Truck-Sized Loophole for Theft
Howie’s right. The media ought to be paying more attention to Congressman Peter Welch’s call for an investigation into how a giant loophole got stuck into rules aiming to force companies to report contracting fraud.
House Democrats targeted a multibillion-dollar overseas contracting loophole Friday by vowing to investigate why — and how — it was slipped into plans to crack down on fraud in taxpayer-funded projects.
The inquiry will look at whether the exemption was added at the request of private firms, or their lobbyists, to escape having to report abuse in U.S. contracts performed abroad.
"Granting this safe harbor for overseas contractors flies in the face of reason," Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., wrote Friday asking the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to investigate. The panel monitors government procurement policy.
"By taking this action, the Bush administration is sending an unambiguous message: If you are a U.S. government contractor in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere overseas, you have a green light to defraud our government and waste taxpayer dollars," Welch wrote to Democratic leaders of the committee.
Basically, under voluntary reporting requirements, government contractors have been reporting less and less of the fraud that they’re committing. Go figure. So DOJ decided to make reporting of fraud mandatory. But someone–it looks like someone in Bush’s Office of Management and Budget (and Fraud Support, apparently)–snuck in a waiver of mandatory requirements for contractors working outside of the United States.
For decades, contractors have been asked to report internal fraud or overpayment on government-funded projects. Compliance has been voluntary, and over the past 15 years the number of company-reported fraud cases has declined steadily.
Facing the increased violations, prosecutors sought to force companies to notify the government if they find evidence of contract abuse of more than $5 million. Failure to comply could make a company ineligible for future government work.
But a later version of the rule, as written by policywriters reviewed by the OMB and published in the Federal Register in November, specifically exempts "contracts to be performed outside the United States."
So if you’re a government contractor stealing from taxpayers within the US, you have to admit to it. But if you’re stealing from taxpayers in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else in the American Empire, you don’t have to ‘fess up. No word on whether Gitmo contractors have to admit to defrauding the government or not…
This should be a very interesting investigation. Now only if the media cares to report on it.
I’m sure McCain will endorse this loophole because it’s needed to fight the terrorists.
Well… maybe it’s a translation problem?
You know, in Americanese, “Reporting fraud is mandatory” gets mistranslated in Contractorese to something more like this:
“Reporting
frauda new budget item for ‘increased security measures and personnel‘ ismandatoryonly for lunatics, idiots, and fools – you won’t have many more chances tocommit fraudprivatize government services on this scale, so take what you can get, hide it in the Caymans, and don’t report a f*cking dime.”I hope the Congresscritters check the pedigrees of the OMB folks.
I assume no one will take my bet that the Congresscritters find prior (and likely future) employment with the
con-artistscorporatecritters who are hauling away the booty?And was this what Junya meant when he said he had to refill his coffers?
Hey MD, someone on a thread mentioned Rove and THE MATH, but now I can’t find that link… do you recall offhand who mentioned it? which thread…? I was trying to track it down on my Saturday blogslog
Google is my friend. *g*
Here are a couple of recent EW threads where Turdblossom’s arithmetic was discussed:
On Rayne’s comment of:
On earlofhuntingdon’s comment of:
There were pages more of hits on a Google search of Rove Math Emptywheel, but these ones seemed the closest in time.
Heck… for some silly reason, I thought that you’d been involved in that conversation and had the info at the tip of your fingers… which, come to think of it, you did…
…< <blushing 80 shades of crimson>>… jeepers! thx for the assistance. It was the Rayne link I was trying to locate…. < </blushing 80 shades of crimson>>
ROT
I made a comment @31 in the “Dude..” post.
Unfortunately, I did not link to anything. So, it’s probably not this comment…
See that you got it @ 5…
This “sneaking” seems very much like the attempt to put the retroactive immunity into the Ports Protection Bill we discussed a few weeks back…
I was trying to find the comment Rayne made, but am always open to other resources, and you post great links.
And was this what Junya meant when he said he had to refill his coffers?
Probably. My working assumption with him and his whole crew is that you can always take them at their word, once you realize what their overall (and unchanging) objective is.
/notsnark!
Protecting (Cheney) overseas contractors (Cheney) like KBR (Cheney) or Halliburton (Cheney) from fraud charges (Cheney)? I really (Cheney) can’t think (Cheney) who (Cheney) in this Administration (Cheney) could be behind (Cheney) this kind of move.
Heh ;-}
Hope noone tells you to go (Cheney) yourself for your (Cheney) innuendo, since you seemingly attribute (Cheney) Dark Motives to others. I think you may be a bit too (Cheney) paranoid.
——-
Ah, klynn…. yeah – did you have a citation? Or could you explain the Rove #s comment with the unlogged tapping? I assume you meant that was how ’someone’ was overwriting files or altering logs, but if you have more info, I’d appreciate. Thx!
gs
Yep.
