How Can We Mend A Broken System for America's Veterans?

The chronic disability claims problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) have reached epidemic proportions. According to the VA’s own inspector general, nearly 900,000 American veterans now wait an average of 292 days for a claim decision - and the VA still gets these claims wrong nearly one third of the time. 

The only good news in this national crisis is that the situation has finally gotten the national media attention it deserves. As I noted recently in The Daily Beast, we're now seeing newspaper editorial boards and magazines calling the VA claims mess a “national disgrace” and insisting that VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resign. Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL), chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, is calling for the resignation of Allison Hickey, the VA’s head of benefits.

But beyond the calls for VA executives' heads, is anyone stepping forward with any truly viable ideas that will fix this broken system? Bergmann & Moore (B&M), a law firm whose only clients are veterans with disability claims, has some good ideas. 

Last week, the Austin American-Statesman printed an op-ed piece written by B&M's partners Glenn R. Bergmann and Joseph R. Moore. The article, “Practical Solutions Can Solve VA Claims Nightmare,” is a clear-eyed take on what must be done to reverse this chronic problem for veterans.

Here are some of B&M's recommended solutions to the claims crisis:

• The VA must become more tech-savvy, such as implementing a new computerized claim processing system. However, the VA’s highly touted Veterans Benefits Management System crashed in April, and several top VA officials involved with implementing VBMS recently departed the VA, casting significant doubt on the project’s success.

• The VA should hire more and then better train its dedicated yet overworked staff. However, VA only increased staffing by a few hundred the past few years, and training remains incomplete.

• The VA should streamline obsolete regulations so both veterans and the VA better understand the process, a reform recommended a decade ago, yet not completed.

• The VA’s myopic emphasis appears to be on deciding claims quickly, not accurately. The VA’s production culture must shift and emphasize quality, a change that worked well for our auto industry.

• The VA should be more transparent so that Congress and the public are not forced to rely on investigative reporters to learn about the depth of the VA’s crisis.

• The VA should expand the agency’s focus from new and simple claims by reviewing all claims, including appealed claims languishing for years.

• VA should work with the Department of Defense and adopt a single computerized lifetime electronic record to address the issue of missing military records that often endlessly delay claim processing. President Barack Obama promised this reform in 2009, yet it stalled this year.

In addition to B&M's opinion piece, last week the Statesman’s editorial board wrote a separate editorial, “VA Fix Requires More than Promises,” which verbally chastised VA for giving out generous bonuses to executives during a time when the waiting lists for veterans grew significantly.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that B&M has some smart solutions to the problems at VA. The law firm has long been on the front lines fighting for veterans with disability claims. Yes, contrary to popular belief, sometimes lawyers are the good guys.  

Speaking of good guys, B&M's managing director of veterans outreach is Paul Sullivan, a Gulf War veteran who once worked at VA. Sullivan is arguably the nation's most accomplished advocate for veterans. As a journalist I have frequently turned to him over the years for reliable, valuable and current information about veterans and the VA. 

Thanks to Sullivan and the other folks at Bergmann & Moore, we now have a cogent, sensible, real-world list of solutions for the VA to hopefully consider.

Women Cancer Survivors Take Over The Grand Ole Opry!

Country music superstar Martina McBride

As a singer-songwriter and three-time survivor of stage IV non-Hodgkin's lymphoma cancer, I've dedicated much of my music life to writing and recording songs that inspire and inform cancer patients and their loved ones. I'm proud to have recored these life-affirming rock, pop and country tunes with such music greats as Peter Frampton, Suzy Bogguss, Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers, Charlie Daniels, Ricky Skaggs, Charley Pride, and members of the Beach Boys family, Chicago, The Eagles, Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers and Little River Band.

Music truly can inspire, and even heal. And arguably no one in the music biz' has been more generous and devoted to supporting cancer patients and survivors than the folks in country music. For example, Taylor Swift, the country-pop megastar, recently escorted leukemia survivor Kevin McGuire and his entire family to the 2013 Academy of Country Music Awards. 

Country music icon Tim McGraw

Country star Tim McGraw, too, has done his part by performing at benefits for cancer patients and recording such touching songs as Live Like You Were Dying, which was written after his father, Tug McGraw, lost his battle with brain cancer in 2004.

