Waste, Fraud, & Abuse
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August 8th, 2008 <!-- by Scott Horton -->
Investigative reporter Joe Lauria discusses the series he co-wrote for the London Times about the Sibel Edmonds case, including the 30 year Washington connection to the A.Q. Kahn nuclear black-market operation, the difficulty in corroborating stories about such a secretive subject, the inability of American mainstream media to diverge from the status quo, how the Tinner family fits into the story and the history of the military-industrial-congressional complex as told in the new book he’s co-authored with former senator Mike Gravel, A Political Odyssey.
MP3 here. (50:50)
Joe Lauria is a New York-based investigative journalist. A freelance member of the Sunday Times of London Insight team, he has also worked on investigations for the Boston Globe and Bloomberg News. Joe’s articles have additionally appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Montreal Gazette, The Johannesburg Star, The Washington Times, New York Magazine, ARTnews and other publications.He is the author with former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Mike Gravel of A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man’s Fight to Stop It, published by Seven Stories Press, with a foreword by Daniel Ellsberg.
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, Private LaVena Lynn Johnson killed herself on July 19, 2005, eight days before her twentieth birthday. Exactly how did she end her life? She punched herself in the face hard enough to blacken her eyes, break her nose, and knock her front teeth loose. She douched with an acid solution after mutilating her genital area. She poured a combustible liquid on herself and set it afire. She then shot herself in the head. Despite this massive self-inflicted trauma, she somehow managed to drag her then fully clothed body into the tent of a KBR contractor, leaving a trail of blood along the way and set the tent ablaze in a failed attempt to cover up her crimes against herself.
WASHINGTON - The two men nominated to replace the ousted Air Force leadership say they'll work to restore trust and confidence in the beleaguered service, under fire for poor handling of its nuclear duties and other missteps.
In documents obtained by The Associated Press, Air Force Acting Secretary Michael Donley and chief of staff nominee Gen. Norton A. Schwartz also defended the branch's much-criticized purchasing system, saying it needs improvement but is "not fatally flawed."
Their comments were made in questionnaires each submitted to the Senate Armed Service Committee, which was to hold their confirmation hearing Tuesday.
Senators want to hear what Donley and Schwartz will do to take the Air Force in a new direction. But some are skeptical about whether the leadership change can solve systemic problems at the service, especially with only six months left in the Bush administration.
If confirmed, Donley and Schwartz would replace former secretary Michael Wynne and chief of staff Gen. Michael Moseley, fired together in June in an unprecedented decapitation of Air Force leadership that Defense Secretary Robert Gates said was to hold the men accountable for a decade-long decline in the way the service handles the nation's nuclear arsenal.
Gates said his decision was based mainly on the damning conclusions of an internal report on the mistaken shipment to Taiwan of four Air Force fusing devices for ballistic missile nuclear warheads. And he linked the underlying causes of that slip-up to the August incident in which a B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear warheads and flown across the nation without anyone realizing it.
Asked on the Senate questionnaire what challenges they'd face in their jobs, the first thing both nominees mentioned was the loss of confidence the service has suffered.
"The next chief of staff must restore the national trust and confidence in the U.S. Air Force to organize, train and equip forces" for peacetime and wartime, Schwartz answered.
"In order to accomplish this, we must reinvigorate our nuclear enterprise, refine and adapt our ways and means for winning today's irregular fight, take good care of Airmen and their families and prepare ... for an uncertain future," he said in 35 pages of questions and answers.
"Immediate challenges are to restore confidence in the Air Force ... build personal and institutional relationships with Congress and the national security community and undertake actions to address the issues - such as re-establishing focus on the nuclear enterprise - that brought us to this point," Donley said in his 44-page document.
Gates said the trigger that prompted him to call for Wynne's and Moseley's resignations was an investigation that found a declining trend in Air Force nuclear expertise and a drifting of the Air Force's focus away from its nuclear mission, which includes stewardship of the land-based missile component of the nation's nuclear arsenal, as well as missiles and bombs assigned for nuclear missions aboard B-52 and B-2 long-range bombers.
Gates said the report, which has not been released publicly, found that the Air Force's nuclear standards have been in a long decline, a "problem that has been identified but not effectively addressed for over a decade" by leadership.
In another investigation, the Government Accountability Office last month said the Air Force made "significant errors" in awarding a $35 billion contract for a new fleet of refueling tanker aircraft. The competing companies are making new offers and selection is being overseen by Gates' office, and not the Air Force.
In yet another case, the Pentagon inspector general this year said the 2005 contract to promote the Thunderbirds aerial stunt team was tainted by improper influence and preferential treatment. No criminal conduct was found. Moseley was linked to the scandal, though not blamed directly.
The U.S. has given Pakistan nearly $6 billion to pursue terrorists since the Sept. 11 attacks, but with little to no proof that the money has been used for that purpose, an independent audit has found.
