Aaron Mehta stories from The Center for Public Integrity

F-35 deputy sees challenges ahead

Lockheed Martin Corporation — 2013-01-23T18:02:57-05:00

A little over five weeks ago, the Pentagon’s F-35 program got a new deputy manager, and a few days ago, he gave a candid “outsider’s” appraisal of the most costly weapons program in history — one that was noteworthy for its appraisal of how poorly the troubled aircraft program was run during the past decade and its criticism of the chaotic way that the Pentagon has been buying such high-tech weapons.

Maj. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, a seven-year Air Force acquisition veteran who last managed the KC-46 tanker program, warned an Air Force Association audience on Sept. 17 at National Harbor, Maryland, that “some of you may cringe at what I say.” Then he disclosed that the F-35’s buggy software “scares the heck out of me,” that its computer-driven logistics system is “frightening,” and that the relationship between the Air Force and the plane’s lead contractor Lockheed Martin is “the worst I’ve ever seen.”

The Pentagon intends to spend over $1.5 trillion over the next thirty years on the F-35, which it considers critical to the country’s military future. It’s a “joint” program because the plane is to be used by the Air Force, Navy, and Marines, an approach initially conceived to save costs. But Bogdan said that describing these as variants reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what the effort has become: “It’s three separate airplane programs that have common avionics and a common engine.”

Not only that, the program has eight foreign partners and two foreign customers, a number the Pentagon hopes to grow. Partly as a result, its management has been a mess: Cost overruns so far have hit a billion dollars and production and flight testing are years behind schedule. In his 15-minute talk, Bogdan used the words “complex” or “complicated” 17 times, at one point asserting that “there is not a more complex program on the planet.”

Even after sixteen years of development and six years of production, the plane’s design remains a moving target. Bogdan said that “one of the things in the first five weeks that really shook me a little bit about this program is the amount of change that we allow….Change in any acquisition program is destabilizing and unsettling.” Affirming years of criticism by the Government Accountability Office, he said that allowing planes to be manufactured (32 so far) while it is still being designed is “the greatest of all sins in the Joint Strike Fighter Program.”

Simultaneously trying to design, produce and field the plane, while training new pilots and creating a parts-and-repair system has been a huge strain, Bogdan explained. “What program would you ever put on paper to do all those things at one time? You wouldn’t do it.” But he said the Pentagon is now stuck in its own mess, and called “concurrency” a “way of life for us” that’s “not going to go away.”

Bogdan expressed optimism that some of the plane’s legendary troubles are diminishing, but warned that the Air Force and the contractor are not measuring its progress by useful yardsticks. Lately, they’ve been boasting about passing key “test points,” accumulating more “flight hours” and achieving more “test sorties,” These don’t matter so much, Bogdan said, because the right standards are “more capability based….I’m not sure we’re measuring the right progress, but the test program is starting to create some momentum and that’s a good thing.”

He said a running dispute between the program’s management and the Pentagon’s director of test and evaluation over the scale and composition of the F-35 test program is no longer about substance, but about “where and when and who pays for it, quite frankly.” He also said that Lockheed, under heavy pressure from the Pentagon, had started to cut its production costs. “Are they coming down as fast as we want them to? No. But they’re coming down.”

But then Bogdan spoke candidly about engineering troubles that he said keep him “up at night.”

The largest of these is the software, now about three to four months behind schedule and still facing its steepest challenge: creating lines of code that fully integrate the fighter’s weapons systems with the plane’s operation. In anticipation, the software effort has been revamped, it’s gotten independent oversight, and the contractor has been barred from moving from one set of code to the next one without government approval.

“Until we have some time to see that really play out…we’ll withhold judgment as to whether or not it’s a touchdown or not,” he said.

Another major challenge is the jet’s complex helmet, a “Star Wars”-like device meant to project onto its visor how the plane is performing, where enemy targets are, and which weapons the pilot can use to handle them. As the Center reported in June, the display has been shaking so much it’s unreadable, and it also does not update swiftly enough. The helmet, Bogdan said, only works in “a very rudimentary way,” warning that uncertainties remain about whether it can be used at night, in bad weather, or in warfighting – the “basic” missions, as he put it.

If the problems can’t be fixed, or if an alternative ($80 million) helmet from Lockheed competitor BAE systems does not meet their needs, “then we have a big problem,” he said. “You don’t fly this airplane without a helmet.”

The new plane also cannot function without highly-sophisticated monitoring of its flight and repair history and the requisite programming of its missions. These are to be performed for each jet by something called the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS). Bogdan said it answers these questions: “What parts do you need? What pilots are qualified? What maintainers are qualified? What mission plan is going?” In short, ALIS is meant to hold a trove of critical, militarily-sensitive data.

There’s just one major problem: The stream of data was found to contain security flaws. So the coding was rewritten, and is still undergoing testing. If ALIS doesn’t work, “this airplane doesn’t work,” Bogdan said. While a version might be functioning by November, the Pentagon has refused to accept some planes Lockheed built because they don’t have the fully functioning ALIS software.

Bogdan warned that both the Pentagon and Lockheed need to be told from now on that the F-35 managers will meet “your needs and not your wants.” He said the program can no longer expect unlimited injections of cash, noting the “great gift” that DOD gave his superior, Navy Vice Admiral Dave Venlet, in February, when it agreed to restructure the F-35 contract and add billions of dollars to its budget.

“There’s no more money and there’s no more time” coming for the program, “so… we’re going to have to do this in a disciplined way,” Bogdan said, adding that if changes can be made and long-term strategies worked out, “we’ve got a shot at getting this done,” he said. “We’ve got a shot. It will not be easy.”

Lockheed spokesman Michael Rein responded gamely to reporters that “it’s always good to have someone with a fresh set of eyes” looking at the program. “We remain committed to continuing our work to solve program challenges and build on the momentum and success we’ve achieved during the past couple of years,” he said in a Monday statement.

But he declined to discuss the sour relationship his company has with the Pentagon, something that Bogdan described as a “cultural thing” afflicting both sides.

Cheryl Irwin, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, told the Center that “there is broad agreement…with Major General Bogdan's comments that the F-35 program will not succeed without strengthening the trust relationship between industry, stakeholders, and the government -- across all aspects of the program."

Newly-installed Air Force Chief of Staff Mark Welsh told reporters in a separate session at the AFA conference that the F-35 is one of three key programs for the Air Force. But he acknowledged that the price of the plane is still an issue. “We need the airplane, but the program's got to perform,” said Welsh.

Hospitals failing to secure dirty bomb materials

2013-01-23T12:59:49-05:00

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, Americans have been haunted by the idea that terrorist groups around the world could set off a “dirty bomb” — a simple explosive device that would scatter radioactive material to the winds, devastating a city.

Thankfully, that threat has never materialized. But the government’s watchdog is sounding alarms that terrorists looking to acquire the radioactive materials for such an attack could find them easily and unsecured at hundreds of hospitals around the country.

A report released Tuesday by General Accountability Office has found that only one out of every five hospitals that use high-risk nuclear isotopes for diagnosis and treatment have the recommended safeguards needed to secure the materials.

Over 1,500 hospitals in the U.S. use radiological sources that could be turned into dirty bombs, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which shares purview over nuclear technologies with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NNSA has spent $105 million to upgrade security at 321 hospitals, but the agency warns it will take until 2025 to upgrade all of the hospitals on their list.

“The longer it takes to implement the security upgrades,” warns the GAO report, “the greater the risk that potentially dangerous radiological sources remain unsecured and could be used as terrorist weapons.”

The improved security features, which include enhanced security doors, increased surveillance equipment and the installation of tamper alarms, have also been slowed by the voluntary nature of the upgrades. Because the hospitals are not required to undergo these upgrades, facilities looking to cut costs can decide the security upgrades aren’t worth the expense.

So far, 14 facilities, including four in “large urban areas,” have declined to take part in the security program. The facilities that have turned down the upgrades contain an estimated 41,000 curies, a standard unit of measurement for radioactive material, which is significantly more than would be needed for a terrorist attack.

GAO inspectors found several incidents where radioactive isotopes were left unsecured and would be easily accessible to terrorists. For example, inspectors found a machine containing 2,000 curies of cesium-137, used in cancer treatments, stored on a wheeled pallet next to the loading dock at one facility, where it could easily have been wheeled down the hall and out the door. In another location, 1,500 curies of cesium-137 were kept behind a locked door — with the combination clearly written on the door frame.

As a result of the report, officials at GAO recommended that the government increase outreach to hospitals to raise awareness about the need for security upgrades, especially in highly populated urban areas. They also called for stronger NRC requirements for security, including dictating the specific placements of cameras and alarms. The GAO’s report recommended increased training for NRC inspectors, some of whom told investigators that they felt ill prepared after a week-long training course.

In a response included with the report, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed that expanding outreach to more hospitals would be a good idea. But while acknowledging GAO’s recommendation for strengthening security upgrades, the NRC said that its standards are in line with those of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and argued that the security protocols would be adequate if they were followed correctly. Despite this argument, GAO stood by its recommendations.

Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI), who requested the report, called the findings “troubling.”

“Delays in securing these materials on the mainland U.S. unnecessarily put the American people at risk,” wrote Akaka in a statement. “We must strengthen domestic radiological security requirements and accelerate efforts to secure all medical facilities with radiological materials."

Radioactive materials are used to help diagnose and treat a number of illnesses, including cardiac disease and cancer. Millions of procedures are performed around the country each year using nuclear medicine.

Although no dirty bomb has been used in the U.S., GAO points to an accidental explosion in Brazil that occurred in 1987 when an abandoned teletherapy machine exploded, killing four people. That device contained 1,400 curies of cesium-137. The accident and its aftermath caused about $36 million in damages to the region, according to Brazil’s government.

While acknowledging that all nuclear materials should be secured, some experts worry the focus on dirty bombs obscures the danger presented by the use of highly-enriched uranium in medical devices. Rather than a small improvised explosive, HEU could be used to make a bomb on the scale of those used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“Dirty bombs are weapons of mass distraction, not weapons of mass destruction,” says Alan J. Kupperman, who heads the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project at the University of Texas. “By contrast, a nuclear weapon from stolen HEU could kill tens of thousands of people.”

Kupperman and others have pushed Congress to move on the American Medical Isotopes Production Act, which was passed by the House in 2011. However, the House version leaves open a potentially dangerous loophole, as reported by the Center earlier this year. An international treaty, signed in April, has also been criticized for not going far enough to restrict the use of highly enriched uranium in medical isotopes.

