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Winston-Salem's Department of Veterans Affairs regional office is among at least 41 VA offices nationwide that improperly placed papers in bins to be shredded, records show.

The papers pertained primarily to veterans' applications for benefits, according to VA records obtained by the News & Record through the service organization Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States.

The papers were described in an Oct. 23 VA conference call as "critical," meaning the documents were necessary for veterans' claims to be properly adjudicated. Improper adjudication could keep veterans or their survivors from getting money to which they are entitled.

The issue resonates in North Carolina because of the number and size of its military bases, its two VA hospitals and its veterans centers. The state also ranks high as a discharge point for service members and a home for retired veterans.

Phone and e-mail attempts to obtain comment from Daniel Umlauf, director of the Winston-Salem VA regional office, were unsuccessful. The Winston-Salem location is the only regional office in the state.

The data indicate that seven misplaced records were found in Winston-Salem out of 474 identified nationwide.

However, the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., said he fears the problem nationwide is much worse than has been documented.

"I am not convinced that only 500 documents were saved from the shredding bin," Filner said. "This is merely a snapshot in time. The VA was unable to convince me that more documents have not been shredded in the past and I honestly do not know how many records have been destroyed and how many files lost over the past decades."

A phone message left with the office of U.S. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, was not returned.

Some veterans also have pointed out that the misplaced documents were found even after regional offices learned that the department's inspector general would be seeking such records, meaning many more could have been improperly destroyed beforehand.

"The question that must be asked and answered is how many disability and compensation claims documents - whether purposely or accidentally - disappeared down a paper shredder?" VFW spokesman Joe Davis said. "This is where greater leadership, management and accountability must come into play at all levels, because those records are not mere pieces of paper. They represent real people with real problems and disabilities."

The VA's inspector general is investigating. It is not clear when that agency will report its findings.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake said Nov. 17 that the department would hold those responsible accountable. Improperly destroying government documents is a felony punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine.

But that won't be enough, said Greensboro attorney Craig Kabatchnick, a professor and director of the veterans-law program at N.C. Central University's School of Law.

"How do you prove your claim if they've already destroyed or tampered with your records?" Kabatchnick said.

Peake said veterans will be given the benefit of the doubt if a question arises as to whether the VA received documents from them between April 14, 2007, and this past Oct. 14, when the department ordered all shredding halted.

The significance of the 2007 date was not explained, and it is possible that some records were destroyed before that date. Peake said the VA will acknowledge records missing from before that date if veterans can provide corroboration that those records were filed.

Veterans who believe records relevant to their cases may be missing have until Nov. 14, 2009, to seek reconsideration of their cases. Kabatchnick said he worries the department won't try to notify veterans whose records might have been affected.

Federal law also requires Peake to ask the Justice Department to help recover any records he believes might have been unlawfully removed from the VA. His statement did not address whether he has done so or will.

If VA documents were destroyed improperly, it wouldn't be the first time.

In 1987, a federal court fined the VA $115,000 for purging records of service members who had been exposed to radiation in Japan after World War II and in postwar nuclear tests.

And in 1995, two former attorneys in the department's Office of General Counsel in Washington, Lawrence Gottfried and Jill Rygwalski, received 15-month prison sentences for having improperly destroyed veterans' records.

The current controversy first came to light in an Oct. 13 report by www.vawatchdog.org, an independent Web site operated by and for veterans. The VA halted all shredding the next day, then later resumed it with tighter restrictions on what would be shredded and who would oversee shredding.

The reports of potential shredding highlight the larger problem of how the VA handles records. Some regional offices also have had problems with mail not being opened or delivered to the appropriate person on schedule.

Newsday, citing VA inspector-general records, has reported that hundreds of claims in the New York regional office were electronically misdated recently to make it appear that they had been processed on time.

The record-keeping issues tie into the VA's backlog of more than 614,000 claims for disability compensation/pension alone. That figure is up from about 378,000 at the end of fiscal year 2006.

Almost 30,000 of the pending claims originated in Winston-Salem, more than all but three other regional offices.

Those claims have been backed up for many years. And the backlog is growing despite added staff and investigative reports and recommendations by the department's inspector general and the Government Accountability Office.

Some veterans have claimed, so far without evidence except in the Gottfried and Rygwalski cases, that VA employees have destroyed records specifically as a way of reducing the backlog, meeting performance goals and receiving bonuses.

Two veterans service organizations recently sued the VA in U.S. District Court in Washington, seeking faster processing of claims and appeals.

Contact Lex Alexander at 373-7088 or lex.alexander@news-record.com