From the time NPR corresondent Quil Lawrence spent in Iraq before covering veterans issues, he could tell women in the military were doing more than ...

Military affairs reporter Jeremy Schwartz had come across an interesting article in the Bay Citizen where they found the rate of death of veterans returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was outstripping the number of deaths on the battlefield. While not a surprising fact, given the growth of veterans returning home and the waning of the conflicts abroad, it was interesting. Half of those who had died had done so within two years of the end of their service.

But for Schwartz it begged a more questions: How did these veterans die? We knew that suicide rates for soldiers ...

Aaron Glantz of the Center for Investigative Reporting was reporting on delays in veterans’ disability claims in Oakland, Calif. when a reader reached out to him.  Jamie Fox, a former Department of Veterans’ Affairs employee, had been fired in 2008 for “failure to follow instructions” and “misuse of time” after advocating for a veteran she believed had been unfairly denied disability benefits.  Fox’s case revealed that the Department of Veterans ...

In 2011, reporter Peter Sleeth was working on a historical account of a battle he had witnessed during his time as an embedded reporter in Iraq.  His work on the piece stalled while researching Sgt. Jacob Butler, a soldier who had died in battle at As Samawah, Iraq in 2003.  No one in the Army had records of his death.  The problem, U.S. Army historians told him, was that the Army was missing huge swaths of data from two wars.  The missing data, Sleeth found, was a result of poor communication between the U.S. Central Command in Iraq ...