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Walter Reed Furor Claims Army Secretary
The White House said the president would name a bipartisan commission to assess whether the problems at Walter Reed exist at other facilities. Last week, Gates created an outside panel to review the situation at Walter Reed and the other major military hospital in the Washington area, the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md.
The actions came after The Washington Post documented squalid living conditions for some outpatient soldiers at Walter Reed and bureaucratic problems that prevented many troops from getting adequate care.
  Army Secretary Francis Harvey testifies before the House Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill in this Feb. 9, 2005 file photo. Harvey abruptly stepped down Friday, March 2, 2007, as the Bush administration struggled to cope with the fallout from a scandal over substandard conditions for wounded Iraq soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) (Evan Vucci - AP) 
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Harvey has been Army secretary since November 2004.
He is the second Bush administration Army secretary to be removed abruptly from office. In April 2003, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld fired Thomas White, who had engaged in public disputes with Rumsfeld.
A former businessman trained as an engineer, Harvey counted as one of his proudest achievements a turnaround of the Army's recent recruiting slump. In 2005, the Army missed its recruiting goal for the first time since 1999, and that same year Harvey instituted a series of changes that led to a recovery in recruiting.
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AP Military Writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.
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