TOMAH, Wis. – The Tammy Baldwin staffer identified in a blockbuster Gannett report as the point of contact for a VA whistleblower was previously employed as a Program Director at the radical leftist group Peace Action Wisconsin.

Mike Helbick, named as the point of contact for VA whistleblower Ryan Honl, is the only Baldwin staffer identified in Donovan Slack’s report on Baldwin’s failure to move on a report of opiate abuse at the facility that she received in August. Slack describes Honl’s desperate attempts to push Baldwin and her staff to call for an immediate investigation.

According to the emails provided to USA TODAY, on Nov. 12, Honl learned about the report’s existence and that a copy had been given to Baldwin’s office, and so he asked for a copy in an email to Baldwin aide Mike Helbick. Honl said he received no response. Two weeks later, he obtained his own copy of the report and began urging in emails to Helbick that the senator do something.

“It is very disconcerting that a United States Senator would have been able to read the report and yet government still has allowed the Tomah leadership to ruin lives and run good doctors and physicians out of the facility,” he wrote on Nov. 24.

“Do you think that’s proper that a nurse practitioner … is ranked the number one prescriber of opiates out of 3,206 physicians in the (region)?”

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Baldwin chose to go public and demand an investigation into the Tomah facility only after a media report last week documented the vast over-prescription of opiates and the death of a Marine, Jason Simcakoski, who overdosed in August. Honl had been pleading for months for attention on the issue.

But the staffer Mike Helbick is interesting in itself.

Helbick is a 2005 UW-Milwaukee grad whose most recent work experience before being hired on Baldwin’s office in 2013 was as Program Director for Peace Action Wisconsin.

Peace Action Wisconsin is a radical anti-war group located in Milwaukee whose mission is nuclear disarmament, defunding the military, and curtailing U.S. military involvement around the world.

Helbick can be seen here in this video of a February 2013 rally in downtown Milwaukee demanding cuts to the Pentagon budget.

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Peace Action Wisconsin is a fringe group, and it is interesting that Baldwin would hire Helbick as a staffer. The group actively advocates for a boycott of Israel and proposes that Israel return to the pre-1967 borders.

“The Israeli occupation since 1967 has gone on far too long, in defiance of international law,” reads one statement from this year. “Therefore, Peace Action Wisconsin supports nonviolent actions targeted against the illegal occupation of the territories seized in the 1967 war, including boycotts, divestments and sanctions campaigns, for both educational and economic reasons.”

Listed among Peace Action’s coalition partners is Friends of Palestine Wisconsin, a group that adopts the same language of occupation and has protested Milwaukee-based Caterpiller for selling bulldozers to Israel.

Earlier this year, Peace Action actually held a demonstration supporting the left-wing Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro as his regime cracked down on demonstrators, arrested public officials, and seized control of media outlets. The brutal crackdown left scores of Venezuelans jailed and killed – most high-profile among them a 22-year old beauty queen murdered at a protest.

Closer to home, Peace Action has supported and promoted demonstrations of the ROTC facility at Marquette University urging students and demonstrators to “stand against militarism.”

And just to complete the picture of the type of group Peace Action Wisconsin is, check out the following images posted to the group’s Facebook page.

Somehow being an operative in this fringe group was seen as an asset to the Baldwin team in Washington D.C.

Published with permission