Walter Reed Army Medical Center

Washington, DC 20307

24 July 2008

The Honorable Jim Webb

United States Senate

507 East Franklin Street

Richmond, VA 23219

Dear Senator Webb,

I am writing to request your urgent assistance. Several days ago, I faxed this letter to your Richmond office, but your staff there  inform me that the system for reviewing faxes is not functioning, so I am sending this via express mail.

I am a 51-year-old active duty Army pediatrician with 12 years of service, including deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan. I have a medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine, and I maintain a medical license from the Commonwealth of Virginia. I am certified by the American Board of Pediatrics.

Despite these qualifications, and an unblemished record of clinical practice, the Army has recently begun steps to discharge me on the basis of a fraudulent psychiatric diagnosis that would prevent me from practicing medicine even as a civilian.

Over a year ago, in April 2007, while Medical Director of an Army clinic in Bamberg, Germany, I requested help investigating possible irregularities in narcotics prescribing. Clinic staff had brought these concerns to me, and I felt obliged to refer them in turn to my chain of command.

Very soon after I did so, LTC Steven Brewster, then the Deputy Commander for Clinical Services at Wuerzburg, Germany, demoted me from my position as medical director, reprimanded me verbally and in writing for “disloyalty,” denied my application to extend my active duty commitment (and an associated pay increase), and transferred me to a less desirable location on a remote base, where he told me he would inform my new commander of his disapproval of me. At my new assignment, starting in June 2007, I was ordered to work under the supervision of a physician’s assistant, CPT Daniel McIntyre, whom I outranked. This physician’s assistant denied my request for summer leave, and my new commander, LTC Telita Crosland, a physician, informed me that she would not give me any time to look for housing. As a result of this and of the full patient care schedule she assigned me, I was not able to set up a home telephone service until November 2007, and I was never able to arrange to have my household goods or furniture delivered.

In June 2007, I had begun reporting to the Inspector General, LTC Efren Rosa, in Heidelberg, Germany, my concerns about the narcotics abuse at Bamberg and about the retaliation I had experienced. The IG informed my chain of command that I had complained but did not begin an investigation.

In August 2007, when my supervisor, CPT McIntyre ordered me to review 10 of LTC Crosland’s  clinical charts, I noted an error in her prescription of an antibiotic for a child (specifically, an overdose). Shortly thereafter, LTC Crosland, who had already established a reputation for shouting and screaming at staff, both at Grafenwoehr and at previous assignments, began subjecting me to frequent verbal and emotional abuse, shouting at me, reprimanding me for such actions as staying late to finish my work, and denying my reasonable requests for office equipment. She also made false statements about me in writing and verbally, in the presence of other staff. One physician colleague, who also worked under LTC Crosland told me, in October 2007, “She’s trying to nail you.” The extremely hostile work environment her actions created for me also prevented me from completing several tasks necessary for me to apply for promotion to the next military rank, with the result that I was passed over by my most recent promotion board.

I had begun reporting the abuse that LTC Crosland was directing toward me as early as September 2007, first to LTC Henry Spring, and later to his superior, COL Theresa Schneider, commander of the US Army medical assets in that part of Germany. I also reported it to the Inspector General in Heidelberg. I reported to all three of these officials the frequent verbal and emotional abuse I was experiencing from LTC Crosland and repeatedly asked them to intervene.

In November 2007, after learning that I had complained about her treatment of me, LTC Crosland ordered me to stop seeing patients and wrote a memorandum to the Credentials Committee in which she stated, falsely, that I had “declared” myself to be a “danger” to patients.

As a result, the Credentials Committee, headed by LTC Spring, pulled my credentials, restricted me from seeing patients, and allowed LTC Crosland to order me to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. I reported all of this to the Inspector General as it was happening. 

In January 2008, LTC Crosland’s treatment of me had become more and more overtly hostile, and her behavior towards me more and more bizarre (for example, one day she came to my office and angrily ordered me to walk across the clinic, past a chair in which her husband was sitting, to take a routine telephone call that I could have just as easily taken in my own office). By this time, I had become physically ill and was admitted to a German hospital with exhaustion. When I was discharged from the German hospital, LTC Crosland ordered a civilian staff member at the clinic to dispatch a specific military vehicle that was assigned to the clinic to come to the German hospital and drive me back to the base. On our way back to the base, the vehicle had to pull off the road because of what a mechanic later identified as a problem with the driver’s side wheel. The civilian driver, Mrs. Helen Wise, was puzzled that a car that she had dispatched in good condition that morning had something wrong with it.

Shortly after this incident, at one point, LTC Crosland angrily threatened me with a court martial when I declined to tell her whether I had called a lawyer whom she had instructed me to call.

