Government Executive - Authors - Richard H.P. Sia

Afghans May Not Be Ready to Take Over Security

Richard H.P. Sia — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:47:04 -0400

Since the United States first sent troops to Afghanistan in 2001, a signature goal of the war has been to increase the size of Afghan national security forces and give their members the skills to vanquish domestic terrorist groups and other security threats on their own.

But as the Obama administration prepares to pull 34,000 U.S. troops out of the country by February and most of the remaining troops by the end of 2014, estimates of the size of the Afghan force trained to take over this lead security role have suddenly grown fuzzy and possibly unreliable.

A new report this week by the government’s top watchdog over U.S. spending in Afghanistan casts doubt on whether the U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan government has met a goal set in 2011 of enlisting and training a total of 352,000 Afghan security personnel by October 2012. Pentagon officials have said that target was meant to strike a balance between what is needed and what America and its allies can deliver in concert with the Afghan government.

The White House declared two months ago, in conjunction with the President’s State of the Union address, that the goal had been attained. Afghan “forces are currently at a surge strength of 352,000, where they will remain for at least three more years, to allow continued progress toward a secure environment in Afghanistan,” it said.

But on Tuesday, Special Inspector for Afghanistan Reconstruction John F. Sopko challenged this rosy assessment, which White House officials said was based on data supplied by the Pentagon.

“The goal to ‘train and field’ 352,000 Afghan National Security Forces by last October was not met.” Sopko said in his latest quarterly report. Instead, as of Feb. 18, the number of personnel in the Afghan National Army, National Police and Air Force totaled 332,753, or about 20,000 fewer, according to data he said he collected from the Coalition-led transition command in Kabul.

Sopko said Afghan troop and police strength is actually declining, not rising – belying a longstanding goal of the U.S. intervention. There are now 4,700 fewer personnel than a year ago, he noted, drawing on the same data that the Pentagon routinely uses.

The discrepancy between the force size the White House has claimed and what the Afghans have actually been able to field is not a trivial one, Sopko’s report suggested. ”Accurate and reliable accounting for ANSF personnel is necessary to ensure that U.S. funds that support the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] are used for legitimate and eligible costs,” it said.

As a result, the discrepancy has triggered a wider audit by his organization into "the extent to which DOD [the Department of Defense] reviews and validates the information collected" from Afghan officials, Sopko said in the report. It will broadly assess "the reliability and usefulness” of what the Afghans – and the U.S. government – say about the force’s size.

In a statement to the Center for Public Integrity, Sopko explained that "we are not implying that anyone is manipulating data. We are raising a concern that we don't have the right numbers. We appreciate how difficult it is to get the correct numbers -- but we need accurate numbers because we're using those numbers to pay ANSF salaries, supply equipment and so forth."

The financial stakes behind the numbers are huge. Sopko’s report says Congress has appropriated more than $51 billion so far “to build, equip, train and sustain the Afghan National Security Forces.”

But U.S. officials and watchdog groups have previously raised alarms about the existence of “ghost” personnel in the Afghan forces, whose salaries are still funded by Western aid but who quit the units to which they are assigned. The annual attrition rate for the Afghan army is nearly 30 percent, according to U.S. military commanders, provoking an enormous churn in the ranks that complicates accurate record-keeping.

Part of the problem, according to Sopko’s report, is that Western officials have allowed “the Afghan forces to report their own personnel strength numbers,” which are based on hand-written ledgers in “decentralized, unlinked and inconsistent systems.” The Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, which oversees the training effort, reported last year “there was no viable method of validating personnel numbers,” the report added.

But U.S. officials have added to the confusion by adopting a new definition of what it means to be a member of the Afghan security force, loosening its terminology in a way that enlarges the ranks to include all those “recruited” rather than those actually trained and field-ready.

For example, the Defense Department’s so-called Section 1230 reports, which track the progress of the war, including efforts to build an effective Afghan security force, said in April 2012 that “the ANSF are ahead of schedule to achieve the October 2012 end-strength of 352,000, including subordinate goals of 195,000 soldiers and 157,000 police.”

But last December’s Section 1230 report – the most recent progress report available -- changed the way it referred to the 352,000 figure. “The ANSF met its goal of recruiting a force of approximately 352,000 by October 1, 2012,” the December report said. Some of these personnel were awaiting induction at training centers, said the report, adding that the Afghan army’s recruits were not scheduled to be “trained, equipped, and fielded until December 2013.”

Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., who in February took command of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan from Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, used still different terminology during April 16 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said the Afghan government “has recruited and fielded most of its authorized strength of 352,000,” a circumstance that he said enables it to “be responsible for security nationwide” in the near future.

The Pentagon is still working on its written response to the special inspector general's report. But a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Bill Speaks, separately told the Center for Public Integrity that "fluctuation in overall strength of the ANSF due to recruitment and attrition is expected."

Speaks said recruitment targets were lowered last year to slow growth as Afghan forces approached "its force structure ceiling of 352,000. . . . Lower recruitment, coupled with several months of higher-than-average levels of attrition in the ANA [Afghan National Army], resulted in a net decrease."

He said ANSF end-strength rose to 336,365 in March, but added that the focus of the training mission now is on “the quality of the force; developing the right balance of seniority, skills and specialization,” more than on the number of trainees.

Sopko’s report attributed the decline partly to a decision last October to no longer include civilians in the official security force tally, such as those in the Afghanistan Ministry of Defense. But Speaks said Thursday that civilians continue to be counted, calling them “a necessary and integrated part" of the Afghan Army. He said an effort is underway to convert the jobs to the civil service system, and also that the Afghan reporting system “is increasingly moving from a paper-based system to a more automated one with new standards" and processes.

Despite the squishiness of the data, U.S. military officials have repeatedly cited the buildup in Afghan forces as the principal reason for declaring the 11-year war a success. “For the last few years, many people have shied away from using the word ‘win,’” Dunford told the senators. “I personally have used that word since arriving in Afghanistan.”

Sharing his optimism, Gen. Allen told Brookings Institution in March that Afghan security forces “turned out to be better than we thought, and they turned out better than they thought.” During the ceremonial change of command in Kabul in February Allen said, “Afghan forces defending Afghan people and enabling the government of this country to serve its citizens. This is victory. This is what winning looks like.”

US officials have long considered the ability of Afghan forces to fight without foreign help as critical to the Obama administration’s exit strategy and pending decisions on how large of a residual force to leave in the county once most U.S. troops leave next year. There are 70,000 U.S. troops there now, of which 1,800 are assigned to the NATO training mission.

At last year’s NATO summit in Chicago, Sopko noted in his report, countries contributing to coalition forces in Afghanistan agreed to set a goal of a 228,500-strong Afghan security force in 2017, which they considered more financially viable than any higher number. But the Obama administration rejected that suggestion and insisted that a force of 352,000 would give the U.S. military more flexibility and could be maintained through 2018.

Whether a force of even that size is enough to meet the West’s ambitions remains controversial. On March 22, for example, the Pentagon’s inspector general reported that the extensive U.S.-led coalition effort to develop the Afghan National Army’s command-and-control capabilities, which are crucial in executing counterinsurgency operations on its own, “had produced a marginally sufficient” system.

The Afghan National Army “did not yet have the ability to plan and conduct sustained operations without U.S. and Coalition support,” the DOD IG report said. “To date, the ANA had only been effective in conducting offensive operations of short duration . . . with heavy reliance on U.S. and Coalition support.”

The IG’s report credited both the Afghan army and police for demonstrating “initiative, coordination and resilience” in responding to insurgent attacks in Kabul on Aril 15, 2012. The actions by security forces “were encouraging and timely,” the report said. But it warned that the progress “may be hampered or even reversed. . . if high-risk challenges are not properly addressed and resolved,” including the removal of ineffective senior officers, an ability to use complex technology, and “the significant reliance on U.S. and Coalition enablers.”

A Government Accountability Office report released in February said further that a claimed improvement in the effectiveness of Afghan security forces has been partly due to the lowering of standards by U.S.-led forces. In August 2011, U.S. military officials changed the highest possible rating for Afghan units from “independent,” meaning they could operate without help from U.S. or coalition troops, to “independent with advisors,” the GAO said.

The Pentagon acknowledged that the changes to the rating levels “were partly responsible for the increase in ANSF units rated at the highest level,” GAO said.

This story was originally published by The Center for Public Integrity, which is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.

