WhistleblowerSupporter

Congress, Corruption, Cover-ups and Government Oversight Agencies Gone Wild

A reader sent this to me today and asked to remain anonymous when it posted.  Thank you to the reader who took the time to write this thoughtful comment.  Here it is.   GFS

Has anyone considered the DSS mad-dash to become an "Intelligence Agency" might have been a desperate attempt to hide from any oversight? As an Intelligence agency, they would not have to answer to any inspectors, DOD/IG, GAO or even Congress. Their years of incompetence, mismanagement and looking the other way while Defense contractors compromised our nation's most classified technologies would be safe from accountability.

Why would they do this? As an example, simply look at the former DSS upper management personnel who have garnered for themselves high paying positions within industry after leaving Government service.

Look back to the Boeing Tanker scandal, Senator McCain publicly asked for a list of all formerly high placed government employees who retired and went to work for DOD contractors. Senator McCain is/was a very influential Senator, yet no such list was ever forthcoming to the public and after losing the Tanker contract, Boeing pulled a Senator or two and a couple of Congressmen/women out of a hat and hocus-pocus, Boeing is back in the Tanker business.

This is just one example of what is going on within DSS and most other agencies; DSS looks the other way, Senators and Congressmen look the other way and God help anyone stupid enough to report security violations, retaliations here we come!  No one wants to address the fraud waste and abuse that is taking over our whole government; why fall on your sword and ruin your career when nothing will change.

I have found with association with others as well as my own personal involvement,  that a great many major security violations and classified technology compromises that we reported, were either dismissed by upper management types who were more loyal to Industry than to the government or dismissed as not an issue, by hiding behind the claim, "National Secrets", and thereby not having to explain anything to anyone with no further comment.  Or the problems we reported were  just plain covered up by agencies such as DSS, Navy, DCIS, NCIS and others. This is the norm in today's Government upper management - no ethics, and no honor.

If it were not so sad a state of affairs in our government, you could laugh at those who are asking Congressmen/women and Senators to pass Whistle blower protections for those who report Fraud, Waste and Abuse.

Think about this; they are asking for Congressmen/women and Senators to provide protections for those who report criminal acts committed by those very same members of Congress, and therein is the reason why agencies such as DSS, Navy, DCIS, NCIS, etc do not fear having to be held accountable for their actions. Our Congressional Representatives don't want to be thrown under the bus or in some cases, disrupt the production of the campaign cash cow. 

-Anonymous Guest Blogger

POGO Reports: Secret Deals May Lead to Bailouts for Defense Contractor Misconduct

Something I found today on POGO follows..  There seems to be a pattern of seeking no accountability for contractor’s malevolent actions.  KBR (Halliburton) has a disgraceful record in the Middle East.  Is this another such corrupt action taken by government, in this case DoD,  to hold these contractors harmless for their crimes?  Could something be in the works for other contractors? 

Read the articles posted previously on this blog regarding the unfortunate experiences of Boeing International Support Systems employee, Robin Petersen, and his being held captive by BISS and Saudi Arabia and not be allowed to return to the U.S. for medical help after he was injured while doing the job he was hired to do by this Boeing wholly owned subsidiary while in Saudi Arabia.  Boeing’s evasion of Petersen's attorney serving Boeing/BISS the summons and paperwork for Petersen's lawsuit is certainly interesting in light of all of this.

Think back to Druyan and Sears and the Tanker scandal and Boeing getting Eric Holder's help in putting into place a non-prosecution agreement.  As long as Boeing offered up victims, of lower managers or employees, Boeing Corporate itself would not be held accountable or be barred from receiving contracts in the future.  Handy, yes?  Is there some other smoke and mirrors thing starting to manifest itself again?  This time it would be DoD writing off accountability for contractors and their actions.  GFS

POGO

Oct 01, 2010

Secret Deals May Lead to Bailouts for Defense Contractor Misconduct

We may be unknowingly bailing out defense contractors such as KBR for the harm they cause, according to Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.

This week, Blumenauer, along with Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., and Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., introduced the Accountability for Defense Contractors Act. This bill would increase transparency and accountability in defense contracting by regulating the Pentagon’s use of classified contract provisions that indemnify contractors from damage lawsuits. It would require the Secretary of Defense to notify Congress when accepting liability in excess of $1 million on behalf of a contractor. It also would prohibit indemnification in cases where the contractor acted with “gross negligence, willful misconduct, or lack of good faith” or the harm resulted from “an unusually hazardous or nuclear risk not specified in the terms of the contract and discovered on the site where the contract is performed, or that reasonably should have been discovered.”

