and un-American,” he said.
“And it damned sure is way past time for it to stop.”
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