Hooker Treason at the Veterans Affairs Department

February 13, 2006

In mid-September 2005, Laura Berg a nurse with Albuquerque VA Hospital sent a “letter to the editor” to the Albuquerque weekly called Alibi .  She wrote the following:

“I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government…”

“The Katrina tragedy in the U.S. shows that the emperor has no clothes!”

“The public has no sense of the additional devastating human and financial costs of post-traumatic stress disorder.. ”

“Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown, and Rice should be tried for criminal negligence.”

“This country needs to get out of Iraq now and return to our original vision and priorities of caring for land and people and resources rather than killing for oil. . . . We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.

Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times.”

This looks like an American exercising her right to express herself. Yet, Mel Hooker, chief of the human resources for the Albuquerque VA Hospital wrote her a letter in which he threatened her with sedition because she criticized the Administration. He even had her computer seized and presumably searched for subversive activity. Hooker also intimated the FBI was also involved.  It turned out she had nothing illegal on her PC including the letter she sent to the weekly paper.

This Hooker should be charged with treason. He should be thoroughly investigated for illegally impeding free speech and violating the U.S. Constitution. 

Unfortunately, this type of behavior is typical of bureaucrats who feel it necessary to defend the U.S. Government and its “great leader Bush” by administratively assaulting employees. He was out of bounds in his authority. Luckily a New Mexico Senator and the ACLU have taken up her cause and are working the case.

This incident is yet another symptom of how un-American our government has become. It is scary to think that the people sworn to uphold the Constitution merely think it's a piece of paper to be ignored.