Last year, several Oregon National Guard veterans sued KBR for knowingly exposing them to a cancer-causing substance called hexavalent chromium while protecting KBR employees who were restoring a water treatment plant in Iraq in 2003. It was discovered during the course of litigation that KBR’s Restore Iraqi Oil (RIO) contract with the U.S. Army contains a classified clause indemnifying KBR for any property damage, injury or death occurring at all KBR worksites. Similar lawsuits against KBR have been filed by current and former National Guard members from Indiana and West Virginia who were also stationed at the water treatment plant in the early months of the war. This means the Army (i.e. the taxpayer) could be hit with millions of dollars in costs and damages.

Last month, Army Secretary John McHugh refused to declassify the KBR indemnification clause in his response to Blumenauer’s inquiry, but he insisted that, apart from the RIO contract, no other Army contracts awarded to companies operating in contingency situations since 2001 contain indemnification provisions. Left unsaid, of course, is whether the other service branches and units of the Department of Defense, to say nothing of other federal agencies, are providing secret indemnity to their contractors.

“The Army considers the use of indemnification provisions only in extraordinary circumstances involving unusually hazardous risks,” McHugh wrote. He also assured Blumenauer that KBR has not yet asserted any claim—and the Army has not made any payments—under the provision.

We’re glad to see Members of Congress addressing this issue and we support the Accountability for Defense Contractors Act. But we’re not convinced that contractors need immunity for wrongdoing. We’re also still left wondering: If certain government functions require perks such as secret grants of legal immunity in order to get the private sector to perform them, why are these functions even considered suitable for outsourcing in the first place?

Neil Gordon

Link to original:   http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2010/10/secret-deals-may-lead-to-bailouts-for-defense-contractor-misconduct.html

Presidential Appointments Contributing to Continuing Waste, Fraud and Abuse in Defense Contracting

May2,2010

 

A reader sent this today after  I posted a number of other things this morning.  This reader understands why I have been unrelentingly posting concerns about some of President Obama’s political appointments.  We have a real mess on our hands that is getting worse, by appointment.  GFS

 

 

 

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What’s happenin’?

 

 

G. Florence-

 

Remember when the State Department posted export violation cases and export enforcement actions for recently closed investigations and cases?  I guess all that is no longer important.  The current Boeing Company controlled government administration doesn’t consider such information relevant.

 

It appears that 2007 is the last State Department posted information.

 

Could this be the following individuals hard at work for Boeing and the defense industry?

 

-Jim Jones, President’s National Security Advisor (former Boeing Director Audit and Finance Committees)

 

-Jim McNerney, Chairman, President’s Export Advisory Council (Boeing Company Chairman)

 

-Eric Holder, Attorney General (orchestrator of the Department of Justice Deferred Non-Prosecution Agreement with Boeing)

 

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2007/October/07_nsd_807.html

 

Concerned Citizen

 

Review: Watchdogs Undermined by Political Appointees

I am hearing from a lot of people who are dealing with the same old same old in government, particularly defense, and in the work they do in some defense contractors.  There appears to be just as much corruption, fraud, waste and abuse going on as before.  And unfortunately, there is no miraculous change in how oversight is being managed, and in the poor leadership that seems to be endemic in both government and industry as of late.  More whistleblowers are still being created and whistleblowers are still suffering retribution and every other kind of abuse for caring enough to try to stand up to wrongdoers.  I am extremely disappointed that the political change does not seem to have had a reparative effect on government and business.  I am also disappointed the many of the appointments made by our current administration, as it seems to perpetuate the problems and the poor judgment of the last administration.  GFS

 

 

 

Watchdogs Undermined by Political Appointees

Congress to Reasses Office Created to Rein in Executive Branch

By Matthew Blake 02/11/2008

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

 

The inspectors general for 64 federal agencies are the government’s frontline against waste, fraud and abuse. It sounds like a salutary public service. But the performances and experiences of inspectors general vary alarmingly and now Congress is reassessing an office created after Watergate to rein in the executive branch.

 

 

In two weeks, the Senate will debate the Inspector General Reform Act of 2007, according to aide for Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a bill co-sponsor. Meanwhile, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform collected a survey last week from the majority of inspectors general, listing the recommendations they have made during the Bush administration that have gone unimplemented.

