Journalism
Richard Currey ventured into journalism for the first time in 2004, when The Veteran (the newspaper of the Vietnam Veterans of America) invited him to look into allegations of toxic water at a large Marine base in North Carolina. The next year Currey returned to investigate the situation of a young Army officer named Julian Goodrum, an Iraq combat veteran weathering abusive treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The Goodrum story led Currey to another soldier lost in the Reed labyrinth, in this case one suffering the after-effects of the military vaccine program. Currey followed up on the military vaccine story in 2007, and in that same year reported on the VA's inability to render effective or timely treatment to children of veterans afflicted with spina bifida -- a story that instigated Congressional action and was credited with contributing to the Spina Bifida Health Care Program Expansion Act.