On Wednesday, the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing on security at nuclear power plants after a trio of activists, including an 82-year-old nun, broke into a sensitive facility outside Knoxville, Tenn.

IG: Afghan fuel records go missing

United States — 2013-01-23T12:59:49-05:00

What happened to almost $475 million worth of oil destined for the Afghan National Army – that’s what the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) would like to know.

Unfortunately, the inspectors may never find out. According to the report released Monday, more than four years of financial records that the Department of Defense was supposed to keep to track this spending are either missing or so poorly kept that even gathering basic information, such as the location and size of fuel sites, was not possible.

The report concludes that the Department of Defense agency in charge of tracking the oil “does not have accurate or supportable information on how much U.S. funds are needed for [Army] fuel, where and how the fuel is actually used, or how much fuel has been lost or stolen.”

Inspectors found that records from October 2006 to March 2011 were shredded improperly, a violation of DOD policies that made it impossible for auditors to track what happened to the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of oil. DOD also “could not provide more than half” of the documents requested from March 2011 onward.

“The destruction of records and the unexplained failure to provide other records violate DOD and Department of the Army policies,” wrote SIGAR head John Sopko in a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and others that accompanied the report. Sopko, an experienced watchdog appointed in May, noted that he has opened an investigation into the destruction of the older records.

The Combined Security Transition Command, a multi-national agency run out of Kabul, has spent $1.1 billion since 2007 in fuel for the Afghan army. A large chunk of that funding comes from the United States— the 2012 budget alone included $429 million for the program. As with other projects in Afghanistan, the program is slated to be handed over to Afghan control in 2013, but funding would continue with projected spending raises of $555 million in 2014.

As a result of its findings, SIGAR recommended that future oil funding for the Afghan army be kept frozen at current 2012 levels until improvements are made to how DOD is accounting and tracking fuel. SIGAR also recommended that the fuel agency “implement a comprehensive action plan” to improve accountability on fuel deliveries and purchases.

In a response included with the SIGAR report, an official of from DOD’s Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan promised to implement a new fuel database, and track invoices better. The response did not directly address the SIGAR charge that documents were improperly shredded, but contained promises that the Army will improve compliance on future reports.

The transition command protested a potential funding freeze, however, arguing that it would impinge on military operations. According to the transition office, the amount spent on fuel needs to keep rising, because Afghani forces are using more fuel every year — the result of increased numbers of vehicles provided by coalition forces. Funding recommendations should be based on military requirements, according to DOD.

However, SIGAR’s report says this response ignores the need to develop a better method and process for creating their cost projections. Because DOD did not provide documentation to back up their claim that oil budgets need to continue to rise, SIGAR stands by their request to cap funding levels.

Commander Bill Speaks, a spokesman for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, said the transition office’s comments “speak for themselves.” He added that the field team provided information requested for the post March 2011 audit and that they will continue to cooperate with SIGAR’s audit. Speaks could not offer a comment on Spoko’s letter by press time.

Although SIGAR’s report didn’t uncover any specific examples of waste, fraud and abuse, investigators said that changes must be made to “mitigate” the risk of fraud. That’s something SIGAR has written about in the past: In May, SIGAR released a report warning of concerns over stolen cash and fuel. “Corruption remains a major threat to the reconstruction effort,” Steven Trent, the acting head of SIGAR at the time, wrote in his introduction to the 176-page report. He added that the problem may worsen as the United States heads for the door: “Afghan reconstruction has reached a critical turning point. The shift in strategy, decline in funding, and persistent violence and corruption underscore the need for aggressive oversight.”

The interim report came from an audit of the overall logistics of the Afghan army, which is due sometime later this year. But the lost data was alarming enough to SIGAR that it merited “immediate attention.”

Amidst cuts, Army outfits chauffeurs

2013-01-23T12:59:49-05:00

Facing the end of an era of untrammeled growth in defense spending, officials at the Pentagon have spent most of 2012 telling anyone who will listen how potential budget cuts will put national security in jeopardy. While funds for big ticket military items are under new pressure, however, there’s one thing the Pentagon still has pocket change for: its well-groomed chauffeurs.

On Friday, the Army formally solicited new bids to make the grey uniforms used by chauffeurs. The request was first uncovered by our friend Mark Thompson, who closely tracks such bids for his entertaining Battleland blog at TIME.

The bid makes clear that even though the Pentagon has plenty to worry about these days — the threat of war with Iran, the chaos in Syria, and the continued conflict in Afghanistan, to name a few — someone there still has time to worry about the fine details of how the drivers of top generals and assistant secdefs are to be dressed.

In the solicitation, the fabrics of the uniforms are spelled out with precision: coats and trousers must be 55 percent polyester and 45 percent wool, while shirts should be 65 percent polyester and 35 percent cotton. The cotton tie must be burgundy. Anticipating a rough winter, the solicitation included an order for 68 black V-neck sweaters.

As Thompson points out, the details suggest the chauffeur force is heavily male. The Army wants 203 men’s coats and 16 women’s coats, along with 408 men’s shirts and only 24 for women. Nothing but the best will do: “new Equipment ONLY; NO remanufactured or ‘gray market’ items,” and all items must be covered by a warranty. Sizes aren’t specified, apparently because there will be a personal fitting in the autumn. The solicitation does not specify how much the Army is prepared to spend.

According to the solicitation, the Army chauffeur corps transports “Senior Executive Staffs of the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Under Secretaries of Army and Air Force, Vice Chiefs of Staff Army and Air Force, Assistant Secretaries, and other Principal Officials of Headquarters Department of Defense (DoD).”

What kind of cars will the Pentagon’s best and brightest be riding in? The solicitation doesn’t say, but it’s worth noting the Army has previously asked for bids to make four large SUVs — two 2011 Lincoln Navigators L 4X4 and two Ford Expedition XLT vehicles, all meant to seat seven passengers.

Only a few lawmakers have tried to make political hay by complaining about the Pentagon’s chauffeur system. In 1973, Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., called it “outrageous.” But judging from the Pentagon’s new order, even in a time of relative austerity, this is one expense the top brass feels it cannot do without.

Requests for comment to the Army and the contracting officer listed in the solicitation were not immediately returned. The Office of the Secretary of Defense referred questions to the Army.

Is the Democratic platform in synch with the public on national defense?

2013-01-23T12:59:49-05:00

The Democratic party platform released this week suggests that national security officials in a second Obama administration will attempt to leave outdated military projects behind, try to bolster the country’s international leadership, and try to control nuclear weapons materials — policies that match some but not all of the preferences expressed by members of both political parties in a May survey organized by the Center for Public Integrity.

The platform, released Tuesday, leaves plenty of wiggle room for the administration, eschewing hard numbers or strategic decisions in favor of generalities — a practice typical in platforms released at convention time that are heavy on rhetoric but light on specifics.

The 2012 platform is even more general than the Democrats’ 2008 version, which contained highly specific pledges of new aid to Afghanistan ($1 billion) and Israel ($30 billion) and called for increasing “the Army by 65,000 troops and the Marines by 27,000 troops.” Instead of looking forward, the focus of this year’s document is on what the Obama administration has already accomplished.

But it still provides a starting point to consider how Obama and his team might handle national security issues if he wins a second term. (Our look at the GOP’s platform was published Aug. 30.) While the platform does not specifically call for defense cuts, it mirrors the strategic plan laid out by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who called in January for moving away from heavy land forces and restructuring how the military spends its funds, while leaving the future defense budget mostly level.

“After more than a decade of war, we have an opportunity to retool our armed forces and our defense strategy,” to ensure “our security with a more agile and more flexible force,” states the platform.

To accomplish these goals, Panetta’s office has already proposed to increase funding for Special Forces while moving away from some traditional warfare assets. He was supported by senior military officers, including Army chief of staff Ray Odierno, who said in April he doesn’t believe “we’ll ever see a straight conventional conflict again in the future.” The Center’s survey, conducted with the Stimson Center and the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, found widespread public support for Special Forces, coupled with a willingness to cut spending on ground forces.

Although the Republican platform also lacked specific figures on potential increases in funding or troop levels, GOP nominee Mitt Romney has made it clear that he intends to expand national defense spending if elected in November. In the survey, however, overall cuts in defense spending were supported by voters from both sides of the political spectrum. In fact, two-thirds of Republicans and nine in 10 Democrats polled supported making immediate cuts.

The average amount was around $103 billion, a substantial portion of the current $562 billion base defense budget, while the majority supported cutting it at least $83 billion. Those numbers dwarf the threatened cut of $55 billion at the end of this year under so-called “sequestration” legislation passed in 2011, which Pentagon officials and lawmakers from both parties have decried as devastating.

The Democrats' platform includes language promoting the country’s role abroad, not just with military force but with leadership on the international stage. Africa, Latin America and the Middle East are areas that get special paragraphs calling for U.S. support and influence. The Democrats also take a shot at Obama’s Republican predecessor George W. Bush by asserting “we have restored America’s leadership at the UN … reversing the previous administration’s disdain for the UN.”

But strong international leadership may be less popular with Americans than the party’s leaders evidently expect. Seventy-two percent of respondents in our poll said the U.S. is “playing the role of military policeman too much.”

The platform reiterates Obama’s plan to remove U.S. forces from Afghanistan by 2014, which appears to be a crowd pleaser. Roughly 85 percent of the survey respondents supported a statement that said in part, “it is time for the Afghan people to manage their own country and for us to bring our troops home.” A majority backed an immediate cut of around 43 percent in Afghan war spending.

And what about the most destructive weapons in the U.S. arsenal? The platform highlights a desire by the administration to reduce the number of nuclear warheads, deployed both domestically and abroad. This stands in sharp contrast to the Republican platform, which accuses Obama of failing to modernize the nuclear arsenal and unnecessarily delaying the deployment of defenses against missiles fielded by other nations. The GOP platform echoes concerns of Congressional Republicans who criticized Obama’s New START nuclear treaty with Russia. In comparison, the Democratic Party platform offers strong support for New START and calls for further treaties with Russia and the international community.

Obama’s aides have been vague in this election year about what kind of reductions he might support in a second term, and the White House has postponed any public discussion of nuclear targeting changes widely seen as a prerequisite to a major cut. But a prominent group appointed to advise Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on arms control matters has tentatively backed two options: implementing START more quickly than the treaty’s 2018 deadline, or informally deciding with Russia that both countries should deploy even “lower levels of nuclear weapons as a matter of national policy.”

