WASHINGTON (AP) — Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned Friday in a personal meeting with
President Barack Obama, shortly after publicly apologizing for deep problems plaguing the agency’s
health care system that Obama called “totally unacceptable.”
Obama said he accepted the retired four-star general’s resignation “with considerable regret” during an
Oval Office meeting. Shinseki had been facing mounting calls to step down from lawmakers in both parties
since a scathing internal report out Wednesday found broad and deep-seated problems in the sprawling
health care system, which provides medical care to about 6.5 million veterans annually.
Obama said Shinseki had served with honor, but the secretary told him the agency needs new leadership and
he doesn’t want to be a distraction. “I agree. We don’t have time for distractions. We need to fix the
problem,” Obama said.
The president named Sloan D. Gibson, currently the deputy VA secretary, to run the department on an
interim basis while he searches for another secretary. The president said he met with Gibson after
accepting the resignation from Shinseki, who has overseen the VA since the start of Obama’s presidency.

A career banker, Gibson has held the No. 2 post at the department since February of this year. He came to
the department after serving as president and chief executive officer of the USO, a nonprofit
organization that provides programs and services to U.S. troops and their families, and after a 20-year
career in banking.
Gibson is the son of an Army Air Corpsman who served in World War II and grandson of a World War I Army
Infantryman.
Obama said an audit submitted by Shinseki shows that the problems are not limited to a few facilities but
to many across the country. “It is totally unacceptable,” Obama said. “Our vets deserve the best;
they’ve earned it.”
Obama said Shinseki had begun the process of firing people and had canceled performance bonuses. The
president said it would be up to the Justice Department to determine whether there was any criminal
wrongdoing at the VA.
In a speech earlier Friday to a veterans group, Shinseki said the problems outlined in the report were
“totally unacceptable” and a “breach of trust” that he found indefensible. He announced he would take a
series of steps to respond, including ousting senior officials at the troubled Phoenix health care
facility, the initial focus of the investigation.
He concurred with the report’s conclusion that the problems extended throughout the VA’s 1,700 health
care facilities nationwide, and said that “I was too trusting of some” in the VA system.
The VA has a goal of trying to give patients an appointment within 14 days of when they first seek care.
Treatment delays — and irregularities in recording patient waiting times — have been documented in
numerous reports from government and outside organizations for years and have been well-known to VA
officials, member of Congress and veteran service organizations.
But the controversy now swirling around the VA stems from allegations that employees were keeping a
secret waiting list at the Phoenix hospital — and that up to 40 patients may have died while awaiting
care. A preliminary VA inspector general probe into the allegations found systemic falsification of
appointment records at Phoenix and other locations but has not made a determination on whether any
deaths are related to the delays.
The agency has been struggling to keep up with a huge demand for its services — some 9 million enrolled
now compared to 8 million in 2008. The influx comes from returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, aging
Vietnam War vets who now have more health problems, a move by Congress to expand the number of those
eligible for care and the migration of veterans to the VA during the last recession after they lost
their jobs or switched to the VA when their private insurance became more expensive.
Shinseki said the last several weeks have been “challenging” but that his agency takes caring for
veterans seriously.
“I can’t explain the lack of integrity,” he told a homeless veterans group. “I will not defend it,
because it is not defensible.” The beleaguered Cabinet official received a standing ovation and loud
applause.
An inspector general’s report found that about 1,700 veterans in need of care were “at risk of being lost
or forgotten” after being kept off an official waiting list.
The report confirmed earlier allegations of excessive waiting times for care in Phoenix, with an average
115-day wait for a first appointment for those on the waiting list — nearly five times as long as the
24-day average the hospital had reported.
“This situation can be fixed,” Shinseki told an audience of several hundred people from around the nation
who have been working with the VA on helping homeless veterans. “Leadership and integrity problems can
and must be fixed — and now.”
He said the government would not give any performance bonuses this year, would use all authorities it has
against those “who instigated or tolerated” the falsification of wait time records and that performance
on achieving wait time targets will no longer be considered in employee job reviews. He also asked
Congress to support a bill by Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., which would give the department more authority
to remove senior government employees who are in leadership positions.
The House has passed a similar bill that would give the VA more ability to fire up to 450 senior
executives at the agency.
Even as he said he agreed it was best for Shinseki to go, Obama sought to shield the outgoing secretary
from being labeled a failure or accused of doing wrong by veterans. He credited Shinseki with reducing
veteran homelessness, improving care for women and making progress on veterans’ education and mental
health treatment.
“I want to reiterate, he is a very good man,” Obama said. “He’s a good person who’s done exemplary work
on our behalf.”