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By this time, LTC Crosland’s strange and hostile actions toward me had begun to raise concern among my friends, colleagues, and family that she was participating in some kind of plan to harm me physically. In fact, a social worker whom I saw, Ms. Ginger Redden, who knew LTC Crosland, asked me, “Do you think she’s trying to kill you?” In late February 2008, when LTC Crosland ordered me not to drive my own car to a medical appointment I had made for myself, and stated that she would arrange a ride for me, an Army chaplain whom I consulted advised me to find another way to get to the appointment, and MAJ Alice Ledoux-Abraham, a friend of who has just retired after 20 years on active duty emphatically advised me not to accept the ride. The evening of 27 February 2008, I reported my concerns to COL Theresa Schneider, that LTC Crosland was intending to harm me. By 0630 the next morning, LTC Crosland hastily changed her instructions to me, at one point bizarrely offering to call me a cab, and then ordering me to drive myself.

I attempted to report these incidents to Army criminal investigators, and Special Agent Karl Hansen took notes for over five hours, but he told me recently that CID does not plan to investigate.

In late February 2008, the Inspector General informed me that he had been instructed by the Commanding General to initiate a command inquiry into my complaints. I continued to try to report my concerns, but shortly afterwards  I was labeled “delusional,” physically detained on the psychiatric ward at Landstuhl, Germany, and flown out of the country. Again, this was all occurring just as the Inspector General was being ordered to proceed with a command inquiry into my concerns.

Over the past several months, while I have been receiving care at Walter Reed, several military psychiatrists have made remarks that lead me to believe that the decision to give me a medical discharge is originating at the level of nonmedical commanders who hope to forestall a full investigation into the allegations I have raised. The first example of this was when Dr. Donna Edison, the psychiatrist who was assigned to me when I first arrived at Walter Reed, told me, several weeks after she first started counseling me, that officials had called from Germany the day before to instruct her to initiate a medical discharge for me. When I asked her who these persons were, she refused to tell me, instead repeating that the decision had already been made. As another example, LTC Eric Dessain, the psychiatrist who is currently in charge of all medical discharges at Walter Reed, in a very brief and hurried meeting several months ago, told me that he had not read my medical record but that it was absolutely certain that I would be medically boarded. He instructed me to abandon my claims of adverse actions on the part of my chain of command and to focus solely on my medical board. In a later meeting, LTC Dessain told me that my case is at the “general” level and that he (LTC Dessain) is obliged to follow orders.

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I am asking for your assistance because of your record of advocacy for the military. Earlier, I had requested help from the office of Senator Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, my home state. However, his staff has told me that they are awaiting results of the inquiry that the Army is conducting in Germany. I have reason to believe that this investigation is compromised. I have also learned that, when Senator Casey’s staff made initial inquiries in Germany, they were given false information about me.

I have tried to explain my situation to the physicians in charge of my care at Walter Reed, where I am currently assigned. I have repeatedly asked to be allowed to return to duty and resume the practice of pediatrics, which is what the Army trained me for. I do not have a record of making medical errors or of giving substandard care to patients. Just as this sequence of events was beginning in the summer of 2007, I had passed the recertification examination required by the American Board of Pediatrics every seven years, and I had just been recredentialed as a pediatrician for another two-year period by the Credentials Committee at the medical command under which I was assigned in Germany. 

Another female soldier at Walter Reed recently told me that she also received the diagnosis of “delusional disorder” while at Landstuhl, from the same psychiatrist (LTC Eduardo Morales) who gave me this diagnosis, at around the same time. That soldier has since had her diagnosis

changed by physicians at Walter Reed, and she has returned to duty. “Delusional disorder” is a very rare condition, and it is even rarer in someone my age who has been fortunate enough be able to pursue a medical career.  

I believe that the decision to discharge me from the Army is an attempt to silence, discredit, and punish me because of the allegations I raised last year about possible narcotics-related wrongdoing. I have accumulated extensive documentation about these matters and can, if you wish, provide specific names, dates, correspondence, corroborating witnesses, and other information supporting my charges.

My career has obviously suffered severe damage as a result of my trying to report suspicious activities involving narcotics at an Army clinic in Germany. I am also concerned that the suspicious activities I tried to report will not be investigated fully.  

I am requesting that I be returned to duty as a pediatrician and that the circumstances under which I was sent to Walter Reed to undergo a medical board for a false diagnosis be investigated.

You may reach me at marthacolgan@yahoo.com or at 267-432-1155 (cell) or 610-942-2504.

Thank you for your attention.

Respectfully,

Martha E. Colgan, MD