The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog

Government Sues Triple Canopy for Iraq Contract Fraud

 

A fraud lawsuit alleges none of the security guards provided by Triple Canopy to guard a U.S. airbase in Iraq met the Army's minimum target shooting requirements.

By NEIL GORDON

The Department of Justice announced the filing of a lawsuit against private security firm Triple Canopy for allegedly defrauding the government on an Iraq security contract.

In June 2009, the Joint Contracting Command in Iraq/Afghanistan (JCC-I/A) awarded Triple Canopy a one-year, $9.5 million contract to provide security at Al Asad Airbase, the second largest U.S. airbase in Iraq. According to the government’s complaint, Triple Canopy billed the government for hundreds of Ugandan security guards who did not meet firearms proficiency requirements.

“[Triple Canopy] went further than simply billing the Government for unqualified personnel,” the complaint alleges. “It falsified the documents in its files to show that the unqualified guards each qualified as a ‘Marksman’ on a U.S. Army qualification course.” According to the complaint, the government paid Triple Canopy a total of $10.4 million on the contract between September 2009 and July 2010 in reliance on falsified billing documents.

We've Seen This Video Before: Drunk Security Contractors Gone Wild

When we first heard that ABC News was working on a story about U.S. security contractors in Afghanistan getting drunk and doing drugs, we had one of those collective sighs: “Here we go again.”

The leaked cell phone video that ABC News and CNN broadcast this week showed a shirtless, staggering security manager for Jorge Scientific showing off his drunken Kung Fu and later wrestling another man. Even more troubling was a shot of the company’s chief medical officer appearing stoned out of his mind on what the report identified as the drug Ketamine.

As Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project On Government Oversight, told ABC News, the men in the video were not only endangering themselves, but also the civilians they were hired to protect.

There was other questionable behavior in investigative reporter Brian Ross’s Nightline report. Employees of Jorge Scientific, which has a $47 million contract to train Afghan police, also supposedly threw live ammo into bonfires they built outside their Kabul residence.

One of the former employees who blew the whistle on the improper behavior said, “It was like a frat house.”

Frat house antics. Drunk, shirtless contractors. Bonfires. It’s déjà vu all over again.

Three years ago, my colleagues at POGO heard similar stories from whistleblowers working for a different security contractor in Afghanistan. That contractor, ArmorGroup North America, provided security at the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

Break-In Reveals "Ineptitude" at Nuke Facility, Probe Finds

By MIA STEINLE

A government investigation into the recent break-in at a nuclear weapons facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., blamed longstanding security weaknesses and “troubling displays of ineptitude” by facility personnel.

The probe by a federal inspector general found that security problems, some of which personnel had been aware of for months, “directly contributed” to the July incident, when activists including an 82-year-old nun penetrated three fences and staged an anti-nuclear protest.

The facility’s federal and contractor managers knew of “a substantial backlog of degraded and/or nonoperational security equipment” at the Y-12 National Security Complex prior to the break-in, according to the inspector general.  The security camera that faced the site of the break-in hadn’t been working for about six months, he wrote.

The findings were reported in an Aug. 29 memo by Gregory Friedman, the inspector general for the Department of Energy.

After the activists broke through a fence surrounding the complex, a security guard turned off an alarm without seeking its cause, Friedman wrote.

Other security guards interviewed by the inspector general’s office said they assumed the sound of a hammer beating against the facility wall was coming from maintenance workers, who they said sometimes show up “in the hours of darkness and without warning,” Friedman said.

“In short, the actions of these officers were inconsistent with the gravity of the situation and existing protocols,” he said.

