Foreign Service Officers Call on Embattled IG to Resign
By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t | Report
Sunday 23 September 2007

The organization that represents America's diplomats is calling on the State Department's inspector general to step down "pending the resolution of grave allegations of malfeasance leveled against him by numerous current and former career government officials."
John K. Naland, president of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), said allegations against the inspector general (IG) cover all investigations, audits and inspections. "They include allegations of his blocking investigations into possible sub-standard construction at the US Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, which may leave employees there unacceptably vulnerable," Naland said.
He noted the 13-page list of allegations released earlier this week by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-California), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, "revealed that AFSA also has been approached in recent days by several concerned former State Department employees with direct knowledge of some of the events in question."
Naland was referring to the letter Waxman sent to the embattled IG, Howard J. Krongard, suggesting he repeatedly blocked investigations into waste, fraud and mismanagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, including construction of the massive new US Embassy in Baghdad to protect the Bush administration from political embarrassment. Waxman plans to convene hearings next month into the charges leveled against Krongard.
Naland added, "The worse-case scenario in corruption is when it endangers lives. The worse-case scenario in public service is when the watchdog becomes the suspected violator. Both of these allegations have been leveled against Mr. Krongard. As long as he maintains day-to-day control, his office's ability to do its vital job with full credibility will be compromised. He should step down until the allegations are resolved one way or another."
The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), established in 1924, is the professional association of the United States Foreign Service. With 13,000 dues-paying members, AFSA represents 26,000 active and retired Foreign Service employees of the Department of State and Agency for International Development (AID), as well as smaller groups in the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), US & Foreign Commercial Service (FCS) and the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB).
AFSA's principal missions are to enhance the effectiveness of the Foreign Service, to protect the professional interests of its members, to ensure the maintenance of high professional standards for both career diplomats and political appointees and to promote understanding of the critical role of the Foreign Service in promoting America's national security and economic prosperity.

Commentary:

Special Counsel Should
Resign or Be Removed

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By TOM DEVINE and ADAM MILES

September 17, 2007

July’s hearing on the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) leads us to this conclusion: Special Counsel Scott Bloch is hopelessly over his head in his job to defend the federal civil service merit system. To restore legitimacy for the office, he must resign or be removed by the president for cause.

Bloch’s mission is to shield federal employees from retaliation and the civil service from political interference. But his mismanagement casts a cloud over OSC career staff members, who remain effective when allowed to do their jobs.

Productivity has plummeted, including a drop in help for whistleblowers. According to OSC’s own reports, the number of “favorable actions” OSC obtained for whistleblowers, its primary constituency, fell from 98 in fiscal 2002 — the last full year of the previous special counsel — to 40 in fiscal 2006. The figure of 40 is an inflated one considering that OSC broadened its definition of favorable actions in 2005.

The House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on the federal work force met July 12 on the agency’s reauthorization. But the hearing degenerated when Bloch was confronted with charges of authorizing the leak of a draft OSC report to the media.

Special Counsel Bloch actively defends the merit system only when it serves his own political self-interest.

Indeed, shortly after the new Democratic Congress took over, Bloch opened a broad-based investigation of efforts by White House officials, including Karl Rove, to politicize the civil service. This was announced just as reports surfaced that a White House investigation of OSC employees’ allegations of Bloch’s own illegal gag orders and of whistleblower retaliation against OSC staff is nearing a conclusion.

Meanwhile, federal employees have been left out in the cold. Our analysis of OSC’s annual reports indicates that the percentage of complainants helped by OSC, 2.49 percent, is the lowest since the Whistleblower Protection Act’s 1989 passage.

At a Senate reauthorization hearing in March, Bloch blamed the whistleblowers. The “quality” of complaints has dropped, he said. He assured Congress he wants to find “the good” in whistleblower complaints so badly that he engages in “Where’s Waldo?” game strategies with his staff.

There is an easier way to help employees than playing games: Listen and allow staff members to make an honest effort.

Government employees do not view OSC as a reliable outlet for their concerns, and with good reason.
OSC whistleblower Natresha Dawson is a poster child for what has gone wrong. After May 2005 Senate hearings, Bloch responded to senators’ criticisms that his agency was no longer communicating with those who seek OSC help by creating a Customer Service Unit (CSU).

Dawson, who staffed the new unit, was bewildered when she was gagged from telling any of the staff who work on cases about her discussions with complainants. She was serving only as an irrelevant diversion. When she appealed to Bloch, she was gagged from communicating again with him under threat of termination. After eight months, the CSU was dismantled and Dawson was terminated. She has filed a Whistleblower Protection Act complaint.

Federal employees can hardly count on Bloch to defend them from the same harassment tactics he perfects against his own staff.

OSC has become an object of contempt among the constituencies it supposedly serves. But there is a real need for a credible special counsel. Relevant congressional committees are working diligently to overhaul the legal rules governing OSC’s work. This is an important step. Unfortunately, it is not possible to legislate commitment, competence or leadership.