The recommendation, now awaiting final approval by the International Security Advisory Board including former Secretary of Defense William Perry, the former commander of the Global Strike Command, and many others -- comes with a warning that “arms control fatigue, electoral politics, and the thorny issue of missile defense have all converged in 2012, creating poor conditions for trust and dialogue.”

In the survey, members of the public showed little hesitation about making cuts in nuclear forces, however. Respondents on average favored at least a 27 percent cut in spending on nuclear arms — the largest proportional cut of any in the survey. Overall, two-thirds of those polled — 78 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Republicans and 57 percent of independents — expressed a desire to cut spending on nuclear arms.

GOP platform at odds with public on defense spending

2013-01-23T12:59:48-05:00

In May, the Center for Public Integrity and the Stimson Center unveiled the results of a major poll on defense spending. Our poll found wide consensus among the public and across party lines that the defense budget could use some trimming — around three-quarters of those polled thought there should be cuts for air power, ground forces, and naval forces, and over eighty percent said there is “a lot of waste” in the defense budget. In fact, respondents preferred far deeper cuts than those suggested by either the Obama administration or the Republicans.

During the conventions, we decided to take a look at what the party platforms say, and how that measures up to public opinion. First up: the GOP and presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Romney has made it clear that he intends to expand defense spending if elected in November, having already called for spending a minimum of four percent of the GDP on national defense.

But Tuesday afternoon, as Romney was being officially nominated at the Republican National Convention, his party unveiled the official GOP platform for 2012. Included in the party platform was a thirteen-page section on “American Exceptionalism,” laying out the Republican view of defense and the future of the military.

While the document is light on specifics and heavy on rhetoric, there are some clues for what would be the Romney administration’s national security priorities. And in some very expensive cases, they don’t match up with public sentiment.

For example, the platform includes a call to strengthen American’s nuclear arsenal. “We recognize that the gravest terror threat we face — a nuclear attack made possible by nuclear proliferation — requires a comprehensive strategy for reducing the world’s nuclear stockpiles and preventing the spread of those armaments,” reads the platform. “But the U.S. can lead that effort only if it maintains an effective strategic arsenal at a level sufficient to fulfill its deterrent purposes, a notable failure of the current Administration.”

This line echoes calls from prominent Republican congressmen who wrote a letter in February calling proposed cuts by the Obama administration a “deep concern.” At the time, the Center reported how campaign finance records show that since 2009 the signers received $1.12 million from the employees and political action committees of the four large defense contractors with a major stake in the nuclear weapons industry. (Spokespeople for House members and companies alike deny there has been any quid pro quo.)

But the public would prefer that the nuclear arsenal be reduced, not expanded. In fact, respondents on average favored at least a 27 percent cut in spending on nuclear arms — the largest proportional cut of any in the survey. Overall, two-thirds of those polled — 78 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Republicans and 57 percent of independents — expressed a desire to cut spending on nuclear arms.

In another part of their platform, the GOP claims the Obama administration has “systematically undermined America’s missile defense” and calls for a recommitment to America’s missile shield. However, a pair of recent studies by the Government Accountability Office have called into question the costs and effectiveness of the missile defense program. In one case, as the Center has previously noted, a missile defense system has been cancelled for inefficiency but is still set to cash in on $250 million in taxpayer dollars.

According to the Center’s poll, the public favors cutting 14 percent of missile defense spending. At the same time, 74 percent of those polled believe that pursuing missile defense is important for the country’s national security, which means that Americans want a missile shield — just one that costs less money.

While discussing foreign aid, the GOP insists on relying more on private sector work than government-run programs that are a “proven breeding ground for corruption and mismanagement by foreign kleptocrats.” Corruption and waste in Afghanistan and Iraq is a long-standing problem that has haunted both the Bush and Obama administrations. In July, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction told the Center he believes $6 billion to $8 billion of taxpayer money has been lost to waste and abuse in Saddam Hussein’s former fiefdom; later that month the IG for Afghanistan reconstruction reported to Congress that millions of lost funds have been sunk into construction projects.

While the Center’s poll did not specifically ask about foreign aid, respondents were very clear about their views on Afghanistan: It’s time to get out. 85 percent of respondents expressing support for a statement that said in part, “It is time for the Afghan people to manage their own country and for us to bring our troops home.” A majority of respondents backed an immediate cut, on average, of $38 billion in the war’s existing $88 billion budget, or around 43 percent.

The platform also delves into social issues, calling for an enforcement of the “Defense of Marriage Act in the Armed Forces,” a reference to President Obama’s support for gay marriage. The GOP also pledged that “a Republican Administration will return the advocacy of religious liberty to a central place in our diplomacy” while calling for increased security against human traffickers on the border.

At the very end of the platform is a paragraph about Iran. ”A continuation of [the Obama Administration’s] failed engagement policy with Iran will lead to nuclear cascade,” warns the GOP. “American must lead the effort to prevent Iran from building and possessing nuclear weapons capability.”

The need to contain Iran, a major focus among the neoconservative wing of the Republican party, has also driven the U.S. to increase arms sales to friendly Middle Eastern countries, most notably to Saudi Arabia, which last year purchased $33 billion in arms from America.

And, of course, not all Republicans are locked in with their party on military spending. In recent weeks some noted Republicans have begun calling for a Romney presidency to consider cuts to military spending as a necessity facing the country.

Stay tuned next week when we take a look at the Democratic party platform.

U.S. sets record arms sales in 2011

United States — 2013-01-23T12:59:48-05:00

2011 was a very good year for U.S. arms sales, with more than triple the business from the year before.

According to a new report to Congress, worldwide sales of U.S. weapons last year added up to $66.3 billion. That accounts for more than three-quarters of 2011 arms sales worldwide, which is “the highest single year agreements total in the history of the U.S. arms export program.”

The report was prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) as part of their annual study of arms sales.

In 2010, the U.S. authorized $21.4 billion in sales, which led CRS to describe the jump as “extraordinary.” In terms of overall sales, Russia was distant second to the United States, having moved $4.8 billion. The previous record was in 2009, when the U.S. did almost $31 billion in sales.

Since the start of 2008, 81.4 percent of U.S. arms sales agreements have gone to the Middle East while 16.04 percent have gone to Asian countries.

In the report, CRS notes that sales to developing nations were a major driver in lifting 2011 U.S. sales, jumping from $14.3 billion in 2010 to $56.3 billion in 2011. CRS points to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as countries that bolstered their arms purchasing in 2011, which CRS says could be linked to concerns over Iran. Saudi Arabia purchased more than $33 billion in arms from the U.S., including 84 new F-15 jets and upgrades for 70 older models.

The Saudis were not alone in purchasing weaponry in the region. The United Arab Emirates purchased 16 Chinook helicopters for just under $1 billion total; Oman shelled out $1.6 billion for 18 F-16 fighters. Egypt added land forces, spending $1 billion on M1 Abrams tanks, a sale that the Pentagon has used to argue for freezing domestic production of the Army’s signature land vehicle.

But “the U.S. arms agreements with Saudi Arabia were extraordinary,” concluded the report, as they “represent, by far, the largest share of U.S. agreements with the world or the developing world in 2011.”

The selling of arms to Saudi Arabia is not without controversy. As the Center reported in June, the country has continued to receive steady flows of arms from the United States despite being on a State Department watchlist for human rights violations. Since the start of 2004, Saudi Arabia has purchased $75.7 billion in arms.

Another country which has received weapons despite human rights abuse concerns is the tiny nation of Bahrain. Earlier this year, the Center reported that the U.S. lifted a freeze on arm sales that had been put into effect due to human rights abuses during the “Arab Spring” uprising. Like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain is a major strategic partner for the U.S. The Persian Gulf nation received $80.4 million in military financing from the U.S. between 2005 and 2010 and is home to a 60-acre U.S. naval base which houses the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

No law requires that U.S. arms be exported only to countries that the State Department — in its annual human rights assessments — determines are treating their citizens well. Instead, a more narrow restriction known as the so-called “Leahy Law,” named for author Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and passed in 1997, prohibits U.S. assistance to specific military and police units deemed responsible for human rights abuses.

While the United States was clearly the leader in weapons transactions, a number of other countries took part in the global arms trade, including France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy — traditional Western European arms suppliers. China has also begun to rise to prominence in this area, although they still lag significantly behind the U.S. and Russia.

Drugs, guns and child porn at Homeland Security

2013-01-23T12:59:48-05:00

The Department of Homeland Security is the first line of defense against threats to Americans, entrusted with guarding the borders, protecting the skies and cracking down on potential terrorist attacks.

But instead of protecting America’s citizens, hundreds of DHS agents have been busy smuggling drugs, guns and illegal immigrants, obtaining child porn, and raking in thousands in bribes and theft.

Those are just a sampling of the crimes DHS agents committed, according to the “Summary of Significant Investigations” released by Homeland Security’s Inspector General this month.

It was a busy 2011 for the IG’s office, which investigated 1,389 allegations that resulted in 318 arrests and 260 convictions. Fines and recovered funds saved more than $45 million in taxpayer funds, according to agency estimates.

DHS is a massive government agency, with “over 225,000” employees, so it may not be surprising that there would be some individuals breaking the rules. But the seriousness of the crimes — including cases where American security was directly compromised by the very agents who are supposed to secure the borders and airports — is eye opening.

“A corrupt DHS employee may accept a bribe for allowing what appear to be simply undocumented aliens into the U.S. while unwittingly helping terrorists enter the country,” warned Charles Edwards, the acting inspector general (IG) at DHS, in Congressional testimony August 1. “Likewise, what seems to be drug contraband could be weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical or biological weapons or bomb-making materials.”

Among the more incendiary crimes profiled in the report:

Two TSA agents plead guilty in unrelated cases of having child pornography in their possession. One was sentenced to 20 months in prison; the other received 132 months in jail.
One border agent in Arizona physically assaulted another agent before he “pulled his service weapon and pointed it at the victim’s head.” The agent served an unspecified amount of time in jail.
While on duty and driving his government issued vehicle, a uniformed Immigration Enforcement officer was viewed buying crack cocaine in Arkansas. The agent received 60 days in prison and 60 months of probation
A detention officer at an immigration holding facility was sentenced to 10 months in prison after forcing “nonconsensual sexual contact” on an adult being detained at his facility.
One TSA agent was arrested after he “he was observed chasing and threatening to kill a young Somali male.” At the time, the agent was carrying a pair of handguns. The agent, who had also assaulted an 82 year old Somali in 2010, became the second-ever conviction under the 2009 Matthew Shepard hate crimes act.

