Government Executive - Authors - Ian Kullgren

Sequestration Could Give Ammunition to Spies, Officials Warn

Ian Kullgren, SHFWire — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:04:00 -0400

The main discussion about sequestration weakening national security has centered on cuts to the military, but government and industry officials are warning that the cuts could have another unforeseen threat: foreign spying.

In a Buzzfeed article published Wednesday, Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and several officials with knowledge of security clearance procedures expressed worry that cuts of about 20 percent to federal workers’ pay could give ammunition to foreign spies on the hunt for classified information.

Their worry is that sequestration cuts could leave some furloughed workers scrounging for money and willing to pass off information in exchange for cash.

"When I was in the Air Force, we had a few espionage cases. Every time we had an espionage case, it was somebody who got involved because their life had fallen apart," Graham told Buzzfeed.

Although that is speculation at this point – there is no known instance since sequestration took effect March 1 – officials acknowledge the furloughs give spies abroad a wider field of potential recruits.

In an interview with Government Executive on Thursday, former CIA Director James Woolsey said the concerns are legitimate.

“It’s not good to put people who are custodians of classified information and so forth into a situation of pressure,” Woolsey said.

Woolsey resigned in 1994 in response to accusations that he botched the handling of Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer who was found guilty of feeding information to Russian spies. The Ames case is regarded as the worst in CIA history – he handed over troves of critical information to enemy spies, including the names of U.S. agents.

Although most workers who make it through the vetting process are “straight shooters,” it’s inevitable that a weak person gets in every so often, Woolsey said. However, he stressed diminishing support for the military is a far greater threat.

About 4.8 million U.S. citizens held security clearance in 2011, according to a study conducted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and cited by Buzzfeed.

According to a private sector official who connects government agencies with potential employees, most clearance are for the lowest classification known as “confidential,” which gives access to sensitive information in secure “clean” facilities. While American spies also have access, many such clearances are for IT workers, managers and engineers.

“From a security standpoint, that means that there are millions of Americans with knowledge of what may seem like mundane information — say, the time a truck driver is to report for duty on a particular day — but which could be critical to agents looking to hijack sensitive chemicals, attack an installation, or simply track movements of government officials,” the article says.

Reach Reporter Ian Kullgren at Ian.Kullgren@Shns.com or 202-326-2143. SHFWire stories are free to any news organization that gives the reporter a byline and credits the SHFWire.

Image by File404/Shutterstock.com

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Defense Department Goes Green to Save Lives, Not Environment

Ian Kullgren, SHFWire — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:22:00 -0400

Defense Department officials are pushing forward with an array of green energy initiatives, but saving the environment isn’t what’s driving their interest. Instead, they’re seeking to save lives and dollars.

Defense officials are beginning to test solar-powered devices for troops in Afghanistan with the hope of reducing the number of fuel convoys, which are often targets of insurgent attacks.

Unlike previous wars, the conflict in Afghanistan does not have a clear battlefront. Instead, isolated hubs of American soldiers are connect by a wiry web of supply roads – often through unsecured lands where enemies attack, killing soldiers and cutting off fuel and water supplies.

From 2003 to 2007, more than 3,000 American troops were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan on resupply missions, according to an Army report.

“You have a quick reaction force that every day almost winds up in a fight because they’ve got to protect the convoy,” former Army Capt. Mike Breen, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and now is executive director of the Center for National Policy, said. “You’re doing all of these incredibly inefficient things, and it’s costing you lives and force structure.”

To cut back on dangerous fuel deliveries, Defense is experimenting with solar power for a handful of basic systems. At one camp in Afghanistan, a generator that powered a radio tower was replaced with solar panels. That saved troops a daily climb up a hillside to refuel the generator, which they did in an armored bulldozer to avoid being shot, Sharon Burke, assistant secretary of defense for operational energy plans and programs, said at a CNP panel discussion Wednesday.

“The department hasn’t quite looked at energy quite this way before as a war-fighting capability,” she said.

It’s also a money saver. Last year, the military burned $15 billion of fuel, although most went to airplanes and trucks that right now can’t be powered by alternative sources. Defense is seeking to expand solar energy to fleets of unmanned drones, which would make them quieter and more efficient, Burke said.

From 2007 to 2011, Defense increased spending on alternative energy from $400 million to $1.2 billion, according to a Pew report.

Even small changes could help reduce costs and make life more bearable for soldiers. Each solider carries about 12 to 18 batteries for a standard three-day mission, and solar-rechargeable ones could lighten their load.

These efforts aren’t likely to be axed by upcoming budget negotiations--the Senate recently shot down an amendment to the continuing resolution that would have gutted $60 million for biofuel production.

