{"id":31508,"date":"2012-08-14T12:58:03","date_gmt":"2012-08-14T16:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=31508"},"modified":"2012-08-14T14:00:53","modified_gmt":"2012-08-14T18:00:53","slug":"secret-service-questions-marine-vet-about-jump-the-white-house-fence-comment-made-to-vet-counselor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=31508","title":{"rendered":"Secret Service questions Marine vet about “jump the White House fence” comment made to Vet counselor"},"content":{"rendered":"

John sends us a link to a story at Military.com<\/a> about Kevin Lane, a Marine Corps veteran who was visited by Secret Service agents about a less than artful comment he made to his counselor. Apparently, he was medically retired from his job as a Pentagon police officer and regretted that decision and was frustrated over attempts to get back to the job. He told his counselor that maybe if he jumped the White House fence, someone would listen to him and help him out.<\/p>\n

That comment, instead of assistance, brought Secret Service agents to his door step.<\/p>\n

Lane\u2019s situation drums up concerns veterans and PTSD patients already have about the confidentiality of their counseling sessions and how their condition will affect their careers. Lane said PTSD cost him his job, and this incident made him distrustful of people he\u2019d expected to be able to turn to for help.<\/p>\n

Secret Service officials confirmed they interviewed Lane and explained their agents have a responsibility to investigate any possible threat against the president.<\/p>\n

“The Secret Service respects the right of free speech and expression but we certainly have the right and obligation to speak to individuals to determine what their intent is,” Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary said in an email.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe the Secret Service was doing their job, but was the counselor doing his? It reminds me of the sergeant in DC who was reported by the suicide hotline counselor to the police which resulted in police breaking into his apartment and his arrest.<\/p>\n

Somehow, I don’t think this kind of stuff happens to civilians. Well, actually, it doesn’t happen to civilians – like the Colorado shooter whose clinician didn’t report his behavior. Or Loughner in Arizona who the police knew was illin’ but did nothing about it, until he shot up a bunch of people.<\/p>\n

Lane didn’t even threaten anyone. Any person who has ever been to the White House can attest that there are so many security people wandering around, no one could get far if they jumped the fence – which happens a couple of times every year.<\/p>\n

Lane even told the counselor that he understood the downside of doing that, and that he wasn’t intending to do it. But the counselor felt a need to contact the Secret Service anyway. Nothing like giving a paranoid person a reason to be paranoid, is there?<\/p>\n

ADDED:<\/strong> John clarifies who the counselor really was;<\/p>\n

The PTSD counselor was not from the Veterans Administration but from a Virginia Department of Veterans Services Grant funded Wounded Warrior Project (not the national program of same name) run by the Rappahanock Area Community Services Board. It is a group of do gooders from the local Mental health Regions collecting a paycheck venturing into areas that should be the purview of the Military and the Veterans Administration as well as the many Veterans Service Organizations. while they have been employing Vets to be Peer group leaders it seems to have been a nice financial boon for the local community service boards to suck up on the government grants to provide additional services at the Community Level for Virginia Vets. <\/p>\n

Mr Lane would have been better served to have gone to an good PTSD program as offered at the Martinsburg, Ruchmond or Lyons VAMCs where he would have gotten care and counseling he needed from people who deal with Veterans on a daily basis and who generally know enough to tell the difference from Hyperbole and a real threat!<\/p>\n

PTSD is not a mental Illness it is a normal reaction to life threatening stress. It never goes away but tools how to deal with that stress help to assuage the affects. these local boards need to leave the issue to those who know best and get out of the business of offering services out of their lane. I know it is a nice rice bowl for them but it belongs with real Veterans Professionals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John sends us a link to a story at Military.com about Kevin Lane, a Marine Corps … Secret Service questions Marine vet about “jump the White House fence” comment made to Vet counselor<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veteran-health-care","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}