In all the above cases, the agents were relieved of duty.

While the largest percentage of cases came from FEMA agents — including a consultant who had to pay a nearly $3 million fine for settle a false claims suit and a contractor that billed the government almost $40,000 for a fake employee — many of the most dangerous cases involved agents from Customs and Border Protection.

“We take all allegations of corruption very seriously,” David V. Aguilar, the acting commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said during an early August hearing. “While the number of corrupt individuals within our ranks who have betrayed the trust of the American public and their peers is a fraction of one percent of our workforce, we continue to focus our efforts on rooting out this unacceptable and deplorable behavior.”

Cases involving border security agents were spread throughout the nation. In New York, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent was discovered to be working with a drug cartel to rob other drug traffickers and sell their product. In Texas, a border agent allowed vehicles carrying “approximately 1,700 pounds of marijuana through his inspection lane in exchange for approximately $10,000 in bribes.” And in Georgia, a border agent working at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport used his position to bypass security and carry drugs and weapons for the cartel.

One notable case involved a border protection officer who “provided drug traffickers with his work schedule and lane assignments, which they used to coordinate their smuggling efforts through his inspection lane.” The agent received more than nine years in prison for his actions; his estranged wife, who also pleaded guilty to assisting the scheme, is on the run after not showing at a Texas courthouse.

Not all crimes are created equal, of course. A customs agent in Boston apparently let his inner fanboy get the better of him when he stole an immigration card filled out by astronaut Neil Armstrong at Logan airport before attempting to sell it through an auction warehouse. The agent was sentenced to 24 months of probation.

Edwards, the acting IG, testified that 2,527 DHS employees have been convicted of crimes since 2004. During this period, the grand majority (65 percent) of those crimes have come from FEMA employees, many of whom were involved in kickbacks with contractors or schemes to steal taxpayer funds. 15 percent of the crimes came from border protection agents, 6.5 percent came from immigration officials, and over 5 percent was from TSA agents.

Unfortunately, DHS doesn’t seem to have licked the corruption problem. As of July 15, fiscal year 2012 has seen 146 convictions of agents. That number is guaranteed to increase; last week, two border protection agents were convicted of smuggling hundreds of people into the U.S. aboard Border Patrol vehicles.

Dissent among Republicans over defense spending

2012-08-17T15:13:13-04:00

Grover Norquist, an influential Republican lobbyist in Washington, is advising his party's lawmakers to cut the defense budget deeply to avoid a major federal tax hike.

His remarks on Monday were another sign of splintering views in Republican ranks about spending on national defense that presently consumes about half of the discretionary federal budget — with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney going in one direction and some Republican lawmakers and lobbyists headed in a different direction.

Norquist, a long-time anti-tax crusader in Washington, said in a talk at the Center for The National Interest that Republicans should not be pushing for increased spending on defense when the national deficit has ballooned. Instead, he said, lawmakers should embrace the need to balance the budget and cut wasteful projects, which he said could be done without negatively impacting national security.

“You need to decide what your real defense needs are,” said Norquist. “That doesn’t mean chairmen of certain committees get to build bases in their states. That’s not a defense need ... [but] a political desire.” The debate so far, he said, has been marked by a lack of “serious conversation” on the Hill. However, he predicted that many of the Republicans unwilling to cut defense spending would either retire or be replaced in the November elections.

Norquist, expressing views typical among more isolationist Republicans, decried foreign interventions such as Iraq and Afghanistan. “Bush decided to be the mayor of Baghdad rather than the president of the United States,” he said. “He decided to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan rather than reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That had tremendous consequences.”

Mitt Romney, in contrast, has called for spending a minimum of four percent of the GDP on national defense — even more than preferred by his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. But Ryan's opposition to the Obama administration's plan to keep defense spending mostly level has led him into conflict with some of the nation’s top military leaders. Early this year, Ryan asserted that Pentagon officials were lying to Congress to fall in line with President Obama’s desire to forgo a planned military spending hike.

“We don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice. We don’t think the generals believe that their budget is really the right budget,” Ryan said in March. His statement drew a quick rebuke from Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey, and Ryan later apologized.

A joint poll conducted by The Center for Public Integrity and the Stimpson Center earlier this year found widespread public support for defense cuts. Around three-quarters of those surveyed called for cuts to the air, ground and naval forces, and over eighty percent supported a statement that current defense spending includes much waste.

The Obama administration, however, has had difficulty selling some of its proposed military budget changes to Congress — including a proposed cut in spending on the M1 Abrams Tank. Many lawmakers predict that the military budget debate will not be even partially resolved until after November’s election.

Counter-IED efforts still beset by poor oversight and duplication

2012-08-13T11:03:32-04:00

The Pentagon has pumped billions of dollars into programs to counter the dangers of improvised explosive devices over the last decade but still lacks a way to track whether its initiatives are meeting their goals — a circumstance that a government watchdog warns could lead to overlap and wasted taxpayer funds.

Poor record keeping has hindered the Defense Department’s ability to monitor more than 1,300 individual anti-IED projects, complicating any effort by outsiders to assess whether the funds have been well spent, a report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office said.

“DOD has not determined, and does not have a ready means for determining,” just how many anti-IED projects it is currently funding, the report said. Although GAO accounted for $4.8 billion in Pentagon spending, it called that estimate “understated,” because many anti-IED initiatives weren’t properly recorded.

“DOD has funded hundreds of C-IED initiatives but has not developed a comprehensive database of these initiatives or the organizations conducting them,” the report stated.

The report is a follow up to a February 2012 GAO study that concluded DOD does not have “full visibility” over its anti-IED projects.

The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), which oversees all this work, has become a symbol of the organizational mess that can ensue when huge government sums are thrown at an urgent project. Improvised Explosive Devices, better known as IEDs, remain a weapon of choice against U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, where 16,500 IEDs were detonated or discovered being used against U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2011.

A sudden infusion of funds by the Pentagon in 2006 turned JIEDDO from a 12-person Army task force into a $21 billion organization with 1,900 personnel. But, as noted by the Center in March 2011, the IED-fighting force never developed any new methods or technology for improving detection of explosives, and its impact was muted. A soldier’s chances of finding an IED before it detonates has remained about 50 percent since the Pentagon formed JIEDDO.

Of the 1,340 anti-IED initiatives funded by the Pentagon since 2008, 596 of them were conducted by JIEDDO. But the organization was unable to provide the accountability office with information on the cost or the effectiveness of four-fifths of those initiatives. In comparison, 80 percent of the non-JIEDDO initiatives completed the GAO survey.

As an example of overlap, GAO’s survey uncovered 107 initiatives spread over 19 organizations working to neutralize cell phone-triggered IEDs, a situation GAO warns “demonstrates overlap and the potential for duplication of effort.”

Other areas of potential overlap included two organizations that produced similar IED-related intelligence reports, two organizations that developed similar robots to detect IEDs from a safe distance, and two organizations that created anti-IED devices using chemical sensors “similar in their technologies and capabilities.”

In its response to the report, the Pentagon criticized the watchdog agency for portraying JIEDDO as “uncooperative” despite having opened up its record books to investigators. GAO noted that, while they agree they were provided access, the limitations of available data showed the extent of JIEDDO’s disorganization.

The Pentagon also disputed GAO’s claims of overlap in counter-IED efforts. For example, the Defense Department noted that when the agency pointed to 60 chemical sensor projects by 14 organizations, it failed to mention the sensors are meant to detect different chemical signatures.

GAO’s response? Without a comprehensive list of counter-IED efforts, neither DOD nor the watchdog agency can tell how and “to what degree” the chemical sensors are actually different from each other — and so “the potential for duplication exists.”

The Pentagon also took issue with GAO’s comparison of two intelligence analysis groups working on counter-IED projects. Although GAO’s report stated the two groups worked in similar areas without knowledge of the other’s activities, the Pentagon said that assessment was outdated and that the two analysis groups are now communicating.

The Army tank that could not be stopped

General Dynamics Corporation — 2012-09-17T14:57:34-04:00

The M1 Abrams tank has survived the Cold War, two conflicts in Iraq and a decade of war in Afghanistan. No wonder — it weighs as much as nine elephants and is fitted with a cannon capable of turning a building to rubble from two and a half miles away.

But now the machine finds itself a target in an unusual battle between the Defense Department and lawmakers who are the beneficiaries of large donations by its manufacturer.

The Pentagon, facing smaller budgets and looking towards a new global strategy, has decided it wants to save as much as $3 billion by freezing refurbishment of the M1 from 2014 to 2017, so it can redesign the hulking, clanking vehicle from top to bottom.

Its proposal would idle a large factory in Lima, Ohio as well as halt work at dozens of subcontractors in Pennsylvania, Michigan and other states.

Opposing the Pentagon’s plans is Abrams manufacturer General Dynamics, a nationwide employer that has pumped millions of dollars into congressional elections over the last decade. The tank’s supporters on Capitol Hill say they are desperate to save jobs in their districts and concerned about undermining America’s military capabilities.

So far, the contractor is winning the battle, after a well-organized campaign of lobbying and political donations involving the lawmakers who sit on four key committees that will decide the tank's fate, according to an analysis of spending and lobbying records by the Center for Public Integrity.

Sharp spikes in the company’s donations — including a two-week period in 2011 when its employees and political action committee sent the lawmakers checks for their campaigns totaling nearly $50,000 — roughly coincided with five legislative milestones for the Abrams, including committee hearings and votes and the defense bill’s final passage last year.

After putting the tank money back in the budget then, both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have authorized it again this year, allotting $181 million in the House and $91 million in the Senate. If the company and its supporters prevail, the Army will refurbish what Army chief of staff Ray Odierno described in a February hearing as “280 tanks that we simply do not need.”

It already has more than 2,300 M1s deployed with U.S. forces around the world and roughly 3,000 more sitting idle in long rows outdoors at a remote military base in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.

The $3 billion at stake in this fight is not a large sum in Pentagon terms — it’s roughly what the building spends in a little more than a day. But the fight over the Abrams’ future, still unfolding, illuminates the major pressures that drive the current defense spending debate.

These include a Pentagon looking to free itself from legacy projects and modernize some of its combat strategy, a Congress looking to defend pet projects and a well-financed and politically savvy defense industry with deep ties to both, fighting tooth-and-nail to fend off even small reductions in the budget now devoted to the military — a total figure that presently composes about half of all discretionary spending.

Vulnerable to IED’s but impervious to Pentagon budgeteers

The M1 Abrams entered service in 1980, but first saw combat during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. That episode indicated that, on the battlefield at least, the only thing that could destroy an Abrams was another Abrams; only seven of the tanks deployed in the operation were destroyed, all by friendly fire.

