By Hope Yen
Associated Press
Sunday, June 4, 2006; A07
The personal data of as many as 50,000 active Navy and National Guard personnel were among those stolen from a Department of Veterans Affairs employee last month, the government said yesterday in a disclosure that goes beyond what VA had initially reported.
VA Secretary Jim Nicholson said in a statement that his agency discovered after an internal investigation that the names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth of as many as 20,000 National Guard and Reserve personnel who were on at least their second active-duty call-up were "potentially included."
In addition, the same information on as many as 30,000 active-duty Navy personnel who completed their first enlistment term before 1991 is also believed to be stored on the laptop computer and disks stolen from a VA data analyst at his Aspen Hill home on May 3.
The VA previously said the stolen data involved as many 26.5 million veterans discharged since 1975, as well as some of their spouses; veterans discharged before 1975 are also deemed at risk if they have submitted benefit claims to the agency.
"VA continues to conduct a complete and thorough investigation into this incident, and those efforts are providing additional details about the nature of the data that may be involved," Nicholson said.
Veterans groups have criticized the VA for the three-week delay in publicizing the burglary after the May 3 theft. Last week, internal documents obtained by the Associated Press showed that the stolen data in many cases included the phone numbers and addresses of veterans, as well as 6,744 records pertaining to "mustard gas veterans" -- or those who participated in chemical testing programs during World War II.
"Once and for all the VA needs to come clean about this situation," American Legion spokeswoman Ramona Joyce said in an e-mailed statement.
Nicholson said there was no evidence that information about other active-duty personnel had been breached.
He said there have been no reports that the stolen data have been used for identity theft, but he added that he wanted to alert the public about the VA's findings out of an "abundance of caution" in what has become one of the nation's largest security breaches.
During hearings last month, Nicholson said he was angry that employees did not notify him about the burglary until May 16. Since then, the VA has fired the data analyst who lost the data, and his boss, VA Deputy Assistant Secretary Michael H. McLendon, has stepped down. The department also placed Dennis M. Duffy, the acting head of the division in which the data analyst worked, on administrative leave.
