Washington
CNN
—
In 2014, Drew Griffin, our beloved CNN colleague who passed away this weekend, met with arguably the most important source for one of his most groundbreaking stories in a seedy bar in Phoenix.
Pauline DeWenter, a scheduling clerk at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Phoenix, picked the spot because it was far from work.
She didn’t want anyone at the VA hospital to see her with Drew and his producer, Scott Bronstein, and put two and two together that she was his source for a story that was rocking the Obama administration.
The Phoenix VA hospital officials had been keeping a secret list to hide a backlog of patients waiting for care, some for as long as nine months.
At the time, the Department of Veterans Affairs had set a goal to see patients within 14 days. The VA was even paying bonuses to senior staff whose facilities saw veterans within a timely manner.
DeWenter, Drew and Bronstein would meet several times as she provided background information, her identity shielded in his stories. Eventually Drew tried to convince her to go on the record and sit for an on-camera interview as a whistleblower who could not be denied.
“He was very patient and understanding,” she said, but she was still reluctant to go public.
After one meeting, she went home and prayed. And then, she changed her mind.
The next day, Drew interviewed DeWenter on camera.
“What happened to those people?” he asked her.
“They went into a desk drawer,” she replied.
Those people were American veterans, on that secret list that hid the backlog of patients at the Phoenix VA hospital.
In some cases, they died with their names still on that list, still in that drawer, before they were ever seen for an appointment with a primary care physician or administered an ultrasound.
“[Drew] told me, ‘After this interview airs, your life will never be the same. Either it will be good, or it might be bad, but it will never be the same,” DeWenter said. “He was right.”
It was difficult for a little while – she was still working at the hospital, after all, as the story was breaking wide open. But eventually new management came in and DeWenter said the environment completely changed.
By the time Drew and his…