Copyright 2013 The Center for Public Integrity

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Lawmakers challenge Austrian sidearms purchase for Iraq

Amy Svitak and Richard H.P. Sia — Fri, 12 Dec 2003 00:00:00 -0500

At least three lawmakers, including House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., have launched separate inquiries into what they believe is a sole-source contract awarded by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to Austrian gun manufacturer Glock. In a Dec. 3 letter to Ruben Jeffery, executive director of the CPA's Washington division, Hunter expressed his concern and questioned whether U.S. handgun manufacturers that supply U.S. police and military personnel were considered in the bidding.

"I feel that since the U.S. taxpayer is paying the largest burden for the reconstruction efforts in Iraq, U.S. companies, and the U.S. taxpayers they employ, should benefit from these dollars," wrote Hunter.

Glock, which maintains a North American headquarters in Smyrna, Ga., has manufactured handguns in Austria since the 1980s. The $19 million contract for 50,000 Glock Model 19 sidearms, with an option to purchase an additional 50,000 handguns, was awarded late this summer, several U.S. industry sources told CongressDaily. A company official in Smyrna confirmed that Glocks were selected for Iraqi security forces, but otherwise would not comment. A Glock attorney in Smyrna failed to return repeated telephone inquiries made in recent weeks. Hunter asked in his letter whether the Glock award was sole-sourced or competitively bid, and requested a list of companies that submitted quotes under the CPA's solicitation in the event that multiple sources were considered. He also questioned whether the CPA plans any more weapons purchases in 2004, and asked how such future procurements will be handled. A Pentagon spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Washington was unable to comment on Hunter's letter by presstime. But a committee spokesman said the chairman had yet to receive Jeffery's response.

In a Nov. 25 letter, Rep. Jeb Bradley, R-N.H., expressed similar concerns with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Bradley visited Iraq recently as part of a congressional delegation comprised of members of the House Small Business Committee interested in the reconstruction process and the competitive participation of U.S. companies for contracts.

"It would appear that the procurement process was not sufficiently open," Bradley wrote upon his return, adding that a lack of bidders might have artificially inflated the cost of the firearms.

Bradley asserted that SigArms, a Swiss firearms company with a manufacturing facility in his district, was not aware of the CPA's contract solicitation. "A representative of SigArms informed me that the company routinely monitors the the CPA Web site and was still unaware of the pending purchase and bidding procedure," Bradley said. A spokesman said Bradley had not yet received a response from Rumsfeld.

Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., whose district is home to the venerable firearms giant Smith & Wesson, directed his questions to Secretary of State Powell, asking in a Sept. 25 letter "why the order was made to a foreign manufacturer without consideration of any American manufacturers." U.S. industry sources said Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., has received complaints about the Glock purchases from Smith & Wesson, which runs a law enforcement training academy in his district. Neal's office was unable to comment by presstime. In addition, aides to House Small Business Chairman Don Manzullo, R-Illinois, who strongly favors limiting Iraq reconstruction contracts to U.S. firms, have been aware of the firearms deal for several weeks. Manzullo recently sought an explanation for the Pentagon's decision to outfit Iraqi police with Russian-made AK-47 automatic rifles and is likely to broaden his inquiry to include the Glock handguns.

Firearms companies with U.S. factories have been frustrated in their attempts to learn details from the CPA about the Glock contract, according to industry sources. Some congressional aides said they understood the CPA may have considered as many as eight companies for the handgun contract, but that U.S. suppliers apparently were either passed over or absent entirely from the solicitation process. Bob Scott, Smith & Wesson's president and board chairman, lamented the contract award and the the CPA's failure to respond to his company's interest in the solicitation.

"As a U.S. taxpayer and a U.S. manufacturer, I am greatly offended that my tax dollars are being used to buy foreign weapons for the Iraqis when there were U.S. companies that could have supplied that product," Scott told CongressDaily last week week.

But other industry sources suggested that the CPA may not have purchased the weapons directly from Glock, but through a U.S. middleman named Doug Kiesler, a firearms wholesaler based in Jeffersonville, Ind. Kiesler did not return telephone inquiries, and Mark Barnes, a Washington-based firearms lobbyist who provides regulatory counsel to Kiesler's police supply company, said he could not confirm Kiesler's involvement with the solicitation. He referred media questions to the CPA, but acknowledged that the contract was awarded competitively to an U.S. firm.

"An American company was required to provide goods and services, and an American company did," Barnes said. "It was appropriately awarded and appropriately filled."

In addition to the weapons contract, the CPA allegedly awarded a separate contract for 50,000 holsters designed for Glock handguns, according to U.S. industry sources. Tom Marx, law enforcement marketing manager at Uncle Mike's Holsters in Oregon City, Ore., confirmed that his company was involved with the contract, but said the award was actually handled by a U.S. wholesaler, and that the wholesaler was likely Kiesler.

Congressional aides familiar with the issue said the efforts to contact the CPA regarding the contract had proved difficult. One aide said the CPA's response to inquiries regarding the contract revealed that Iraqi funds, rather than U.S.-appropriated tax dollars, may have been used to pay for the handgun contract. Others observed that the CPA is under significant pressure to hastily equip new Iraqi military and police forces, a factor that could preclude its ability to rely solely on competitive procurement practices.

Nonetheless, these aides are still hoping to learn more about how Glock ended up with the CPA award, and are anxious to learn more about Kiesler's role in the deal. Earlier this week the CPA posted on its Web site a Dec. 5 decree from the Defense Department that some countries would be excluded from bidding on prime contracts in Iraq. Included was a list of countries deemed eligible to bid on the $18.6 billion in U.S-funded prime contracts for reconstruction projects in Iraq. Austria was not included on the list.

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'Losers' in 2004 base funding could be vulnerable to closure

Amy Svitak and Richard H.P. Sia — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 00:00:00 -0500

So far, the Pentagon is not saying which facilities are most likely to get the ax -- although Raymond DuBois, deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations and environment, has lamented the Washington area's excess capacity in the past and suggested how it might be put to better use in the future.

"We have now -- very large military installations here in the Washington area. We also have an enormous amount of leased space in the Washington metropolitan area," DuBois said at a news briefing late last year. "Can we better utilize the military installations, the military real property assets owned by the services, and reduce the expense of leased space?"

Bolling was one of many casualties of the fiscal 2004 appropriations process, failing to garner any new construction funds that might deflect scrutiny next fiscal year, when the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission decides which facilities to shut down. President Bush sought $9.3 million this year for an adjudication facility at Bolling in his budget request, but the House nixed the funds in the conference for the military construction spending bill, which now awaits his signature.

Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and several Army National Guard centers -- three alone in Alabama -- also failed to get funding from conferees, despite presidential requests for multimillion-dollar upgrades. (For a complete database ranking allocations of fiscal 2004 construction funds by facility, click here.) As for Bolling -- a relatively small Air Force installation situated in a densely populated urban area -- several analysts see it as an obvious choice for closure. While it houses the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Air Force headquarters building, a ceremonial air wing, band and honor guard, these analysts say other area facilities, such as the Washington Navy Yard or Maryland's much larger Andrews Air Force Base, could take on these missions in a realignment.

The 2004 spending bill also left Moody Air Force Base in Georgia vulnerable to a closure decision. In 2001, Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., added $6.9 million to the House version of the military construction bill to build a C-130 maintenance hangar there. The effort failed in conference with the Senate but has been revised since then. Two attempts were made this year in the Senate to add $7.6 million for the base to the 2004 Defense appropriations bill and the military construction bill.

Both add-ons failed in conference, leaving Moody without any construction funds -- not even family housing money. But community groups remain hopeful, saying the base, home to the 347th Rescue Wing -- the only such wing in the Air Force -- is well-positioned to avoid closure. This is partly because the Air Force Special Operations Command, whose vice commander is a former member of that unit, controls it.

Another facility absent from the 2004 spending bill was Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts. It has survived earlier closure rounds but was omitted from the president's budget and both House and Senate versions of the spending measure. That may have helped spur state officials to launch a campaign last month to save the base and hire a retired Air Force general as a consultant.

A state development agency called MassDevelopment is lobbying to acquire adjacent land in hopes of attracting a high-tech tenant that might make the base too valuable to close. The agency also hopes to influence the Pentagon as it develops criteria, due at the end of this month, for BRAC decision making. Its aim is to give science and technology facilities like Hanscom a higher profile in the Pentagon's evolving BRAC process.

Vandenberg Air Force Base in southern California also was denied 2004 military construction funds. President Bush sought $16.5 million to build a consolidated fitness center there, but the Senate eliminated the requested funds in conference.

