The Carol Czarkowski Story

Carol Czarkowski was working as a Contracting Officer at the Department of the Navy, when she found evidence of wrongdoing. She requested an investigation from both Senator Robb’s and Senator Warner’s office, both Senators from Virginia. She was a bit surprised that even though Senator Warner had the background of having been the Secretary of the Navy in the mid-1970’s, only Senator Robb ordered a GAO investigation. The Executive Director of the program to which she was assigned as Contracting Officer had informed her, that the Senator had removed $6 million from the program as a result of the disclosure she had recently made to him.

In June, of 1999, two GAO Investigators visited Ms. Czarkowski and talked with her about her allegations. Subsequently, they asked the DOD IG office to investigate the allegations of wrongdoing that she had reported.


The DOD (Department of Defense) assigned a former Navy IG person to investigate. Unfortunately, she reports that investigator did nothing more than call one of the GS-15’s (an upper level manager) in the organization where Ms. Czarkowski was working and “asked him if an investigation was needed.” (Another case of asking the fox if the henhouse is secured?) The GS-15 manager told the DOD IG that no investigation was needed, and the investigator stopped there.

Instead of ethically pursuing the investigation and completing the work, the DOD IG went to Ms. Czarkowski’s office on a day when she was out on sick leave and then helped a security officer pack up her belongings into a box and moved her out of the Program Office where she had been working. When she returned from her sick leave, she was met at the lobby of the Program Office, by the security officer. S/he told Ms. Czarkowski that “anyone who requests a GAO investigation is no longer welcome in the Program Office.” As a result of this, all of her Contracting Officer duties were removed and she was moved to a warehouse in Arlington, Virginia, with no duties assigned and where she was totally away from all other contracting personnel. In other words, exiled.


She states that as far as she knows, no investigation was ever done, and after more than three years of fighting the Navy for the actions taken against her, the Navy Executive Director removed her from government service with only one day of severance pay.

Ms. Czarkowski explained that she had over 29 years of government service history, with outstanding government ratings and was 54 years of age at the time of this cavalier treatment from her supervisors at the Navy.

Just two months prior to her removal, the MSPB had determined that she was a whistleblower, and deserved to be given those protections. (Such as they are!) The Navy, however, just six days prior to her removal, declared that the organization (the Navy) was exempt from the MSPB for security reasons.

Nearly four years later, the Federal Circuit Court found for her and reversed and remanded her case back to the MSPB for settlement. The settlement was finalized between Ms. Czarkowski and the Navy in September of 2005. And she further reports that the Executive Director of the Navy who in her opinion is responsible for and committed the illegal acts against her, has not lost a day of work and has not been fined or suffered any other type of reprimand that she knows of to this day for his actions. In fact, it appears that he has now been promoted to the Under Secretary of the Navy’s office.


Ms. Czarkowski asks “When we have the type of management in the Navy as the person who removed me when as a Contracting Officer, I reported wrongdoing on a Navy contract, how can we expect procurement officers in Iraq to report fraud, waste, and abuse of government funds?”


She regretfully adds that she is not the only employee to have suffered this sort of treatment. And she reports that due to the actions of the Navy management, other employees in the Navy organization where she used to work, prior to her removal, are totally afraid of taking any stand against the management when they discover wrongdoing, because of what they saw was done to Ms. Czarkowski. It has badly damaged morale for employees to see that GS-15, upper level managers were apparently allowed to break the laws with impunity,and ethical employees like Ms. Czarkowski, who tried to do the right thing, suffered severe retribution, and watched his/her career disintegrate.


Ms Czarkowski’s commitment and tenacity are to be commended and respected. Few people are able to navigate through this system and win. Pogo stated that she might be the only federal employee who won their case in the Federal Circuit Court between 1995 and 2005. Like other courageous whistleblowers, she states that she was just doing what a good Contracting Officer would do in looking out for the taxpayer’s dollars. She notes that some employees, who are perhaps more concerned or fearful about their career, would not choose to do what she did.

And therein lies one of the great tragedies of our time. Often it seems those who serve our country and stand up to wrongdoing and criminal behavior when they find it, don’t get to continue to do their duty and those who don’t stand up, are intimidated by the wrongdoers, or are a part of the corruption, seem to finish careers to retirement, get promotions, and avoid the pain, all at the expense of American tax payers and our country.

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The following is another article that was written about Ms. Czarkowski’s situation sent to me by a contact in the Washington DC area. I do not have the source of this, but will post it as it was sent.

Left Behind: Intelligence Agencies

Employees working at intelligence agencies have been excluded from
protections under the Whistleblower Protection Act, including "the
Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National
Security Agency, and certain other intelligence agencies excluded by thePresident."

The case of Navy whistleblower Carol Czarkowski illustrates how
Intelligence agency exclusions can be abused. After Czarkowski filed her Whistleblower Protection Act complaint and the Navy failed to get her case dismissed, it retroactively declared her ineligible for protection under the law because her office was designated an "intelligence agency."

