From CREW's vantage point, a very disturbing pattern is emerging regarding the safety and care of U.S. soldiers and veterans.

Last week, CREW and VoteVets [0] released an e-mail obtained from a Veterans Affairs (VA) employee directing VA staff to refrain from diagnosing soldiers and veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  

For the past couple months, we've been trying to get to the bottom of the scandal involving the manufacture of substandard helmets for U.S. soldiers. 

This week, CREW received a response to its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on March 5, 2008 with the Department of Defense (DoD) seeking information regarding a $74 million contract awarded to Sioux Manufacturing.  DoD's response can be found here [0].

DoD denied CREW's request for expedited processing and deferred a decision on a waiver of all processing fees under the FOIA.   We were told "Expedited processing cannot be granted based on a hypothetical situation."

The "hypothetical situation" relates to the manufacture of substandard helmets for U.S. soldiers.  The records sought by CREW are likely to shed light on how and why Sioux Manufacturing has been awarded multiple contracts by the Department of Defense for the manufacture of Kevlar, including a $74 million dollar contract just 12 days before the company settled a lawsuit alleging that Sioux had supplied substandard Kevlar for use in up to 2.2 million helmets for the military.

Anne Weismann, CREW’s chief counsel put it pretty clearly:

It is hard to imagine that the Department of Defense is actually arguing it is merely “hypothetical” that substandard helmets might endanger our soldiers' lives.