Ready for another POGO podcast? POGO staffers recently sat down to dissect the President's fiscal year 2013 budget request. Did the executive branch ask Congress to keep funding the Energy Department's billion-dollar boondoggles? Did costly weapons systems get curtailed? Will U.S. troops continue to keep a watchful eye on Italian beaches?
Have a listen to get the scoop on how the President wants to spend your tax dollars.
In a development POGO has been eagerly anticipating, Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Jim Webb (D-VA) will announce legislation tomorrow to "overhaul the federal government's planning, management, and oversight of wartime-support contracting."
The legislation, called the Comprehensive Contingency Contracting Reform Act of 2012, is intended to build on the recommendations of the recently dissolved Commission on Wartime Contracting (CWC).
POGO has strongly supported the work of the CWC and has called on Congress to take action based on its recommendations. We’re pleased that Senators McCaskill and Webb took the time and effort to help further the CWC’s important work and we can’t wait to take a look at the legislation.
The announcement will take place at a press conference in the Senate Radio-Television Gallery at 2:00 p.m. tomorrow.
Yesterday, the Comptroller General of the United States, Gene L. Dodaro, appeared before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to discuss a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on federal agencies and programs "which have duplicative goals or activities."
At the hearing, Dodaro was asked by Representative Jason E. Chaffetz (R-UT) about the alarming number of vacancies at inspectors general offices across the government, a topic POGO has been following closely.
"To have four of these major departments without an IG—one of them, the State Department, for more than three years—I think is totally unacceptable," Rep. Chaffetz said.
POGO is co-sponsoring a book reception on March 8 for the paperback release of Prophets of War. Get the details on our Facebook event page!
By DANA LIEBELSON
The largest defense contractor in the U.S., Lockheed Martin, is also a heavyweight in POGO's Federal Contractor Misconduct Database, having paid $590 million since 1995 in fines, penalties, and settlements for cases of misconduct. Perhaps no one knows more about the problems associated with this defense contracting giant than William D. Hartung, whose book, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, is being released in paperback on March 6. Hartung is a Senior Research Fellow in the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program, and is an expert on weapons proliferation, the politics and economics of military, and national security.
In anticipation of the new edition of Hartung’s book (it was first published in hardback in December 2010), POGO spoke with him about contracting costs, Obama’s defense budget, and the revolving door.
POGO: What made you decide to write Prophets of War?
William Hartung: I’ve worked on military spending issues for a long time, and Lockheed Martin just kept turning up. The company is a big arms exporter, was a player in the Strategic Defense Initiative under Reagan, and was on the cutting edge of the merger movement in the 90s. In terms of looking at how the defense industry works, [Lockheed Martin] just seemed like the obvious place to start.
POGO: What do you think President Dwight D. Eisenhower—who famously warned about the dangers of the military industrial complex—would have had to say about Lockheed Martin?
WH: I don’t think Eisenhower could have imagined it. In absolute military terms, the U.S. defense budget is a lot larger than it was, and the idea that a company could get $36 billion in government contracts in one year and be involved in almost every area of defense—from weapons production to working with the IRS and Homeland Security—would have been unbelievable.
Where there's smoke, there's fire. POGO's Morning Smoke is a collection of the freshest investigations, scoops, and opinions related to the world of government oversight. Have a story you'd like to see included? Contact POGO's blog editor
In response to Representative Ed Markey's (D-MA) recently introduced bill that would reduce wasteful Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear spending by $100 billion over the next ten years, Representative Mike Turner (R-OH) extended an invitation to his fellow congressman to go on a vacation of sorts. Now a grassroots group is encouraging the trip, as it might shed some much needed light on how much money the U.S. actually needs to spend updating its nuclear weapons complex.
Markey’s bill, the Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures Act, calls for the cancellation of two costly and unnecessary proposed facilities: the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex (Y-12). POGO agrees with Markey that cutting these multi-billion-dollar projects without a cause is a smart move. But according to Turner, Markey’s plans “do not reflect the deteriorating circumstances” of the facilities they would replace.
In a letter he sent last week, Turner invited Markey to join him on a tour of these two existing facilities—the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility at LANL and Building 9212 at Y-12—which he characterized as old and “deplorable.” His letter includes photos of, among other things, electrical panels and rusty pipes at the facilities.
The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA) recently examined Turner’s claims about Building 9212 and concluded that a trip there would be worthwhile—and would likely show that the building could be brought up to snuff for much less than $7.5 billion, the estimated cost of the proposed replacement facility DOE says it needs. Commenting on a photo of a rusty lighting panel at Building 9212, OREPA remarked:
Where there's smoke, there's fire. POGO's Morning Smoke is a collection of the freshest investigations, scoops, and opinions related to the world of government oversight. Have a story you'd like to see included? Contact POGO's blog editor
In February, POGO launched "Where Are All the Watchdogs?"-- a webpage continually tracks Inspector General (IG) vacancies in the federal government, the length of those vacancies, and whose responsibility it is to fill the positions.
IG vacancies begin and continue for a variety of reasons. To help explain those reasons, POGO’s “All Along the Watchtower” series will detail the context surrounding some of the more notable vacancies in our IG vacancy tracker.