An event coming up this summer in Nashville further demonstrates this deep connection between country music and cancer patients. On Saturday night, August 24, country music royal Martina Mcbride (pictured above), who's one of the finest singers on the planet, joins forces with the Women Survivors Alliance (WSA) and the National Women’s Survivors Convention on the legendary stage of the Grand Ole Opry to celebrate women cancer survivors from across the country.

There are approximately 14 million cancer survivors in the United States, and more than half are women, according to the WSA, a non-profit organization founded two years ago to provide support to women who have moved beyond their cancer treatment. The Opry will recognize these brave women throughout what promises to be a hot august night both on stage and over the airwaves on 650 AM WSM and opry.com with special performances and survivor messages.

Olympic Gold Medalist and cancer survivor Scott Hamilton will serve as a guest announcer.

“We’re delighted to be a part of these survivors’ visits to Nashville,” says Opry Vice President and General Manager Pete Fisher. “We are going to have a lot of fun while also helping them take great steps toward creating awareness and a real movement about survivorship.”

Hundreds of women survivors of all types of cancer from across the country and around the world will converge on Music City for a three-day, one-of-a-kind experience. This is not your typical cancer convention: women will celebrate the mission of taking a step to creating a national movement towards survivorship and understanding the needs of cancer patients after treatments conclude.

“We are so grateful to Martina and our partners at the Grand Ole Opry for making this night so special,” says Karen Shayne, founder of the WSA. “Women cancer survivors will be ready to celebrate as we wrap up our national convention and their collective efforts to create a national movement to help other women dealing with life after cancer.”

Among the national organizations and individuals already involved in the National Women’s Survivors Convention are: Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, LiveSTRONG at the YMCA (USA), YMCA (YUSA), Chico's, Coldwater Creek, 4th Angel Program at Taussig Cancer Center - Cleveland Clinic, Olympic Gold Medalists Shannon Miller and Scott Hamilton, Bravo TV Star Tabatha Coffey, MTV Star Diem Brown, Dr. Susan Love and the Army of Women Campaign, Great American Country’s Nan Kelley and husband Charlie Kelley. 

For early registration for the National Women’s Survivors Convention, visit this site. Tickets for the special Opry event may be ordered by calling 800-733-6779 or at the Opry's website or at the box office.

EXCLUSIVE: "Terrorists' Lawyer" Talks About Boston Bombing Investigation

Civil rights attorney Randy Hamud

In the summer of 2001, attorney Randy Hamud was running a successful, and uncontroversial, legal practice in San Diego. But that all changed on 9/11. Within days of the terrorist attack, Hamud took on several new clients who had befriended Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, the two San Diego-based Al Qaeda hijackers who piloted American Airlines flight #77 into the Pentagon. Subsequently, Hamud also agreed to represent the family of Zacarias Moussaiui, the so-called 20th hijacker in the 9/11 plot.

Hamud quickly became ubiquitous. Bombarded with media queries, he received countless death threats and was even dubbed the "terrorists' lawyer." Truth is, Hamud has never represented a convicted terrorist. He worked for Moussaoui's family, not Moussaoui, and all his San Diego clients were subsequently released from custody. 

Nonetheless, Hamud is now a controversial and even polarizing public figure. But he is greatly misunderstood. During my coverage of 9/11 for Newsweek, I grew to know and respect the man. Mind you, I don't always agree with him; we've had some lively debates over the years about everything from politics to religion to who should coach the San Diego Chargers. But I admire his unwavering love for the U.S. Constitution, which he describes as "the most perfect governmental instrument ever written." 

Hamud, who's of Lebanese descent, was born and raised in Los Angeles. A family man and passionate football fan whose hero is Gen. George Patton, Hamud is a secular Muslim who speaks Spanish but not Arabic. He loves riding horses and wearing cowboy boots and a Stetson. In 2005, he authored Osama Bin Laden: America's Enemy in His Own Words (right), which employs bin Laden's published quotes to illustrate why the now-deceased Al Qaeda leader was the most dangerous man in the world. 

