European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - August 22, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 4 the stars and stripes monday August 22,1988 a covered up disability claim errors under reported mistakes probe finds Washington a veterans administration a officials refused to reply to the panel s specific this category refers to mathematical and other factual m. _ ? _ .4.  Fil  frequently made wrong decisions on Veter ans disability claims and the a tried to cover up the mistakes by deliberately under reporting the error rate House investigators said sunday. The House government operations committee said the managers made wrong decisions in their haste to make themselves look Good and win pay bonuses for meeting production quotas. The panel suggested that Congress end a 55-year-oldprohibition and allow veterans who Are denied benefits to Appeal their cases in Federal court. Their present Las resort is a a appeals Board where veterans won less than 13 percent of the time under the now abolished quota system. A committee report released sunday cited testimony by a former a official that some disability cases were processed in a scant 7.8 minutes to meet production quotas. The panel said an internal study by a attorney Ronald b. Abrams in 1984 blamed Many errors squarely on a managers trying to make themselves Loo Good for. The Agency s internal personnel evaluation  the a Doles out $11 billion in disability benefits annually to 2.5 million veterans widows and children. While some veterans were improperly denied benefits under the a s error plagued system others May have received Money to which they were not entitled according to committee staffers. The a said in a statement it has not been provided with a copy of the committee s report and is obviously disadvantaged by the fact that it was re leased to the Media before it came to us. We intend to review it thoroughly when it is  allegations. Nine of the 15 republicans on the 38-member com Mittee filed dissenting views disagreeing with the recommendation for court appeals. While we share the committee s concerns about. Practices such As production quotas. We cannot sup port the committee s inference that the appeals Board does not have the Best interests of the veterans in mind they said. The report based on a study by the subcommittee on human resources found that . Moore for Mer director of the a compensation and pension service who was in charge of claims processing was allowed to resign after the a s inspector general concluded he misrepresented the truth before the House panel. The inspector general also found that Moore improperly solicited computer equipment from veterans service organizations falsified education credentials provided 19 the a and solicited veterans groups cohost receptions for a officials the report said. Moore also was accused of improperly maintaining a slush fund of donations from veterans service groups when he was a regional director in Milwaukee. The fund was used to finance Moore s own fare Well party the report said. Telephone Calls were placed seeking Moore s com ment but Moore could not be reached. The report did not give exact numbers of errors but cited Abrams internal study of 1,700 cases which Esti mated errors. An 18.2 percent judgmental error rate in which the wrong decision was made even though the data used to Render the opinion was accurate. A procedural error rate of 21.5 percent encases where the mistake did not affect the final Benefit determination. The a however gave the subcommittee Lowe error rates for the 1983-87 period substantive errors 1.02 percent to 1.73 percent judgmental errors 1.11percent to 1.81 percept and procedural discrepancies 3.91 percent to 5.09 percent. The a s quota system was described to the sub committee earlier this year by Ernest b. Wright a member of the Board of veterans appears and a for Mer appeals Board member Daniel . Bierman. They testified that Bra members. Had production quotas of 40 cases per week which if fulfilled could result in Merit pay increases As High As 5 percent of a member s pay the report said. It was Bierman who said he had production record showing that some cases were processed in 7.8 min utes others in 20 minutes. Bierman told the subcommittee headed by  Weiss  that the quota system promotes a shoddy appraisal of the cases and incomplete reviews. No one can turn in 60, 80, 100, 102 cases a weekend be assured that they will be properly processed Bierman said. The a ended production based bonuses and preferential treatment for claims cases in which members of Congress intervened after both practices were Public a substantive error rate of 8.4 percent that led sized in subcommittee hearings and challenged in a to denial of claims that should have been approved. Lawsuit filed by the Vietnam veterans of America. Of High of Developer Richard e. Jacobs right and area. The 900-foot building will be the Cleveland mayor George Voinovich look tallest Structure in Ohio when it is Cora at a Model of the planned Amer Trust plated. The 1.7 million Square foot High enter building in the Public Square Rise is projected to be finished by 1993. Marines failed to shield vital data report says Washington up the Marine corps carelessly exposed tens of thousands of secret military documents to possible Compromise by regularly fail ing to safeguard classified information an internal report says. In an unusually Blunt report Navy auditors have criticized senior Marine corps officials in Washington for Gener Al inattention to implementing Security and their subordinates for a less than diligent approach to handling  the naval audit service said in it feb. 29 report that the Marine corps Headquarters in Virginia failed to keep track of most of its 60,000-plus secret documents. The whereabouts of these papers is unknown. The report also said the headquarter sometimes discovered that secret records were missing but waited up to seven years to investigate. Our review of Marine corps head quarters showed fundamental problem sin the control Protection and destruction of classified materials said the re port which was obtained by United press International through the Freedom of information act. Loss of classified material could go unnoticed and a potential threat to National Security by compromised Classi fied material could go undetected Audi tors found. Auditors did not say they had found any instances of espionage. But the re port said Marine corps personnel some times granted civilian contractors Access to classified documents even though the civilians lacked Security clearances. Maj. Ron Stokes a Marine corp spokesman acknowledged inadvertent disclosures of classified data to civilian personnel without requisite Security  Stokes noted that some documents should have been locked up in safes a night but were left out in the open where they were perused by government work ers who did not have clearances. But Stokes said there had been no known Compromise of classified information under conditions presenting risk to National  the Navy has been the victim of two celebrated espionage cases in recent years in which classified documents were illegally Given to foreign agents. The Walker family spy ring spirited away secret Navy records to the soviets and Jonathan Pollard revealed secret data tothe israelis. The Headquarters of the Marine corp runs worldwide operations for the land assault service of the Navy. Only 1,562of the 3,478 military and civilian head quarters employees Are cleared for Access to secret materials. These records Deal with sensitive topics such As troop operations War strategy invasion contingency plans weapon capability and performance intelligence matters and nato operations. Among the problems cited by the audit report Only 28,000 classified records a Headquarters were monitored As required through an inventory while Many More than this number escaped such control. Although 30 top secret document were found missing in 1980, a preliminary inquiry was not begun for nearly seven years. Drawers of secret records were left open with no worker nearby. Secret nato records and . Materials were mixed in the same file giving staff members who were supposed Tosee Only one set of documents Access to both. Stokes said the Marine corps has recently made a number of changes such As initiation of random inspections aimed at correcting Security weaknesses