Army begins questioning Bergdahl about disappearance, Taliban capture

HOUSTON — The U.S. Army has begun questioning Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl about his disappearance in Afghanistan that led to five years in captivity by the Taliban, his attorney and an Army spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Bergdahl was questioned at Fort Sam Houston in Texas where he has been staying since returning to the U.S., said his attorney, Eugene R. Fidell.

"Sgt. Bergdahl answered all questions put to him. The interview is proceeding. It has been a productive expenditure of time," Fidell said in a telephone interview during a break in the questioning. Fidell declined to comment on what specific questions Bergdahl was asked.

Lt. Col. Alayne Conway, an Army spokeswoman, said Bergdahl was advised of his rights under Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Article 31 pertains to individuals being informed of the nature of the accusation against them and says that they do not have to make any statement to investigators.

"This in an ongoing investigation; the investigating officer has 60 days from his appointment to conclude his investigation; however, he can request additional time if he feels it is necessary," Conway said in an emailed statement. She did not respond to an inquiry about what type of questions investigators asked.

Maj. Gen. Kenneth R. Dahl, who is heading the probe into the 28-year-old's disappearance, questioned Bergdahl on Wednesday, Fidell said.

A well-known lawyer and military justice expert who is currently a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, Fidell described the setting of Bergdahl's interview as "a comfortable environment," a room with a sofa and a couple of chairs. He said there were four people in the room, the interview was being recorded and that they were taking breaks throughout the day.

It was not immediately known how long the interview would last. But Fidell said he expected this would be the only interview Bergdahl would be giving as part of the investigation.

"There is no reason to think there will be more than one," he said.

The Idaho native was freed by the Taliban May 31 in a deal struck by the Obama administration in which five senior Taliban officials were released from detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Bergdahl had disappeared from his post in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan on June 30, 2009. Some ex-members of Bergdahl's former unit have labeled him a deserter, asserting that he chose to walk away and saying some were wounded or killed looking for him.

The investigation's findings will help determine whether Bergdahl is prosecuted for desertion or faces any other disciplinary action.

Bergdahl had been receiving care at Fort Sam Houston since returning to the United States on June 13. He was treated at Brooke Army Medical Center at the fort but was later shifted to outpatient care at the military base.

Earlier this month, the Army announced Bergdahl had been given a desk job, ending the formal phase of his transition from Taliban prisoner to not-quite-ordinary soldier.

Bergdahl has not commented publicly on the circumstances of his disappearance, and the Army has made no charges against him.

It is unknown whether Bergdahl's family has seen him since his return to the United States. Army officials have said because of a request by Bergdahl's family for privacy, they cannot comment on that matter.

EUCOM sends advisers to Ukraine to assist in crash probe

STUTTGART, Germany — U.S. European Command has dispatched a small team of advisers to Ukraine to support the investigation into the downing of the Malaysian airliner last month.

About 12 servicemembers were sent to Kiev, but they will not venture to the site of the crash in eastern Ukraine. The team will provide assistance to U.S. diplomatic personnel in areas such as communications, logistics and surveying, the Pentagon's spokesman said on Tuesday.

"Recovery operations is something, tragically and unfortunately, the U.S. military has to do and has to be good at. And these people are -- they have expertise in that regard," Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters.

The troops, who arrived in Ukraine on Monday, were mobilized at the request of the State Department, Kirby said.

U.S. officials have accused pro-Russian separatists of shooting down the commercial aircraft, which crashed on July 17 in the heart of contested territory not far from Ukraine's border with Russia.

Close to 300 people were killed, prompting widespread international condemnations. Soon after the incident, U.S. and European officials levied additional sanctions on Russia. U.S. officials have accused Russia of supplying separatists with advanced anti-aircraft weapons systems that it believes were used in the attack.

The separatists also have been accused of preventing access to the crash site, and hampering the investigation and the recovery of remains.

In recent weeks, Russia has moved more than 10,000 troops back to its border with Ukraine, according to U.S. officials, raising concerns that tensions in the region could further escalate.

