ALABAMA VET WHO WAS WATER-BOARDED AND HAS PTSD TO GET FULL DISABILITY PAYMENTS

Alabama veteran to get retroactive disability payments
Retroactive payments for former Navy Seal could be substantial

By GEORGE WERNETHStaff Reporter
http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/1206177340142180.xml&coll=3

A local veteran judged by the Department of Veterans Affairs to have post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of being waterboarded in a 1975 Navy survival course will receive 100 percent disability payments retroactive to 1999, a spokesman said.

Arthur McCants III, 60, of Eight Mile, will get the payments dating back to the time he made his first PTSD claim, VA spokesman Steve Westerfeld said Friday in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.

The total retroactive amount could be substantial, but Westerfeld said that he could not provide the figure at this point.

He said that 100 percent disability today amounts to about $2,500 per month. He estimated that in 1999 -- the year that McCants filed his first claim -- 100 percent
disability was about $1,500 per month.

"It is great news," said McCants, who is facing having his home foreclosed upon. McCants, who is divorced and the father of three children, including two children in law school, told a reporter, "Now I can be the man of the family again."

McCants said he has been living on $1,500 a month, including $1,300 in disability from the Postal Service where he once worked and $200 from the VA stemming from a physical injury he received during his five years in the Navy
.
Waterboarding is a controversial procedure that simulates drowning; some decry it as torture. It has been used to prepare trainees at the Navy survival school for mistreatment in case they were captured.

McCants -- who has battled alcohol and drug addiction -- is scheduled to start an eight-week PTSD treatment program in Biloxi on Monday and will get free medication because of his new status with the VA.

Westerfeld said that, according to VA regulations, any retroactive disability award that goes back more than seven years has to be thoroughly examined. But he said, "There's nothing that is going to stop this from happening." He said the matter will be expedited because of McCants' financial hardship status.

A VA appeals board in Washington recently reversed earlier rulings and granted the rare disability claim made by McCants.

Westerfeld reported Tuesday that VA officials considered information in a series of Press-Register articles about McCants in making their decision.

McCants said he has struggled with suicidal thoughts because of the waterboarding experience.
Among the evidence McCants had offered to the VA was a report by a VA analyst concluding that McCants suffered from PTSD as a result of the waterboarding that he described.

At the Navy survival school, McCants said he and some 30 other service members played the role of POWs during one exercise, while their instructors acted as guards.

He said he was strapped to a board that was tilted so his feet were at an angle above his head.

He said that water was poured into his mouth and nostrils until he passed out.

He said the procedure was repeated after he came to, only the second time a T-shirt was placed over his face and water was poured though it, leaving him sucking for air and desperately trying to break the straps.

McCants said that he went through the survival course in order to qualify to be an in-flight communications operator on a P-3 Naval aircraft used to track Soviet nuclear submarines. VA records reflect that he successfully completed the course on April 21, 1975.

Over the years, McCants has been arrested in the Mobile area on various drug-related offenses. This past year, he was charged with trafficking cocaine and use or possession of drug paraphernalia. Court records show that the trafficking case was sent to a grand jury for review and the other charge was dropped. The grand jury case is pending.

McCants has said his law-enforcement problems are related to his alcohol and drug addiction. He said he hopes that through his PTSD treatment he will be able to go through vocational rehabilitation training and find employment again.