Walter Reed General Relieved of Command

Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, said in 2003 he voiced his concerns to Kiley.

"I told him that there were people drinking themselves to death, there were soldiers at Walter Reed that Walter Reed didn't even know were there and living in the barracks, and that no one was taking care of the soldiers," Robinson said.

Some missed appointments because Walter Reed officials had lost track of them, Robinson said.

Among the others who brought the problems to the attention of Kiley and other Walter Reed and military officials, according to the Post:

Retired Maj. Gen. Kenneth L. Farmer Jr., who commanded Walter Reed for two years before leaving in August, said he was aware of outpatient problems and reported them both to his commander, Kiley, and to his successor, Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman.

Rep. Bill Young, R-Fla., stopped visiting Walter Reed after voicing his complaints. His wife, Beverly, complained to Kiley that she visited a soldier lying in urine on his mattress. "I went flying down to Kevin Kiley's office again and got nowhere," she told the paper. "He has skirted this stuff for five years and blamed everyone else."

Joe Wilson, a clinical social worker in the psychiatry department, briefed colonels at the hospital about a survey that found 75 percent of outpatients called their experience there "stressful" and many were "unsatisfied, frustrated, disenfranchised."

Joyce Rumsfeld, wife of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asked a staffer during a visit if her husband was seeing only patients handpicked to show the hospital's good side and was told yes.

In addition to the Defense Department review, the hospital is now in the second day of a two-day inspection by the Joint Commission, a hospital accreditation agency formerly known as the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations.

"These are serious wounds, and these folks aren't getting the care they need at Walter Reed, right in the backyard of the capital," former Lt. Paul Rieckhoff, a veteran and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told CNN. "I think there are a lot of people who work very hard and care very deeply in Walter Reed and also in the [Veterans Administration] hospitals around the country. But what we consistently hear is that they're under-resourced."

ABC News' David Kerley contributed to this report.