Jet Ski Intruder at JFK Reminds Us Again of the Need for Oversight of Privatized Security

Ticketing area inside JFK Airport

By NEIL GORDON

Fingers are pointing at contractor Raytheon Company after Friday’s incident at JFK International Airport when stranded jet skier Daniel Casillo managed to swim, climb, and walk his way to the terminal undetected by the airport’s high-tech security system. The construction and maintenance of the airport’s Perimeter Intrusion Detection System (PIDS), a $100 million network of fences, sensors, motion detectors, and video surveillance cameras designed to thwart terrorists, was contracted out to Raytheon in 2006 by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The contract requires Raytheon to install PIDS at JFK and three other airports (Newark Liberty International, LaGuardia, and Teterboro).

Here’s how Raytheon describes PIDS on its web site:

Raytheon’s Perimeter Intrusion Detection System (PIDS) creates a zone of safety around commercial airports and helps security staff make better decisions on potential threats with greater speed and precision. The system achieves this by detecting, observing, assessing and tracking intrusions to secure areas and by aiding airport security personnel in dispatching the appropriate response to the intrusion.

“The highly touted PIDS system…has proven to be a boondoggle, having never fully come online after a series of troubling delays,” according to the New York Post. Tests of the system in early 2010 found numerous bugs, including false alarms triggered by wind, rain, and squirrels. At the time, WABC-TV reported that the Port Authority had stopped paying Raytheon, putting it on notice for inadequate performance and warning that the project had reached “a critical juncture.” The negative press prompted U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Robert Menendez to call for an investigation and demand a refund from Raytheon.

Where's the Oversight at Nuclear Labs? Hands-Off Approach is Recipe for Disaster

Energy Secretary Steven Chu has preached a hands-off approach to contractors at nuclear facilities. It's not working.

 

By PETER STOCKTON and LYDIA DENNETT

As the saying goes, “The fish rots from the head down.” This is certainly the case at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where an 82-year-old nun and two accomplices recently broke in, raising serious questions about the Department of Energy’s (DOE) security strategy.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement provided to the Knoxville News Sentinel on Monday: “The department has no tolerance for security breaches at any of our sites, and I am committed to ensure that those responsible will be held accountable.” But there is no denying that Y-12 was a giant failure of federal oversight. Now the people being axed are lower-level employees rather than those who have allowed the security standards to fall far below acceptable levels, such as Secretary Chu, himself.

Secretary Chu should be the first on the chopping block. He has been preaching for years that government overseers should get off the back of the contractors and everything will be fine. Then, of course, he is shocked when Y-12 is successfully attacked by an 82-year-old nun.

After only one year in the position, Secretary Chu’s deputy secretary, Daniel B Poneman, sent a memorandum (PDF) to the department with a safety and security reform plan aimed at curtailing pesky government oversight. “Contractors are provided the flexibility to tailor and implement safety programs in light of their situation without excessive Federal oversight or overly prescriptive Departmental requirements,” the memo said.

It should be clear by now that the current culture at DOE and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is to take their orders from contractors and provide little or no oversight. As the previous head of contractor-operated laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Secretary Chu made clear his disdain for federal oversight, DOE insiders told the Project ON Government Oversight (POGO). In fact, he’s been successful in creating a culture of federal hands off the contractors in the weapons complex.

Y-12 Nuclear Facility Goes on Lockdown After Security Breach

 

In this National Nuclear Safety Administration photo from 2010, officials at the Y-12 nuclear facility show off "state-of-the-art security technology."

 

By JOE NEWMAN

As officials at the Y-12 nuclear weapons facility sort through their recent security breakdown, they've decided it might be best to move all of their nuclear materials, including highly-enriched uranium, into their on-site vaults.

The Knoxville News Sentinel's Frank Munger reported that the "security stand-down" is expected to last into next week. The federal contractor that runs the Oakridge, Tenn., facility made the decision with the support of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Munger writes:

According to the federal NNSA, "This is being done to address additional security training and execution deficiencies identified by the contractor after Saturday's incident. However, all nuclear materials at Y-12 are in safe, secure storage and we remain entirely confident in the security of Y-12's facilities."

