Wounded Vets Lobby For Recognition

On Dec. 22, 2004, Tyler Ziegel had his face blown off. On Monday, he was in front of a microphone. The microphone was in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims in downtown Washington. In front of the microphone was a CNN camera filming a documentary on veterans to air on Veterans Day. 

Ziegel, 24, is part of the Louisiana Veterans Advocacy Group, a grass-roots organization that, in this era of AstroTurf “citizen” groups represented by high-powered PR firms, really is grass roots. And it shows. 

The group doesn’t have a website. Lavelle Tullis, a Vietnam veteran organizing the press conference, doesn’t have an e-mail address, and asks a reporter to mail a copy of this article to an address in Dry Prong, La. Paul Labbe, another Vietnam vet and the group’s leader, doesn’t have a pen and borrows one from a reporter so that he can get contact info for the press that has shown up: a reporter from the New Orleans Times-Picayune and one from the Baltimore Sun, along with the CNN crew.

Ziegel, wearing a black U.S. Marines cap, a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt, jeans and rubber sandals, blinks nervously at the reporters. Since his run-in with a suicide bomber in Iraq, both his ears are gone, as is most of his nose. He can’t use his right eye. “Who am I looking at here?” he asks, checking Labbe’s list of reporters. 

Ziegel runs through his story: After recovering at an Army burn unit (where the care was “very good,” he notes), he realized he was getting only a third of his disability payments.

He asked why and they told him his scars were “superficial” -- stretching that term to a snapping point. Eventually, he met Labbe, who got CNN involved. After the network did a short piece about his plight in January, he was quickly given full disability benefits. 

Ziegel adds that his brother is going to Iraq in a few months. “Hopefully I won’t have to fight [for benefits] for him,” he says. 

Labbe takes over and goes case by case through a stack of documents, occasionally pointing an accusatory finger behind him. “These are the judges who are supposed to ensure that veterans’ constitutional rights are not denied,” he says as a young woman walks past, spots Ziegel, stops and does a double take. She slides around behind him, where he can’t see her, so that she can stare at him. 

“The men in this building should be running around like the people at Walter Reed did” after the press exposed poor conditions there, Labbe goes on as a tall, middle-aged woman with large silver earrings walks past and stops dead upon seeing Ziegel. She veers a sharp right and climbs a few stairs to put a maximum distance between her and him. 

At 1:26, the CNN camera comes down, though Labbe still has a number of cases to get through. He finishes by 2:00 as his voice raises to a shout directed at the judges inside: “These people here need to be kicked out!”

“Do you have any questions?” he adds quietly. 

After the conference, a reporter asks Ziegel if he’s following the presidential election. “I’m not really a political guy,” he says, but is quick to reflect on his recent interaction with the staff of two candidates. He and the Vietnam vets recently met with staff of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. They brought their stack of documents.

Obama got higher marks than Clinton from the vets, who said his office agreed to work with the Veterans Benefits Administration on the cases despite the group’s unpolished lobbying style. Spokesman Ben LaBolt confirmed the meeting and said that Obama’s staff, along with the staff of Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.), “is working to address and expedite the cases brought to his attention by the Lousiana Veterans Advocacy organization.” Obama, he added, has pushed for an increase in funding to hire 500 additional claims workers. 

Their meeting with Clinton’s staff didn’t go so well. They had particular problems with Lt. Col. Jaime Martinez, one of the three staffers with whom the trio met. “He was a total asshole,” says Tullis, wearing a black muscle shirt and jean shorts.

“I thanked that colonel for serving his country,” says Labbe. “He was looking right at Tyler and didn’t thank him. The man didn’t have the decency to say anything about his sacrifice.”

A Clinton staffer said that the vets are taking a bit too much offense and that the staffers they met with constitute Clinton’s entire foreign policy crew and that they were given a meeting even though they showed up unannounced and aren’t New York residents. The aide also said the office forwarded the stack of documents to Landrieu’s office and to the Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

“Sen. Clinton and our whole office work tirelessly to serve the men and women who serve us, and these veterans were treated with the utmost respect by the staff they met with -- which is exactly what they deserve,” said Philippe Reines, a Clinton spokesman.

“Lt. Col. Martinez -- an active-duty officer with more than two decades of experience who has served three recent combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan -- understands deeply and personally the issues facing service members and veterans, and he and our entire office places the concerns of veterans first and foremost. These are three of the nicest, most professional people you’ll ever encounter. "

They didn’t convince Ziegel. “I definitely, definitely won’t be voting for Clinton,” he said.