Agency: Department of Homeland Security
Vacancy Date: 02/27/2011
Days Vacant: 365 days
Who nominates/appoints the IG: The President, with Senate confirmation
Nominee pending: Roslyn A. Mazer
Days pending: 221 days
Who needs to take action: It’s complicated...
By JAKE WIENS
As of today, the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General (IG) has been vacant for exactly one year. The position became vacant when Richard Skinner retired after 42 years of service in the federal government.
The Obama administration acted quickly to nominate Roslyn A. Mazer for the position in July 2011.
Mazer was thought by many to be a qualified candidate. An attorney by training, Mazer spent much of her career in the IG community. After serving for seven years in the Oversight & Review Division of the Department of Justice OIG, Mazer was appointed IG of the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI IG) in 2009.
Mazer’s work outside of the IG context, as the first chair of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals, has drawn praise from the government oversight community. Steve Aftergood, the Director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy, called the Panel one of the “most successful classification reform initiatives of the last half century.”
Speaking of Mazer’s nomination, he added: “At a time when agency Inspectors General may be asked to assume greater oversight over classification policy, she brings an exceptional depth of knowledge and experience to the subject.”
But despite Mazer’s apparent qualifications, her confirmation vote was delayed at the request of the White House after Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, announced she would oppose the nomination and that other GOP senators would as well, according to a December article in Congressional Quarterly.
Every once in a while, POGO will hear from a federal contractor--usually a very small company--complaining about not getting paid on time or for the full amount owed by an agency or another contractor. But now, a proposed rule could help address this problem, and bring more robust data to the federal government's contractor responsibility database.
The Prompt Payment Act (PPA) requires federal agencies to pay their contractors on time, or else face late payment penalties. The PPA generally requires the government to pay contractors within 30 days of receipt of proper documentation. A memorandum issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in September shortens the payment window with regard to small business contractors to 15 days.
Subcontractors, however, still have to wait until the prime contractor gets paid before they do. So, accelerating the payment of prime contractors should also speed up payments to subcontractors, right? Not necessarily.
Where there's smoke, there's fire. POGO's Morning Smoke is a collection of the freshest investigations, scoops, and opinions related to the world of government oversight. Have a story you'd like to see included? Contact POGO's blog edit
Kudos to ABC's Jake Tapper for calling out the White House on its unprecedented use of the Espionage Act to silence whistleblowers.
In a question to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney at a press briefing earlier this week, Tapper pointed out the massive disconnect between the Obama Administration's praise of aggressive journalism abroad and its apparent proclivity for silencing truth-tellers on the home front:
The White House keeps praising these journalists who are — who’ve been killed...How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court?
You’re — currently I think that you’ve invoked it the sixth time, and before the Obama administration, it had only been used three times in history. You’re — this is the sixth time you’re suing a CIA officer for allegedly providing information in 2009 about CIA torture. Certainly that’s something that’s in the public interest of the United States. The administration is taking this person to court. There just seems to be disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States.
That's right—the Obama Administration has brandished the Espionage Act in six cases to prosecute leaks of classified information to the media, compared to just three such cases in all previous administrations. This effectively equates blowing the whistle to a ninth-circle offense, putting truth tellers in the same category as the likes of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
Carney's reply held about as much substance as a fist full of cotton candy—he said he "would hesitate to speak to any particular case, for obvious reasons," and referred Tapper to the Justice Department.
But Tapper pressed on: "So the truth should come out abroad; it shouldn’t come out here?"
Carney's response: "Well, that’s not at all what I’m saying, Jake, and you know it’s not."
That might not be what Carney is saying, but it's certainly what the Obama Administration's actions suggest. There's really no other way to interpret the Obama Administration's over-zealous use of the Espionage Act. As the Government Accountability Project's Jesselyn Radack pointed out, in the Justice Department's (DOJ's) disastrous case against whistleblower Tom Drake, DOJ requested a harsh sentence for Drake specifically to "send a message" to the intelligence community. (The case against Drake—who is exactly the kind of whistleblower who deserves protection—ultimately went down in flames.)
It's important to remember that President Obama's Justice Department can choose which cases to pursue and how to pursue them. Thus far, it appears to have chosen to declare open season on whistleblowers, using over-the-top Espionage Act prosecutions to attack the messengers while ignoring the wrongdoing and potential crimes they're exposing. The upshot? Journalists and the American people won't be able to rely on whistleblowers for information about how their government really works.
Today, Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) again threw her political weight into fighting secrecy at the Department of Defense (DoD), in particular, the DoD's justification for keeping secret information related to the water contamination at Camp Lejeune.
As POGO reported last month, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) recently released a redacted report on the water contamination at Camp Lejeune in response to a very legally dubious request by the Navy, which, citing security concerns about releasing “critical infrastructure information,” appeared to pressure the agency into not releasing the report in full. The critical infrastructure information that was kept secret happened to be related to the location of certain water wells which were contaminated for more than 30 years—but are still active.
Maloney sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta raising concerns about the Navy’s request and asking him pointed questions about how he plans to implement the “public interest balancing test” she helped author and pass last year. The new law requires the Defense Secretary, or designee, to use the test and determine whether security interests outweighs other public interests before withholding critical infrastructure information sought under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Rep. Maloney is certainly not the only one troubled by the Navy and Marine Corps’ actions.