Disgruntled Veteran
I applaud Michael Granberry’s recent article on Neil Shangold, the disgruntled veteran who recently occupied my office at the Veterans Administration (“Vet Says Jail Care Superior to That of VA,” Jan. 9).
It begins to get at the facts in his case. Media coverage since the event has projected Mr. Shangold as something of a hero, a symbol of deserving veterans who have been shortchanged and frustrated by their dealings with the VA.
As your article begins to show, that is not an entirely accurate projection.
A still more complete and balanced presentation of the facts in his case would convey a different image.
Mr. Shangold is receiving $138 a month from the VA for conditions which are rated as 20% disabling.
His assertion that he is under-compensated is based more on his personal financial circumstances than on an understanding of VA’s disability-rating criteria. The fact is that he is appropriately compensated for his service-connected condition.
In your article about Mr. Shangold, he is quoted to have said that he had been diagnosed as having a “soft-tissue” problem with his knees and that the VA failed to make that diagnosis. That’s not true.
The diagnosis of his service-connected disability is, by definition, a “soft-tissue” problem. It is also nonsense to say that the characterization of his condition as an orthopedic problem is wrong.
Those statements reflect an ignorance of medical principles, a misunderstanding or a deliberate distortion of the VA record.
He may be a nice man who wouldn’t hurt anyone, as his friends say, but Mr. Shangold came into my office with a loaded gun and destroyed more than $10,000 worth of government property.
Among that which he destroyed was painstakingly compiled (on voluntary overtime by a VA employee) data on homeless veterans that would have been used to assist them.
That sort of desperate, misguided and destructive act cannot and will not influence policy decisions concerning VA benefits.
D.H. EMER
Director, Regional Office
Department of Veterans Affairs