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| Wisconsin's Keith Roberts is a veteran whom we betrayed and is a man who will never be made whole by what baleful U.S. officials acting from base motives inflicted on an innocent man from northern Wisconsin. |
First in a series this week on wrongful conviction of innocent veteran
Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — Decency and duty drove a Wisconsin Navy veteran to act in an unsuccessful attempt to save a fellow airman from being crushed to death by a 73,000-pound C-54 transport aircraft at a Naval airbase in Naples, Italy on Feb 4, 1969.
The Navy veteran is Keith Roberts of Gillett, Wisconsin, (Mal Contends).
For his service and good work, Roberts was prosecuted by the United States Dept of Justice in one of the most despicable miscarriages of justice my state has seen.
While Roberts filed a disability claim related to his PTSD condition, citing in-service 'stressors,' that was being adjudicated at the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic (2001-2009) stepped in and subsequently secured an indictment on mail fraud on April 26, 2005 under Title 18 United States Code 1341 (mail fraud), later superseded to wire fraud, (Wisconsin State Journal).
Roberts was convicted of wire fraud in 2007 for receiving disability benefits related to PTSD, diagnosed by several public and private medical professionals. The federal indictment was malicious and baseless, (Wisconsin Navy Airman Keith Roberts, U.S. Attorneys Scandal–Milwaukee, EpluribusMedia, Wis Community).
The indictment reads in part that Roberts was not friends with his friend, Airman Gary Holland, and that Roberts "exaggerated" efforts to save his friend when the Navy air base equivalent of a general quarters alarm was sounding as an air man was being crushed to death by the C-54 aircraft. Consider this.
Reads a U.S. Department of Justice, United States Attorney’s Office Eastern District of Wisconsin press release from March 5, 2007:
The DoJ indictment is demonstrably false, but even granted its silly assertions and premises is absurd grounds for a federal criminal indictment.
Roberts was an airman stationed at the Naval Air Facility in Naples, Italy, in 1969. The indictment alleged,and the government proved at trial, that Roberts fabricated his role in the attempted rescue of an airman who was killed at the Naval Air Facility on February 4, 1969. Roberts also fabricated his relationship with that airman.Roberts was discharged from active duty in 1971.
This Wisconsin veteran's fight for exoneration of this political prosecution continues on this Veterans Day, 2019.
Contra the government's case, writes human rights attorney Scott Horton in Harper's Magazine (Sept 7, 2007), "The prosecution smacks of retaliation and a plan to suppress veterans claims—Roberts was prosecuted for tenaciously pursuing a claim for benefits, which VA resisted and which is still in the benefits review process."
The Vietnam-era veteran had no idea while he was gathering evidence seeking an earlier retroactive date for his successful VA claim in 2002, per the advice of a Shawano (Wisconsin) Veteran’s Service Officer, and jumping through hoop after hoop, that not only were his existing VA benefits in jeopardy but his very liberty was in danger.
"The process of gathering evidence to prove PTSD disability is extremely time-consuming," said then Sen. Barrack Obama (D-IL) on August 10, 2005 at a time when the VA was set to review 72,000 PTSD cases, but backed down under intense pressure from veterans. "It requires the compilation of medical records, military service records, and testimonies from other veterans who can attest to a person’s combat exposure."
As Roberts was adjudicating his claim with the VA, after Roberts had accused the VA of fraudulently handling his claims in 2003, U.S. Atty Biskupic, in an extraordinary development, stepped in in 2005 and launched this extraordinary prosecution.
Critics see Roberts as an innocent victim—a poster boy and cautionary tale—of a VA bureaucracy determined to deter PTSD claims from Vietnam vets, rightwing forces allied with VA Secretary Jim Nicholson (2005-07), and an overzealous prosecutor, Biskupic and his staff.
This week, these pages will feature exclusively new developments of a man who served our country honorably; followed the advice of his veteran service officer, and was subsequently chewed up, imprisoned and effectively tortured in federal prison.
A three-member panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (07-1546) in July 2008 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 ... .
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The U.S. v. Keith A. Roberts indictment on mail fraud (April 26, 2005), [superseded by the indictment on wire fraud,] alleges in part that Roberts in his "(s)cheme to (d)efraud" the VA "falsely represented material information to the VA" including "that Roberts and airman Gary (Holland) were close friends and roommates."
In fact, an analysis obtained from Roberts' wife, Deloris Roberts, of the service histories of Gary Holland and Keith Roberts reveals parallel military careers 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.
These service histories are readily available to any federal investigator probing the case. But the enterprise of judging the friendship between two airmen 35 years later is the basis of a federal indictment?
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In February 2010, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts questioned Assistant to the Solicitor General Anthony Yang in oral arguments in the federal benefits-related case, Astrue v. Ratliff.
Asked Justice Roberts, "In litigating with veterans, the government more often than not takes a position that is substantially unjustified?" (p. 52, United States Supreme Court)
Yes, he was told.
Roberts found this "really startling."
So, please, stay tuned, what I will present in these pages this week is really startling.
And Happy Veterans Day, Keith Roberts.
We know what our government did to you and your family.
"[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 the 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 about the Roberts affair. "I'd have to say that you guys are TOTALLY (uppercase in the original) right about Roberts' conviction being bullshit ... . "
See also:
Keep up the good work Mike. Bob Walsh
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