Critics are citing the incident as an example of mismanagement at the scandal-ridden agency.

Personal information – including names, Social Security numbers, phone numbers and addresses – of 1,000 veterans ended up in the trash in May, the Veterans Affairs Black Hills Healthcare System announced on Friday. The agency says the files were thrown out by mistake during a May 15 move at the Hot Springs campus. An employee noticed the box in the dumpster two days later, and the files were retrieved and secured by Veterans Affairs (VA) police.

Teresa Forbes, public affairs officer for the VA Black Hills, told the Rapid City Journal that the files were "part of a patient list generated for internal compliance purposes," and did not contain the veterans' medical data.