The base houses the Air Force Space Command and the 30th Space Wing. It could take on the service's Space and Missile Systems Center now at Los Angeles Air Force Base if that base were to close. The Los Angeles base is located in an expensive section of Los Angeles County, and analysts consider it an obvious choice for closure, since it boasts no actual space or missile facilities.

But a Senate add-on, giving the Los Angeles base $5 million for a "main gate complex," survived the conference, possibly helping safeguard the installation from the BRAC process.

Another major southern California facility -- Edwards Air Force Base, known for its test pilot school -- won an infusion of nearly $26.4 million for new construction in the final spending bill.

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Winners in military construction bill hope to stave off base closures

Amy Svitak and Richard H.P. Sia — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 00:00:00 -0500

In the scramble for military construction funds a year before the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission is expected to cut as much as 25 percent of excess domestic base infrastructure, facilities in Alaska, Hawaii and Texas fared exceptionally well, while some in Alabama, California and Georgia did not.

An analysis by CongressDaily of funding allocations in the military construction bill shows bases with high-priority missions -- for example, Hawaii's Schofield Barracks, home of one of the Army's new Stryker brigades -- among those receiving the most federal funds. Rapid reaction forces at Fort Drum, N.Y., home of the Army's 10th Mountain Division, and Fort Bragg, N.C., headquarters of the 82nd Airborne Division and XVIII Airborne Corps, were among the big winners.

In addition, Virginia's sprawling Norfolk Naval Base and the Navy's sole recruit boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, north of Chicago, ranked high on the allocation list.

Other facilities, such as Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina and the Blount Island Marine Corps maritime prepositioning facility in Florida, grabbed a sizable amount of money, thanks to well-organized lobbying efforts by groups seeking to protect them from the 2005 closing round, the analysis shows. (For a complete database ranking allocations of fiscal 2004 construction funds by facility, click here.) Lawmakers, prodded by local officials and lobbyists retained by community groups, added millions to the construction bill in hopes of shielding the bases from the Pentagon's ax. But the Defense Department insisted such efforts to protect them would not work.

"All installations are going to be judged equally," said Raymond DuBois, the Pentagon's former deputy undersecretary for installations and environment, last December. "You must approach this in a comprehensive and objective fashion. All installations are on the table."

Maybe not, said Chris Hellman, director of the Project on Military Spending Oversight, a Washington-based watchdog group.

"You can't BRAC-proof a base, even with new construction ... but it doesn't hurt," Hellman said. "And just because there is a BRAC round looming, that doesn't mean you put construction projects on hold, either."

The Blount Island facility, for example, garnered a hefty $115.7 million in 2004 funds for land acquisition. Part of the funds will allow the Navy to buy 137 acres of undeveloped property and a restrictive-use easement on another 133 acres of developed land.

The deal between the Navy and the Jacksonville Port Authority, negotiated with support from Florida Democratic Sens. Bill Nelson and Bob Graham, along with Reps. Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., and Corrine Brown, D-Fla., could help ensure the Marine Corps' long-term use of Blount Island.

These funds, along with $30 million in congressional add-ons to the bill, are a likely boon to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's recently formed task force to help save the state's 21 military installations and three unified commands. During the past two BRAC rounds, Florida lost its Cecil Field Naval Air Station, the largest military installation in the Jacksonville area.

A smaller, but no less important, amount of money -- $26.3 million -- is earmarked in the bill for Edwards Air Force Base in California, for the first phase of a complex for the military's next-generation, joint-strike fighter and a House add-on of a new base operations facility. A coalition of local governments and businesses near the base traveled to Washington last spring to lobby for help in protecting Edwards from the 2005 BRAC.

Fort Dix, the venerable New Jersey Army base that has barely survived past closure rounds, received a House add-on of $6.4 million for construction of an urban assault course and a major conference center. The base lately has served as a major processing facility for reserve forces bound for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Funds to improve mission-specific infrastructure and upgrade base housing are the most helpful, Hellman said. The Pentagon has pledged to solve the military's substandard housing woes, giving installations with new or improved living quarters a leg up. Other bases could benefit from new construction allowing them to take on old missions from closed facilities, he said.

"Unlike rounds in the 1990s, we're not going to see missions going away," Hellman said. "We'll see more consolidation; and if they close a facility, they'll probably move it to a new one, so any new construction is going to be positive in that regard."

Shaw Air Force Base, for example, received an $8.5 million congressional add-on to pay for a deployment-processing center. Shaw was a potential candidate for the ax during the 1995 BRAC round, but it is home to the 20th Fighter Wing with three F-16 fighter squadrons. Airmen regularly deploy from this medium-sized base to others around the world, including those in the Persian Gulf.

Local governments near Shaw hope the passage of land-use ordinances to limit encroachment also will protect the base from shutdown. While the Air Force is now planning to reduce its overall number of fighter squadrons, an overseas fighter wing could be moved to Shaw, further protecting it from the budget ax.

But Hellman said the best way for a local community to shelter a base from the next BRAC round is through planning.

"The people that intrigue me are the ones that are looking at what the community can do to make the base a better match," he said. "They can't affect what goes on inside the base, but they may be improving highway access to bases for, say, mobility centers; and that's going to be something that the military is going to look at."

For example, the state of Texas authorized $250 million in bonds in September for communities to do just that type of work, "which makes a lot more sense than hiring a lobbyist," Hellman said.

Mississippi is also taking this approach. Three of the state's installations -- Columbus and Keesler Air Force bases and the naval reserve facility at Pascagoula -- won $16.7 million in congressional add-ons to the administration's $26.3 million Military Construction request for that state.

While Democratic Rep. Gene Taylor has carefully overseen Mississippi from Washington, the state is working locally to protect its military assets, recently establishing authority for local communities to borrow up to $300 million annually for base-related improvements.

Tomorrow: A Look At The Losers.

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TSA reaffirms decision on German firearm supplier

Richard H.P. Sia — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 00:00:00 -0400

The Transportation Security Administration has reaffirmed its decision to have German firearms manufacturer Heckler & Koch supply as many as 9,600 .40-caliber handguns to U.S. commercial airline pilots who complete federal law enforcement training under the agency's guns-in-cockpits program.

A contract of three one-year options to supply H&K USP40 Compact Law Enforcement Model semiautomatic handguns was signed after the agency, under pressure from House Small Business Chairman Donald Manzullo, R-Ill., reevaluated all the bids it had received from firearms companies, especially those with manufacturing facilities in the United States. The maximum value of the contract is $3.3 million, H&K officials said Tuesday.

After a long, controversial search that upset many of the world's biggest gun manufacturers, TSA initially awarded the contract in July to H&K for its German-made firearms.

That prompted Manzullo, an outspoken advocate of "Buy American" laws to support U.S. manufacturing jobs, to argue that the agency arming U.S. airline pilots should have given preference to American-made weapons. Losing bidders included several American and foreign firms that supply handguns to U.S. military and police forces from U.S. factories.

Congressional and industry sources told CongressDaily this week a "mitigating" factor for Heckler & Koch was its timely announcement in August, during TSA's bid re-evaluation process, that it would build its first U.S. factory. The plant will be built on a 29-acre site in a Columbus, Ga., technology park.

Indeed, the company staged a groundbreaking ceremony Oct. 14 with Georgia GOP Gov. Sonny Perdue, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and Reps. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., and Phil Gingrey, R-Ga.

The $25 million factory is expected to create some 200 jobs, boost area retail sales and generate more than $402,000 in annual property taxes, with job figures increasing as new contracts are awarded, company officials said.

Among its first products will be handguns for the TSA program, although the firearms delivered to pilots this year and much of next year will come from the main H&K plant in Germany.

The U.S. facility also will produce assault rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers and small arms for U.S. military and police forces.

"Establishing an American manufacturing base has been our number one priority," Heckler & Koch Vice President Peter Simon said in a statement. "Our Georgia factory represents Heckler & Koch's commitment to the U.S. military and law enforcement communities, to America's war on terrorism and to the creation of skilled manufacturing jobs for Americans."

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TSA revisits German gun contract

Richard H.P. Sia — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 00:00:00 -0400

The Transportation Security Administration is reconsidering its recent decision to arm U.S. commercial airline pilots with German-made Heckler & Koch handguns, only a few days after House Small Business Chairman Donald Manzullo, R-Ill., inquired about the agency's method of choosing a supplier, according to congressional and gun industry sources.

