After attempting in 2012 to link his congestive heart failure to a service-connected disability, the 53-year-old Sedona resident was startled by a statement from the Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services in denying his claim last year: “You served in the Air Force from April 14, 1982, to February 13, 1988, and from April 5, 1999, to July 5, 2000, and from September 21, 2001, to July 4, 2003.”

Completely omitted was Burroughs’ initial Air Force hitch, which included time served at Woodbridge air base in Suffolk, England, site of the UAP encounter. He joined the USAF on March 12, 1979.

This was big-time weird, because Burroughs had formerly appealed for help from now-retired Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl. Kyl’s staff couldn't get his papers, either. They were informed Burroughs’ elusive medical records — which Burroughs needed to make his case for compensation — might be languishing in a classified section in the Department of Veterans Affairs; indeed, a VA letter informed Burroughs “A claim must be filed with the VA before classified records can be requested.”

As Burroughs would eventually discover thanks to an assist from Sen. John McCain’s office, his discharge papers had been deliberately altered. “It took a yeoman's job to get your DD214 corrected,” wrote a McCain staffer, “but we may never be able to gain access to the missing USAF medical records from 1979 to 1983.”

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