Tom Devine is legal director and Adam Miles is the legislative representative of the Government Accountability Project.


http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3039412

9-23-07

I received a post today from someone which was a blog from Kevin Stoda in Kuwait, which he had posted on GNN (Guerilla News Network). I share this here for those of you interested in reading on…

He expressed concern that POGO (Project on Government Oversight needed more support and awareness, and that federal whistleblowers needed the same.

He reports that he saw signs in the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait encouraging employees and people visiting the public services sector, to whistleblow “if and when they need to.”

He further explains that the posters indicated that there were certain rights that a person had to blow the whistle on corruption and other bureaucratic malfeasance when observed on site. He also stated this is appropriate as the U.S. Embassy “tries to promote a decrease in corrupt practices in the Middle East by shining its light on a variety of shenanigans and illegal mistreatment of companies, and individuals by employers, local government officials, and various businesses in the region.”

He encouraged people to go to the POGO site (www.pogo.org) and look over the stories and announcements including what is going on in the Senate, in particular what they are doing to try to increase oversight over businesses where allegations of “War Profiteering and Corruption” were taking place. He noted that the bill was similar to Truman era type (WWII), oversight.

You may find this article and view the description of that program, and also a list of companies listed as companies who’ve committed misconduct in government contracting at: http://alone.gnn.tv/blogs/25104/POGO_The_Project_on_Government_Oversight_Needs_More_Support_and_Awareness_as_do_federal_whistle_blowers

GFS

From The New York Times
September 21, 2007
$6 Billion in Contracts Reviewed, Pentagon Says
By ERIC SCHMITT and GINGER THOMPSON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 — Military officials said Thursday that contracts worth $6 billion to provide essential supplies to American troops in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan — including food, water and shelter — were under review by criminal investigators, double the amount the Pentagon had previously disclosed.
In addition, $88 billion in contracts and programs, including those for body armor for American soldiers and matériel for Iraqi and Afghan security forces, are being audited for financial irregularities, the officials said.

Taken together, the figures, provided by the Pentagon in a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, represent the fullest public accounting of the magnitude of a widening government investigation into bid-rigging, bribery and kickbacks by members of the military and civilians linked to the Pentagon’s purchasing system.
Until the hearing on Thursday, the Army’s most detailed public disclosure about the scale of the problem was that contracts worth $3 billion awarded by the Kuwait office were under review.

At the hearing, a panel of high-ranking Defense Department officials described a war-zone procurement system in disarray. They said that the Pentagon failed to provide adequate training for contracting officers for their assignments, offered insufficient oversight of contracting officers’ activities and had not put in place early warning systems to catch officers who violated the law.

“In a combat environment, we didn’t have the checks and balances we should have in place,” said Shay D. Assad, director of defense procurement and acquisition policy. “So people who don’t have ethics and integrity are going to be able to get away with things.”
Representatives from both parties pummeled the panel with angry questions and comments, assailing the Pentagon for having failed to overhaul the procurement system more than two years after Congress had identified serious problems in defense contracting and passed legislation aimed at helping the Pentagon correct them.

The lawmakers also challenged assertions by the Pentagon officials that the corruption being uncovered was the work of a few isolated individuals. Several committee members suggested that the abuses were far more systemic.

“The problems were so severe that I fear they could represent a culture of corruption,” said Representative Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri, the chairman of the committee. “I am extremely disappointed to learn that so many individuals violated their integrity and undermined the oaths they made to this country.”
Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican and retired Marine colonel, said he was “doubly, triply, quadruply appalled” at the “clear breakdown in leadership” that allowed some Army contracting officers to corrupt the procurement system. He said it was inexcusable that it took so long for the Army to put adequate checks in place.

Pentagon officials did not dispute the seriousness of the problems. However, they took issue with lawmakers’ characterizations of their scope. “I think it’s isolated incidents,” said Thomas F. Gimble, the principal deputy Pentagon inspector general. “The real issue is a lack of control, a lack of integrity and lots of opportunity and lots of money.”

Mr. Gimble and the other Pentagon officials said they were working aggressively to identify officers and civilians responsible for crimes and turn them over for prosecution, increasing the numbers of contracting officers and lawyers in Kuwait and improving the contracts and ethics training they provide to their specialists.
The Pentagon officials said that they would turn the largest contracts in Kuwait over to more seasoned military procurement specialists in the United States and that they had set up a more rigorous set of contract review procedures. And the Pentagon inspector general has been sent to Iraq to investigate the department’s contracting procedures.

“I don’t think it was a widespread conspiracy or cultural issue,” said Lt. Gen. N. Ross Thompson 3rd of the Army, a senior procurement official who is co-leader of an Army review of contracting procedures in Kuwait and Iraq. “We’ve got a number of individual cases. All the ones we know about are being actively investigated. We’ve got internal controls to make sure there aren’t new problems in different areas.”

As of Sept. 12, the Army reported that it had 78 cases of fraud and corruption under investigation, had obtained 20 criminal indictments, and had uncovered over $15 million in bribes.
Lawmakers scolded the Pentagon for just recently ordering the creation of a special contracting corps of experienced procurement specialists — authorized in the legislation two years ago — to bolster purchasing teams in the most active combat zones, and to report directly to a regional military commander.