The Senate legislation—the House passed a Reform Act in November—would "ensure that IGs remain autonomous and operate independent of the agencies they oversee," said Beth Petite Lavine, spokeswoman for Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Ia.) a bill co-sponsor. The oversight committee is looking at what happens when the agencies allow the investigations but ignore the findings.

Both efforts are part of a sentiment expressed by Democrats and Republicans in Congress who focus on oversight as well as by analysts who study the federal bureaucracy: the White House-appointed leadership at federal agencies is undermining the watchdogs. "This is a crisis," argued Kenneth Gold, director of Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, "The IG’s power has diminished."

Beverley Lumpkin, an investigator for the non-profit Project on Government Oversight, agrees. But she emphasizes it’s more than a blame-Bush situation. "Things are not much worse in the Bush administration," Lumpkin said, "It’s been a problem for 20 years. Administrations take advantage of the fact that agency heads control so much."

Advocates for inspector general reform argue that there are essentially three ways the office of inspector general has been politicized and consequently lost its bite. The first is the matter of a rogue inspector general stonewalling his own staff’s investigations. In the past year, six inspectors general have been investigated by a committee of their peers for allegations like stopping staff investigations on administration political appointees, cutting back on staff while giving themselves a raise and abusive treatment of employees.

 

The most well-known case is that of the State Department IG, Howard "Cookie" Krongard. Krongard resigned shortly after deceiving the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about knowing whether his brother was on the Blackwater advisory board. Blackwater was one of several State Department contractors Krongard had ordered his staff to stop investigating.

 

While Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice didn’t seem to mind that Krongard stopping investigations, agency heads have taken action on IG’s who started them. The CIA’s John Helgerson appears to be the latest IG to be undermined in this way. Helgerson issued scathing reports on issues like the intelligence agency failing to anticipate 9/11 and the agency’s disregard for humane interrogation practices. So the Central Intelligence Agency turned the tables last October, and started investigating Helgerson on the premise of helping him do his job better.

 

Last week with no public explanation, the CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, announced the appointment of an ombusdman for Helgerson. "This is especially troubling," said Brian Miller, inspector general of the General Services Administration, "because it may tend ultimately to subvert the independence of inspectors general."

 

Miller knows about going up against an agency head. GSA Administrator Lurita Doan told Miller last year that he was terrorizing employees by scrutinizing whether they were getting the best deal on the $56 billion worth of contracts purchased by GSA. Doan subsequently wrote an e-mail to GSA regional administrators stating, "Everyone now understands we have challenges with our OIG. ... This is going to require a lot of work to fix and I’m going to need your help."

"Psychologically it is extremely hard for people who take their jobs seriously and want to improve GSA to work in a climate where the agency head is openly hostile to the duties those people must perform," said David Farley, a spokesman for the GSA’s office of inspector general.

 

Doan also took the extraordinary step of reducing Miller’s budget. One key provision of the Senate legislation, according to McCaskill’s aide, is that inspectors general would be able to send their budget proposal straight to Congress and the White House. Another key provision would set up an "integrity council," independent of the White House, with the ability to discipline IG’s not aggressively investigating their agencies.

 

The legislation doesn’t tackle the third obstacle to effective IG’s, when the agency is simply looking the other way. That was the problem Clark Kent Ervin experienced as the first inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security. "This administration has tended more to ignore recommendations than to actively fight or obstruct investigations," Ervin said.

Sen. John F. Kerry may have cited Ervin’s scathing audits during the 2004 presidential campaign, but DHS ignored them. After publicly feuding with the White House, Ervin left in December 2004.

 

Still, a good deal of work by inspector generals is implemented. Roll Call newspaper reported last year that IG’s provided the government $9.9 billion in potential savings from audit recommendations and $6.8 billion in investigative recoveries. And some IG’s are neither thwarting investigations nor being thwarted. "Everyone in town agrees that Glenn Fine at the Justice Department and Earl Devaney at Interior are great," said Lumpkin, of the Project of Government Oversight.

 

Lumpkin added that the public doesn’t know about the work of a lot of other good ones because the administration is interfering with it. And this, she said, "is a problem that’s reached it’s boiling point."