In the last decade, however, as hundreds were deployed to Iraq and later to Afghanistan, a key shortcoming became apparent: Their flat bottoms made the Abrams surprisingly vulnerable to improvised explosive devices (IEDs). As a result, the Abrams in Iraq ended up being used as “pillboxes” — high-priced armored bunkers used to protect ground.

“The M1 is an extraordinary vehicle, the best tank on the planet,” Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army Major General now with the nonprofit National Security Network, said in an interview. Since the primary purpose of tanks is to destroy other tanks, however, their utility in modern counterinsurgency warfare is limited, he added.

Ashley Givens, a spokeswoman for the Army’s Program Executive Office for Ground Combat Systems, said that the Army can refurbish all 2,384 tanks it needs by the end of 2013. Freezing work after that, she said, will allow the Army to “focus its limited resources on the development of the next generation Abrams tank,” rather than building more of the same that “have exceeded their space, weight and power limits."

Warfare has changed, Odierno explained while discussing the Army’s new strategy at the February hearing.

“We don’t believe we’ll ever see a straight conventional conflict again in the future,” he said.

But top Army officials have so far been unable to get political traction to kill the M1. Part of the reason is that General Dynamics and its well-connected lobbyists have been carrying a large checkbook and a sheaf of pro-tank talking points around on the Hill.

For example, when House Armed Services Committee member Hank Johnson, D-Ga., held a campaign fundraiser at a wood-panelled Capitol Hill steakhouse called the Caucus Room just before Christmas last year, someone from GD brought along a $1,500 check for his re-election campaign. Several months later, Johnson signed a letter to the Pentagon supporting funding for the tank. Johnson spokesman Andy Phelan said the congressman has consistently supported the M-1 “because he doesn't think shutting down the production line is in the national interest."

The contribution was a tiny portion of the $5.3 million that GD’s political action committee and the company’s employees have invested in the current members of either the House and Senate Armed Services Committees or defense appropriations subcommittees since January 2001, according to data on defense industry campaign contributions the Center for Public Integrity acquired from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

These are the committees that approve the Pentagon’s spending every year. Without their support, the tank — or any other costly military program — would be dead.

Kendell Pease, GD’s Vice President for Government Relations and Communications, said in an interview that the company — which produces submarines and radios for the military as well as tanks — makes donations to those lawmakers whose views are aligned with the firm’s interests. “We target our PAC money to those folks who support national security and the national defense of our country,” Pease said. “Most of them are on the four [key defense] committees.”

But Pease denies trying to time donations around key votes, saying that the company’s PAC typically gives money whenever members of Congress invite its representatives to fundraisers. “The timing of a donation is keyed by [member’s] requests for funding,” he said, adding that personal donations by company employees are not under his control. He said the donations tend to be clumped together because lawmakers often hold fundraisers at the same time.

More cash at key milestones

During the current election cycle, General Dynamics’ political action committee and its employees have sent an average of approximately $7,000 per week to members of the four committees. But the week President Obama announced his defense budget plan in 2011, the donations spiked to more than $20,000, significantly higher than in any of the previous six weeks. A second spike of more than $20,000 in donations occurred in early March 2011, when Army budget hearings were being held.

At a March 9 hearing of the House subcommittee dealing with land forces, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, railed against the Army’s decision to freeze work on the Abrams. Since the start of 2001, Reyes has received $64,650 in GD donations, including $1,000 on March 10, the day after the hearing, according to the data. Reyes' office did not return a request to comment; his overall campaign receipts in the current election cycle have been $1 million.

Another large spike occurred the first two weeks of May 2011, a period in which the House Armed Services Committee voted 60-1 for a budget bill containing money to continue work on the Abrams through 2013. Over this period, GD’s PAC and employees donated a total of $48,100 to members of the four committees, with almost $20,000 of that going directly to members of the HASC as they voted.

During another two week period in September, in which the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense handed in its conference report and Congress rushed to pass a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open, the company sent $36,500 to members of the four committees — primarily the House Armed Services Committee, whose members got $30,500.

The final large spike in donations last year came the week of Dec. 11-17, when Congress made a final vote on the whole budget. During this week, GD’s donations to members of the four committees totaled $17,000.

Along with its checks, the company has been carrying around a message that a cutoff of tank manufacturing work in Lima will harm the nation’s “industrial base,” using what has become a favorite expression of alarm for military contractors facing cutbacks.

The workforce “is not like a lightswitch. You can’t just click it off, then walk away for three years, come back and click it on,” Pease said. Smaller suppliers who exclusively make parts for the Abrams could be shuttered if the Army’s spending stops, he said. GD has also accused the Army of underestimating the plant’s temporary shutdown costs, claiming that the government’s actual savings would be minimal.

To help bring its corporate viewpoint to lawmakers, General Dynamics has spent at least $84 million over the past 11 years on lobbyists, according to Senate Office of Public Records lobbying data acquired from the Center for Responsive Politics. Just in the last year and a half, the firm — which draws nearly three-quarters of its revenues from public tax dollars in the form of federal contracts — has spent at least $13.5 million on more than 130 individual advocates, who pressed Congress to fund a variety of military and non-military programs at the firm.

While lobbyists often do not name their causes, those working for GD that specifically listed the Abrams tank, along with other topics, reported earning at least $550,000 from 2011 to the first quarter of 2012, according to the data. Pease described the lobbying efforts as “education … Shame on us if we don’t go and tell them [Congress] our side, because the Army is doing the same thing as we’re doing, having just as many meetings as we are.”

Relying on special contacts

In addition to tapping its in-house team, the company also hired outside firms to help sway lawmakers’ votes, which in turn assigned the General Dynamics account to former congressional staff tightly connected to committee members — part of the “revolving door” phenomenon now common among veterans of both political parties.

GD has paid the Podesta Group more than $1.5 million since 2009 to lobby on the defense appropriations and authorizations bills, according to lobbying disclosure forms. Among the more than 20 Podesta lobbyists assigned to the account was Josh Holly, communications director for the House Committee on Armed Services under Republican leadership for six years.

According to Holly’s bio on the Podesta website, he worked directly with Republican Buck McKeon of California, the committee's current chairman. McKeon is a major recipient of GD campaign donations, garnering $68,000 from GD’s PAC and employees since the start of 2001 — with $56,000 of that coming just since 2009, when he became the committee’s top Republican. Holly did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking his comment. Committee spokesman Claude Chafin said McKeon has consistently argued that it is fiscally smarter to keep the Abrams work going than to stop it.

Podesta also assigned the GD account to two former House Appropriations Committee aides. One of them, Jim Dyer, confirmed that he lobbied on the tank this year, but directed other questions to General Dynamics. GD also hired firms that assigned its account to six other lobbyists who worked for the relevant committees, and to a former Pentagon liaison to Congress.

Pease said that when working with outside firms, he lets them pick the specific lobbyists on the account. But when picking the firms, “you always look for those people who can get the job done,” he said, referring to his approach as using a rifle rather than a shotgun. The company hires “a lot of individuals who understand our message, and how to deliver the message, so we can educate the right people, so they can understand our side of the equation.”

The company’s efforts so far have had great success. In April, 111 House Republicans joined with 62 House Democrats in a letter to Secretary Panetta decrying the decision to freeze work on the tanks. Less than a quarter were from Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania — the rust belt states with small subcontractors that would be directly impacted by a halt to Abrams work.

Of the 173 signers, 137 received contributions totaling more than $2 million from GD since 2001. Giving to Republicans and Democrats was split in half, with Republicans receiving about 51 percent of contributions and Democrats 49 percent. More than half of the Armed Services Committee and Defense Appropriations Subcommittee members signed, effectively telgraphing the outcome of their deliberations.

The first signature was from Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., whose district includes the Detroit suburb of Sterling Heights, the location of the headquarters for General Dynamics Land Systems. Rep. Levin’s brother is Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.m the powerful head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sen. Levin has received $46,200 from General Dynamics since 2001; his brother has received $43,000.

In a written statement, Rep. Levin said he wants to protect the Abrams because of its “vital importance to more than 60 local companies” in Michigan and the difficulty of restarting tank production after a hiatus. Rep. Levin’s spokesman Josh Drobnyk says Levin has not conferred with his brother on the issue but confirms that representatives from GDLS contacted the congressman’s office about the Abrams.

Sen. Levin’s spokeswoman Tara Andringa said that “based on information on the M1 tank program from the Army, from contractors and from independent analysts,” the Senator supported the funds for the Abrams as being in “the best interests of U.S. security and protecting taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars.”

Both this year and last year, the funds were added to the President’s proposed budget without a specific recorded vote, in what independent experts have termed an earmark — money directed by members of Congress to a pet project that often benefits their district. Earmarks were supposed to have been banned after the 2010 election, but lawmakers have decided that when multiple members favor adding funds — rather than just one lawmaker — it is not formally an earmark.

So far, there has been a great silence on the Abrams funding issue from congressional deficit hawks. Rep. Jim Jordan, who represents the Ohio district where the Lima plant is located and has received $31,000 for his campaigns from General Dynamics’ leadership PAC and employees, said he is now optimistic that the Abrams money will make it safely through the Senate.

If it does, the fight still might not be over. The White House, in its May 15 response to the House budget, objected to the “unrequested authorization” of funds for the Abrams during a “fiscally-constrained environment.” The administration did not specifically threaten a veto over the issue but said that if too many unrequested projects impeded “the ability of the Administration to execute the new defense strategy and to properly direct scarce resources,” senior advisors will recommend the President veto the bill.

Reporter Zach Toombs and Data Editor David Donald contributed to this report.

Correction, July 30, 2012, 12:18pm: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the Pentagon spends $3 billion every 82 minutes. The Pentagon actually spends $3 billion in a little more than a day. Also, the earlier version said that members of the House Armed Services Committee got $31,500 from General Dynamics during a two-week period in September last year. The correct figure is $30,500.

GAO: Missile defense initiative faces continuing challenges

United States — 2012-07-23T07:17:21-04:00

For years, the U.S. has pursued a reliable missile defense shield. But major parts of the program need better management or the entire effort will experience serious delays, says a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

Cost estimates and timetables for five key missile defense programs are “either not reliable or the program is missing information that could make it more efficient,” according to the report, released Friday.

Systems analyzed by the GAO were the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA, Aegis Ashore, Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD), Precision Tracking Space System (PTSS), and the Targets and Countermeasures Extended Medium-Range Ballistic Missile.