"What matters is that they continue to reinforce these units, that they are very capable and very ready across what we call combined arms capabilities -- armor, artillery, air defense, special forces -- and that they are closer to the border than they were in the spring," Kirby said.

Vandiver.john@stripes.com

As disability awards grow, so do concerns with veracity of PTSD claims

The 49-year-old veteran explained that he suffered from paranoia in crowds, nightmares and unrelenting flashbacks from the Iraq war. He said he needed his handgun to feel secure and worried that he would shoot somebody.

The symptoms were textbook post-traumatic stress disorder.

But Robert Moering, the psychologist conducting the disability examination at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Tampa, Fla., suspected the veteran was exaggerating.

Hardly anybody had so many symptoms of PTSD so much of the time.

As disability awards for PTSD have grown nearly fivefold over the last 13 years, so have concerns that many veterans might be exaggerating or lying to win benefits.

Moering, a former Marine, estimates that roughly half of the veterans he evaluates for the disorder exaggerate or fabricate symptoms.

Depending on severity, veterans with PTSD can receive up to $3,000 a month tax-free, making the disorder the biggest contributor to the growth of a disability system in which payments have more than doubled to $49 billion since 2002.

"It's an open secret that a large chunk of patients are flat-out malingering," said Christopher Frueh, a University of Hawaii psychologist who spent 15 years treating PTSD in the VA system.

Diagnosing PTSD can be difficult in the best of circumstances. Experts have long debated how to define the condition. One person can suffer crippling anxiety from an experience that wouldn't faze someone else.

Assessing PTSD becomes even more difficult in a VA system that gives veterans a financial incentive to appear as sick as possible, former and current VA mental health clinicians said. The number of veterans on the disability rolls for the disorder has climbed from 133,745 to more than 656,000 over the last 13 years.

Vietnam and the recent wars have fueled the growth in roughly equal measure.

Frueh and other critics of the disability system have sparred in medical journals with senior VA mental health officials, who argue that the extent of malingering is impossible to know without more research.

The veteran Moering evaluated was already receiving $1,600 a month in disability pay for PTSD as well as various joint problems. But he wanted to increase it.

Three tests designed to detect dishonest patients by looking for highly unlikely response patterns strongly suggested that the veteran was exaggerating,

According to disability records that Moering allowed The Times to review. The case is one of eight that Moering opened to the newspaper. In each, he challenged a PTSD diagnosis. The records were redacted to hide names and other identifying information.

Moering said he could not determine whether the veteran was feigning entirely or simply stretching the truth.

"This is the dilemma we face," Moering said. "How can a disability rater honestly rate this veteran?"

Government policy in cases without a clear answer is to give the veteran the benefit of the doubt. The VA left his disability rating intact.

War's psychic toll

In some ways, the explosion in PTSD cases is a sign of progress.

Though descriptions of the disorder show up in literature as far back as Shakespeare, it did not become a formal diagnosis until 1980, and even then remained controversial. After decades of downplaying the psychological toll of war, the government has finally acknowledged the damage and boosted assistance to veterans in need.

The VA has increasingly recognized non-war-related PTSD as well, extending monthly compensation to tens of thousands of veterans traumatized by accidents -- both on- and off-duty -- that occurred at the time they were enlisted. In one case The Times reviewed, a woman was awarded PTSD compensation based on breaking her leg in a fall walking to the mess hall.

As the number of cases has climbed, so has debate over their legitimacy.

A 2007 study of 74 Arkansas veterans with chronic PTSD, most of them from the Vietnam War, concluded that more than half were exaggerating symptoms. Other research has found little evidence of malingering.

In the aftermath of serious trauma, most people experience symptoms of the disorder. But the nightmares, concentration problems and heightened state of alert usually go away in a few weeks. In a minority of cases, certain combinations of symptoms persist. That's PTSD.

Because the diagnosis relies mainly on what patients report, it is easy to exaggerate.

In online forums, veterans trade tips on how to behave in their disability evaluations. Common advice: Dress poorly and don't shower, refuse to sit with your back to the door, and constantly scan the room.

If an examiner asks about homicidal thoughts, a Vietnam veteran posted, say: "Doc, doesn't everyone, I mean didn't you ever think about killing someone? Hell, I think about it every time someone gets too close to me."

He also urged veterans to purposely fail memory and other cognitive tests.

The motivation behind such advice is not always clear. It may be aimed at helping veterans get what they deserve from a system that many see as rigged against them. Exaggeration can also be a sign of distress itself.

Though VA investigations have exposed scams -- including disability recipients who never served in the military -- the department has focused on making the system friendlier to veterans.

To get paid for PTSD, veterans must link their symptoms to trauma that occurred during their service. In 2010, the VA expanded what situations could qualify.

Credible fear of being attacked -- without actually suffering or witnessing violence -- became sufficient.

The VA also dropped its requirement to support each case of war-related PTSD with records of the underlying trauma. Those veterans are now taken at their word.

After the changes, the number of new PTSD claims rose 60% to more than 150,000 a year, and approval rates jumped from 55% to 74%.

The shift raised new concerns.

In a 2014 paper, Arthur Russo, a VA psychologist in Brooklyn, argued that the disability system is prone to "collusive lying," in which veterans fake mental illness and clinicians go along with it.

He cited an email from an unnamed VA chief psychologist to staff members instructing them not to diagnose malingering or "make any comments that appear to question patients' reports of trauma."

Gail Poyner, an Oklahoma City psychologist, said she was dismissed in 2010 from a company the VA hired to conduct disability exams because she insisted on giving veterans tests to determine whether they were exaggerating.

"It's political," Poyner said. "It's not prudent to suggest that people who have served our country are not being honest."

The VA issued a statement to The Times saying it encourages examiners "to conduct comprehensive, accurate and thorough evaluations" and to use their clinical judgment in deciding whether to test for malingering.

An issue of honesty

The quest for VA disability benefits begins before service members leave the military.

Jill Wilschke, a therapist who worked at Camp Lejeune, N.C., until late last year, said many of her patients had witnessed the horrors of war and were being forced out of the military because of PTSD.

"People I worked with were really hurting and scared about how they would survive when they left," Wilschke recalled.

But in several cases, she said, Marines whose symptoms were fading expressed concern that medical records documenting their progress would be used against them in disability exams. One with mild PTSD was contemplating putting off college because he worried attending would make him appear too healthy.

Wilschke worried that some patients weren't being honest with her.

Several VA mental health providers said the incentives of the disability system have undermined their relationship with patients and inhibited them from fully engaging in treatment.

In 2005, the VA office of the inspector general looked at 92 cases of PTSD and found that while most veterans received treatment when their disability ratings had room to rise, visits dropped off after their ratings topped out at 100% disabled.

Frueh and other researchers have argued that the incentives of the disability system may help explain why veterans tend to report less improvement than other patients in response to treatment.

In its statement, the VA pointed to several studies casting doubt on that view and said "it is counterproductive to disparage VA disability policies and treatment efforts without clear supporting evidence."

Many veterans -- including those receiving disability pay -- make substantial progress with treatment, it said.

Among the most encouraging results came in a study published last year in JAMA Psychiatry. It looked at 1,888 veterans who began a treatment known as prolonged exposure therapy. Nearly 800 went on to fall below the threshold for PTSD on a standard assessment scale. Their traumas included combat, sexual violence and painful childhood experiences.

In the VA disability system, however, the disorder is usually permanent.

Of the 572,612 veterans on the disability rolls for PTSD at the end of 2012, 1,868 -- a third of 1% -- saw a reduction in their ratings the next year, according to statistics provided by the VA.

Even some veterans whose diagnosis falls under deep suspicion have managed to keep their disability ratings.

In one case that Moering reviewed in 2009, he searched military records and concluded that a Navy veteran on the disability rolls for PTSD had lied to VA clinicians about having served in the elite SEALs and concocted his combat history.