The companies that competed for a three-year, $5 million contract to supply TSA with as many as 9,600 .40-caliber semiautomatic pistols have been told that their bids will be re-evaluated, but the reasons were left unclear, industry sources said. TSA officials told at least one firm they had questions about information the agency used earlier this month to select H&K as the winner.

The questions came from Manzullo, an outspoken advocate of "Buy American" laws to help support U.S. manufacturing jobs.

Aides to the Illinois Republican said he had met last week with TSA officials to learn why the German firearms giant H&K beat other bidders, including American-owned Smith & Wesson and foreign firms, like Beretta, that have manufacturing facilities in the United States.

"We are pleased that the Department of Homeland Security has wisely decided to rebid the handgun contract for the Transportation Safety Administration," Manzullo said Tuesday in a statement. "After our initial meeting, it was obvious that the decision to select Heckler & Koch, a German company with no U.S. manufacturing capability, over American competitors was based on faulty data."

One TSA official initially told the committee staff early last week that H&K would make its firearms in the United States. That contradicted a July 18 CongressDaily news story that quoted company spokesman Steve Galloway as saying all the guns would be made at H&K headquarters in Oberndorf, Germany, and then shipped to a distribution center in Sterling, Va. Galloway, who has said his firm does not have a U.S.-based manufacturing plant, could not be reached Tuesday for further comment.

"It showed us that they [TSA officials] didn't know all the facts," said one House committee aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "That was the impetus for the meeting." The contradiction also prompted more questions about how the agency's "source selection committee"-the panel reviewing the bids-chose the winner, the aide said. "Best value isn't always just the price," the aide added. "TSA is going to look at the policy implications [of its contract award] as well."

Manzullo raised a larger concern at the meeting: whether the TSA award to the German firm would influence officials elsewhere in the Homeland Security Department and ultimately cost U.S.-based, firearms manufacturing jobs.

The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which includes the enforcement arm of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service, will award "a substantial contract" next month to supply handguns to its officers, Manzullo said.

With a contract from TSA-situated in the same division as the immigration and customs agency-Heckler & Koch would be well positioned to win the other contract, which committee aides say could be worth $30 million.

"We expect those procurement officials to strongly consider American companies when making that award," Manzullo said Tuesday.

TSA spokesman Robert Johnson declined to discuss the meeting with Manzullo, except to say, "A decision has been made to reconvene the technical committee ... to go through each bid again."

"It's too early to speculate on what may come of that process," Johnson added.

The decision to re-evaluate the bids is only the latest twist in the agency's effort to buy handguns for the airline pilots who volunteer for the Federal Flight Deck Officer program.

According to several well placed industry sources quoted July 16 by CongressDaily, the agency changed its handgun preferences several times once the program was authorized last November by the Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act.

Late last year, TSA initially favored Austrian gun manufacturer Glock, then appeared to bow to pressure from the office of Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., in favor of Arizona-based Smith & Wesson. After Italian gun maker Beretta and other firms protested contract requirements they claimed favored one particular manufacturer, TSA dropped those specifications and opened competition for the handgun contract industry-wide.

Manzullo had considered calling TSA officials to a public hearing after the House reconvenes in September, but for now he will let the process play itself out, aides said.

In May 2001, Manzullo used his prerogative as chairman to convene a hearing on the U.S. Army's $29.6 million contracts to buy 4.8 million black berets, nearly a quarter of which were to be made in China by a British firm.

A few days before the hearing, the Defense Logistics Agency canceled all the contracts involving foreign suppliers.

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German gun maker wins TSA contract to arm airline pilots

Richard H.P. Sia — Fri, 18 Jul 2003 00:00:00 -0400

A company spokesman confirmed the contract award Friday. TSA notified bidders by fax late Thursday. TSA officials were unable to comment as of Friday afternoon.

Although losing bidders may still file a protest, the award caps a procurement effort that proved troublesome for TSA, which ran afoul of leading handgun manufacturers in its attempt to buy handguns for its next class of pilots, scheduled to begin Sunday.

CongressDaily reported Wednesday that gun makers who expected "full and open competition" complained that TSA appeared to bow to congressional and other outside pressures at different stages of the process by favoring certain handgun manufacturers over others. Protests by the Italian firm Beretta and other companies prompted TSA on June 12 to open the competition industry-wide and push back various deadlines and delivery dates.

TSA spokesman Robert Johnson adamantly denied in an interview earlier this week that the procurement process contributed to a delay in the summer training classes. The agency has been under pressure from Congress to accelerate the arming of commercial pilots under the Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act enacted last November.

TSA's Federal Flight Deck Officers program allows pilots to volunteer for firearms training and become certified law enforcement officers, authorized to use a handgun to defend their cockpits from hostile intruders.

Potential bidders for the gun contract had been told by TSA that the agency wanted to buy as many as 9,600 handguns through fiscal 2006. The H&K spokesman said the model chosen was the company's USP Compact .40-LEM firearm, which are made in Oberndorf, Germany, and shipped to the U.S. distribution center in Sterling, Va.

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TSA handgun contract draws ire of firearms makers

Richard H.P. Sia — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 00:00:00 -0400

The agency drew the heaviest fire after it appeared to bow to pressure from the office of Rep. J. D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., to drop a possible deal with the Austrian gunmaker Glock and focus instead on buying guns from venerable Smith & Wesson, an American-owned firm based in Hayworth's district.

Only after vigorous protests last month by Beretta, an Italian handgun supplier to the U.S. military, and other firms did TSA drop narrowly drawn contract specifications favorable to Smith & Wesson and open up the competition industry-wide.

The troubles over the handgun contract have renewed questions in Congress over the agency's contracting practices, particularly its apparent tendency to avoid competitive bidding for its contracts. House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Martin Olav Sabo, D-Minn., already has asked GAO to look into more than 90 sole-source contracts valued at over $50 million that have been awarded by TSA since its inception a little over a year ago.

These contracts "could easily and should have been competed to safeguard federal tax dollars," Sabo said last month. He declined comment Tuesday on TSA's attempt to buy handguns, except to say through his spokesman that he remains "concerned about sole-source contracts and mismanagement" at the agency.

TSA spokesman Robert Johnson defended the agency's actions Tuesday, saying, "Everything we've done has been done by the book."

"When warranted, we'll make adjustments in a manner that is fair to all," he said when asked about complaints from potential bidders. "We have our top people ... managing it so taxpayers will get the best deal."

The agency has been under intense pressure from Congress to accelerate the training and arming of commercial pilots under the Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act enacted last November. The so-called Federal Flight Deck Officers program, which allows pilots to volunteer for firearms training and become certified law enforcement officers, took off in April when TSA put the first 44 pilots through a six-day training course in Georgia and gave them .40 caliber semiautomatic pistols made by Glock.

The next classes were to have started earlier this month, but gun industry sources said the procurement troubles contributed to a delay. TSA recently announced weekly classes would resume this weekend in Georgia, but came under attack in Congress last week for failing to consult key lawmakers in deciding to move all training to a single remote site in the New Mexico desert after Labor Day.

According to several industry sources who spoke with CongressDaily on the condition they or their firms would not be named because of the still-pending contract award, TSA bought Glocks for the first training class through an open-ended contract between the Austrian firm and the Secret Service.

TSA officials then began looking for another federal contract with Glock on which they could piggyback for larger, extended purchases, these sources said. Although TSA officials initially favored buying revolvers-which trainers recommended as being easier to maintain and use in the confined space of a cockpit, sources said-they decided late last year that a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun should be the pilots' standard firearm-in particular, a law enforcement model capable of firing a magazine of 12 or more hollow-point bullets.

The decision caught Smith & Wesson by surprise, which was preparing to offer TSA its line of revolvers. Company executives met with TSA officials in January and, according to one well-informed source, "waved the flag a bit" to argue that Smith & Wesson, which reverted from British to American ownership two years ago, should have a fair shot at supplying the guns-in-cockpits program.

Then Glocks were handed out to the first class of pilots in April, so Smith & Wesson executives visited Hayworth's office to complain that TSA might not seek open competition for a long-term handgun contract. That, they argued, would shut out the only U.S.-owned manufacturer of .40-caliber pistols who was seeking to participate in the competition.

A Hayworth spokesman confirmed the meeting took place, adding that the issue was handled "at the staff level."

"We called over [to TSA] to express our concern about the initial [procurement] process," Hayworth spokesman Larry Van Hoose said.

Soon afterward, TSA announced it was soliciting bids for handguns "under full and open competition." Van Hoose observed, "That's all Smith & Wesson wanted."

