New York Times News Service
via Peninsula Daily News
WASHINGTON — Eric Shinseki resigned as secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department on Friday after meeting face-to-face with President Obama about mounting evidence of widespread misconduct and mismanagement at the agency’s vast network of medical facilities.
Shinseki, 71, had said for weeks that he wanted to stay to confront accusations that officials at the department’s hospitals had manipulated waiting lists to cover up long delays in scheduling appointments for thousands of veterans.
In a speech Friday morning to a veterans group, Shinseki apologized and described the V.A. he led as having “a systemic, totally unacceptable lack of integrity.”
He vowed to fix what he called a “breach of integrity” and said he had already initiated the firing of top managers at the Phoenix medical center, where allegations of mismanagement first surfaced.
But his contrition and promises of action came too late to save his job.
READ THE LATEST UPDATE at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/31/us/politics/eric-shinseki-resigns-as-veterans-affairs-head.html?emc=edit_na_20140530
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