Government
Accountability Office Report Proves ‘America First’ Is Another Trump Fraud
By David Cay Johnston, DCReport Editor-in-Chief
Was the F-15 a victim of defective - and illegal - foreign parts? (Wikipedia) |
Congress requires that all Defense Department work at home be done by American companies.
After all, we wouldn’t want a Shanghai electronics maker, operating as a front for the Chinese military, to put even one transistor in America’s military command-and-control systems.
We wouldn’t want a Kremlin front to secretly slip engine kill switches in our fighter-bombers.
But foreign firms often successfully pose as American-owned and -operated, according to a new report by the Government Accounting Office, the investigative arm of our Congress.
This is precisely the kind of policy failure that Trump told voters he would end. But he has not.
This week the GAO warned of “several types of financial and
nonfinancial fraud and national security risks posed by contractors with opaque
ownership.”
It examined 32 cases that have been settled. It found
“price inflation through multiple companies owned by the same entity to falsely
create the appearance of competition, contractors receiving contracts they were
not eligible to receive, and a foreign manufacturer receiving sensitive
information or producing faulty equipment through a U.S.-based company.”
Significantly the GAO limited its study to cases that have undergone thorough review so the facts are settled. It said nothing about how many cases are pending and whether any show attempts—or successes—by hostile foreign powers planting faulty or spy-worthy equipment in our military hardware and software.
Wall
Street Fronts
We know that hostile foreign powers are doing all they can to
use Wall Street fronts and other corporate guises to damage our military
capacity.
The highest levels of the Chinese military, for example, used
Wall Street fronts to acquire and then remove from America neodymium technology
that is a necessary component of mobile phones, lightweight car engine starter
motors, high tech headsets and many military applications including smart bomb
guidance devices.
The failures of two administrations on neodymium were detailed
in the chapter Chinese Magnetisism in my 2007
bestseller Free Lunch. President
Bill Clinton’s administration allowed the sale of the rare earth technology
companies to a Wall Street firm that turned out to be a front for the Chinese
military command.
The George W. Bush administration then allowed the buyers, who by then had been unmasked, to remove this technology, making America vulnerable to Chinese control of neodymium supplies.
The George W. Bush administration then allowed the buyers, who by then had been unmasked, to remove this technology, making America vulnerable to Chinese control of neodymium supplies.
Since then, Congressional
hearings showed, the Chinese have used
their lock on so-called rare earths to advance China’s
interests at our expense. And they
have wielded the
threat of cutting us off in the
gratuitous trade war Trump declared would be easy to win.
This is precisely the kind of policy failure that Trump told voters
he would end. But he has not. And it’s not surprising given that Trump says
that only Einsteins
can understand digital technology.
The awful truth is that Trump knows less than most Army privates
about geopolitical strategy, as documented here, here and here, among many other places. As Chicago Tribune
columnist Steve Chapman wrote in 2016, Trump’s
ignorance is bottomless.
Plane
Crash
The new GAO report cited the example of “an ineligible foreign
manufacturer that illegally exported sensitive military data and provided
defective and nonconforming parts that led to the grounding of at least 47
fighter aircraft.”
In fact that case resulted in the crash of a Missouri Air
National Guard F-15C Eagle jet fighter because a key airframe support failed
during flight. The pilot escaped.
The graphic below explains how that scheme worked.
While the GAO does not identify the contractor, the only known case it fits involved the November 2007 crash of a Missouri Air National Guard F-15C Fighter jet. The pilot survived the failure of a key structural support part during flight.
In all 160 planes required rework at a cost of about $500,000
each. The grounding of those planes for repairs also reduced training and
ready-to-fly alert team operations in case of a sneak attack.
Failure
to Act
Boeing used the inferior foreign-made parts in maintaining aging
F-15s. But there is no reason to believe that such abuses have ended based on
the GAO report.
The problem of foreign contractors posing as American firms—and
as multiple firms—is not new.
What makes the GAO report significant is that Trump, unlike
George W. Bush and Barrack Obama, ran for office on an “America First” platform
and a promise to end such abuses.
The GAO report makes clear that through budget year 2018, which
ended last fall, nothing has been done to fulfill or even start work on his
promise, at least when it comes to Pentagon contracting. That ending time
period places the failure to properly safeguard our country squarely on Trump’s
watch.
The Defense Department agreed with the GAO findings, the report shows. Most of its comments were withheld on national security grounds.