Hospital Investigates Former Aid Chief

Some soldiers go directly to the many volunteer organizations set up to help the wounded. Last year, Wagner began an effort to funnel all requests and donations through the family assistance center. It was a good idea, said Sosin and others, but because Wagner seemed preoccupied, a bottleneck of requests resulted.

"It was really all at the expense of the service member," said Sandra Butterfield, who worked at Walter Reed as an ombudsman for a Defense Department-funded relief organization. "He decreed that everything had to go through him," and it didn't seem to matter if that slowed the process. Officials, she said, "don't understand what it meant to have no money. Family members changed the sheets, empty the bedpan. But they are leaving their homes across the country. . . . Every day I came home angry."

Some families were also angered by the way Wagner treated them.

"The patient care was absolutely wonderful, but the administration was horrible, especially Dr. Wagner," said Maria Mendez, whose 25-year-old nephew, Spec. Roberto Reyes Jr., suffered severe brain and limb damage when a mine exploded near him outside Baghdad. "It was like running around in circles. He was never around."

"They were unprofessional, discourteous and uncompassionate all in one," Mendez said. "I was very surprised. You figure any family who's gone through such devastation, then faces this, to be treated with such unprofessionalism . . . it's like you're putting salt on the wounds."

Frustrated, Mendez set up an account for her sister, Aida Rivera, Reyes's mother, to pay for her stay at Walter Reed. Rivera eventually got financial assistance from the Army and outside organizations, but she also received a $3,519 bill from Mologne House, a hotel at Walter Reed, for her stay as her son's nonmedical attendant.

Staff members from other offices also complained to the command about Wagner, according to memos obtained by The Post. In one, an employee, who asked not to be named, questioned why a soldier's mother "who had subsisted on dried soups . . . due to her lack of funds" could not get help. Four months after approaching the center, the memo said, the mother had not received the per diem owed her as her child's nonmedical attendant "and has no cash for essentials nor emergencies."

A wife who accompanied her wounded husband, who was based in Germany, said Wagner asked her repeatedly why she did not return to Germany so she could continue working. The woman "reported she felt harassed and bullied but that she held her ground," the employee's memo states.

Wagner said families were often angry at his office, not because it failed them but because they were distraught over their situation. "Their true need is an emotional one. They're going to be angry at somebody. . . . I did my best; no, more than my best."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.