The Whistleblower Who Fell Through the Cracks

On a hot, parched day in June 2004, a convoy of Humvees was making its way across Iraq’s Sunni Triangle when a roadside bomb exploded, mangling the head vehicle and knocking lead gunman Mike Helms unconscious. The force of the impact blew 2,000 rounds of ammunition from the Humvee. The other soldiers, seeing Helms’ limp frame, thought he was dead.

Helms, an intelligence specialist deployed to the Army’s 902nd Military Intelligence (MI) Group, was alive—but he was wrongfully denied military medical care. When he tried to speak out about the U.S. military’s poor treatment of deployed civilians in Iraq, he plunged into a whistleblower’s worst nightmare: as he was losing his health, reprisal against him caused him to lose his livelihood.

A previously undisclosed Department of Defense (DoD) InspectorGeneral (IG) report obtained by POGO and dated October 2010, substantiates Helms’ claim that the military retaliated against him because of his whistleblowing. As the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2011 makes its way through Congress, there is no better time to shed light on Helms’ story.

“I just told the truth about what happened to me,” Helms told POGO in an interview. “But I didn’t have any protection. If it was up to some people, I would never work in the federal government again.”

Helms was hired as a federal civilian employee, but was eventually authorized to work as a lead gunman, partly because of his former soldier experience. According to Helms, there were not enough personnel for the convoys, so he was moved to the position to ensure there was enough trained military crew on the task force. The U.S. military treated Helms as a soldier: he ate military rations, worked alongside troops and came under enemy fire.

But all that changed when Helms was actually injured by enemy fire. According to DoD policy, civilians who are injured while deployed are supposed to receive the same treatment as military members. However, according to an unclassified DoD paper from 2005 on Helms' case, this policy is often overlooked, because it is uncommon for DoD civilians sustain war-related injuries that require extensive recovery periods.

Treatment Denied

Helms, who had serious brain trauma and shrapnel embedded in his arm, fell through the bureaucratic cracks. After he spent a week at the 31st Combat Support Hospital in Tikrit and his injuries failed to improve, he was medically evacuated to Landstuhl, Germany. Then, instead of being medically evacuated out of Germany as per custom for injured soldiers, he had to buy a commercial ticket home.

When he returned to the United States, Helms was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC., where, according to the 2005 DoD paper, he was “denied admittance into the hospital” and experienced a “denial of lodging at the guest house, denial of emergency financial support, denial and delayed medical treatment, and disrespect by hospital staff.”

For a while, he slept on the floor of one of the soldiers who had been alongside him in the Humvee wreck. In the states, he was forced to rely on the Federal Worker’s Compensation Program, which Helms said was inappropriate for his injuries and “nothing but a nightmare,” as doctors had little experience treating combat wounds. To this day, he continues to struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury caused by the improvised explosive device.

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