A fierce civil libertarian and supporter of the Bill of Rights, Hamud has a unique perspective on the terrorist attack in Boston. He says he’s beginning to see “strong similarities” between the 9/11 legal cases and the one developing against 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston bombing suspect. 

Hamud notes, for example, that authorities have already begun taking men who knew Tsarnaev into custody and holding them on immigration charges. Of course, two of these men have now been arrested for allegedly removing computers and other items from the suspect's apartment. A third was arrested and then released on bail. 

“Bringing people who knew the alleged terrorists in on immigration charges was a common tactic for law enforcement after 9/11 as well,” says Hamud, who went to UCLA Law School and is a former deputy city attorney in L.A. “This is reminiscent of the Bush Administration’s nationwide sweep in 2001.”

Hamud is troubled by this trend, but I see it as a necessary step in the Boston bombing investigation. It has not come even close to the level we saw immediately after 9/11, when then-Attorney General John Ashcroft called for "aggressive detentions" of Arab and Muslim men as material witnesses in the terror attack. This roundup ultimately netted more than 1,200 men, including Hamud’s clients: Mohdar Abdullah, Omar Bakarbashat, Nawef Alselmi and Osama Awadallah. 

These men were never charged or convicted of any terrorist-related activity and have all long since been released from custody. Three of them were deported, and a fourth still resides in the United States.

“I do not wish this to be a déjà vu situation,” says Hamud, who in the weeks and months after 9/11 emerged as one of the nation's most eloquent defenders of America's civil liberties. “We saw all sorts of violations of constitutional and individual rights after 9/11, including abuse of the material witness statute. Immigration laws became a sword rather than a shield for immigrants. The FBI claims they learned from their mistakes after 9/11, and adopted a different approach. We’ll see."

Hamud, who calls the Boston bombing a "despicable act of terrorism" and believes the evidence will lead to the younger Tsarnaev's conviction, says his hope is that in the process of discovery federal agents don’t try to use the same kinds of broad-brush immigration allegations they did after 9/11 to go through an entire community of Chechnyans.

“I believe we’ve matured as a country since 9/11," Hamud says. "But we’ll see. After all, the FBI does have some egg on its face after questioning the older brother and letting him back in the country.”

Hamud says the hiring this week by Tsarnaev's defense team of Judy Clarke, the infamous San Diego-based attorney who represented would-be terrorist Moussaoui, "Unabomber" Ted Kaczysnki, Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph, child murderer Susan Smith, and other notorious clients, is no surprise.

"She (Clarke) is a consummate expert in death penalty cases, and her goal is to save the life in jeopardy," Hamud says. "Moussaoui had a number of lawyers assigned to the defense team, but among them even then, she generated a lot of respect."

The way Hamud sees it, the Obama administration “did the right thing” not labeling Tsarnaev, a U.S. citizen, as an enemy combatant. 

“It’s important that he be tried in a criminal court,” he says. “He committed a criminal act, and he needs to be punished by the criminal system, by a jury that will give him a fair trial. The evidence is overwhelming in this case. He will be convicted. But there should be justice, whereas in Guantanamo, we have planners and implementers of the 9/11 attacks who still haven’t been tried.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the decision not to treat Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant is "absolutely the right way to go and the appropriate way to go,” and added that because Tsarnaev is a naturalized U.S. citizen, he cannot be tried by a military commission.

"It is important to remember that since 9/11 we have used the federal court system to convict and incarcerate hundreds of terrorists," Carney said.

Hamud believes that if the deceased brother and suspect Tamerian Tsarnaev had been taken alive he might have been named an enemy combatant because he went back to Russia so recently and for so long. But Hamud acknowledges that “it was different during the Bush administration when they arrested Jose Padilla, an American citizen, in Chicago, and labeled him an enemy combatant and said that he could be held in military prison indefinitely without access to a lawyer. The Constitution does not allow citizens arrested on U.S. soil to be held beyond the reach of the courts.”

Hamud says one other unfortunate similarity between the 9/11 attacks and the Boston bombing is how it has negatively affected innocent Muslims in America.

“The Muslim community in America is once again very guarded and concerned,” he says. “People are beginning to speak out in the hopes of diffusing any animosity that might arise from these terrible acts. I hope that people will be accepting of Islam as a religion rather than an agenda for fanatics.”