Scandal probe ensnares commander of U.S., NATO troops in Afghanistan

[csziggy]

90. It was PBS Newshour, not Frontline

Now that I've had some coffee, I could find it. Video and transcript at the link:

Veterans Face Uphill Battle for Benefits When Field Records Are Lost, Destroyed
AIR DATE: Nov. 12, 2012
According to a new report by the nonprofit online news organization ProPublica and The Seattle times, the U.S. government sometimes has no official record that men and women actually served overseas.

It sounds unlikely, but an investigation by the two news organizations revealed that millions of U.S. military field records have been lost or destroyed.

<SNIP>
This is the first real electronic war where records were meant to be kept entirely on computers. It was new. They had strict rules and regulations about what were to be done.

But if the commanding officer of a given unit didn't insist those things be done, they weren't done. And that happened again and again and again. Reports either weren't made, weren't kept or their hard drives or their computers were wiped before they came home. That's losing all those records.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec12/propublica_11-12.html