GAO lists ten “best practices” that the programs should be following, and found only four cases — out of a possible 50 — where the programs “fully” met these criteria. In ten cases the criteria were just “minimally” met. To help improve the “transparency and needed accountability” of the programs, GAO recommended that they be directed to “improve their compliance” with best practices. For long term solutions, managers need to do a better job of overseeing and pacing the work, the report said.

In its response to a draft version of the report, officials at the Pentagon said they agreed with GAO’s overall findings and recommendations.

The GAO's review included a reminder that the agency has “consistently reported … troubled acquisition histories” for the missile defense effort. One such report came in April. That study found that President Barack Obama’s administration was repeating a mistake made by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

In 2004, the Bush administration rushed a missile interception system through the development process to meet deadlines, leading to “unexpected cost increases, schedule delays, test problems, and performance shortfalls,” the report stated. In the past decade alone, the Pentagon has spent $80 billion on all its missile defense efforts, and it forecasts spending another $44 billion over the next four years.

A similar scenario is now playing out involving U.S. missile defenses in Europe. In 2010, Obama chose to deploy missile systems across the continent and improve interceptors by 2020. But a series of missile test failures have hindered those plans, slowing production for three of four interceptors the U.S. plans to place in Europe.

U.S. official says government wasted $6-8 billion in Iraq reconstruction

Iraq — 2012-07-18T10:40:07-04:00

The official in charge of monitoring America’s $51 billion effort to reconstruct Iraq has estimated that $6 billion to $8 billion of that amount was lost to waste, fraud and abuse.

Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) for the past eight years, gave that estimate in an interview with the Center for Public Integrity on Monday, shortly after releasing a new summary of his office’s many grim discoveries since it began work in in 2004.

In Friday’s report, Bowen said the exact funds lost to fraud and waste “can never be known,” largely because of poor record-keeping by the U.S. agencies involved in the effort. These include the Departments of State and Defense, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development.

According to the report, auditors repeatedly found that the State Department and Defense Department failed to properly review invoices from government contractors, often approving billions of dollars in services without checking if costs were accurate or efficient. “I think the consistent theme throughout our eight years of oversight work has been the inconsistent availability of records and information on contracts and costs,” said Bowen, a former Texas lawyer.

Bowen said his efforts were hampered from the outset by the ineffectiveness of a clearinghouse created in Iraq for government departments to submit reconstruction bills and contracts for review and oversight. Known as the Iraq Reconstruction Management System, the system was often ignored, with the result that nearly a third of all the contracts could not be monitored adequately.

"Agencies often inconsistently used it - such as USAID. Sometimes projects were put in there, sometimes they weren’t,” said Bowen. Aides said his $6 to $8 billion figure is based on his review of audits and reconstruction costs, as well of estimates of waste in programs where key data is missing.

Bowen’s Deputy Inspector General, Glenn Furbish, said separately in the interview that the cost of many contracts was steadily increased due to frequent modifications. “Once U.S. agencies started down this road, they rarely stopped and said ‘this is getting out of hand,’” Furbish said.

He also noted that many agencies sometimes skipped appropriate review of their bills in an effort to spend money within a deadline, so they did not have to return it to the Treasury.

Since its founding in 2004, SIGIR has investigated $635 million in spending, resulting in $176 million in “fines, forfeitures, and other monetary results.” In total, the agency estimates it has saved around $1.5 billion in taxpayer funds.

Friday’s report mostly detailed the persistent poor handling of government contracts. “In some instances, invoices were reviewed months after they were paid,” according to the report. “Poor and/or delayed invoice reviews add risk that the government may overpay, or pay unallowable and unreasonable costs.”

The report lays much of the blame on a lack of manpower dedicated to reviewing and overseeing government contracts. The State Department enlisted a single contracting officer to handle a $2.5 billion deal with DynCorp International to train Iraqi police forces, for example. Auditors called this decision “especially disturbing" because of problems in earlier DynCorp contracts. According to Furbish, after SIGIR singled out the contract, the State Department reviewed its original agreement with DynCorp and recovered more than $60 million from the company.

DynCorp spokeswoman Ashley Burke confirmed that her company returned funds to the government but said it had not engaged in misconduct.

SIGIR’s investigation also uncovered instances of bid-rigging and bribe-taking by State and Pentagon officials.

Fraudulent activities uncovered by the special inspector general resulted in 87 indictments, according to the report. Of those cases, 61 involved contract kickbacks, 11 involved contract fraud, and nine were related to embezzlement. Both military officers and defense contractors were frequently implicated.

The report details one such case, involving U.S. Army Major Roderick Sanchez, who served from 2004 to 2007 as a contracting officer in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait. Sanchez used his authority to solicit cash payments, Rolex watches and other expensive gifts in exchange for steering Pentagon contracts to foreign companies, reaping benefits worth more than $200,000, according to the report. He was sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of $15,000.

A Navy Lieutenant Commander named Frankie Hand, stationed at Camp Taji in Iraq as a contracting officer, entered into a secret agreement with two U.S. contractors — Michelle Adams and Peter Dunn — agreeing to rig government contracts to their benefit in exchange for a cut of the profits, the report said. The two contractors paid Hand $757,525 after obtaining two contracts improperly. An Air Force Master Sergeant received $50,000 in bribe money for “assistance” in the deal, the report said.

Hand received three years in prison and forfeited his share of contract profits, while Adams and Dunn received 15 and 14 months in prison, respectively.

Friday’s report, titled “Final Forensic Audit Report of Iraq Reconstruction Funds”, was wider in scope than most of SIGIR’s work, covering not just a specific project, but a broader picture of Iraq’s reconstruction. SIGIR spokesman Chris Griffith said however that Bowen' has one more major report to publish in January.

Many of the challenges described in the Iraq report mirror those depicted in similar reports by its cousin, the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. In a May report to Congress, for example, that office concluded that “corruption remains a major threat to the reconstruction effort” and said contractors were taking advantage of lax oversight in Afghanistan.

Drones not used effectively on U.S. borders

United States — 2012-06-14T15:25:51-04:00

The key military role played by the over 7,500 drones used by the Pentagon is well-known. But until recently, the deployment of drones by the government inside U.S. borders has attracted little attention or critical oversight.

Now a new internal audit from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has raised concerns about the utility of those drones, focusing on their high costs and how they have been managed.

DHS has spent more than $250 million on its program in the past six years, and currently has nine Predator drones on call. While each drone is purchased at a cost of around $18 million each, the GAO estimated that the hourly charge is $3,234 — or almost $65,000 per 20-hour mission.

The majority of the drones are based on the U.S./Mexico border, where a growing drug war has slowly seeped into parts of California and Texas. But drones also scout the border with Canada. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified last month that UAVs were patrolling from North Dakota to eastern Washington State.

The program has had a series of operational troubles, the IG report reveals. For example, the drones have required an hour of maintenance for every hour they fly, significantly increasing their expense. Additionally, inspectors found that the drones were often grounded by bad weather.

As a result, in 2011 the drones logged only half the air time expected. During the year-long period inspectors studied, the drones logged only 37 percent of the minimum desired mission needs and 29 percent of the maximum needed.

This failure to meet expectations hasn’t tempered the government’s enthusiasm. In 2011, DHS asked for and received an additional 2 drones for use on the border. The department is expecting another to be delivered in 2012. Some of the conclusions in a draft version of the IG’s report were first disclosed in May by the Los Angeles Times.

The report recommended that the Customs and Border Protection agency, which manages drone use for DHS inside U.S. borders, put off further purchases of drones until it has figured out a way to use its current ones more fully. It also calls on DHS to create a formal process by which outside groups — including the FBI, the Defense Department, the Texas Rangers, FEMA and the United States Forest Service, among others — can request to borrow drones from DHS and pay for their use. In their response to the report, the agency said it agreed.

According to statistics cited by the Washington Post, the drone program led to the apprehension of 4,865 undocumented immigrants between 2006 and 2011. But this was a mere fraction of the illegal immigrants caught — 327,577 captured in 2011 alone — during this period, and a careful cost-benefit analysis comparing drones to manned surveillance aircraft and mounted patrols evidently has yet to be done.

Some critics have raised privacy concerns. “The deployment of drone technology domestically could easily lead to police fishing expeditions and invasive, all-encompassing surveillance that would seriously erode the privacy that we have always had as Americans,” warned a December report from the American Civil Liberties Union. This week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ken.) introduced a bill to ban the use of drones for domestic surveillance, citing similar privacy concerns.

Proponents of drone use note that the drones helped seize almost $20 million in marijuana during 2011. Also, last summer, a drone in North Dakota was used to help arrest a three armed citizens who chased a local sheriff of their property. Police used the drone to pinpoint the location of the men and ascertain that they were unarmed before moving in to arrest them. The incident is believed to be the first domestic arrest made with the aid of drones.

Domestic use of drones seems slated for a sharp increase, no matter what the statistics show, due to the image of battlefield success now associated with military drone use overseas. The Federal Aviation Administration estimates that by 2020, for example, there could be 30,000 drones operated inside U.S. borders. Included in that number are both military-grade drones like those used by DHS on the border, and smaller surveillance craft that are cheap enough to be purchased by local law enforcement.

The Defense Department, in an April report to Congress, lists 110 military bases in forty states where it predicts the military's drones could be flying by 2017 for what it calls a "wide range" of missions, including testing and training. The report was first disclosed by InsideDefense.com and the Federation of American Scientists "Secrecy News" blog.

In the House, a 55-member, bi-partisan Unmanned Systems Caucus is dedicated to expanding the use of drone technology. Part of the caucus’ mission statement is “the urgent need to rapidly develop and deploy more Unmanned Systems in support of ongoing civil, military, and law enforcement operations.” The caucus is headed up by Defense committee chair Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), a noted friend of the defense industry who has received campaign contributions from multiple drone manufacturers.

Supporters may have the upper hand with public opinion. A poll released Tuesday by the Monmouth University Polling Institute found that two out of three Americans support the use of drones domestically to track down escaped convicts and control illegal immigration at the borders. That support for drone use shot up to 80 percent when respondents were asked if they should be used for rescue operations.

But just in case anyone intends to go overboard, only 27 percent of those polled were okay with drones being used to catch speeders.

Managing editor for national security R. Jeffrey Smith contributed to this article.