Members of the Senate have observed that the ability to invoke the intelligence agency exemption ex post facto is problematic, noting that the Navy sought the exemption "over a year into whistleblower litigation" and only "after the [Merit Systems Protection] Board rejected an earlier effort to avoid litigation on a different basis."

Czarkowski appealed the attempt to retroactively exempt her
from whistleblower protections under the intelligence agency exemption.
She won that appeal in the Federal Circuit Court in 2004. Five years
after being fired and filing her initial complaint with the Office of
Special Counsel, Czarkowksi is only now headed toward legal proceedings
that will deal with the merits of her case.

Through the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998, Congress asserted that it had the right to receive classified
information from whistleblowers working for intelligence agencies in the case of "serious or flagrant" problems. However, Congress failed to provide a legal remedy for the whistleblower. This Act, allows an
Inspector General to investigate whistleblower retaliation. This option was already available prior to the Act and, as a result, the protections are an empty promise at best. According to one official, in the past ten years, only a dozen whistleblowers at the Pentagon ever invoked protection under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act.

From Laptop Security blog
http://blog.absolute.com/boeing-employee-fired-for-alleging-security-problems/

Boeing Employee Fired for Alleging Security Problems
Related entries in Business Security

Boeing has fired an employee who spoke with the Seattle Post-Intellencer about alleged computer security problems at Boeing. The employee claimed that the company was misrepresenting the results of its data security audits in the filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published a story in July stating that Boeing was not protecting data from theft, manipulation or fraud. The employee claims he was trying to save the company in so doing. He claims that he had earlier tried to raise his concerns with the company and with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but they were not addressed and he was treated badly as a result.

Boeing is required, by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act - to prove they have internal control of their data to prevent it from being manipulated and misrepresented to stockholders. The Seattle P-I obtained documents outlining the challenges Boeing faced in compliance, and the failure of IT to control the data environment. Examples cited were: access to data by employees who should not have access, manipulated security audits, and threats to employees to produce evidence for the audits.

Boeing has faced many data threats this year, including the theft of sensitive company information that could have cost the company billions, and three separate cases of laptop theft and data loss.
Boeing is now investigating, and has fired, the employee who disclosed the information to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. There has been no confirmation that the information provided by the employee was accurate.

You can read the original Boeing story here.

I received this from someone who gave me permission to put it on my blog. They were quite disgusted with this whole USAF situation and wanted other people to be aware of the problems. -GFS

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Sopranos running the USAF?

Remember those great episodes of The Sopranos where you had the "no-work" or "no-show" contracts on a construction site. Just hang out in the seat smoking a cigar, having a drink all while being paid full? Well, it looks like the USAF has decided to "Benchmark" that process.
While waiting to be confirmed by the White House for a top civilian post at the Air Force last year, Charles D. Riechers was out of work and wanted a paycheck. So the Air Force helped arrange a job through an intelligence contractor that required him to do no work for the company, according to documents and interviews.

For two months, Riechers held the title of senior technical adviser and received about $13,400 a month at Commonwealth Research Institute, or CRI, a nonprofit firm in Johnstown, Pa., according to his resume. But during that time he actually worked for Sue C. Payton, assistant Air Force secretary for acquisition, on projects that had nothing to do with CRI, he said.

Riechers said in an interview that his interactions with Commonwealth Research were limited largely to a Christmas party, where he said he met company officials for the first time.

"I really didn't do anything for CRI," said Riechers, now principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition. "I got a paycheck from them."
That my friend is fraud - or at least it sounds like that outside the Beltway. People can go to jail for such things, if it is against the law in 202. It is one thing to have orders to one UIC and then go around a insufficient manning document and work in another (or like RADM Sestak, USN (Ret) cruise the p-ways of The Pentagon at 2230 for hard-working Sailors to absorb into your collective of the undead) - but this is a totally different level.
Riechers's job highlights the Pentagon's ties with Commonwealth Research and its corporate parent, which has in recent years received hundreds of millions of dollars worth of grants and contracts from the military, and more than $100 million in earmarks from lawmakers.

Commonwealth Research and its parent company, Concurrent Technologies, are registered with the Internal Revenue Service as tax-exempt charities, even though their primary work is for the Pentagon and other government agencies. In a recent report Concurrent, also based in Johnstown, Pa., said it was among the Defense Department's top 200 contractors, with a focus on intelligence, surveillance, force readiness and advanced materials.

Concurrent's top three executives each earn an average of $462,000. The company reported lobbying expenditures of $302,000 for the year ending in June 2006, more than double what it spent on lobbying four years earlier.
And who did they buy with that money....
But Marcus Owens, former director of the exempt organizations division at the IRS, said Concurrent and Commonwealth Research appear to be "providing the sorts of services that are commonly provided by business organizations like Boeing and Lockheed Martin and others, and not charities."