Tue. May 13, 2008 - Former State Department officials, appearing Monday at a hearing aimed at influencing Senate consideration of the Bush administration's pending request for supplemental war funds, excoriated the department for allowing rampant corruption in Iraqi ministries and failing to back an Iraqi official who tried to attack it.
"The Department of State's actual policies not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government," said Arthur Brennan, a former New Hampshire state judge who served briefly as director of the State Department's Office of Accountability and Transparency at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
"The embassy effort against corruption, including its new centerpiece, the now defunct Office of Accountability and Transparency, was little more than 'window dressing,'" added Brennan, testifying at a hearing of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.
Senate Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan of North Dakota said the failure to attack corruption and an estimate that corruption has cost Iraq up to $18 billion since the U.S. invasion in 2003, much of it American money, will factor in the Senate Appropriations Committee's consideration Thursday of the administration's request for $108 billion in supplemental funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"As we are asked to appropriate money, what will happen to that money, in whose pocket will that money go?" Dorgan asked.
Monday's hearing was the second on Iraq held in recent weeks by the party committee. Dorgan denied the hearings were partisan. But with neither Republicans nor State Department officials in attendance at the hearing, one State official dismissed it as "political theater."
A department spokesman did not return calls by presstime.
Critics have suggested State has not pushed anticorruption efforts to avoid hurting relations with the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Much of Monday's testimony was covered by a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in the fall. But that event lacked the emotional testimony of James Mattil, former chief of staff at OAT, and Brennan, a Republican who spent just 25 days in Iraq before leaving due to his wife's health problems.
"State has negligently, recklessly and sometimes intentionally misled the U.S. Congress, the American people and the people of Iraq," by publicly opposing Iraq corruption while privately letting it flourish, Brennan said.
Brennan said he sent a letter in July to the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction detailing the nonactivity of Iraq's "Joint Anti-Corruption Committee," only to have the State Department withdraw the letter and exclude the reference to the committee.
Mattil testified that from 2006 to 2007, OAT's budget was slashed and its staff cut from 25 to six, without the any consultation with the office itself.
Brennan, Mattil as well as several senators said they were they perplexed and infuriated by the State Department's abandonment of Judge Radhi al Radhi, former head of Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity, who witnesses said brought more than 3,000 corruption cases. After the slaying of 31 of his employees and assassination attempts, Radhi sought asylum in the United States.
Brennan and Mattil said a senior State Department official had ordered agency employees not to give al Radhi references or contact him. Mattil said al Radhi and his family are now "destitute" and struggling to pay for an apartment in Virginia.
"This is about betrayal," said Dorgan. "We are going to ask the State Department what the hell they are thinking."
Click for source (Congress Daily)
Dunkin’ Donuts received $22 million in federal loans to safeguard its assets against terrorism. Augusta, Georgia, received $3 million to protect its fire hydrants against terrorist tampering. Veterinary schools have called for a four-fold increase in funding to fight hoof-and-mouth disease spread by future terrorists. With a half-billion dollars in homeland security funds available, virtually every interest group in the country is trying to grab a slice of the anti-terrorism pie, no matter how unlikely or bogus the threat. With the U.S. Congress authorizing so much wasteful spending in the name of fighting terrorism, perhaps the 9/11 terrorists got more than they bargained for.
“For a multitude of politicians, interest groups, professional associations, corporations, media organizations, universities, local and state governments and federal agency officials, the War on Terror is now a major profit center, a funding bonanza, and a set of slogans and sound bites to be inserted into budget, project, grant and contract proposals,” writes Independent Institute Research Fellow Ian S. Lustick in a recent op-ed. “For the country as a whole, however, it has become a maelstrom of waste and worry that distracts us from more serious problems.”
From 2003 to 2006, the list of potential terrorist targets compiled by the Department of Homeland Security has grown from 160 to 300,000. That anti-terrorism spending is running amuck is admitted quietly within parts of the federal government. In 2004, Lustick heard a federal official encourage scientists to pursue “outside the box” projects to fight terrorism, although, as Lustick explains in his report, “Our Own Strength Against Us,” the official later admitted off the record that much of the spending was for show, rather than for genuine security. In 2005, the Small Business Administration’s inspector general reported that 85 percent of the businesses granted low-interest SBA loans for counterterrorism failed to establish their eligibility. These and other episodes leave Lustick to conclude that “al Qaeda’s most important accomplishment was not to hijack our planes, but to hijack our political system.”
“The War on Terror Feeding Frenzy,” by Ian S. Lustick (The Hill, 4/22/08)
Also see, “Our Own Strength Against Us: The War on Terror as a Self-Inflicted Disaster,” by Ian S. Lustick
The Department of Defense, already infamous for spending $640 for a
toilet seat, once again finds itself under intense scrutiny, only this time
because it couldn't account for more than a trillion dollars in financial
transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles and planes.
"According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions." Donald Rumsfeld, 2002
