The Department of Veteran’s Affairs should have terminated the Federal Way Veterans Center’s team leader after a whistleblower exposed misconduct at the center last year, according to a U.S. Office of Special Counsel letter sent to Congress and President Barack Obama last Thursday.

But instead, the agency provided training and letters of reprimand to the team leader and her regional supervisors — actions not in line with the Veterans Affairs’ ethics policy.

“I do not find that verbal counseling and letters of reprimand are sufficient disciplinary actions in light of the serious misconduct at issue,” wrote head of the Office of Special Counsel Carolyn N. Lerner to the president, noting that their regulations indicate removal is an appropriate penalty.

The team leader also received positive performance reviews for 2013 and 2014.

Whistleblower Jonathan Wicks, a former clinician at the center, discovered that employees at the center lied about clinical time spent with clients, failed to contact veterans who requested counseling services and used a paper log for important information instead of a digital system.

Having gone to combat in Iraq, Wicks believed the Federal Way Vet Center was a place where veterans were supposed to go when times got tough.

Wicks had returned home from the war and decided to go to school for social work.

With his own experiences of post-traumatic stress disorder, Wicks got a job as a clinician at the center in 2013 to serve other veterans.

Instead, he discovered a few months in that the center’s team leader was lying about time spent with patients and the outreach specialist wasn’t reaching out to more than 100 veterans who could have used the help.

“I felt disillusioned,” Wicks said. “I believed in the Vet Center, that we could make a difference.”

Wicks said the team leader was counting brief phone conversations as “substantive clinical interactions,” according to the letter sent by Lerner. She would also say she spent 120 minutes in a session with a client, when, in reality, it was 60 minutes a session.

In 2014, Wicks found out the outreach specialist had more than 100 cases with late counseling requests.

“If we don’t talk to someone in 30 days, we get in trouble,” Wicks said. “There were requests with 90 days, 120 days over.”

Wicks told his boss, the team leader, who thanked him for the information. But a week later, the pending cases were now closed. Each case had a “copied and pasted” note on it that said the case was closed because the client hadn’t contacted the center.

The outreach specialist’s contract was not renewed after it expired in May.

Also, the center used a paper log to record important information instead of an electronic system.

According to the letter, Wicks said the paper log book was “often left unattended in open, unsecured office space.”

Wicks reported the misconduct to the team leader’s supervisors at a regional office in Colorado and figured he’d give them a year to investigate.

He also confronted the outreach specialist about his closed cases, which is around the same time employees at the center started to retaliate by changing his security code.

“They started talking about me in staff meetings and talking about me being a problem,” Wicks recalled.

Then, when Wicks required medical leave to recover from his depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (he required two inpatient hospital stays and was suicidal), his boss wouldn’t approve his time off, even though he had enough sick leave.

When he went to the regional office for help, they told him, “if anyone could just get a sick note then everyone could just get out of work with a sick note.”

Wicks was shocked that they questioned his need for the time and clinicians’ desire to work.

“I couldn’t believe they were so bold and stupid, like, I don’t know, I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I had to resign.”

Wicks resigned in July 2014 but it wasn’t before he had enough evidence to report the misconduct.

All of the claims were substantiated by the Office of the Medical Inspector, which assembled and led a Veterans Affairs team to investigate the allegations in November 2014. A report was issued in February and later amended in April to include more information.

“It’s been the hardest year of my life,” Wicks said. “I’m hoping the Congressional oversight committee and president will respond to Carolyn Lerner’s request that she’s (the team leader) removed,” Wicks said. “The entire time, they were covering it up.”

Wicks said the Veterans Center is a place where veterans are supposed to go to get better, yet here he is, a veteran, just now feeling vindicated.

“Outside of the team leader and outreach technician, all of the other clinicians are totally competent, capable and totally compassionate counselors,” Wicks said. “The Vet Center model could be run very well but it’s just got the wrong person in charge.”

The Mirror contacted the Federal Way Veterans Center’s team leader for comment but has yet to receive a reply.