"There are a lot of businesses doing this kind of stuff that are paying taxes," said Owens, a partner at Caplin & Drysdale law firm. "It makes me wonder what the charitable purpose is here."
...
A leading patron of Concurrent in Congress is Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), who represents the district where the company is based. Murtha, chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, announced the creation of the company in 1987.
Ungh. Well, he is sooooo clean. This is where it gets ugly.
Riechers is a decorated Air Force officer who retired in 2002. He joined SRI International, another nonprofit firm, as a senior technical adviser. From December 2002 to November 2006, he worked in a variety of Pentagon jobs while being paid by SRI International. In November, Riechers was nominated to be a senior acquisition official, taking the title last held by Darleen A. Druyun. She was sent to prison in 2004 after she left the Air Force for negotiating a job with Boeing while she worked for the government and for favoring the company in several procurement decisions.
Now, where is my favorite Proverb? Oh, here it is; Proverbs 23:11,
As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.
The Good Book speaks the Truth.

In the end, you cannot blame Riechers all that much. An offer was made to him that seemed normal in the swamp he lives in. Long ago that swamp needed to be drained. If we can't drain the swamp because it is part of the DC power structure, at least we can let some light in now and then to show everyone what crawls around in the ground clutter. For that, we should thank the author of the article, Robert O'Harrow Jr of the Washington Post.

From Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis LLP (Philadelphia Qui Tam Attorneys)
http://www.ppl-law.com/2007/10/companies-trying-to-stop-whistleblowers.html

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Companies Trying to Stop Whistleblowers from Collecting
The Supreme Court has made it more difficult for whistleblowers to share in the proceeds from fraud lawsuits against government contractors. The court recently ruled that James Stone, an 81-year-old retired engineer, may not collect a dime for his role in exposing fraud at the now-closed Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant northwest of Denver, Colorado.

Justice Antonni Scalia said Stone was not an original source of the information that resulted in Rockwell International, now part of aerospace giant Boeing, being ordered to pay the government over $4 million for fraud connected with environmental cleanup at the Rocky Flats Plant.

The company wanted the justices to restrict when an individual can collect for suing on the government’s behalf.

Boeing Worker Says He Was Fired for Talking to Newspaper
From Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 1, 2007
By Andrea James

The Boeing Co. fired at least one employee Friday for having a conversation with the Seattle P-I in July, the employee said.

The company told Nicholas Tides in the past week that he was being investigated and was not allowed to discuss allegations against him with any other Boeing employees, Tides said Friday after he was notified of his dismissal.

On July 17, the P-I published an investigative report revealing that Boeing had failed to prove that it could protect its computer systems against manipulation, theft and fraud. The problems were found during the course of audits mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a 2002 law that requires public companies to ensure that they have such protections in place.

Boeing has always maintained that it is compliant with the law and that its financial statements are accurate.

It was in the context of the Sarbanes-Oxley story that Tides spoke with the P-I, but the newspaper would not confirm whether the report relied on any information from Tides.

Also Friday, the P-I received an anonymous e-mail, with a subject line: "Boeing's hunt for SOX Whistleblowers."

It said: "Computers are being surveilled, audit employees photographed from a distance, their activities video-taped. Multiple suspensions occurring this week. … We're all under direct threat of firing, lawsuit, and criminal prosecution if we even mention this to each other."

Tides, who said he was unaware of the e-mail message, worked as an information technology auditor in Boeing's St. Louis office. He gave the newspaper permission to report on his firing and said Friday that managers began to treat him badly after he raised ethics concerns within the company over how it was conducting its audits.

He said that he has also reported some of those concerns to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the government body that regulates public companies.

"Everyone who raises concerns is retaliated against," Tides said. "There's no way in the world that I expected to lose my job when all I am trying to do is save the company."

At the time of the P-I report, a Boeing representative told the P-I that the company would focus on fixing problems, not retaliating against employees who raised concerns.

A Boeing spokesman said Friday night that the company would not comment on personnel matters.

"We have very clear policies and procedures regarding the release of information outside of the company. Our employees know what they are, and they are expected to follow them," said Tom Downey, Boeing's senior vice president for communication.

The P-I spoke with dozens of employees and contractors before the July report was published. Many of them said they feared losing their jobs, but they believed that Boeing's information technology department was mishandling its Sarbanes-Oxley compliance effort.

Tides, 36, said he has worked for Boeing for about three years and only recently joined the Sarbanes-Oxley compliance effort. He holds a master's degree in business administration and has worked in compliance for more than 10 years, he said.

"I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills; I'm in this all by myself now," he said. "The last two years out of three I've been an 'exceeds expectations' employee."

Immediately following the P-I report, some employees said they worried that Boeing would access their personal e-mail accounts.

When asked whether Boeing investigators have read employees' private e-mails, Downey said, "Our company computing systems are the property of The Boeing Co., and our employees are very aware of their responsibilities in using their systems, and in their use they consent to using those assets properly."

He also called the anonymous e-mail "speculation" and declined to comment on it.

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