But the kind of gun TSA described in its solicitation on May 22 was so specific-it must have, for example, a "completely concealed hammer" without a "spur," a minimum 12-round magazine of a certain size with the "spring tension" of 10 coils, and an ability to fire 10,000 rounds without breaking down-that many potential bidders cried foul. Among them were Beretta, SigArms and other handgun suppliers to U.S. military services and law enforcement agencies. Some pointed out that federal air marshals who work for TSA aboard commercial airliners carry SigArms pistols with visible hammers.

The agency also invoked an arcane "Buy American" executive order that made guns from Italian (Beretta), Austrian (Glock) or other foreign firms ineligible, but exempted Russian- and Chinese-made weapons. Adding to the firestorm was TSA's insistence that the first 200 guns from an initial order of up to 2,400 be delivered by July 1, a date that has slipped several times.

"There is no gun company in the world that can deliver 200 guns by [the latest deadline of] July 9th, with only a few weeks notice, unless they had prior knowledge of the contract award," protested an unidentified company in an exchange of questions and answers that TSA posted on the the FedBizOpps Web site for potential bidders. "It normally takes 45 to 90 days to make and deliver guns once an order is received. This is the industry standard," the protester wrote.

TSA wants to buy as many as 9,600 guns over the life of the contract, which would expire Sept. 30, 2006. With .40 caliber pistols costing about $500 each in the commercial market, the contract may be worth $4.8 million to the winner, although industry sources said the bragging rights may prove more valuable to a company's business than the revenues.

On June 12, Beretta filed a motion with a federal mediator to suspend the contracting process, citing "a range of restrictive and ... strange and inexplicable requirements" for the handguns.

The specifications may have been written "to thwart congressional intent" that TSA train and arm airline pilots, or were "so narrowly tailored" so that only one firearm could qualify, Jeffrey Reh, general counsel at Beretta's U.S. headquarters in Accokeek, Md., charged in the motion.

Reh sent copies of the motion to House Transportation and Infrastructure Aviation Subcommittee Chairman John Mica, R-Fla., whose panel oversees TSA, and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., in whose district Beretta is based, but aides to the lawmakers said neither of them intervened in the dispute.

Later that afternoon, TSA abruptly announced it was dropping all of its controversial requirements, deleting those for the concealed hammer and magazine coils, cutting the initial delivery to 50 guns and waiving the "Buy American" provision.

"When we filed our protest, the TSA was very prompt in meeting with us," Reh said in an interview this week. "At this point, we're satisfied."

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TSA firearms training changes trigger Hill outcry

Richard H.P. Sia — Wed, 09 Jul 2003 00:00:00 -0400

"They're not happy campers on the Hill," Mica said in an interview, referring to himself and his colleagues.

Mica lambasted the Transportation Security Administration, which Congress tapped last November to run the guns-in-cockpits program.

"There are members who are upset the agency turned it into a bureaucratic, costly endeavor-and we want something simple," Mica said.

Mica, an architect of the airline security program, threatened to stop the move legislatively, saying emphatically that "there will be a directive through the security bill in the [Federal Aviation Administration] reauthorization, now in conference, or by working with appropriators" to insert a rider to a spending bill.

"There's significant opposition" in Congress to moving the training classes to the single location in New Mexico, he added.

The TSA will move its training classes because the Georgia facility, one of several Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers across the country, cannot handle the program's anticipated growth, a spokeswoman at the TSA regional office in Scottsdale, Ariz., told CongressDaily late last week.

Under what is officially known as the Federal Flight Deck Officer program, the TSA has trained and certified only one class of 44 pilots in firearms use to defend their cockpits from terrorists or other dangerous intruders. Those pilots, who have been sworn in as law enforcement officers, graduated in April.

Mica said he and his subcommittee learned of the relocation plans in a heated closed-door meeting two weeks ago with retired Coast Guard Adm. James Loy, the TSA administrator.

Aides to Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., in whose district the current training activities are located, said Georgia lawmakers first learned of a possible move when USA Today reported June 6 that TSA was offering its trainers the chance to relocate to New Mexico, where it said the agency planned to hold all future firearms training classes for pilots.

The aides said Kingston, who was en route to Washington Tuesday, was angry and frustrated that he and his staff picked up some details from training center officials in Georgia but could not get anything confirmed by TSA headquarters.

On June 30, the agency added to the uncertainty when it issued a little-noticed news release announcing that six-day training classes would resume July 20.

"Classes will be conducted at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center's campuses in Glynco, Ga., and Artesia, N.M.," the TSA release said.

But late last week, Suzanne Luber at TSA's regional office confirmed to CongressDaily that all classes at the Georgia site would end by Labor Day.

"We'll move classes to Artesia in September," Luber said, explaining that the amount of firearms training at the Georgia facility has been "growing exponentially," crowding out the classes for airline pilots, which are expected to increase in size and frequency in fiscal 2004.

The New Mexico site is better suited for the TSA program, Luber added.

"We have three airplanes on the ground and we do our federal air marshal training there," she said.

Last May, Duane Woerth, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, urged TSA to examine the availability of other federal law enforcement training facilities, including the one in Artesia, so pilots who volunteer for the training can travel to the nearest site.

Officials at the labor union declined to comment on the move to Artesia, although some pilots have groused about the inconvenience of the desert location, accessible only by car after flying a small plane to Roswell, N.M. Under the program, pilots must pay their own travel, lodging and daily expenses.

Mica accused TSA of failing to respond to a consensus view in Congress that also supports using multiple locations, but with a clearly defined role for private instructors under federal supervision.

"We want a dispersal of training at federal facilities and we want it open to competition in the private sector," he said.

Refresher courses for the twice-a-year recertification requirement should also be held at more than one site and with private contractors, Mica added.

Instead, TSA will move its own trainers across the country and continue to put pilots "through all the hoops" to earn the right to keep guns in their cockpits, Mica said.

"It makes no sense," he said.

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Hill interest keen as Air Force bases to get Boeing tankers

Richard H.P. Sia — Thu, 19 Jun 2003 00:00:00 -0400

The Air Force announced Wednesday that the 100 new KC-767 airborne refueling tankers it wants to lease from the Boeing Co. will be assigned to air wings based in Washington state, North Dakota and Florida.

The announcement not only helps protect their bases from the next military base-closing round in 2005, it allows the Air Force to shore up support from House and Senate appropriators as Congress prepares to review the service's controversial $16 billion deal to lease modified Boeing 767 jets. Critics of the deal, led by Senate Commerce Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., and several taxpayer watchdog groups, have branded it "corporate welfare" and "a profligate waste" of taxpayer dollars.

In posting a detailed "tanker roadmap" on its Web site, the Air Force said the first 32 KC-767 tankers would go to the 92nd Air Refueling Wing at Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane, Wash. The first planes would be delivered in fiscal 2006 and a flight-training center-part of a $200 million construction package-would be built at the base, which is Spokane County's largest employer.

The base is in the district of Republican Rep. George Nethercutt, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee with Rep. Norman Dicks, D-Wash., a longtime advocate for Boeing from the Seattle-Tacoma area. With Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, they will be counted on to help line up support for the tanker lease, which must be approved within 30 days of its formal submission by the Air Force.

Thirty-two other KC-767s would go to the 319th Air Refueling Wing at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., by fiscal 2009 with $176 million for related construction projects. One of the state's senators, Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan, sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee. By fiscal 2011, 32 more tankers will be sent to the 6th Air Refueling Wing at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Fla., with as much as $200 million for construction associated with the new aircraft. The base is in a district adjoining the one represented by House Appropriations Chairman C.W. (Bill) Young, R-Fla.

Four remaining tankers would serve as backup inventory for the fleet. Whether leased or bought, larger, more sophisticated airborne tankers are widely regarded as critical to sustaining the ability of the Air Force, Navy and Marines to launch air combat missions on short notice anywhere in the world.

For its part, Boeing has broadened its base of support for the lease agreement by announcing that it will create 2,300 jobs, including roughly 1,000 at its plant in Wichita, Kan., where the 767s built in Everett, Wash., will be outfitted as refueling tankers. Indeed, initial word that the Pentagon had approved a leasing deal was leaked last month by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., one of the plan's boosters on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In addition, the Wichita-based 22nd Air Refueling Wing at McConnell Air Force Base will receive 15 more KC-135 "R model" tankers by 2011, enlarging its fleet to 72 planes and making it less likely to be closed.

Under the plan, Robins Air Force Base near Macon, Ga., will lose its refueling tankers beginning in 2010, but Air Force officials have assured lawmakers, including Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., that four advanced command-and-control planes called MC2As will take their place.