“That it’s taken two years to do this is an indication of a system that’s quite slow,” said Representative Duncan Hunter of California, the senior Republican on the committee. “That’s half the time it took to win World War II.”

Boeing target of U.S. inquiry
Air Force improperly billed as much as $106 million, report says
Saturday, July 28, 2001
By TONY CAPACCIO
BLOOMBERG NEWS

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Justice Department has concluded The Boeing Co. improperly billed the Air Force for as much as $106 million in costs incurred in developing its 777 commercial airliner, according to four government officials familiar with the case.
Boeing, the world's largest aerospace company, has repaid more than $10 million since 1997, with the most recent payment in April 2000. The case isn't settled and the government is weighing civil charges, the officials say.

Pentagon auditors routinely question contractors' charges and negotiate settlements. This case isn't routine, those familiar say: Over five years it has grown to involve six government agencies; Air Force investigators have used subpoenas to compel documents and testimony from current and former Boeing employees; and Boeing's corporate management was involved in the billing decisions.
A Boeing spokeswoman, Debra Bosick, said the company is the subject of a government inquiry. An Air Force spokesman confirmed an investigation of a major defense contractor is under way but wouldn't identify Boeing as the company involved.

The case "is being looked at for civil, administrative remedies," said Maj. Mike Richmond, a spokesman for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. "It's not considered a criminal investigation at this point, though that eventuality is not being ruled out."
The dispute is the subject of an article in the TIG Brief, an in-house magazine published by the Inspector General of the Air Force. While no company is named in the article, the officials said Boeing is the one involved.

A defense contractor "mischarged commercial work to government-shared overhead accounts," the magazine said. "Subpoenaed documents verified that the contractor also capitalized and depreciated special test equipment in government-shared overhead accounts."

Bosick said Boeing's attorneys haven't heard from the government since December and declined to give more details.
The U.S. attorney in Seattle, where Boeing is based, is reviewing whether to file civil charges for accounting irregularities by two Boeing units, the Defense and Space and Commercial Airplane groups, officials said. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Jennings, who is handling the investigation, declined to comment.

Any charges would be filed under the False Claims Act, which provides civil penalties of not less than $5,000 and not more than $10,000 per claim, plus triple damages.

The matter came to light in an August 1995 audit by the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency. The audit revealed that Boeing billed the Air Force for work on the 777, including development of specialized test equipment, officials said.

The Pentagon concluded that Boeing billed to the Air Force costs that should have been absorbed by its Commercial Airplane Group.
The costs -- for supplies, materials and services connected to its 777 transport -- were put in the Defense and Space Group accounts and charged as U.S. defense work, according to officials.

The Pentagon since 1999 has issued as many as 10 subpoenas for documents and to depose current and former Boeing officials on the matter, officials said.

"Boeing provided all cost-accounting information to government auditors," said Boeing spokeswoman Bosick.

"Additional information was provided in response to government depositions taken in November 2000," she said.

"Our understanding is that the purpose of the depositions was to determine if there was a need for further action. The government has not contacted Boeing Co. since that time."

Bosick declined to discuss the previous settlements.
The settlements did not "relieve the contractor of possible criminal or civil penalties," said the case summary published in the TIG Brief.

Subpoenaed documents showed that "corporate management was implicated in the decision to mischarge the government-shared accounts," said the case summary.

As part of its investigation, the Pentagon Inspector General subpoenaed documents in early 2000 from UAL Corp.'s United Airlines, Delta Airlines Inc. and All Nippon Airways Co. Ltd., all buyers of Boeing's 777. At issue is whether Boeing offered to sell these airlines testing equipment that was developed at Air Force expense, officials said.

After the subpoenas were issued, Boeing officials acknowledged these offers were made and the company produced documents previously withheld, said a government official familiar with the case.
Boeing never sold the manufacturing test equipment to the airlines, Bosick said.

Pentagon auditors estimated Boeing may have charged the Air Force as much as $106 million in connection with the billings, which included the cost of supplies, materials and services.
The Defense Contract Management Agency negotiated settlements demanding repayment of about $10.8 million, said Lynford Morton, an agency spokesman.

The most recent settlement was made April 28, 2000, for $4.5 million, officials said.

The first payment of $6.3 million was made in September 1997.
"The settlement amounts reflected a negotiated solution following established Defense Department practices for ensuring audit recommendations are fully addressed and only fair and reasonable contractor costs are reimbursed," Morton said.
The settlements didn't address issues connected with the testing equipment, Morton said.

The Justice Department met last month with representatives of other federal agencies to determine whether to file a civil complaint against Boeing in the case, said an official.

PAST BOEING FINES

Boeing has faced several fines in the past few years, such as:
· APRIL 2001 -- State Department fines Boeing $3.8 million for violating export laws.
· NOVEMBER 2000 -- Justice Department fines Boeing and United Space Alliance $825,000 for their role in false claims filed for work done on the space shuttle and Space Station Freedom projects.
· AUGUST 2000 -- The Federal Aviation Administration fines Boeing a record $1.24 million over inadequate supplier oversight and other issues.
· SEPTEMBER 1998 -- Boeing fined $10 million over charges it violated arms-control export laws.