Overpaid DAV Execs Team Up to Censor Truth About Salaries

• Charity organization for vets pays some top brass more than U.S. president

• Veteran who exposed truth threatened with banishment from “non-profit”

By Dave Gahary

An exclusive story—completely ignored by the mainstream media—by this reporter in the July 1, 2013 edition of AMERICAN FREE PRESS, revealed the nation’s top disabled veteran charity is paying certain employees incomes rivaling, and in some cases exceeding, that of the president of the United States, who is paid $400,000 annually. This included Arthur Wilson, who retired in June. Wilson was making around $360,000 a year at the time he retired and earned other income from DAV-related schemes, pushing his income past that of the U.S. president. It was the article about Wilson that generated the controversy.

This in light of the fact that “nearly 200,000 veterans are homeless and hungry living on the streets of this once-great nation,” has shone a bright, ugly light on the self-serving aims of this particular charity.

In an update to this story, over four months later, this reporter received a “suspension” email on October 24, 2013 from the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) National Commander, Joseph W. Johnston, which reads in part:

Dear Mr. Gahary:

This letter will notify you that I am temporarily suspending your membership…You are precluded from participation in any DAV activities during the course of your suspension.

Following our discovery of your affiliation of a recognized “hate group,” we undertook to examine your specific views. It is my judgment that you have publicly identified yourself as an advocate of positions that directly contradict the ideals and policies of DAV. For example, and without limitation, you have made statements that condemn religious (Jewish) and racial (African American) groups. I am convinced that it is not conducive to the best interests of DAV for you, an elected official and leader within the organization, to continue representing DAV. Many DAV members, as well as others we serve and the people who support our cause belong to the very groups targeted in your statements. Your public airing of your bigoted views is not acceptable to DAV. I frankly would be hard-pressed to explain to our members or supporters a rationale for permitting you to remain in your current status.

The National Executive Committee will convene in closed session [in February] to determine the status of your membership in our Organization.

The “hate group” the letter is referring to is the newspaper you are reading now, a term made popular by the neat, little “hate” rating system of the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose representative, Mark Potok, admitted to this reporter that “hate” is a subjective term, which of course should already be a widely-known-and-accepted fact. In effect, the nation’s largest disabled veteran charity has decided that news stories under-and-unreported by the elite media is “hate speech,” and should be shunned at all cost, as well as the journalists reporting these significant ignored facts.

It should be noted that, as a commander of a local DAV unit in New Jersey, this reporter has devoted many hours to servicing veterans’ organizations in the state and building up the membership of the chapter to levels that have resulted in the awarding of membership banners for the past several years, and has been reelected to the position of commander annually since 2010 by a membership that includes American blacks and Jews.

When a newspaper like AFP can influence the decisions of an entity as large as the DAV, you can rest assured we are doing what any newspaper should be doing: shaking the tree of power and calling these powers to the carpet.

No wonder AFP is referred to as America’s Last Real Newspaper.