The idea of a long-term lease has been controversial ever since the Air Force asked Congress for permission to negotiate a lease with Boeing to replace the military's aging, rusting fleet of KC-135E tankers. Federal budget rules usually favor buying over leasing as the least costly way to acquire military hardware, but Congress gave the green light to the service in its fiscal 2002 defense spending bill, apparently convinced a lease could deliver new tankers faster and with fewer risks to the Air Force than outright purchases.

Since then, McCain, who has consistently opposed a lease, has strengthened his case by citing analyses by the GAO, CBO and ex-OMB Director Mitch Daniels showing that a long-term lease would be significantly more expensive than a direct purchase of tanker aircraft or an overhaul and upgrade of the 127 KC-135Es. With Boeing struggling through an industry downturn and flagging sales of its 767 passenger jets, he has argued that the Air Force deal is really a Boeing "bailout."

"In all my years in Congress, I have never seen the security and fiduciary responsibilities of the federal government quite so nakedly subordinated to the interests of one defense manufacturer," McCain, whose committee will soon hold a hearing on the deal, said recently. "Indeed, any objective analysis of the deal would conclude that the sole purpose served by this lease is to maximize the profits of Boeing, with the consequent underfunding of other defense priorities."

Meanwhile, House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., told Bloomberg News Wednesday that he needed more information to justify leasing the tankers, and planned to hold a hearing on the issue next Tuesday.

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Senate panel prods agencies to share intelligence

Richard H.P. Sia — Fri, 02 May 2003 00:00:00 -0400

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted unanimously Thursday to approve an intelligence authorization bill for fiscal 2004 that attempts to improve the sharing and analysis of critical information among intelligence agencies.

The bill provides the funding necessary to establish a single governmentwide terrorist watch list, according to information released by the committee at the end of its closed-door markup. It also provides increased funding to standardize databases to facilitate access to information.

In addition, the bill requires the director of central intelligence to conduct a pilot program "to determine the feasibility and advisability of permitting intelligence analysts access to raw intelligence from the databases of other elements of the community," the committee said in its news release. The ultimate goal will be to achieve "all source fusion of data," the panel said.

"One thing which was clear from last year's joint [House and Senate] inquiry into the intelligence breakdown prior to September 11th is that collected intelligence is only as good as this nation's ability to properly analyze, fuse and disseminate it," Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said in a prepared statement. "We are better than we were on 9/11, but we still have a long way to go. I think this bill moves the intelligence community in the right direction."

The need to improve government information sharing was one of the principal findings of the congressional inquiry into the events leading up to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A report released Wednesday by the General Accounting Office found that the government still lacked any standardized or centralized method to monitor suspected terrorists. GAO found 12 different "watch lists" with "overlapping but not identical sets of data and different policies and procedures [that] govern whether and how these data are shared with others."

Coincidentally, a new Terrorist Threat Integration Center-perhaps the most visible of President Bush's initiatives in the classified budget-opened Thursday in a temporary location at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Consistent with congressional demands for improvements in the sharing and analysis of information among intelligence agencies, the center is supposed to monitor threat information gathered by the CIA and FBI and allow these two rival agencies some access to each other's data. But with many operational details still to be worked out and lots of technical hurdles to overcome involving different databases, it is expected to take more than a year for the center to function effectively.

Besides addressing policy and resource constraints that limit information sharing and intelligence analysis, the Senate committee said the authorization bill also "lays the basis for more fundamental reforms by requiring the executive branch to review and report to Congress on issues such as the need to revise executive orders and security policies consistent with improved information sharing in the computer age."

"Other provisions assist the director of central intelligence by providing additional management flexibility for personnel and construction issues and by eliminating a number of recurring and burdensome congressionally directed reports," the committee said.

In particular, the committee said it approved provisions that:

Relieve the director of central intelligence of notification obligations for certain construction projects. The current director, George J. Tenet, who also heads the Central Intelligence Agency, asked for these authorities to expedite construction projects which might be necessary to protect U.S. interests, the committee said.
Authorize $8 million to the "Community Management Staff" to establish a program similar to the military's Reserve Officers Training Corps to encourage college students to pursue careers as intelligence analysts.
Permit Defense Department intelligence agencies to award personal services contracts to acquire, on short notice, critically needed personnel such as linguists and experts on weapons of mass destruction.
Require a report on intelligence lessons learned in Iraq.

"This nation has been and remains at war and I believe that this bill reflects that reality," Roberts said. "We have tried to correct some problems without unduly interfering with the intelligence community's ability to prosecute the war in Iraq or the war on terrorism."

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the committee's vice chairman, described the bill as "a bipartisan effort to support the needs of the intelligence community, while pressing it to move forward on important reforms."

"My goal with this bill is to take the first step in improving information sharing, collaboration, and domestic intelligence," Rockefeller said in a prepared statement. "And, through funding, oversight, and language in the bill, I believe this goal was achieved."

Details of what the government spends annually on intelligence activities have been a well-guarded secret for more than 50 years, although the CIA's Tenet voluntarily revealed five years ago that overall spending at that time totaled $26.7 billion. Some experts outside the government estimate that total annual spending has climbed to well over $30 billion, especially since Congress boosted funding for intelligence activities by $3 billion to $5 billion immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and by roughly $2 billion to $3 billion last year.

More than 80 percent of the money in the bill goes to the Defense Department, and the rest is apportioned among the CIA, the National Security Agency, and other smaller federal agencies.

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Pentagon warns consumers on Iraqi leader playing card sellers

Richard H.P. Sia — Tue, 15 Apr 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Why? Because despite claims by some sellers on the eBay auction Web site that a friendly government contractor discreetly released several thousand decks to them, the Defense Intelligence Agency actually made only 200 decks for distribution to select U.S. forces in Iraq to aid in the hunt for senior Iraqis, a knowledgeable Defense official told CongressDaily.

And to satisfy growing public curiosity and demand for the cards, the full set has been available to download and print for free since last Friday using links appearing on the Web sites of both the Defense Department and U.S. Central Command. The set can be downloaded in different sizes and formats, including a single 11-inch by 22-inch sheet in an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file.

Since Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, a Central Command spokesman, disclosed at a news briefing in Doha, Qatar, that soldiers were given decks of cards showing "key regime leaders who must be pursued and brought to justice," public demand for the cards has soared.

The number of auctions for the decks more than doubled on eBay in the last 24 hours, with more than 190 auction listings on Tuesday, some involving sellers who claim to have more than 2,000 decks for sale. Some sellers, including a few from coalition partners in the war Great Britain and Australia, are offering .pdf files that can be e-mailed to buyers, while others are selling uncut sheets of cards, electronic sets "burned" onto compact discs or purported "casino quality" decks for more than $100 apiece.

DIA itself has been inundated with e-mail requests for the cards on its public Web page. The Central Command site offers a link to its own .pdf file but warns, "The cards are not available for sale or distribution."

"It's definitely a case of 'buyer beware,'" said the Defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said the agency initially considered hiring a leading playing-card manufacturer to make thousands of decks for distribution in the war zone but chose instead to distribute only 200 decks to troops with "a need to know"-presumably U.S. special operations forces in Iraq.

"We printed them ourselves," the official said, adding that the cards are not plastic-coated and likely would wear out after only a few games of poker. Defense officials said they have no plans for any additional printing runs or any "authorized" release of the card decks for public sale.

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House panel to apply 'lessons learned' in Iraq to defense procurement

Richard H.P. Sia — Fri, 11 Apr 2003 00:00:00 -0400

"The president's program is a recommendation, but we can change some priorities," Hunter said in an interview. His subcommittee chairmen are already "scrubbing" the administration's requested $380 billion defense budget to find savings that would free up more money for "modernization," especially the procurement of cutting-edge weapons technology, stealthy bombers and tanks, he said. "We're working on a package," he said, declining to specify any figures his group has in mind. "There's some shaping we can do."

The U.S. military's swift advance toward Baghdad through the use of massive airpower in conjunction with heavy tanks and special operations forces affirmed what Hunter called his own preference for spending more on stealthy, "deep-strike" capabilities as well as "heavy armor." He said he wants to spend more to stockpile plenty of precision munitions such as the bunker-busting Joint Direct Attack Munition, the satellite-guided bomb used recently to attack Iraqi leaders.

