Pentagon Takes 'Full Responsibility' for Walter Reed's Building 18

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21, 2007 — -- Top Pentagon officials took full responsibility Wednesday for poor living conditions inside Building 18 at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a facility that houses injured soldiers who have returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With repair work already under way, Gen. Richard Cody, the Army's second-highest ranking officer, expressed the Army's disappointment with the state of the outpatient living quarters, which, he admitted, he only learned about through recent media reports.

Many of the rooms in the former hotel are covered in mold and have holes in the ceiling and leaky plumbing. Nearly half of Building 18's 54 rooms require repairs of some type, which, until now, have not been addressed.

"I'll take responsibility -- I'm the vice chief of staff of the Army," Cody told a crush of cameras and reporters. "I'll take responsibility for this, and I'll make sure that it's fixed."

In addition to speedy repair work on Building 18, Cody insisted that he had already met with some of the people he considers responsible for the conditions, though he would not identify any specific officials and denied that anyone had been fired, disciplined or discharged.

Instead, Cody said that the people overseeing the facility were not qualified and that the military's inspection policy had obviously failed.

"We had people that were put in charge that did not have, in my mind, in my experience, the right rank and the right experience and the authority to be able to execute some of the missions that was required," he said. "But at certain levels, we should have had higher-level, noncommissioned officers, and we should have had higher-level officers overseeing Building 18 and the outpatient care. And that's what we're correcting right now."

William Winkenwerder, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said the staff at the facility shares in the responsibility but added that the problems did not have to do with funding.

"There are resources to do all the things we need to do to take care of people," Winkenwerder said. "So, at the end of the day, I think this matter is about trust and the trust that we all have with the service members and their families."