The Saturday "incident" involved three peace activists, including an 82-year-old nun, who cut through three fences surrounding the facility, posted a banner on one of the buildings and poured human blood on the premises, according to the News Sentinel's orginal story about the break in.The activists were arrested under federal trespassing charges and are expected to appear in court Thursday.

The Project On Government Oversight's Peter Stockton, an expert in nuclear security, told Munger that the security breach could be a sign of a much bigger problem.

"The DOE's unprecedented response to last weekend's break-in, alarming as that incident initially appeared, suggests that it has revealed even more drastic flaws in the security at the Y-12 facility," Stockton said via email. "At this point we can only guess what those flaws might be."

Joe Newman is the director of communciations for the Project On Government Oversight. Image is from Flickr user NNSANews.

Follow @JFNewman

Mission Impossible? Not for 82-year-old Anti-Nuclear Weapons Activist

Michael R. Walli, 63, Megan Rice, 82, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, succeeded in a disarmament action at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Nuclear facility before dawn.

 

[Update: The federal contractor who runs the Y-12 facility has put the complex under a "security stand-down," the Knoxville News Sentinel reports. Click here to read more.]

By MIA STEINLE

When a nuclear weapons facility can’t stop infiltration by an octogenarian nun, it’s time to reassess its security standards.

The 82-year-old nun, accompanied by two other anti-nuclear activists, broke into Tennessee’s Y-12 National Security Complex early Saturday morning, the Knoxville News Sentinel first reported.

“The Department of Energy has repeatedly claimed that security at the site, which houses 300 to 400 metric tons of bomb-grade uranium, is robust enough to defend against more than a dozen heavily-armed terrorists with inside knowledge of security procedures” Peter Stockton, a nuclear security expert at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), ironically observed.

“It looks like the Boy Scouts could have done a better job” securing the site, he added.

After cutting through three fences surrounding the facility, the activists “posted a banner on one of the buildings and poured human blood on the premises,” the News Sentinel reported. The activists were arrested under federal trespassing charges and will remain in jail until a hearing this Thursday, according to the newspaper.

Energy Dept. IG Highlights Redundant Bureaucracy, Potential Savings in Research Facilities and Contractor Guard Force

By MIA STEINLE

In light of the country's growing debt, many government agencies are facing budget cuts and, anticipating this inevitability. Last week, Department of Energy (DOE) Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman released a report identifying the agency's weaknesses and ways to reduce its operating costs.

Among the proposed cost-saving measures are three suggestions that piqued our interest here at POGO.

First, the report questions if it makes sense for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to function as a semiautonomous agency. The NNSA, which oversees nuclear weapons, was made a separate agency to allow it “to concentrate on its defense-related mission, free of other bureaucratic distractions.” Unfortunately, this freedom has resulted in redundant bureaucracy—the report suggests considering the reincorporation of NNSA into DOE in order to eliminate these costs.

Second, the report notes that DOE’s 16 federally funded research centers cost more than $10.4 billion annually to operate. If some of the centers were consolidated, DOE could eliminate redundant support costs (total support costs account for nearly 40 percent of laboratory budgets), decreasing the overall research center budget. This reevaluation of DOE structure is long overdue. “While there has been some evolution over the years,” the report says, “the Department's research complex is organized essentially as it has been for over a half-century.”

Finally, DOE spends nearly $700 million annually on its 4,000-person “protective force,” or security staff, which is largely composed of contractors. According to the report, the agency has no uniform contract for its protective force, and management and training can vary from site to site. The report asks if standardizing this system could save money, suggesting, among other options, federalizing DOE’s protective force—that is, hiring government workers rather than private contractors. DOE as a whole has “one of the largest contracting portfolios on the civilian side of the Federal government,” according to the report, with 99,000 contractors and only 16,000 federal employees in fiscal year 2010. As POGO recently found in its Bad Business report, contractors cost almost twice as much as federal employees on average for 35 occupations examined.