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GOP Seeks to Unwind Health Care Overhaul By Starving Agencies of Funding

Ian Kullgren, SHFWire — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:22:46 -0400

Their sights might be lowered, but they haven’t surrendered.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of Supreme Court arguments that resulted in the Affordable Care Act being upheld, and Republicans are re-tailoring their battle plan to fit the landscape.

Instead of pushing for a straightforward repeal by Congress -- which would never get by the Democratic-controlled Senate, let alone President Obama -- leaders are using the budgeting process to mount an attack against the agencies charged with executing the overhaul.

It’s a simple theory: If you can’t get rid of the law, sever its life source.

The largest changes included in the Affordable Care Act take effect next year -- most notably expanding Medicaid coverage to people whose income is lower than 133 percent of the poverty level -- giving Republicans who control the House the chance to snip provisions line-by-line during budget negotiations.

On March 21, the House passed a budget plan by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that would remove funding for the law instead of trying to remove it from the books altogether.

But it’s not that simple, experts say. Such a plan might wound Obama’s landmark achievement, but would leave its vital organs intact.

“It would nibble the Affordable Care Act around the edges, but it would not get at the core of the changes,” Donald Barr, a Stanford University professor who specializes in health care reform, said.

The difference lies within fine details in the appropriations process.

Budget plans such as Ryan’s control only year-to-year spending, called discretionary spending.

But the meat of the Affordable Care Act, including the Medicaid expansion, is mandatory spending, which means Congress can’t touch it in the year-to-year budget process.

Repealing the Affordable Care Act would save about $890 billion in mandatory spending by 2022, according to a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimate provided to House Speaker John Boehner.

In comparison, the CBO predicts that discretionary spending will exceed $115 billion by 2019, although it could vary greatly based on which programs Congress decides to support. Among other things, the law authorizes Congress to spend $7.3 billion to fund public health centers and $893 million for National Health Service Corps scholarship aid in 2014. But it’s up to lawmakers whether to use it.

“That would still leave the majority of things that the people who hate the Affordable Care Act seem to have the most heartburn about, you know, still there,” Phil Joyce, a University of Maryland public policy professor and former CBO analyst, said of the Ryan budget.

That’s the idea behind mandatory spending: to protect large entitlement programs, such as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security from the short-term political whims of Congress. Lawmakers must vote to repeal specific programs, making it less likely they will fall victim to meat-axing.

“That’s why it’s much harder to change the law than, sort of, even enact the law in the first place,” Joyce said.

Mandatory spending is playing a bigger role in the budget process every year. According to the Congressional Research Service, about a quarter of the federal budget was dedicated to mandatory spending in 1962, three years before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law. By 2011, it had risen to 56 percent and is projected to grow well past 60 percent by 2022.

Still, de-funding the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t go unnoticed. Such a move could further sap the Internal Revenue Service of resources to enforce the individual mandate, said Edwin Park, vice president for Health Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

But right now, political reality isn’t on the Republicans’ side. A budget that de-funds the Affordable Care Act would need Obama’s signature, which they almost certainly wouldn’t get, or a two-thirds majority to override a veto, which they don’t have.

Recently though, the GOP has won some small victories. Last week’s bill to avoid a government shutdown denied the Health and Human Services Department a request for more money to cover administrative costs, including setting up state insurance exchanges.

In an interview with NPR, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the situation was indeed difficult, but the department “would figure out a way to move forward.”

Also, across-the-board sequestration slashed domestic discretionary programs by 5.3 percent, meaning agencies will be fighting for a larger slice of a smaller pie.

Now, Congress must pass a 2014 budget and reach an agreement on the debt limit, which is set to expire May 18.

“Under the best of circumstances, that is doing to be very rocky,” Robert D. Reischauer, a public trustee of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, said during a panel discussion Monday at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “By the time the summer heat begins, things are going to get worse and worse.”

Even in the face of fierce opposition, Democrats contend that the savings -- and renewed public support -- will come when the full law takes effect and people begin to see savings.

They promise that the Affordable Care Act will put a stopper in rising health-care costs and therefore lower the long-term deficit. That analysis has been backed by nonpartisan studies.

“Those savings that are contained in the Ryan budget move forward,” Rep. Lujan Grisham, a New Mexico Democrat who serves on the budget committee, said in a conference call last week. “But we repeal all the access, reopen the doughnut hole.”

Some Republicans are still determined to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would do away with the law’s mandatory spending increases. On Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced an amendment to the Democratic budget to repeal the law. The Democratic majority shot it out of the sky, as expected.

As it has been since the law was passed, new taxes on small businesses and the individual mandate continue to fuel boiling Republican opposition.

“I am convinced that the primary reason we aren’t seeing a robust economic recovery is the uncertainty in costs associated with this health-care law,” Cruz said in a speech on the Senate floor last Friday.

Reach Reporter Ian Kullgren at Ian.Kullgren@Shns.com or 202-326-2143.

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Hidden From View, Offerings at Vietnam Memorial Reveal Nation’s Loss

Ian Kullgren, SHFWire — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:11:00 -0400

Duery Felton doesn’t go looking for things.

War found him at age 19, when he was drafted to be an Army specialist in Vietnam. After a year of fighting the Viet Cong near the Cambodian border, the native Washingtonian returned in 1968 wounded and discouraged.

As a black Vietnam veteran, he was welcomed back with scorn. Washington was still “a really Southern town,” where racism and bitterness from the war ran deep.

Things seem to find Felton. Now 66, he is a head curator of items left at theVietnam Veterans Memorial wall. More than 400,000 items have found their way to his doorstep.

“I look back on my life, and I think about all the things I haven’t been seeking, but have come to find me,” he said.

It’s a massive collection to watch over. The National Park Service stores the items in a cavernous preservation facility 12 miles away in Landover, Md. A small team of historians Felton helps to lead has spent years cataloguing each one, looking for the most telling items to display in an underground museum slated for construction across the street from the memorial wall.

The tradition of leaving items at the wall has taken on a life of its own since it opened in 1982. The first one is rumored to have been a Purple Heart posthumously awarded to a solider – his brother is said to have placed in the wet concrete while the wall was being built, although curators aren’t sure if the story is true.

Now, more items arrive faster than Felton’s team can catalogue them. Endless rows of blue plastic bins keep them safe, sequestered from the rest of the world. Every day, year after year, they pore through memories of the lost.

One man left his medals pinned to a Viet Cong fighter’s shirt.

Another soldier left a flag he took from a Viet Cong soldier he killed in battle and a poem scribbled on a ragged piece of notebook paper, describing how the memory still haunts him.

There’s a banner bashing former President Bill Clinton for avoiding the draft, and a slew of other items protesting Robert McNamara, who was secretary of defense during the war.

And then there are the families. A widow left her son’s high school graduation photo, thanking her son’s dead father for giving her their son. A mother left her dead son’s worn childhood teddy bear.

The smallest items are collected and stored away, even those that seem like trash. There are hundreds of empty beer cans, probably left intentionally, along with troves of baby shoes and Metro transit cards, which likely were dropped accidentally by tourists.

“Some of the things that upset me most are the photos,” museum technician Janet Donlin said. “I know it was the last picture taken of them before they died.”

Leaders of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, who also headed the construction of the wall, are seeking to tell the war’s story through artifacts. The collection speaks from all sides, including the anger and controversy that divided the nation. Most items are left anonymously. Their back stories are a mystery.

“It’s certainly teaching about the Vietnam War without taking sides,” said Jan Scruggs, president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and an Army veteran who fought in the war. “It happened a long time ago. “People still argue about it, and let them.”

Plans for the 35,000 square foot education center, designed by the same firm that drew up plans for Capitol Visitor Center and the Newseum in Washington, will feature a video projection screen with pictures of every soldier whose name is on the wall. The memorial fund put out a nationwide call for veterans and families to send in pictures.

Although the foundation held a symbolic groundbreaking in November, it is not yet clear when construction will begin or when the center will open, Scruggs said. The group has slightly less than half of the money and must meet a 2014 deadline set by Congress.

The price tag is roughly $85 million, although Scruggs said that likely will go up once construction starts.

Newly appointed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam veteran, introduced a bill to authorize construction of the education center in 2000 when he was a senator from Nebraska, but Congress wasn’t convinced. It gathered enough support to pass in 2003, with the requirement that funds would be raised within seven years. In 2010, Congress extended the deadline for four more years and could do so again.

Felton has seen how the items left at the wall change with time. There are fewer handwritten notes, since people mostly type them on a computer. And messages like “John, this would have been our 50^th anniversary,” are a reminder of how much time has passed.

Instead of pencil rubbings of the names, people now snap photos with smart phones and tablets. But they still leave things every day for National Park Service rangers to collect at closing time.

Asked whether he’s ever left anything, Felton cracks a knowing grin.

“Everybody asks that,” he said. “It’s a secret.”

Reach Reporter Ian Kullgren at Ian.Kullgren@Shns.com or 202-326-2143.

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Photos: Inaugural Committee Holds Dress Rehearsal with Fake Obamas

Ian Kullgren, SHFWire — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 12:10:00 -0500

On Sunday, Air Force Staff Sgt. Serpico Elliott got a chance to briefly walk in his commander-in-chief’s shoes: from inside the Capitol down to the presidential podium for the inaugural dress rehearsal. The stand-in first lady – 20-year-old Army Spc. Delandra Rollins – was at his side, holding a leather office folder as a Bible prop and smiling for the cameras.

Band music blared over the loudspeakers as the two entered, and thousands of empty folding chairs greeted them on the Capitol lawn. The Mall was dead as well, as fences quarantined off large sections where between 600,000 and 800,000 people are expected to descend Jan. 21 for the public swearing in ceremony.

“It was amazing,” Elliott said. “It was good to see … down on it instead of the outside looking in.”

Inauguration planners made the couple stand completely still for several minutes, marking the position of their feet on the stage and tweaking the angles for television crews and photographers on the risers.

Each branch of the military was asked to submit nominations for rehearsal stand-ins. After meeting both contenders separately, the committee chose Elliott and Rollins because of their striking similarity to the Obamas. Elliott and Obama both are slightly taller than 6 feet. Elliott has never met the president.

Marine Master Sgt. Richard Bolin and Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Rachel Washko stood in for Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, but were not chosen based on their appearances.

About 2,500 members of the armed service are scheduled to participate on Inauguration Day for both celebration and support services, Air Force Brig. Gen. Jim Scanlan, deputy for inaugural support, said.

Scanlan said the committee started planning for the ceremony more than a year ago, combing through footage of past inaugurations to get ideas and to see what previous committees could have done better.

The massive stage, which has been under construction since September, is nearly finished except for pieces of blue painters’ tape still clinging to the hand railings.

Obama will take the oath of office officially Jan. 20, as the Constitution requires, in a private White House ceremony. The public ceremony was postponed to Jan. 21 when Jan. 20 fell on a Sunday.

After the rehearsal ended, Elliott said the honor made him more nervous than excited.

“I don’t think that is cut out for me,” he said.

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For Nixon’s 100th Birthday, Supporters Seek to Reshape Legacy

Ian Kullgren, SHFWire — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 12:00:00 -0500

More than 400 Nixon relatives and former staff members packed into an ornate ballroom at the Mayflower Renaissance Hotel on Wednesday night to celebrate the late leader’s 100^th birthday – one of the larger gatherings of his supporters since Aug. 9, 1974, when Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment.

The timing served as a starting point for a broad campaign by Nixon’s supporters to rewrite the narrative of his tarnished presidency. The Richard Nixon Foundation, a nonprofit organization, funded by the former president’s family and friends, announced a $25 million campaign to renovate the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Calif., to provide more supporter-funded historical information.

The speakers, who included former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Nixon’s two daughters, Tricia Nixon Cox and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, painted a portrait of a dedicated peacemaker who ended the Vietnam War and negotiated peace in the Middle East.

They skated around Watergate, offering only veiled – and at times misleading – references to the scandal.

“Would there be a Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library if Richard Nixon had not selected this man as vice president?” said former GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, who served as Nixon’s senior adviser.

Faded Nixon campaign signs greeted guests in the cocktail lounge. Hundreds of birthday balloons floated around guests as they ate cake for dessert. The large cake was a replica of his quaint childhood home, complete with meticulously detailed white siding and a manicured lawn.

The foundation has a history of conflict with historians from the National Archives, whom the federal government commissioned to correct inaccuracies in the museum about the Watergate scandal. In 2006, historian Tim Naftali was appointed as the museum’s director. He spent five years renovating the Watergate exhibit, which had accused Democrats of trying to overturn election results by ousting Nixon and questioned reporting procedures by The Washington Post, which broke the story.

“They saw him as they victim of a witch hunt,” Naftali said in a phone interview from West Hollywood Calif., where he now works as a historical author. He said some Nixon supporters argued that he behaved no differently that other presidents. “It was that he was a victim of a double standard.”

Foundation leaders, however, say they want to reframe the story of Nixon’s presidency to include his accomplishments along with his shortcomings.

“The idea is not to confound or combat the critics,” Fred Malek, the fundraiser’s chairman, said in an interview. “It’s to get the positives of the manifold accomplishments of this president out to more people.”

Malek, who held several government jobs during the Nixon presidency, would not discuss specific changes the foundation will make to the museum because it is too early in the process, but he said one of the major goals is to put more museum materials online. Although it just officially began, the foundation already has received $4.5 million in donations for what they named the Richard Nixon Centennial Legacy Campaign.

“He reflected the qualities that make a great leader,” Kissinger said during his keynote speech. “Courage and character.”

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