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Subject: VA NURSE INVESTIGATED FOR " SEDITION"  FOR CRITICIZING BUSH
Date: 10 Feb 2006 23:22:22 -0600
From: MichaelP <pap

THANKS JR
==========

http://progressive.org/mag_mc020806

McCarthyism Watch

Matthew Rothschild has been with The Progressive since 1983. His
McCarthyism Watch web column has chronicled more than 150 incidents of
repression since 9/11. His exclusive web commentaries, This Just In, run
on the website several times a week. Monday through Friday, he does
two-minute web radio commentaries that are also available as podcasts, as
is his weekly half-hour interview show, Progressive Radio. He co-founded
and directs the Progressive Media Project.

By Matthew Rothschild February 8, 2006

Laura Berg is a clinical nurse specialist at the VA Medical Center in
Albuquerque, where she has worked for 15 years.

Shortly after Katrina, she wrote a letter to the editor of the weekly
paper the Alibi criticizing the Bush Administration.

After the paper published the letter in its September 15-21 issue, VA
administrators seized her computer, alleged that she had written the
letter on that computer, and accused her of " sedition."

Here's what her letter said.

"I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal
negligence of this government,"  it began. " The Katrina tragedy in the
U.S.  shows that the emperor has no clothes!"  She mentioned that she was
" a VA nurse"  working with returning vets. " The public has no sense of
the additional devastating human and financial costs of post-traumatic
stress disorder,"  she wrote, and she worried about the hundreds of
thousands of additional cases that might result from Katrina and the Iraq
War.

"Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown, and Rice should be tried for criminal
negligence,"  she wrote. " This country needs to get out of Iraq now and
return to our original vision and priorities of caring for land and people
and resources rather than killing for oil. . . . We need to wake up and
get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration
playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.

Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times."

After her computer was seized, Berg wrote a memo to her bosses seeking
information and an explanation.

Mel Hooker, chief of the human resources management service at the
Albuquerque VA, wrote Berg back on November 9 and acknowledged that "your
personal computer files did not contain the editorial letter written to
the editor of the weekly Alibi."

But rather than apologize, he leveled the sedition charge: " The Agency is
bound by law to investigate and pursue any act which potentially
represents sedition,"  he said."In your letter . . . you declared yourself
Tas a VA nurse' and publicly declared the Government which employs you to
have Ttragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence' and
advocated, Tact forcefully to remove a government administration playing
games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.' "

Berg, who is not talking to the press, is " scared for her job"  and
"pretty emotionally distressed,"  says Peter Simonson, executive director
of the ACLU of New Mexico.

"We were shocked to see the word 'sedition' used,"  Simonson tells The
Progressive."Sedition?  That's like something out of the history books."

In a press release, Simonson also said: " Is this government so jealous of
its power, so fearful of dissent, that it needs to threaten people who
openly oppose its policies with charges of Tsedition'?"

The ACLU of New Mexico is working in Berg's behalf. It has filed a Freedom
of Information Act request for documents relating to this incident.  And
it is asking " at the very least"  that Berg " receive a pubic apology
from Mr. Hooker to remedy the unconstitutional chilling effect on the
speech of VA employees that has resulted from these intimidating tactics,"
according to a letter from the New Mexico ACLU to the VA's Office of
Regional Counsel.

Hooker refused to return a phone call, and the VA's Office of Regional
Counsel refused to comment but referred questions to public affairs.

"While VA does not prohibit employees from exercising their freedom of
speech, we do ask that such activity occurs outside government premises
and not during their official tour of duty,"  says Bill Armstrong, a
public affairs specialist for New Mexico's VA Health Care System."When we
have reason to believe that this policy is not being adhered to, we have
the obligation to review an individual's computer activity."

The VA in Washington also refused to comment on the sedition charge.

"We don't discuss internal personnel issues,"  says Phil Budahn, a VA
spokesman in Washington, D.C.

Berg has an additional concern: that the VA may have got the FBI on her
case.

A union employee " shared with me that Mel Hooker conveyed to him that my
letter had been reported Tup through VA channels' to the FBI in
Washington, and that this had been discussed and confirmed"  with union
officials at the national office, Berg wrote in her November 2 complaint.
(The union she belongs to is the American Federation of Government
Employees.)

Hooker denied that the VA had contacted the FBI. " The Agency has no
knowledge of any report alleged to have been made to the FBI regarding you
or your letter,"  he said in his November 9 memo.

Meanwhile, Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, has taken up the
Berg case.

"I am writing to express my deep concern regarding news reports that Ms.
Laura Berg .  . . was investigated for sedition after writing a letter
that was critical of the current Administration,"  Senator Bingaman wrote
to R. James Nicholson, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, on February 7." In a
democracy, expressing disagreement with the government's actions does not
amount to sedition or insurrectionQit is, and must remain, protected
speech."