As Matt Wald reported in The New York Times last Tuesday, DOE has so far been silent on these suggestions:

The Energy Department had no immediate comment on the new report. But the Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, said, “The broad concepts make a lot of sense.”

Mia Steinle is a POGO Investigator.

Follow @miasteinle

Our Top 10 Ways Congress Can Save Nearly $600 Billion

By DANA LIEBELSON

The heat is on the Super Committee--it only has three days to come up with a plan to cut at least $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit or face the possibility of automatic, across-the-board cuts. Because we're sure the committee members would rather be eating turkey this Thanksgiving than being the turkeys, POGO is glad to lend a hand with these 10 Super Recommendations.

Most of these proposals aren’t new—POGO and our colleagues at Taxpayers For Common Sense offered them and others back in July as part of nearly $600 billion in savings we identified in our “Spending Less, Spending Smarter” report.  But these highlights from that report are certainly worth a second look at.

»»Click Here to See Our 10 Super Recommendations««

$372 billion	$44 billion	$4 billion	$27 billion	$7 billion
$1.9 billion	$30 billion	$12 billion	$3.7 billion	$60 billion

 

Dana Liebelson is POGO's Beth Daley Impact Fellow.

Follow @dliebelson

McCaskill to Maddow: Contractor Math is Not Working for Taxpayers

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By JOE NEWMAN

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show last night to discuss the findings of our report, which showed that the U.S. government is wasting billions on overpriced private contractors.

Of POGO, McCaskill said: "POGO is a great non-partisan group--they call them balls and strikes."

POGO studied 35 federal job classifications and found that, on average, the govermment was paying contractors nearly twice as much as it would have cost federal workers to do the same work.

During the interview, Maddow asked McCaskill if she thought POGO's report would lead to federal contracting reforms:

Maddow: Is putting a price tag on the contractors issue giving you any more traction on it in a bipartisan way? Is telling people that it's costing us 30, 40, 50, 60 billion dollars more than it ought to be gaining you any political ground?

McCaskill: I think it is. Because I'm an auditor--I want to do the math and when you do the math on this, it's not working for the taxpayer.

Joe Newman is POGO's Director of Communications.

Follow @JFNewman

Kabul Attack Underlines Importance of Embassy Security

By JAKE WIENS

Armed with rockets and machine guns, a group of militants yesterday launched a sophisticated attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul from a partially constructed building about half a mile away, reports the New York Times.

The attack comes just months after two separate attacks rocked Afghanistan’s capital. The first was a June attack on the famed Inter-Continental Hotel, which reportedly claimed the lives of at least 10 people. Following that attack, at least nine people were killed and dozens more were injured when Taliban militants, dressed as Afghan women, detonated car bombs at the British Council on Afghanistan’s Independence Day in late August.

Although no embassy personnel were harmed during today’s attack on the Embassy, the brazen midday assault, coupled with the previous attacks, is a reminder that security of the Embassy remains paramount.

"Spring Break in Kabul" Contractor Settles for $7.5 Million After DOJ Joins Whistleblower Lawsuit

By NICK SCHWELLENBACH

Private security contractor ArmorGroup North America Inc. (AGNA) agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle whistleblower allegations that it violated procurement rules that put the security of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan at risk. AGNA's parent company said the settlement was made solely "to avoid costly and disruptive litigation—and that there has been no finding or admission of liability."

This is the same company whose employees are depicted in lewd pictures POGO made available in fall 2009—which demonstrated a serious breakdown in discipline among the security personnel defending the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan. POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian called it a 'Lord of the Flies' environment.

Former AGNA director of operations James Gordon was the whistleblower who filed the lawsuit—he will receive $1.35 million from the $7.5 million AGNA has agreed to pay. According to a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release, these are the whistleblower allegations that were resolved by the settlement:

• "AGNA submitted false claims for payment on a State Department contract to provide armed guard services at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan";