A whistleblower at the Atlanta VA Medical Center who was demoted and disciplined for forwarding an email to Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Justin Gray has been given his job back.

But that whistleblower said he is still looking for answers from the VA on the issue that led him to speak up more than a year ago.

“They wanted to keep me silent,” Gregory Kendall told Gray after signing a settlement agreement that formally reinstates him and even includes a monetary settlement.

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In 2023, we reported on a tip from another whistleblower to the VA Inspector General that a total of 7,188 mental health calls to the Atlanta VA had “gone unanswered.”

In a whistleblower report that Channel 2 Action News obtained at the time, that VA employee warned the calls were due to not having enough people answering the phone writing in the complaint, “We are at a critical staff level and cannot answer the phones but it’s being said the phones are broken.”

Kendall said he believed Atlanta VA leadership was trying to cover up the problem from the public and Congress.

That’s why he said he alerted Gray and Channel 2 Action News about a Congressional briefing on the unanswered mental health phone calls.

The demotion letter he received cited that action for changing his title and cutting his annual salary by nearly $20,000.

The reason cited was “poor judgment” and the example given was “you forwarded an internal email to Investigative...

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