I have been re-reading all the contexts of Rove’s “number” comment to see if he tipped his hand at all in regards to the telecoms. If I find something, I’ll post it.
Saw that you were looking for Rayne’s comment…Glad you found what you needed.
hmmm you got me thinking too.
Could the new math be that they are able to alter the numbers on the servers that calculate the totals. Like a backdoor. I don’t know just thinking out loud.
Could the new math be that they are able to alter the numbers on the servers that calculate the totals. Like a backdoor. I don’t know just thinking out loud.
Correct.
Some of us have been supposing that for about two years now, and with the news that the GOP-owned servers were housing the Ohio 2004 Sec of State voting software, it seems highly likely that vote tampering occurred.
Think of it this way: if I’m a legit (programmer/developer), the last thing on earth I’d do is allow myself to even appear suspicious by housing a Sec of State voting operation on a server owned by a political party. Even if everything worked beautifully, and even if all the votes were counted correctly, why would I even take the risk of looking sleazy by putting government business on a GOP-owned server? That’s stupid.
If the Dems had not won the House and Senate in 2006, so that they could hold hearings, I’m not sure we’d have discovered the GOP servers, BTW. (Maybe someone else here has better info, but that’s what I recall.)
There are websites and books that have discussed this issue in depth, and the liklihood that some kind of vote tampering occurred is quite high. However, I have not read the tomes, so can’t provide specific citations. However, you could do some Google searching to find out more.
But from a purely technical point of view:
1. A reputable programmer or business would not permit putting government vote tallies on a server owned by ANY political party.
2. There are ways to write code so that the vote fraud is hard to trace.
3. Wireless communications can also send messages to the software and that can affect how the software functions. This kind of interference would also be hard to trace.
However, there are commenters ’round these parts who work ‘closer to the machine’ than I do. (I don’t write C; they do ;-)) They’re better resources than I am.
They write harder core languages; I only write scripting languages.
But even scripting languages could pull off vote fraud.
And anyone with access to those GOP servers — or with access to the networks — could overwrite logs so that the history of who did what, when, would be harder to trace. Not impossible, but harder.
And MAN @ 16
Yes, being from Ohio, the Ohio election has been foundational to my own questions regarding this major network access and the Rove’s number’s comment.
ROT – many in Ohio and Robert Kennedy, Jr. would agree with you…
I’m still checking Rove comments and comparing them with published information on the Ohio election…
Like ROT makes clear…this new information about Verizon almost fits like the missing piece of the puzzle regarding Ohio…
For machine level ‘C’ code; no problem what so ever!
Lets fix a voting machine.
Today most of the code to run machines is stored in non-volatile flash memory. Flash memory does not lose its information when the power is off, but is too slow to feed instructions to the Processor chip as fast as it uses them so code is normally copied to faster RAM chips (which can’t store anything without power), and executed from there. Since the flash memory is readable and writable from the processor, covering your tracks is simple: at the end of the vote fixing routine, just copy over the routine in the flash with some innocuous code. Ta dah! No record that it was ever in there. Even data checks such as CRC can be fooled or changed, they are intended to catch random accidental errors, not to be tamper proof.
If the pirate code checks something like the date before executing, the machine will pass any accuracy test since the pirate program won’t run before the election, then, on election day, it will run then effectively erase itself. It would also be simple to trigger the erase on some other cue that the machine was being examined, such as a door open switch. Only rigorous code tracing on the source code in the machine itself (NOT the copy the vendor gives you) before the program was run would find this chunk of code. This code needs to be simple to keep the size down.
That is what I think happened in Sarasota, FL in the election that Barbra Harris was SUPPOSED to be in, mysteriously went to the gooper that was in her place. The code was in place when she bought the machines, but was too simple to know that it’s effects were obvious or that Baba was not in the election.
…..
Now, since PCs and servers running windows or Linux is hundreds of thousands of times more complex than a simple voting machine, doing the same thing on a dll file on the hard disk or even the flash boot memory is even easier to hide. No human can step through a megabyte of code, and machine level code is very short and easy to hide, especially when it erases itself. Machine code can be hidden in “data blocks”, which will be copied “as is” into memory and then executed as code somewhere else.
The most hacked code on the planet is Windows, and THAT is what the “bar code readers” that are the “reliable” touch screen replacements run on.
Every bit of this can be coded by one guy and implemented by a single low level person at some point in the system AFTER the code has been checked and certified.
Yeah, I am with Hugh. I would look at the former head of Halliburton to be in this mix heavily.
My guess is that Cheney and co’s objection was probably more about being cut out of future contracts than being required to report the fraud.
If I remember correctly they have been found padding bills already.
next they’ll want retroactive immunity
here’s a thought: what’s W’s pardon list going to look like this Dec?