The VA responded by reducing his PTSD rating from 50% to 30%, records show.

alan.zarembo@latimes.com

Post-9/11 GI Bill turns 5

Seventy years ago, the original GI Bill provided a bridge to the middle class for veterans returning from war who may have otherwise found limited opportunity in the civilian world.

Five years into the Post-9/11 GI Bill era, this newest incarnation has done much the same, veterans education officials said.

But serious challenges may lie ahead for the highly popular program.

“Protecting the benefit is an increasingly important piece of the puzzle,” said Matt Randle, interim chief of staff for Student Veterans of America. “If we cannot demonstrate [the Post-9/11 GI Bill’s value] to the lawmakers of this country — and ultimately to the taxpayers of this country — then I think that it can and may well become part of the discussion in a budget-conscious Congress.”

Most veterans have two GI Bill benefits to choose from: Post-9/11 and the Montgomery GI Bill.

Their preference is clear — last year, nearly eight times as many vets used Post-9/11, compared to Montgomery.

Except in particular, rare cases, Post-9/11 is the more generous benefit by far. It covers the full cost of in-state tuition at all public colleges and universities or up to $19,198 at private schools in the 2013-14 school year.

It also provides a housing stipend, which varies by school location and is based on the Basic Allowance for Housing offered to an E-5 paygrade with dependents. Post-9/11 beneficiaries also receive a stipend of up to $1,000 per year for books and supplies, depending on course load.

And all these benefits can be transferred by the vet to a spouse or child, under certain conditions.

Montgomery cannot be transferred, offers no stipend and covered no more than $1,648 per month for college costs in 2013-14, though under some circumstances, vets can pocket the difference when tuition falls below the $1,648 level.

The money that Post-9/11 typically provides has attracted the attention of many student veterans — as well as schools and skeptical public officials.

Such officials have focused on for-profit schools, charging that some take advantage of student vets, sucking up their benefits while offering little in return. For-profit school representatives and even veterans service organizations have pushed back on that characterization, saying there are good and bad schools of all types, whether for-profit, private or public.

Still, talk of schools squandering Post-9/11 benefits continues and could lead to doubts about whether the cost is worthwhile.

“In order to preserve the benefit, we need to be able to show policymakers that student veterans are succeeding in higher ed,” said Ryan Gallucci, deputy legislative director for Veterans of Foreign Wars.

But that can be difficult. Veterans using the Post-9/11 GI Bill often come to school with transfer credit and sometimes attend part time, due to career or family obligations. Such students cannot be counted in the traditional student success measures established by the Education Department.

In March, SVA released a study attempting to track vet graduation rates. But the study relied on a sample of students dramatically different from the typical veteran population and used an inconsistent method to determine success, casting doubt on the results.

Curtis Coy, a VA deputy undersecretary, said this lack of outcome data can hurt vet students trying to decide on a school.

“You get 36 months of benefits. It doesn’t leave you much room for error,” Coy said, adding that VA is working to figure out methods to measure the success of student veterans at particular schools.

For its part, SVA last month rolled out a “Not Recommended” schools list, to warn vets away from institutions that it believes could squander their benefits.

Perhaps the other biggest concern related to the Post-9/11 GI Bill was addressed just last week, as part of a comprehensive veterans reform bill passed by Congress. One provision requires public universities to offer in-state tuition rates to all Post-9/11 beneficiaries, thus eliminating a tuition gap that vets sometimes had to make up themselves when their military service prevented them from establishing residency in a particular state.

“That was a huge push for us,” Randle said.

Still, Randle expressed some concern about the future of the overall benefit, noting that if Congress lets the Post-9/11 GI Bill continue as is, without scaling it down, it “would be the first” GI Bill to receive such hands-off treatment.

Coy said he wishes he had “a good crystal ball” to divine what changes Congress may make to the benefit in the future. But whatever may happen, he said, the benefit is a great investment for the country, and Congress is likely to want to ensure vets have such a bridge to civilian success.

“This Post-9/11 GI Bill will spawn the next ‘greatest generation,’ ” Coy said. “I would suggest that the American people believe that this is a benefit that has been richly earned by veterans.”