Two other priorities, Hunter added, are airborne-refueling tankers, which allow attack planes to complete long-range missions, and airlift capability to enable the rapid deployment of forces anywhere in the world. He mentioned in particular the modified Boeing 767 tankers, 100 of which may be leased soon by the Air Force, and the Boeing C-17 cargo plane that has seen considerable action in Iraq.

The Bush administration wants to buy 11 more C-17s at a cost of $3.6 billion in 2004, the third year of a four-year program to acquire a fleet of 60 planes. "We're trying to look at the industrial base now and get a handle on whether we can do more," Hunter said.

Pointing to the critical role of stealth aircraft in the war, Hunter raised the possibility of directing the Pentagon to produce a lower-cost version of the radar-evading B-2 bomber to improve the military's ability to strike deep in enemy territory.

Given the demanding, high-tempo operations over Iraq and the constant need to be ready for other potential conflicts, the bomber fleet needs to be bigger, he said.

Hunter said he wants to add another 50 bombers like the B-2 or a variant to enhance the Air Force's deep-strike capability. The Air Force now has 21 B-2 bombers in the fleet and plans to retire 31 of its older, less stealthy B-1B bombers, reducing the overall size of its bomber force, which also includes aging B-52s.

"I like armor," he added, saying he would like to add "a couple more" armored divisions to the Army. "I think there's a new appreciation for heavy armor [from] this operation [in Iraq]. We were able to move great distances at rapid speed, with low casualties and enormous firepower -- with heavy armor. And I think that's generated a new appreciation -- it certainly has for me -- for heavy armor."

About the size of the active-duty military, he declared he would "like to see a larger force," considering that long deployments in the war zone, especially among reservists, are likely to lead to a sharp drop in re-enlistments.

But he suggested that high personnel, operations and maintenance expenses might militate against a big increase in the 2004 budget. The Navy is already building ships that require smaller crews and cruise missiles that cost a fraction of the price of a Tomahawk, enabling the Navy to project more power, but at a smaller cost, Hunter noted.

Last year, the House committee tried to add 12,552 slots to the active-duty forces, but Defense Secretary Rumsfeld resisted, citing the long-term expense. After the CBO determined that the increase would cost more than $1 billion a year, the lawmakers agreed to allow Rumsfeld to increase active-duty forces by up to 3 percent.

The House Armed Services subcommittees have tentatively scheduled markup sessions for their portion of the defense budget from April 29-May 6, with Hunter convening the full committee session on May 7, a committee spokesman said Thursday.

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Senator asks Bush to consider drones for homeland use

Richard H.P. Sia — Thu, 10 Apr 2003 00:00:00 -0400

"The potential applications for this technology in the area of homeland defense are quite compelling," Warner said in a letter to the president.

Warner sent the letter Wednesday as a follow up to indications he gave CongressDaily in December that he would ask Bush to weigh the wider use of UAVs by civilian U.S. agencies responsible for homeland security. CongressDaily reported that an increasing number of federal agencies were independently pursuing plans to use UAVs as surveillance tools to guard against acts of terrorism in the United States.

Warner endorsed the use of long-endurance, land-based UAVs to support the Coast Guard, which must monitor more than 300 U.S. ports and 95,000 miles of waterways without neglecting other maritime missions. As part of its Deepwater modernization program, the service already plans to buy 69 high-speed drones that would take off vertically from the decks of its planned new National Security Cutters. The first deployment of UAVs is scheduled for 2006.

Warner also urged the president to consider allowing UAVs to monitor the safety and integrity of the nation's major oil and gas pipelines, and critical infrastructures such as dams, hydroelectric power plants, drinking water conduits and long-distance power transmission lines.

Raising the issue of privacy, Warner said, "It is essential that any examination of this concept address the real concerns we all share about the possible loss of privacy." But he also acknowledged that "there may be many detractors to the idea of using UAVs for other than military purposes based solely on the concerns regarding privacy."

In addition to privacy concerns, one of the current barriers to wider use of surveillance drones within the United States has been civilian airspace restrictions set by the Federal Aviation Administration. Warner hinted in December that if the president wanted UAVs to play a major homeland security role, the FAA would find a way to accommodate agencies that want to use them.

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F-14 upgrade effort for Iraq war wins plaudits on Capitol Hill

Richard H.P. Sia — Tue, 25 Mar 2003 00:00:00 -0500

This effort to get a new war-fighting capability out to the field quickly drew praise from aides to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and other lawmakers who have criticized the military's "procurement bureaucracy" for taking too long to develop and test new weapons and equipment for U.S. combat forces.

"Any effort to quickly equip our soldiers with the best technology available is obviously a step in the right direction," said a spokesman for House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee Chairman Curt Weldon, R-Pa. "While Congressman Weldon believes in rigorous testing procedures that are currently in place, there are always ways to streamline these processes."

A spokesman for Hunter said Hunter "would be pleased that, one, we've found a quick way to get a weapon into the field and, two, it allows the deployment of more precision munitions."

All 30 F-14D fighters participating in the war, aboard the aircraft carriers USS Theodore Roosevelt, USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Constellation, were modified about five to six months ahead of schedule after accelerated testing of a software upgrade yielded positive results, said Denise Deon, a spokeswoman for the Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, Md.

On Feb. 2, the Navy command put an upgrade support team to work aboard the Roosevelt to make the necessary changes to aircraft bomb racks and software and then sent the team to the other carriers, Deon said. Upgrades to all forward-deployed F-14Ds and the training of 90 aircrew and maintenance personnel were completed within 17 days, so each plane was capable of carrying four Joint Direct Attack Munitions-or JDAMs-by the time war began last Wednesday.

These satellite-guided bombs, along with cruise missiles, have been the primary weapons in the so-called shock-and-awe campaign against fixed targets in Baghdad, Basra and elsewhere in Iraq.

A Navy F-14D from the Constellation gave the upgrade its first "operational" test on March 1 when it destroyed a ground target while patrolling the southern no-fly zone over Iraq, said Lt. Cmdr. Danny Hernandez, a Navy spokesman. "We are using the JDAM F-14D capability right now in operations against Iraq," he said.

The F-14, featured in the hit movie "Top Gun" with its distinctive twin engines, supersonic speed and variable sweep wings, entered the Navy fleet in 1973, a product of the old Grumman Aerospace Corp. designed for air-to-air combat in all weather conditions. The most advanced model, the F-14D, was last delivered to the Navy in 1992 and is expected to be replaced by F/A-18E and F Super Hornets in about five years.

In the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict, the U.S.-led coalition swept the skies clean of Iraqi aircraft very early in the conflict, leaving at least two carrier-based squadrons of F-14s in the war zone without a major role to play for the rest of the conflict.

So Navy leaders decided after the war to devise removable bomb racks for F-14s that would let them carry up to four 2,000 pound MK-80 "dumb" bombs. Four years later, they added the LANTIRN targeting system to permit delivery of laser-guided bombs over Bosnia. When Tomcat pilots began training in late 1992 for air-to-ground missions, many dubbed their converted aircraft "Bombcats."

Last Friday, during a war briefing for Pentagon reporters, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, showed two videos of strikes by F-14D Tomcats against a missile support vehicle and an Iraqi missile storage facility in Basra. The bombs used probably were JDAMs as a result of the recent upgrades, Hernandez said.

"The Tomcat has proven itself time and again," said Navy Capt. Peter Williams, the naval command's F-14 program manager. "You could say that the cat has many lives, and once again we've added more capability to a mature platform."

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Lawmakers seek to stop next base-closing round

Richard H.P. Sia — Thu, 16 Jan 2003 00:00:00 -0500

"I'm just adamantly opposed to it, and I'll take every opportunity I can get to stop it," Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., said about the law in a telephone interview Tuesday from his district.

One of his Republican colleagues, Rep. Joel Hefley of Colorado, "is definitely opposed to the way the law is written and will use his subcommittee to look into this," said a spokeswoman. During last week's reorganization of the Armed Services Committee, Hefley was named chairman of the new Readiness Subcommittee, which will oversee the base closure process.

Their target is the fiscal 2002 Defense authorization law's section on base closures, which caused weeks of bitter wrangling in the hectic, post-Sept. 11, 2001, session of Congress and helped delay adjournment until Dec. 13, 2001, when a conference agreement was finally approved.

Before the compromise was reached, the House had opposed any base closings, and the Senate had backed a closure round in 2003 by a narrow 53-47 vote.

As enacted, the section requires the Defense secretary to submit a list of recommended closings and realignments to a nine-member Base Realignment and Closure Commission by May 16, 2005, well after the 2004 elections. The commission would have until Sept. 8, 2005, to add or subtract sites from the list.