I have a sort of handle on presidential pardons, but I wonder if a president can pardon people before any court has found them guilty. Ford pardoning Nixon would make it seem so. So can Bush just say anyone working in my administration or my department of justice, homeland security, FDA, etc., etc. is pardoned of any charges that may come in the future?
here’s a thought: what’s W’s pardon list going to look like this Dec?
The Manhattan white pages. /sha-boom pow!
I’d like all persons and agencies who have had a part in designing or countenancing the loophole to provide an analysis of the effects contractor fraud has and has had on US military personnel deployed in foreign countries, particularly in Iraq. I’d like to see how those persons and agencies would conform the loophole with “supporting the troops.”
cheney has been trying to absolve himself from liability since he became vp. I remember from very early on his talking a lot about and pushing legislation that made the govt responsibile for asbestos contamination…..to relieve himself of the misjudgments he made at Halliburton. He clearly has ‘no liability for me’ on his mind.
The m.o. of using cfr is classic bush avoidance of congress. However, also, I noticed the ostensible pocket veto while the house was in pro forma session, in December 2007 included a signing statement that objected to congress’ provision for contractor oversight at section 841 of HR4986 the defense appropriation. A government professor commenting on the signing statement last week reviewed the president’s inaction with respect to that newly created oversight body. Prof. Kelley elaborates a theory that the Bush refusal to submit his allotted two nominees for the oversight entity may be intended to invalidate any attempt by congress to complete their own nominations as the law stipulated. Nonnominating is another Bush m.o.; or he will nominate a few of the most objectionable reactionaries, to some post, without completing nomination of other more collegially vetted persons; leaving congress to argue about attrition of appointive bodies’ membership and poor quality of the people Bush actually nominates. The use of cfr has brought the administration to court numerous times in a wide range of areas. An interesting recent commentary on the administration’s expectations as some disputes move toward court deliberation appears in a recent article about Scotus moving away from stare decesis in torts last week.
There was a SJC hearing September 12, 2007 on the m.o. of federal register fiat by the president; see this witness statement. As alluded in the @22 article about the Scotus associate justice’s recent remarks about tort law, fda is one of many agencies adopting Bush’s federal register fiat m.o.; OmbWatch has an interesting article on SBA’s Republican version of the same technique.
Carlyle Group May Buy Major CIA Contractor: Booz Allen Hamilton, according to Tim Shorrock in a special piece for CorpWatch.org.
Takes a really strong stomach to see the “nepotism” ingrained in the Military/Industrial complex. Billions of demand created by fear mongering.
This is a club that promotes war, that profits and leaches of off the American people.
This is rally sickening how MSM keeps it under the rug. The Bush family has a huuge conflict in the spy side of government. They all know full well what data mining gets them…these are private companies, privatly owned with no public disclosure requirements with our information they can use without oversight!
I suspect Carlyle may have been PLANNING to buy Booz. But seeing as how Carlyle’s going broke, I suspect those plans have been shelved for the moment.
I’m wondering if they do a stock swap instead, or some other method of quasi-acquisition. Really depends on what the ultimate goal is — liquidating a holding for current owners, or something else (diversify earnings, wrap sensitive dealings up more tightly in a private equity holding corp., etc.).
OT — Jeebus, Debbie Dingell has crossed over the line, as has former MI Gov. Jim Blanchard. Dingell will be on FOX News Sunday to talk about the MI primary do-over; clearly she has stepped off to the dark side if she has no clue about using FOX for dirty work. Blanchard is badmouthing DNC about the primary — tantamount to trashing Howard Dean. Means he’s bucking for another juicy gig with the Clinton administration; his spouse has already been doing that for a while now.
ROTL @ 24 — there have been conversations with people in Congress about the security breach(es); I can’t say much about it, and I don’t know how far along the conversation went, let alone what’s happening as a result. If the entire network is compromised, they already know everything and have likely been working like busy little rodents to undermine any efforts taken to remedy the situation. It’s imperative that we continue to work to seat good, honest people from the grassroots in government, or we will lose it all.
JohnJ, thanks for a really helpful comment.
Having climbed around inside a number of apps, I know how easy it is to reset conditions — and ‘disappear’ data, so I follow what you’re saying here. Set the code block to run if += dateTimeX, then erase if -= dateTimeY. Simple.
As for the dll files (in my world, we call ‘em ‘libraries’), what you’re saying makes a ton of sense.
FWIW, there was a comment at EW in the past month or so, where someone was asking about ‘pointers’, I think they were expecting to find COPIES of Rove’s old emails, when in fact one ought to look for ‘pointers’ (or ‘library files’ as a first step.
Looking for ‘copies’ seemed futile, and your comment confirms this in spades.
And if you wanted to pull this kind of duplicitous fraud, wouldn’t it be handy to have access to a whole network.
Appreciate your filling in a few blanks; I stay out of the layer you work in ;^}