Uppity Wisconsin

President-elect Barack Obama has tremendously more on his plate than reinventing government and restoring some semblance of accountability to Americans.

Ensuring that the world does not enter into a second depression, halting a war or two, saving the environment, formulating an industrial policy on alternative energy, one can go on; all are problems of a massive scale.

But readers of Uppity Wisconsin may notice a comment from a veteran posted this week about another veteran who is serving a four-year sentence in federal prison.

That jailed veteran is Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1968-71), a Vietnam-era veteran, [see Wisconsin Navy Airman Keith Roberts and U.S. Attorneys Scandal–Milwaukee] from Gillett, Wisconsin; and he’s an innocent man wrongfully imprisoned.

Roberts was convicted on five counts of wire fraud for receiving U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits after the national VA office launched a vendetta against Roberts for being a pain to the VA regional office in “tenaciously pursuing a claim for VA benefits" (Harper’s).

U.S. Atty Stephen Biskupic's office took up the VA’s case that resulted in the 2006 conviction.

In sum, Roberts served his country and was railroaded by a corrupt VA and an appalling U.S. DOJ.

President-elect Obama should grant an extraordinary pardon that will not only serve the cause of justice but will also repudiate a VA that has become outright hostile to veterans.

U.S. v. Roberts

The title of the case is fitting for this honorably discharged veteran diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The crux of the case against Roberts is that Roberts was not friends with his fellow Navy airman (Gary Holland) when both the men were on line duty at a Naval base in Naples, Italy on February 5, 1969 when Holland was crushed to death by a C-54 aircraft.

The prosecution also says that Roberts exaggerated his efforts to save Holland, which constituted fraud for which Roberts was convicted by a jury in northern Wisconsin. And that Roberts therefore lied about the friendship and the effort to save Holland.

Holland and Roberts did not have a friendship, and Roberts exaggerated his efforts to save Holland. That’s the alleged fraud, that’s the intent to engage in fraud? Yes.

In fact, the two men had parallel service histories that would make it unlikely that Holland and Roberts were not at least friendly in their relationship, and that contradicts the prosecution’s indictment and trial statements.

So what happened, why the prosecution on such a slender reed?

"[T]he only reason Airman Roberts was ever prosecuted was because he was a ‘belligerent ass’ who kept insisting that he get paid back to discharge. He was demanding an appeal in Washington," said a background source at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee who e-mailed the Lee Rayburn radio show in Madison in early June 2007 after a program about the Roberts case, and asked to remain anonymous out of fear of losing his job. "I'd have to say that you guys are TOTALLY (uppercase in the original) right about Roberts' conviction being bullshit ... ."

Said Roberts’ attorney Robert Walsh, a combat Vietnam Army veteran, at the oral arguments in October 2007 before the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, referencing this VA standard for judging any first-person account by veterans of what happened to them during their service:

… I submit to you that they are inconsistencies in every veteran's record, combat or peacetime. And that Congress has recognized that. And that’s why VA benefits is a very paternalistic, claimant-friendly, non-adversarial system. It’s even more paternalistic that the Social Security benefits adjudication system (per the Veterans Judicial Review Act). So, where’s the intent (for fraud)?

Good question.

Roberts criminal case is before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (U.S. v. Roberts, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin) where Roberts is seeking an en banc hearing, and his benefits case is on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC).

A three-member panel for the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in July found that, "The record might also have supported a jury determination that Mr. Roberts sincerely believed that his statements were true and that he had no intention to defraud the Government ... (but) (i)t is beyond our authority to disturb (a guilty) finding on appeal (in this case)."

As for the comment by the veteran who served with Roberts in Italy, it corroborates what Roberts has claimed for decades had occurred:

James W. Ervin PH3 (not verified) on Tue, 12/16/2008 - 4:13pm. I was stationed @ NAF (Naples), Italy at the time of this "incident". July 1968 thru Nov.1969 . I also remember the young sailor be trapped / crushed up inside the wheel well (nose) of the aircraft inside the hangar of NAF naples,Italy. I do remember someone wanting to drive a forklift into the side of the aircraft ; but an officer or someone of authority would not let them do that....so what they did was have men climb up into the plane & go to the rear of the plane to put weight in the rear of the plane to let the nose come up to release the trapped sailor. (Unfortunately) that process was too slow to save the sailor from death. I also remember taking photographs of the " Pin " that was in the nose gear at the time. I remember it as being a homemade looking pin without a locking clip to keep it from being removed without unlocking the device. As for the names of the people involved , I don't remember ; but there definitely was someone there who wanted to use the (fork) lift to rescue the sailor from the collapsed nose wheel and was ordered NOT to use the fork lift. Sincerely ,

Roberts' family and fellow veterans supporting him in his case remain hopeful, but desperate.

President-elect Obama should grant this family a full pardon and make things right.

via mal contends