Senate Confirms New AG, Alleged Author of Boeing Non-Prosecution Agreement

Considering all of the problems that have been allowed to continue due to the Deferred Prosecution Agreements, I read were personally written and encouraged by this individual, I have grave doubts about his ability to do what is necessary to clean up the corruption.  -GFS

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Senate Confirms Holder as First African-American Attorney General

Monday 02 February 2009

»

by: Carrie Johnson, The Washington Post

US Attorney General Eric Holder. (Photo: Getty Images)

    The Senate this evening confirmed Eric H. Holder Jr. as the nation's first African American Attorney General in a vote of 75 to 21, opening a new chapter for a Justice Department that had suffered under allegations of improper political influence and controversial policy decisions on wiretapping and harsh interrogation practices.

    Holder, 58, will arrive at the Justice Department headquarters in Washington tomorrow for a swearing in ceremony and to greet some of the department's 110,000 employees.

    "The need for new leadership at the Department of Justice is as critical today as it's ever been," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the Judiciary Committee chairman, on the Senate floor this afternoon. "This confirmation is going to do a great deal to restore the morale and the purpose throughout the department."

    The Senate vote occurred four days after Holder overcame concerns by a small but vocal group of GOP lawmakers over his position on national security and gun rights, as well as his recommendations in two controversial Clinton clemency decisions. After delaying consideration of the nomination for a week, the Judiciary panel ultimately voted 17 to 2 Thursday to advance Holder's bid to serve as the country's chief law enforcement officer.

    Holder's advocates marshaled critical support from a broad base of federal and state law enforcement groups as well as a bipartisan coalition of former Justice Department leaders, including onetime deputy attorney general James B. Comey, FBI director Louis Freeh and Bush national security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend.

    By all accounts, Holder is among the most credentialed lawyers ever to become Attorney General. He began his career as a public corruption prosecutor before serving as U.S. Attorney in the District and as a Superior Court judge. Holder later operated as second in command at the Justice Department during the later years of the Clinton Administration.

    But his service in the Clinton years invited criticism from GOP lawmakers, who also questioned his approach to hot button terrorism policies.

    At a grueling, seven-hour hearing last month, flanked by his wife and three young children, Holder labeled the simulated drowning technique called waterboarding "torture" and vowed to make national security his top priority.

    Holder also said that he would look askance at efforts to "criminalize policy differences" but did not conclusively rule out prosecution of Bush Administration officials for their involvement in detainee questioning and warrantless surveillance operations. That issue emerged as a pivot point for conservatives such as Sen. John Cornyn (Tx.) who today voted in opposition to Holder.

    Government officials "need to know the law is not going to change....I worry about Mr. Holder's shifting opinions, and about the effect it will have on intelligence officials," Cornyn said.

    Another "nay" vote came from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Ok.). On the Senate floor this afternoon, Coburn concluded that Holder's recommendation of "neutral leaning toward favorable" in the last minute 2001 pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich "should disqualify him from higher office."

    "I believe in summary that independence is lacking, judgment is lacking and candor is lacking," Coburn said.

    A significant number of Republicans disagreed and supported Holder, along with an overwhelming majority of Democrats who cast all of their votes with Holder today. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Ca.) said this afternoon that she "had never seen a more qualified nominee....I don't think you can beat these credentials."

    From day one Holder will have a full plate of work.

    President Barack Obama already has put the Attorney General in charge of a government-wide task force deliberating where to send nearly 250 terrorism suspects detained at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama last month instructed officials to close the prison within one year. In another change from the Bush administration, lawyers said, the Attorney General will have a permanent formal role on the National Security Council.

    Holder also will play a critical role in developing new legal guidelines for interrogation practices and in deciding whether the Obama administration will adopt broad claims of executive power in court cases over warrantless eavesdropping and the firings of nine prosecutors during the Bush years.

    Holder last month vowed to revitalize the department's troubled civil rights division, which is supposed to enforce voting and employment laws for minorities. Morale at the unit plunged during the Bush years and the Justice Department Inspector General in January issued a report detailing hiring abuses and racial epithets that proliferated among some former officials there.

    Holder's late sister in law, Vivian Malone Jones, worked for a time at the civil rights division four decades ago, after she graduated from the University of Alabama, where she faced down vicious and sometimes violent crowds as one of two black students to integrate the school.

    He also may spend significant time and energy pushing back against calls from liberal Democrats who want a reckoning for what they perceive as Bush era legal abuses. Holder has charted a middle path on many of those issues, including a pledge to honor legal immunity for telephone companies that helped the government conduct electronic surveillance and support for several provisions of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, which is set to expire later this year.