Vacuum cleaner sucks $440 million from Navy

Miami,Florida,United States — 2012-07-24T14:37:40-04:00

Update, July 24, 2012, 2:37p.m.: A civilian worker admitted to starting the fire aboard the USS Miami to leave work early, according to an affidavit filed by the Navy Criminal Investigative Service with the United State District Court in Portland, Maine. It said that while Casey James Fury was undergoing a lie-detector test, he told the NCIS he set fire to a few rags in a bunk room in the submarine, starting the fire that resulted in $400 million of damage to the vessel.

According to the seven-page affidavit, at the time he started the fire, Fury was anxious over a text message exchange with his ex-girlfriend about a man she had begun dating. Fury faces two counts of arson. If convicted of either, he could see a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and be forced to pay a fine of up to $250,000 along with restitution for damage caused to the submarine.

It can take a powerful enemy to damage the nuclear powered submarines that form the linchpin of the U.S. naval arsenal. The most worrisome threats are usually sub-killing torpedoes or large mines. But the subs’ designers evidently forgot to incorporate countermeasures against another threat: vacuum cleaners.

According to a news release Friday from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, it was a vacuum cleaner that caused an estimated $400 million in damages to the nuclear-powered USS Miami on May 23. The 22-year-old Miami was docked at Portsmouth as part of a dry dock repair period when the fire broke out, and over the next 12 hours it damaged crew quarters as well as command spaces and the torpedo room.

The fire did not damage the nuclear reactors, which were shut down two months earlier. “Findings indicate the fire started in a vacuum cleaner used to clean work sites at end of shift, and stored in an unoccupied space,” according the release. “Preliminary investigations indicate that the fire started with a heat source being vacuumed up and igniting the debris in the vacuum cleaner.”

In plain language: The vacuum sucked up something hot it shouldn’t have and, while sitting in a closet, ignited. It sounds like a cigarette. But a shipyard spokeswoman, Debbie White, said there is a no-smoking policy on board even while the ship is in dry dock and that it is currently unclear what the “heat source” that started the fire was.

“We have an investigation, and the investigation’s ongoing,” White said. “What exactly started the fire, we won’t know until that’s through.”

The $400 million repair estimate is likely to go up — the Navy estimates another $40 million could be needed for “secondary effects, such as disruption to other planned work across all Naval Shipyards, and the potential need to contract work to the private sector.”

The Miami is one of 42 active Los Angeles class nuclear-powered submarines. The Navy commissioned the ship in 1990 and has used it to carry out anti-submarine warfare exercises since it returned from deployment in worldwide anti-terrorism efforts in 2004. Armed with both torpedoes and Tomahawk missiles, the Miami can hold over 110 service members on board.

The Los Angeles class submarines are slowly being replaced by the newer Virginia class attack subs, which have been a source of budget disagreements between the Pentagon and members of Congress.

On its website, the Navy describes Los Angeles class subs as the “backbone” of the submarine force, a ship designed to engage enemy forces as well as carry out reconnaissance missions.

But never let it be said that Navy cannot adapt to rolling seas, or the threat posed by small suctioning motors: As a result of the fire, the shipyard has ordered that all of the industrial-strength vacuums be emptied at the end of each shift or removed from the ship.

Experienced watchdog appointed for U.S. spending in Afghanistan

2013-01-18T15:28:26-05:00

When you’ve faced down mafia dons, fought with energy companies, and led investigations into nuclear weapons, it can be hard to find a new challenge. But if he was looking for one, John F. Sopko seems to have found it.

This week, the Obama administration announced that the veteran investigator is their pick for the vacant position of Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a key watchdog role as the U.S. draws down its forces in the country after over a decade of conflict.

Sopko’s selection fills just one of the government's ten vacant inspector general jobs, according to the non-profit watchdog Project on Government Oversight (POGO), which supports his pick. The Department of State has gone almost 1,600 days without leadership, the most of any department. The Obama administration’s slow pace in filling the jobs has been the source of contentious hearings by the Republican controlled House.

When Sopko starts work — unlike most IG positions, SIGAR does not need Senate confirmation — he will have his hands full. Waste, fraud and corruption in U.S. operations in Afghanistan have been persistent challenges. In 2011 a government watchdog estimated that one-sixth of the nearly $100 billion spent by Washington in Afghanistan since 2002 was wasted.

Last month, in SIGAR’s quarterly report to Congress, the office highlighted the continuing threat posed by corruption and questioned whether Afghan forces can provide enough security for ongoing U.S. funded construction. “Afghan reconstruction has reached a critical turning point,” acting IG Steven J. Trent wrote in the report. “The shift in strategy, decline in funding, and persistent violence and corruption underscore the need for aggressive oversight.”

Trent has been the acting IG since September of 2011, meaning that the job has been empty for 475 days.

Sopko has investigated crime and corruption for years, on and off the Hill. He started his career as a prosecutor in Ohio, where his most high-profile case involved being lead prosecutor against the Licavoli mob organization. He spent most of the 80’s and 90’s as deputy chief counsel at the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, an entity with standing subpoena authority that gives it great power. While there he led a number of investigations, including a look at waste and abuse at the DC-area Blue Cross-Blue Shield. He helped disclose that executives burned through cash on luxurious travel while driving the company into a financial hole. The committee also monitored the proliferation of nuclear weapons and investigated alleged abuses by labor unions.

In 1997 he moved to the Department of Commerce, where he conducted other investigations. Then in 2004 Sopko became the Democrat’s General Counsel and Chief Oversight Counsel for the House Select Committee on Homeland Security. He subsequently became Manager for the Operations Division of what was then-called the Homeland Security Institute, an independent organization federally chartered to study and improve operations at DHS.(After a 2009 contract renewal, the group was re-branded as the "Homeland Security Studies and Analysis Institute.")

When the Democrats took over the House, Sopko was invited by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) to come back to the Hill, this time as chief counsel for oversight and investigations for the House Energy and Commerce committee — one of the chief watchdogs for the energy industry and government agencies as varied as the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Commerce. In 2009 he left to join lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Field, where he has been ever since. (A search of lobbying disclosure records turned up nothing under Sopko’s name.)

The importance of good IG’s was something acknowledged by Sopko in a 2009 editorial. The previous IG for SIGAR, Arnold Fields, resigned in early 2011 under bipartisan pressure over his job performance.

“This vacancy was among the most important positions to fill, and they have found an excellent person for the job,” Danielle Brian, POGO’s Executive Director, said in a statement. “We look forward to seeing serious oversight of the tens of billions of dollars being spent on Afghanistan reconstruction” in coming years.

Through a White House spokesman, Sopko decline to comment for this article.

Updated 6/6/12 to correct the title of the Homeland Security Institute

U.S. arms Bahrain, despite human rights concerns

Bahrain — 2012-05-16T14:16:37-04:00

While much of the world’s focus has been on the civil war in Syria, the island kingdom of Bahrain continues to shake with anti-government protests that started in last year’s “Arab Spring.” While it has received less attention, human rights groups have documented ongoing government abuses.

Those concerns were enough to put a halt on a weapons sale from the U.S. to Bahrain last fall, but the Obama administration announced last Friday that it has decided to proceed with the sale, despite the ongoing upheaval and protests from both Congress and human rights groups.

“Bahrain is an important security partner and ally in a region facing enormous challenges,” wrote Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Nuland in an official statement announcing the sales. “Maintaining our and our partners’ ability to respond to these challenges is a critical component of our commitment to Gulf security.”

In a nod to the human rights concerns, the Pentagon said the weapons being sold to Bahrain will not include anything that could be used against protestors. Instead, it would be a package of equipment geared towards protecting the country from external threats, including engines for F-16 planes and harbor security boats.

“Sales of items that are sort of predominantly or typically used by police and other security forces for internal security, things used for crowd control, we’re not moving forward with at this time,” said an unnamed administration official on a conference call last Friday. “That would include things like tear gas, tear gas launchers, stun grenades – those sorts of things.”

In December, the Center for Public Integrity reported on concerns from the Government Accountability Office that equipment such as night vision goggles could be used by security forces to crack down on protests. The report also raised questions about how the State department often fails to investigate past abuses from foreign security forces slated to receive military technology, which can increase “the risk that [U.S.-funded] equipment may ultimately be used by violators of human rights.”

A $53 million sale was initially announced last fall, but was frozen in October while the U.S. waited to see improvements on the human rights situation. The administration has declined to disclose a total list of what materials will be sold to Bahrain, or how much the new package will cost.

Bahrain is a major strategic partner for the U.S. The island nation received $80.4 million in military financing from the U.S. between 2005 and 2010 and is home to a 60-acre U.S. naval base which houses the U.S. Fifth Fleet. The fleet patrols the waters of the Middle East and is responsible for making sure the Strait of Hormuz, which a significant portion of the world’s oil passes through, remains open. The fleet would also be a first line of defense against any aggressive moves from Iran.

The protests have largely been driven by a rift between Bahrain’s Sunni ruling family and its majority Shi’ite population, but have been exacerbated by human rights abuses suffered by protestors at the hands of government forces. In November, an independent panel formed by the Bahrani government issued a report detailing a number of abuses, including commonplace torture in police stations such as electrocution and threats of rape. In response to the report, the government promised to reform its internal security forces — something that has yet to happen, according to experts.

Human Rights Watch released a report in late April documenting ongoing abuses in the island nation. The group acknowledges that changes have been made, like putting cameras throughout police stations to record abuses, but found that the torture has simply moved outside the police station. In one case the group interviewed two teenage boys who were taken to an empty lot and beaten severely.

“The situation has not improved very much,” Joe Stork, Deputy Director for Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division, said in an interview. What improvements have occurred have been mostly cosmetic, “not a basic behavior change,” he says.

Stork believes the Obama administration cares about the human rights issue, but feels that political concerns trumped concerns over abuses. “To be meeting a Bahranian request for certain kinds of arms is a bad move in our view,” he says.

At least two leading Democrats in Congress agree the arms deal is a bad idea. “The U.S. and the Government of Bahrain share strategic interests, but if history has taught us anything, this is a time to demonstrate our unambiguous support for the aspirations of the Bahraini people for greater political freedom,” wrote Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) in a statement released Friday. The author of the so-called Leahy Law, which attempts to prohibit arms sales to foreign security forces facing human rights concerns, added that the deal “sends the wrong message.”

“This is exactly the wrong time to be selling arms to the government of Bahrain,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) added in a separate statement. Last October, Wyden introduced legislation to block arms sales to the country. “Reform is the ultimate goal and we should be using every tool and every bit of leverage we have to achieve that goal. The State department’s decision is essentially giving away the store without the government of Bahrain bringing anything to the table.”

