We all make mistakes, but Richard Brisard, chief of clinical support for the Veterans Administration Southern Nevada Healthcare System, made a doozie.

On Feb. 6, he told a housekeeper to dump old records from an office at the VA's West Clinic at 630 Rancho Drive. Because the records were old, he thought they contained nothing important. But how wrong can one man be?

The housekeeper, a mentally challenged employee from Opportunity Village, dumped the records into the communal trash bins at the back of the office complex, as she had been instructed. A concerned security officer, Andrew Martin-Smith, tried to stop her and later raised questions with his supervisors.

Martin-Smith realized, as the housekeeper did not, that the records contained way too much personal information to be tossed into a trash bin, but she told him that's what she had been told to do by Brisard, and she did it.

Brisard, a longtime VA employee, is vacationing out of state, but John Bright, director of the VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System, conceded Friday that Brisard made a mistake by asking the housekeeper to dump the records instead of having them shredded.

"He was cleaning out an office. It wasn't his information. He didn't think there was anything sensitive in there."

None of this would have become public except that the security guard, concerned about the laissez-faire attitude of both the VA and his employer, RAMCOR, retrieved a sample of the documents and showed them Thursday to an astounded U.S. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.

On Friday, Porter asked Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson to review the way the VA handles personal records, at both the local and national levels. Later Friday, the inspector general's office took over the investigation that Bright had closed, then reopened after meeting with Porter.

Martin-Smith, the alert security officer, told me on Friday that he saw files with personnel information about some of the heads of departments in the Southern Nevada VA offices. He saw resumes and current information including names, phone numbers and addresses, and Social Security numbers of patients. There also was a report on an investigation into missing drugs.

There were enough documents to fill an entire Dumpster, Martin-Smith said, although they were spread into two.

"It was sort of a criminal's dream. They could create a false identity in one swoop," Martin-Smith said.

Bright said he thinks that all the records have been recovered, with the exception of the armload that Martin-Smith took to the congressman.

"This was a stupid accident caused by someone who was in a hurry and trying to do too many things at once," Bright said.

It's not clear how long the files were in the trash bin and exactly when they were retrieved. And now that the inspector general is involved, local VA officials no longer can talk about it.

Between Feb. 6 and now, Martin-Smith said, he also has seen other personal information from other offices in the complex tossed into the trash bin, which he said is the reason he went to Porter.

"It's a culture problem," said the officer, who has 30 years of experience in law enforcement. "There needs to be a cultural change from the top down."

In his letter to Nicholson, Porter wrote: "I am deeply concerned as this incident highlights the VA's lack of appropriate safeguards to ensure that sensitive information is handled properly. The VA has had similar violations in other states and just last year compromised the records of thousands of veterans when a laptop computer was misplaced."

Porter told me: "I don't care if they were in the Dumpster one minute or one month, it's unacceptable."

He's absolutely right. Our veterans deserve better than this. And how ridiculous is it that our government tells businesses that it's a crime to fail to protect personal information while a VA employee can be so thoughtless?

Bright said Brisard is devastated by his mistake. He should be.

Coming Monday: What was RAMCOR's role?

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.