Reporting the hard truths: Jasper Craven on veteran homelessness and military scandals
The deeply sourced reporter shares five of his favorite stories on military and veterans’ affairs.
Jasper Craven has been writing about the U.S. military and the Department of Veterans Affairs since 2014, when he was a stringer for a couple of Vermont newspapers, covering the state’s congressional delegation. At the time, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who represents Vermont, was the chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. “This was before he ran for president,” Craven tells Depth Perception. “So I got really great access to him and his staff, and really just learned a lot about the VA.”
That year, CNN reported that dozens of veterans had died while waiting for medical care at Phoenix Veterans Health Administration facilities. “Bernie got caught up in that scandal, which was really sort of the big cornerstone scandal of the Obama era,” Craven says. “I just got caught up in that story and found it really fascinating. And I’ve been on the beat ever since.” Craven, who now lives in Brooklyn, has gone on to write for the New York Times, The New Republic, Politico, and many other outlets. He also writes the Battle Borne newsletter, a must-read for news, analysis, and investigation on veterans’ issues.
Depth Perception asked Craven to share his favorite longform pieces about military and veterans’ affairs. “These stories strike at the heart of a troubling American hypocrisy: We lionize veterans in our words, yet our actions so often fail them,” he says. The following list has been lightly edited for length and clarity. —Mark Yarm
“VA policy restricts ‘meaningful access’ to benefits for Native Americans” by Nikki Wentling, Stars and Stripes (June 26, 2019)
“This story is about the many decades of neglect towards Native American veterans who, throughout American history, have served at the highest rates of any ethnic constituency, which is something I did not know coming into this story. To understand this really proud lineage of public service only to be smacked in the face with the VA’s consistent failures to provide the basic benefits earned through that service was maddening. I also want to shout out Stars and Stripes, which has a proud history of aggressively covering the Pentagon, the VA, despite being government-funded.”
“The Invisible Army” by Sarah Stillman, The New Yorker (May 30, 2011)
“This is a fascinating exploration of basically trafficked foreigners brought onto military bases in the Middle East and exploited quite severely through contractors receiving taxpayer dollars. There’s a million fascinating threads in the piece. It’s incredibly compelling to read about the sacrifices and exploitation of these migrant workers. But it’s also a real testament to all of the invisible infrastructure that makes a military campaign work, to ensure the day-to-day functioning of this massive, world-spanning agency. It’s an incredibly well-told story about an incredibly undercovered population.”
In the VA’s land war, who pays and who profits?
Craven is part of the reporting team for “Home of the Brave,” Long Lead’s sweeping project focused on veteran homelessness in Los Angeles. His reporting traces how, after a 1971 earthquake killed 46 veterans at an L.A. VA campus, the government evicted 1,500 veterans from government-provided housing. They continue to fight their own government for much-needed shelter more than 50 years later.
Craven wrote two parts of the seven-part feature. In “Carving up the Map,” he details eye-opening levels of corruption on the campus. “It’s been very detrimental to the community, because a lot of the people that are preying on veterans or seeking to profit off of them are veterans themselves,” Craven says. “Fundamentally, this is a story of betrayal and deep divisions in this tight-knit community.”
Read “Home of the Brave” today and for updates on the veterans’ class-action lawsuit against the VA for access to housing, which heads to trial on August 6, subscribe to the feature’s newsletter.
“Veterans became eligible for billions. These firms saw a chance to profit.” by Lisa Rein, the Washington Post (May 23, 2024)
“This is a recent piece that’s actually following up on some reporting I did for the Texas Tribune about this new, predatory, for-profit industry — largely led by veterans — that is alleged to have engaged in, and be engaging in, serious pension poaching. Essentially, a number of unaccredited companies have popped up to assist veterans with their benefits claims. They’re often providing veterans really shoddy services, charging a lot of money, leaving them high and dry. It’s a tragically typical story in the veteran space, but nonetheless an important one.”
“The Unseen Scars of Those Who Kill Via Remote Control” by Dave Philipps, the New York Times (April 15, 2022)
“This is a fantastic story by Dave Philipps, who is the extraordinary veterans affairs reporter at the Times. What it does is give a fascinating, and really pioneering, look at how service members can experience trauma in ways that the public doesn’t often think about. It’s a very heartbreaking story of a man who served as a remote drone pilot. He never left American soil, and yet the experience he had in that job really destroyed his life. Philipps traces all of that out in a very compelling way.”
“The Veterans Day Freebie Anti-PTSD Diet” by Matt Farwell, The New Republic (Nov. 12, 2019)
“This is sort of a gonzo work by Matt Farwell, who is an Army vet, a great dude, and a fantastic writer. Basically, he spent Veterans Day tracking down as many deals and freebies as he could. And so it’s this weird little yarn that turns into a fascinating meditation on the many shallow ways in which America claims to be supporting veterans, but really isn’t. Matt is hilarious, and this story is very funny.”
