Earlier this month, the Austin American-Statesman published an exhaustive story from reporter Jeremy Schwartz about a once promising, now troubled Department of Veterans Affairs brain research program in Waco, Texas. A mobile MRI machine was set up in 2008 to much fanfare, but had essentially remained idle due to poor management and mechanical failures ever since. We spoke to Schwartz, who is on the newspaper’s projects team and has focused on military-related issues since 2009.
How did you come upon this story?
I had basically gotten a call out of the blue. I had been writing about the VA and some of their issues on the claims side. They had been having some problems processing their disability claims. I had been writing about that and I think that’s where this gentleman had seen my work.
Jeremy Schwartz/Austin American-Statesman
He called me up. He was an employee at the center and was extremely nervous about his identity being exposed and so fearing retaliation from the VA. He did not want to speak on the record at all. But … he pointed me to a lot of the documents that I would need to get this story. We met and came up with a FOIA (Freedom of Informationa Act) request together. That was invaluable. Even had I just heard that this program was floundering and not producing, it would’ve been hard to come in from the outside and fashion a FOIA request specific enough to get the documents I needed to get. He was just crucial in terms of sitting down with me and going step by step over the documents we would need.
How did that develop into a 10-month investigation?
We met last year, late fall, and put in the requests at the beginning of this year. The VA is not quick on FOIA requests. FOIA requests used to come from the office that you were asking the information from. In the last year or so, I’ve noticed that FOIA requests go to Washington for some vetting, some extra level of somebody putting eyes on your request. That happened in this case. That added probably added a month or two to the wait. The FOIA came back in early May, I believe. As we were waiting I was trying to reach out to other folks who worked at the center.
Did you have a good amount of knowledge about post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury research before this story?
I had been covering military issues since 2009. I had been covering human costs of PTSD and TBI for years. I was familiar with the issues involved. I was much less familiar with the research end of it, specifically how the MRI machine works. I had no idea. That was a steep learning curve. I didn’t think it would be going into it. You have an MRI machine, you have brain scans, you do research. But there was a lot to learn about how MRIs work and how research protocols work at the VA.
In your reporting, did you come across any research going on that did what this program sought to do?
There are quite a few MRI studies out there. There’s a lot of research that use MRIs to look at different parts of the brain and there’s a lot. This patchwork of research going on out there. What made this program exciting is that they were going to do before and after scans of soldiers who are deployed. That is less common. And I did not find other examples of MRI studies of a before-after deployment. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I did find PTSD and TBI studies that aren’t necessarily MRI studies. There was one particularly in San Diego with a Marine unit. They did some really interesting work linking TBI and PTSD. They were able to do that by studying these troops before and after their deployment.
What has the response been on this story?
The congressional response has been pretty strong off the bat. The local delegation here in Texas have asked the VA for some answers for this. The representative in Waco (Republican Rep. Bill Flores) has even floated the idea of shutting this center down because of basically, six years of wasted money and wasted chances. To him, it seems as though they have squandered their chance to do this kind of research. This also builds upon another failed program in Austin. Between the programs, that’s basically wasting 10 years and about $15 million dollars. For them, there’s a loss of patience with the VA. Some in Congress might think this research may be better performed by a different agency. The VA program here has hired a new director and a new researcher in the last few months. We will see what happens.
Where do you think this center might be headed?
They’ve hired somebody to oversee the scanner. The first step will be to get the scanner working. It’s hard to say that it will ever get to that point. With world-class MRI research programs a lot goes into it. There are universities there are other VA facilities there’s a whole infrastructure that is required. There’s a whole staff that is needed to make it work efficiently and productively. That will be the VA’s challenge, to set something up. You can’t do MRI research half-heartedly. You have to set up an actual program. They aren’t there yet, but it will take an investment on their part. If Congress or the local congressional delegation is not convinced that is going to pay off then I think I think it’s possible that this research will go somewhere else.
What was your biggest challenge during the course of reporting this story?
We got the FOIA back and we got 1,000 pages of stuff, which was great stuff. But the challenge then is to use that and put that into context. You need human intelligence to back it up. The challenge with this was to find employees and old employees of the center to talk. And it’s a small center. There’s not a large pool to draw from. It took some time to convince people to speak with me. There’s a lot of fear out there, even people who don’t work with the VA anymore. That was the challenge. I think a lot of the challenge on a lot of these FOIA-driven projects is getting that flipside and getting the people on the inside to talk to you.
