Hearing of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee - The Nomination of James Peake to be Secretary

Interview

Hearing of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee - The Nomination of James Peake to be Secretary

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SEN. BURR: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, my colleagues. I thank you for scheduling this hearing in a very timely manner to consider the nomination of General James Peake to the secretary of Veterans Affairs.

A number of my colleagues have said on this panel that it's important, especially now, to have a permanent leader at the helm of the Veterans Administration. With that in mind, I hope this committee can schedule a mark-up as soon as -- as soon as possible after this hearing. I think we can move this nomination to the floor and, hopefully, quickly have a confirmed leader at the helm of the Veterans Administration.

General Peake, I've examined your application; I've examined carefully the committee papers, I'm convinced that you've really prepared for this job for a lifetime. In fact, I don't think you could have been better prepared for this job if you had actually planned it for a number of years.

Your dedication to service to this nation in uniform goes back to 1962 when you entered the military at West Point. After graduating from West Point, you led troops into battle in combat in Vietnam. There you were wounded, not once but twice. Your bravery, your valor have been recognized with military medals and commendations too numerous to mention, but I will highlight just a few: Two distinguished service medals -- the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for valor, and two Purple Hearts.

Of course if your attendance at West Point and your dedicated combat service were not enough, you decided not only to stay in uniform but to go to medical school and to serve an additional 32 years in the military as a physician. Today you're a board-certified thoracic surgeon; a fellow of both the American College of Surgeons, and the American College of Cardiology.

Your dedication to duty and medical skills were obviously no secret to your fellow medical colleagues or senior military leaders. In 2000 you were selected to be the Army's 40th surgeon general. Those experiences alone, in my mind, qualify you for this job. You understand life as a soldier on the ground; you've experienced the challenges of recovery from wounds suffered during war; and you've led the next generation of men and women who follow you into service.

Mr. Chairman, the VA is an agency dedicated to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphans. I believe we've found a man to lead the VA who not only understands combat service -- the needs of our injured military personnel and America's veterans, but a man who has spent the better part of his life taking care of those men and women, and more importantly their families.

Dr. Peake, I fully intend to support your nomination to be the next secretary of Veterans Affairs. And it is my deep hope today that every one of my colleagues on this panel will, in fact, show their support, and we will act very quickly.

Senator Dole, I welcome you today and thank you for the introductions, and I know Senator Inouye will be here. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for this hearing and for an expeditious consideration of General Peake's nomination.

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SEN. BURR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Again, Dr. Peake, welcome. We're -- we're truly blessed that we've got somebody of your caliber, your experience, your expertise that would consider this role for one year at a very difficult time. Senator Akaka and I were sent a letter by Senator Bond asking us to as four questions. I'm going to exercise and ask the chairman unanimous consent to send those in writing to you, but I would like to ask one of them in public for the record, if I may:

Veterans groups have been raising concerns about the impact of PTSD and TBI on our servicemen's -- members deployed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. What did you do as Army surgeon general to prepare for the long-term outpatient treatment and disability benefits for PTSD and TBI patients observed by Army medical personnel during your tenure as the Army's senior medical officer?

GEN. PEAKE: My record on mental health goes back really in the -- in this particular environment goes back to 9/11, when we had an airplane in the building with us over there at the Pentagon. And what we did immediately was create an operation called Operation Solace, where we were very concerned about making sure that people had access to mental health counselors. We brought them into the building. We flooded the building with them -- had them walking around so that we tried to avoid any appearance of stigma. So it wasn't medicalized there that -- we had the senior Army leadership by General Shinseki stand up and really direct the Army staff to make sure you get your people out because it's the right thing to do to get them seen by these mental health providers.

We put mental health providers into the primary care system because we were -- we expected and my experts in this area expected the potential somatization of mental health kinds of problems. And I think that was a very, very successful intervention, if you will, for a population of about 20-some thousand people there in the Pentagon. When we early -- in the early days of Iraq invested in putting a mental health assessment team into the combat zone earlier than we've ever done that kind of thing before, I was very concerned. "Are we getting the -- do we have the mental health assets right there?" Because if you take care of it at the front end of the battle area, the idea is that it would improve the returning veteran and returning soldier so that they don't have the problems that potentially we would have to deal with.

I think there's a lot to learn about PTSD we don't know about. The VA, I know, is one of the leading experts in all of that, but we -- there's still a lot to learn about it. And so what I wanted to do was set the base for that. That -- ultimately during my time, there were two teams that went over and we reported out fully because we did discover problems. We did discover things that we wanted to do differently. We did identify the number of people that at least had some of the stressers that might lead to PTSD. We invested in surveys to try to understand -- anonymous surveys to try to understand what the soldiers were saying about it as well. It led to published papers in the New England Journal of Medicine recently -- the follow-on was just in the end of November -- a follow-up. It led to the Post- Deployment Health Assessment. I wanted to get that up front as far as we could, so we started looking at that and putting it into Kuwait on handheld computers so that the soldiers could get into that early on. Then the Post-Deployment Health Reassessment has just been restudied and we find even a larger number of veterans and soldiers that are reporting at the second go-round that didn't report in the first go- round.

I guess the point I'm making, sir, is that I've been involved in looking prospectively at the mental health to try to understand what the things that were needed now. I think that there is a lot more to do. I think that we are learning that we can be proactive. I do believe this is treatable and that we can intervene and I look forward, if confirmed, to working on the VA side of the House and walking across to the DOD to make sure that there is a continuum in this treatment of what we are understanding better of the mental health consequences of war.

SEN. BURR: Dr. Peake, I thank you for that thorough answer.

And Mr. Chairman, I see the clock. I'll wait for the second round for my question.

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