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.

This article is from Seattle Post-Intelligencer. If you found it informative and valuable, we strongly encourage you to visit their Web site and register an account, if necessary, to view all their articles on the Web. Support quality journalism.

If you have information or stories about the activities of Defense Security Service (formerly DIS) and former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense and owner of Sullivan/Haave Associates, Carol Haave, and other related areas in DOD and are willing to share it, please contact me.

I am researching in this area now and would like to speak to people who have personal knowlege of what all has gone on for the past decade or two.

State Department Agents Say Jobs Were Threatened
By Glenn Kessler and Karen DeYoung
The Washington Post

Saturday 29 September 2007

Investigators in IG office were told not to cooperate with probe of their boss, house panel alleges.

Two career investigators in the office of State Department Inspector General Howard J. Krongard have charged that they were threatened with firing if they cooperated with a congressional probe of Krongard and his office.

Told by Terry P. Heide, Krongard's congressional liaison, that he should not agree to a request for a "voluntary" interview by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Special Agent Ron Militana said he was then advised that reprisals could be taken against him. "Howard can fire you," he said Heide told him. "It would affect your ability to get another job."

Militana said in a telephone interview yesterday that he took that comment and others as direct threats. He and Assistant Special Agent in Charge Brian Rubendall, another career investigator who was also present at the Sept. 25 meeting with Heide and an IG lawyer, are among at least four IG investigators who have sought protection under the Whistleblower Protection Act. They also include the assistant inspector general for investigations and his deputy, who recently resigned after charging Krongard with impeding their work.

In recent weeks, the agents relayed their concerns about Krongard to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the oversight panel. Waxman has said he is investigating allegations that Krongard has repeatedly thwarted investigations into alleged contracting fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan, including construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and weapons smuggling allegations against Blackwater USA, a private security firm working under government contract in Iraq. The committee has scheduled a hearing on Oct. 16.

Waxman first revealed the details of the meeting in which Militana and Rubendall said they were threatened in a letter he sent yesterday to Krongard and posted on the committee's Web site. "I am appalled by these reports," Waxman wrote. "As an Inspector General, you hold a position of special trust within the federal government. Your office is supposed to be an example of how to protect whistleblowers, not an example of how to persecute them."

He said that the agents originally were cooperating anonymously but that they had decided to go public after the reprisal threats.

Krongard's office issued a statement yesterday saying that "the Office of the Inspector General has cooperated with and will continue to cooperate with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's investigation. Furthermore, the OIG will continue to make any OIG employee available to speak with the committee, if they choose."

Heide, the IG congressional liaison, confirmed in an interview that she had called the meeting with Militana and Rubendall, along with John M. Smith of the IG's legal counsel's office. But "the conversation was not as reported," she said. Waxman "selected certain statements out of context to make a particular case that does not exist. I categorically deny that I was telling them they would be retaliated against."

She said that the agents apparently "did not mention all the parts where I told them they were to tell the truth, they were to fully cooperate, that the Office of the IG and the IG himself was fully cooperating."

No one from the committee had contacted her before the letter was posted online. Waxman, Heide said tearfully, "has hurt somebody. I mean, this is my career." Her job, she said, "is simply to provide information. That's what I was doing."

J. Keith Ausbrook, minority counsel for the committee, also took exception to Waxman's tactics, saying that committee Republicans were "deeply concerned" with the letter. "It seems to us to be an example of shooting first and asking questions later," he said. Ausbrook emphasized that "we don't want to minimize" the seriousness of the alleged threats. "We are concerned about this as well. But we are also concerned about the way the majority has proceeded to deal with it."

The Senate confirmed President Bush's nomination of Krongard, who had no previous State Department experience, in May 2005. He previously worked for an international law firm and had been general counsel for Deloitte & Touche in the mid-1990s. His brother, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, served as the No. 3 CIA official under then-Director George J. Tenet.

Howard Krongard's office, charged with oversight of State Department contracts and operations, has competed with the congressionally appointed Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR). He was closely involved in unsuccessful administration efforts to shut down SIGIR's operations when its funding and mandate ran out last year, according to a source closely involved in internal administration discussions of the matter who declined to speak on the record.

State Department contracts in Iraq became a target for Waxman when he became chairman of the oversight committee in January. Krongard's operations have been the subject of several hearings. In a 13-page letter to Krongard on Sept. 18, Waxman charged that the inspector general had "interfered with ongoing investigations to protect the State Department and the White House from political embarrassment."

The letter, which Waxman said was based on allegations by seven current and former members of Krongard's staff, alleged that Krongard had refused to send investigators to Iraq and Afghanistan to investigate $3 billion worth of State Department contracts and had impeded a Justice Department probe into the construction of the embassy in Baghdad. It also included an internal e-mail that indicated Krongard had intervened to stop his office from cooperating with a Justice Department investigation into alleged arms smuggling by Blackwater. In a North Carolina case, two Blackwater employees have pleaded guilty to weapons charges and are cooperating with Justice officials.