The controversy may continue for some time. Stork says he expects the protests to continue. Protestors “feel betrayed they feel sick and tired of having their demands ignored,” he says. “I don’t see this ending, and I don’t think the government is capable of putting it down.”

Another $250 million drink for missile defenses

United States — 2012-05-16T10:50:35-04:00

The talk of the defense world is the budget — specifically, how to shrink it and what will be cut, due to Congressional wrangling or the looming “sequestration”. Given the new austerity pressures, it’s noteworthy that a costly program targeted for cancellation by both the administration and the Congress has gotten a new government check for a quarter of a billion dollars — and, if the Pentagon gets its wish, will get another $400 million soon.

But that’s what happened with the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS), a putative replacement for the Patriot missile defense system. It has been plagued with so many cost overruns and delays that DoD and Congress both agreed last year to pull the plug — although conflict remains over the timetable.

The Pentagon decided to keep paying until the program attained a “proof of concept,” a status that falls well short of production and deployment but would in theory allow the U.S. or its foreign partners to restart the project later if they chose. DoD requested a total of $804 million over 2012 and 2013. But Congress disagreed, and agreed to fund only the first year.

Two developments have brought MEADS back into the news. The first was the Pentagon’s contractual payment of another $250 million for the project to finish the first year (hat tip to Tony Capaccio and Roxana Tiron of Bloomberg News for reporting this). In addition, the Pentagon has now asked again for another $400 million to finance the second year of work, setting off renewed objections from lawmakers opposed to pouring more funds into a weapon system unlikely to play a real-life role. The House Armed Services Committee has in fact rejected additional funding for the program, a decision that evoked strong objections from the White House in a statement Tuesday evening.

Pentagon officials have said a key reason for keeping the program going is help project partners Germany and Italy, providing “a meaningful capability” for them and “a possible future option for the U.S.” Since the project began in 1995, the U.S. has contributed 58 percent of the funds, while Germany provided 25 percent and Italy 17 percent. The venture is led by Lockheed Martin, in collaboration with a German firm, LFK-Lenkflugkörpersysteme, and the international MBDA-Systems Inc.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon did not return a request for comment, but Frank Kendall, the acting under secretary for acquisition, defended the costs at a March hearing as “not just a contract” but rather “an agreement with two of our … closest international partners.” The White House statement said cancelling it "would be perceived...as breaking our commitment...and could harm our relationship with our allies on a much broader basis." It also could inhibit the harvesting of technology from the program to use elsewhere, the statement said.

Kendall's argument at the hearing did not hold much water with Senator Mark Begich (D-AK), who acknowledged the importance of good international relations, but asked why “we are paying the tab” for “a system we are not really going to use fully.”

Begich and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) earlier called for the program to be cancelled before the proof of concept phase has ended. “The Department of Defense has stated that it does not intend to procure MEADS,” the senators wrote in a March letter. “Facing a serious fiscal crisis, we cannot afford to spend a single additional dollar on a weapons system such as MEADS that our warfighters will never use.”

A request for comment from Lockheed, a main MEADS contractor, was not returned. But their homepage contains a number of press releases defending the project, including an editorial from retired Maj. Gen. James Cravens, a former Commandant of the Air Defense Artillery School hired by Lockheed in 2004. He denies a cost overrun and scoffs at the idea that Patriot systems, produced by both Lockheed and rival Raytheon Corporation, are enough to protect troops.

“Today’s threats have outgrown the Patriot missile-defense system — just ask a soldier,” writes Cravens, who says upgrading the Patriot is a bad investment “because of its Cold War architecture and technology limitations.” (There has been speculation that technology developed for the MEADS project could be used to upgrade the Patriot.)

Unlike the Patriot system, widely deployed around the globe by both the U.S. and other countries, MEADS was supposed to be more mobile and be able to target missiles coming from all directions. According to the MEADS contractor website, the new system would cover “eight times” the range of the Patriot missile defense systems, with a focus of targeting low to medium altitude missiles, drones and other airborne vehicles and weapons.

Initially projected to cost $3.4 billion to develop, a 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report put the total cost of procuring the 48 systems at $16.5 billion, almost five times the initial projection. The report said the project was “at risk of not meeting several technical performance measures, including assembly, disassembly, and emplacement times, especially in extreme temperatures.”

The report went on: “Requirements satisfaction, software maturity, and cost growth continue to be concerns” among Pentagon officials. in addition, the vehicles used to move the launchers failed to “meet all NATO road requirements, putting their ability to be deployed in question.” Its problems were not constrained to hardware — “the battle management software is delayed and the multifunction radar still faces hardware challenges,” according to a more recent GAO report.

Critics have also depicted the program, conceived in the wake of the Cold War and the first Gulf War, as unnecessary. Thomas Collina, research director of the Arms Control Association, said a number of short-range missile defense systems are already working, including the Patriot land based systems and SM-3 launchers equipped on sea-faring vessels. “If you’re looking to cut budgets, [MEADS] is an obvious target. ... It’s redundant, over-budget and hasn’t met performance expectations,” Collina said.

Public offers mixed support for military healthcare changes

2012-05-10T10:00:01-04:00

The military has long prided itself on the medical and other benefits it supplies members, both active duty and retired. They have been a major selling point for the all-volunteer force. But with new budget austerity pressures, the military has been forced to consider cutting these benefits.

The public has mixed feelings on this, according to the results of an innovative, new, nationwide survey developed by three nonprofit groups, including the Program for Public Consultation, the Center for Public Integrity and the Stimson Center.

Military personnel costs have nearly doubled since the start of fiscal year 2001, according to calculations by Lawrence J. Korb, a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress and a former assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan. If the costs are not controlled, Korb says, they will eat away at the military’s budget, forcing vital training and modernization programs to the side.

Dealing with this issue was a challenge for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who opposed expanding TRICARE to National Guard members in 2003 and in 2006 pushed for raised fees similar to what the Obama administration has called for in its latest budget. The problem also haunted Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who said of the problem in 2010 “Everybody knows that we’re being eaten alive by health care.”

Under the Obama administration’s 2013 budget, non-active military employees in TRICARE, the main health system, would see an increase in co-pays for medicines among as well as enrollment fees for special TRICARE programs. The administration believes these extra fees would save $34.5 billion in discretionary funds and $16.5 billion in mandatory funds over the next ten years.

The President’s budget proposal also includes a 1.7 percent increase in military pay, which would kick in for fiscal year 2015; it is meant to offset some of the new fees.

But House Republicans have indicated they intend to do away with the TRICARE fee increase, and the issue is expected to be a point of heavy debate during budget markups. The issue has also been raised on the campaign trail. Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has seized on the TRICARE cuts as a potential political issue. “Right now the president is cutting back on spending. And that's something that has to happen,” Romney said during a March debate. But he's only cutting back in the military. He's going after Tricare. Saying ‘OK, we're going to — we're going to raise the co-pays. We're going to cut the benefits.’ Why is it we go after military families?”

According to the survey, however, increasing the co-pays is supported by a solid majority of the American public — 59 percent. This change, which would not impact active duty military personnel, would save around $3 billion a year. A solid majority of the Republicans surveyed, moreover, expressed strong support for cutting military healthcare expenses and other personnel expenses — expressing a higher preference in many cases for that than cutting other military programs.

But overall, a proposal by the Obama administration to raise the annual premium on the families of military retirees younger than 65 from $520 to $1100 was rejected by those surveyed, 53% to 44%. That plan would save another $3 billion a year. A third proposal, changing the cap on military retirees out-of-pocket costs from $3,000 to $7,500, was also rejected by respondents, 63% to 34%, even though it would save an estimated $11 billion a year.

Health care costs were not the only benefit that survey respondents were asked to consider cutting. Currently, military families receive tax-exempt allowances for housing and food. These allowances are growing at a faster rate than basic military wages. Sixty-one percent of the respondents voted to slow the growth rate of these allowances, which resulted in $6 billion saved a year.

A narrower majority (52 percent) supported changing the pensions of new recruits to save $9 billion a year. Currently, military personnel can retire after 20 years and receive a pension, worth 50 percent of the average of their last three years of salary, for the rest of their lives. The respondents supported changing that pension for new recruits so that it begins only at age 60, and is worth 40 percent of the average of the last five years’ worth of salary.

The respondents also rejected a cap on military pay raises that would have saved $2 billion a year. Overall, respondents to the poll voted for cuts to military benefits of around $18 billion.

Korb, the author for a recent study on military benefits, argues that the Obama budget is not really making cuts to TRICARE, but rather is bringing costs “back into the agreed upon accepted standards.” When co-pays and fees were set in 1996, the government agreed that retirees would pick up 27 percent of the cost, with the government shouldering the rest. But with no fee increases in the ensuing years, the percentage that retirees are paying has dropped to around 10 percent; Obama’s budget proposal would raise it to around 14 percent.

ACCOUNTABILITY: Senators demand answers on behalf of military whistleblowers

2012-05-25T16:41:43-04:00

Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) want more information from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta about an inspector general's report criticizing the Pentagon's treatment of whistleblowers — a report first disclosed by the Center and the Project on Government Oversight.

Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and McCain, the panel's ranking member, made their feelings known Tuesday in a letter to Panetta.

"Last Sunday, the Washington Post reported on an 'internal Pentagon report' finding that the Department of Defense Inspector General unit responsible for protecting military whistleblowers had failed to do its job," wrote the Senators, referring to the Center story that was reprinted in the Post. "According to the article, the May 2011 report found 'persistent sloppiness and a systematic disregard for Pentagon rules meant to protect those who report fraud, abuses, and the waste of taxpayer funds.'

"We understand that this report was initiated and conducted by the Inspector General, and that the Inspector General has made a number of changes in an effort to address the problems identified in the report," the letter concludes. "Nonetheless, the systematic failure of the Department to protect military whistleblowers from reprisal is a matter of grave concern. Accordingly, we ask that you provide us with a copy of the report and advise us of the actions that have been taken and will be taken to address the problems identified in the report - including steps to re-open any reprisal cases that were inadequately investigated or erroneously dismissed."

The Center's report also elicited a response from Lynne M. Halbrooks, the acting inspector general for the Department of Defense. Halbrooks submitted a letter to the editor for Tuesday's Post defending her office, a letter noting that the review was conducted at her request and was conducted by staff from the inspector general's office.

"The increase in hiring of staff in support of military reprisal investigations and the changes to practice subsequently initiated were based on my review of the internal report," Halbroks concludes. "I am committed to continuing on a path to establish a model whistleblower program for the Department of Defense. "