Then, in a step similar to the process used to decide base closings in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995, both the president and Congress would have to accept or reject the entire list.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld must decide on the initial selection criteria by the end of this year, a deadline that is spurring Taylor and Hefley to action.

The base closing process was designed to limit the ability of parochial political interests to block attempts to cut spending on facilities of dubious value to the national defense.

The law also contains language prohibiting the White House from having private firms take up the work at a military facility slated for closure-a response to the Clinton administration's attempt before the 1996 presidential election to keep open two Air Force maintenance depots that were to be closed in the vote-rich states of Texas and California.

The Bush administration is eager to close as many installations as in the previous four rounds combined, reasoning that the billions of dollars used to maintain excess capacity would be spent better on improving the military's war-fighting capabilities.

For the 2005 round, the law requires the defense secretary to tie any base realignment and closure recommendations to future national security threats and anticipated fiscal 2006 troop levels and spending. The secretary must review the entire inventory of installations at home and overseas to look for "excess infrastructure."

This review puts at risk "every single facility," said Hefley's spokeswoman. She said her boss "thinks it's a whole waste of time; it creates more paperwork and causes more anxiety for the communities." She said Hefley did not necessarily oppose another round of closings, but "he does not support the way [the law] is right now."

"I'm pleased that someone who's his own man would at least try to change the process, if not repeal BRAC," said Taylor, when told of Hefley's position. Last year, Taylor blasted House Republican leaders for quashing his attempt to get a House floor vote on a proposal to kill the 2005 round of base closures.

Taylor said the U.S. war on terrorism could last years, making it necessary to assure the military has enough "surge capacity" to absorb any future expansion of force levels. "Should we need to expand, we've got the bases," he said. "But here we are-we've closed Cecil Field [a naval air station in Jacksonville, Fla., shuttered in 1999], and now we need it again," referring to an Army National Guard aviation unit's recent move there. "That's insane!"

Even as Taylor plots strategy to stop the next round of closings, he has been busy trying to persuade the Biloxi City Council not to grant a zoning variance for a high-rise development near Keesler Air Force Base.

Such "encroachment" on the base could lead to noise complaints to the base commander, who would have to impose flying restrictions on the pilots, Taylor argues. "Soon the Air Force starts not looking so fondly on the base," he said. "Keesler brings $1 billion to the local economy. We don't need to lose this base."

Other public officials elsewhere have been thinking ahead as well. In Oklahoma, which has not lost a base in the previous four rounds, the state Military Base Closure Prevention Task Force recently issued recommendations to help protect existing bases from encroaching development.

In Virginia, the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission reportedly awarded a $325,000 consulting contract to help devise "a winning strategy for protecting" the area's military bases.

New House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said last week he did not expect the base closing law to change, but he spoke before learning of Taylor and Hefley's intentions. Hunter was unavailable for further comment, but Taylor expressed confidence that the chairman-who has broken with GOP leaders in the past over trade and security issues and whose San Diego district has a large Navy presence-would be reluctant to block challenges to the law.

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House Armed Services chief backs increases for weapons, pay

Richard H.P. Sia — Fri, 10 Jan 2003 00:00:00 -0500

While that should be good news for defense contractors, Hunter told an afternoon news conference he would push Pentagon officials to set up a system that lets small vendors "challenge" current arms makers by offering technology that would be cheaper, better and delivered faster into the field than what might already be in the procurement pipeline.

This would bring competition to the existing system and "will put pressure on producers who have become too comfortable" selling "overpriced" and less innovative warfighting platforms and weapons to the Pentagon, the San Diego Republican explained.

Hunter also castigated the "procurement bureaucracy" for taking too long, sometimes "dozens of years," to bring new equipment to U.S. combat forces. "Some big success stories-like the Predator-occurred because the exigencies of war drew them into the theater," he said, referring to the pilotless surveillance and attack aircraft that has been deployed successfully in the overseas war on terror.

In addition, the new chairman said "bureaucrats" were too afraid of testing new weapons systems, suggesting that too much attention has been paid to the test failures of the ballistic missile defense system rather than the successes. "I want lots of tests," he said about weapons development in general.

Hunter said he wants to push spending levels for buying new weapons up to at least $90 billion a year, with particular emphasis on munitions and cutting-edge technology, plus new ships, vehicles and aircraft to replace aging stocks. The fiscal 2003 Defense appropriations bill, which Bush signed into law last month, allocates $71.6 billion for procurement, $10.7 billion more than the previous year's spending. "We still have a long way to go," Hunter said.

"Precision-[guided] munitions are expensive," he said, noting that multi-year purchase contracts and his suggested changes to the procurement process would lower their cost.

Citing recent reports that the president's fiscal 2004 budget will call for a $14 billion increase over current overall defense spending, Hunter said a $20 billion increase is "probably required to get us through the year," especially if the United States launches a war against Iraq. "There is a very strong case to be made for more money," mainly to modernize the armed forces, he said.

Despite successive years of pay raises for military personnel that exceeded raises for federal workers, a 6 percent pay gap still exists between soldiers and their civilian counterparts, Hunter added, vowing that his panel will work to close it.

He sidestepped a question on future military base closings, which the last Congress agreed would not be decided until 2005, after the next election. He chose instead to rail against environmental laws that he said hamper military readiness by restricting training exercises.

Hunter announced that Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., will be the full committee's vice chairman and chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee; Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., will be chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee; Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., will head the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee; Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y., will lead the Total Force Subcommittee; Rep. Terry Everett, R-Ala., will be chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee; and Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., will head the Projection Forces Subcommittee.

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Agencies see homeland security role for surveillance drones

Richard H.P. Sia — Thu, 12 Dec 2002 00:00:00 -0500

Incoming Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said in an interview Tuesday that he will ask President Bush to explore the possible deployment of such aircraft, known as unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, by civilian agencies responsible for homeland security.

The drones would be similar to those used in high-profile missions by the CIA and U.S. military to target suspected Taliban and al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. But unlike many of the UAVs deployed overseas, such as the one that fired a missile at a carload of suspected terrorists in Yemen last month, the drones flown for homeland security operations would not be armed with weapons, only cameras or sensors, several federal officials said.

"I think it would be very important that the president initiate a study on the future use of UAVs by elements of the federal government other than the military," Warner said.

Warner said he believes UAVs could be an effective means of watching the home front in the war on terror. But he acknowledged that "they're quite intrusive." Warner said concerns about individual privacy, such as those raised when the Pentagon offered to do aerial surveillance during the recent hunt for the Washington-area snipers, are "an open issue and should be addressed by the [president's] study."

Among the agencies now committed to deploying UAVs are the Coast Guard and Border Patrol, both of which are moving to the Homeland Security Department. Other non-Defense Department agencies, such as the Transportation Department, are in the early stages of exploring possible security roles for drones. Meanwhile, the Energy Department, which set up a UAV program in 1993 to study clouds and climate change, has been developing high-altitude instruments to measure radiation in the atmosphere.

Despite an industry rumor that the FBI is looking into UAVs at its Quantico, Va. facilities, an agency spokesman said there is no such activity.

Drones, which are controlled remotely on the ground, can hover over an area for hours, sometimes days, to provide accurate and timely information. In the war on terror, the military and CIA have used UAVs for reconnaissance, surveillance, targeting, bomb damage assessment and telecommunication relays over hostile areas, without risking the lives of aircrews. San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. has supplied the Predator, which can operate up to 25,000 feet, compared to the 40,000-foot ceiling of commercial airplanes. Northrop Grumman Corp. of Los Angeles has produced the still-experimental Global Hawk, which can fly up to 66,000 feet and rival the venerable U-2 spy plane in reconnaissance capabilities.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, interest in UAVs among federal agencies has swelled, industry sources said. "There's been a lot more activity over the last couple of months," said one manufacturing executive who asked not to be named. "It's been really intense. We're doing things now that we wouldn't have been doing a year ago."

"These [UAVs] are hot," said Daryl Davidson, executive director of the Association for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems International. Marketers for Boeing, Northrop Grumman and other top U.S. defense firms have been busy talking to agencies about civilian applications of UAV technology, he said.

Indeed, Boeing, which received a defense contract earlier this year to develop a fuel-cell propulsion system for UAVs, hopes to sell to civilian agencies high-endurance drones that can fly for weeks instead of days, said Chick Ramey, a company spokesman. Lockheed Martin has been shopping around its small Sentry Owl, which the Air Force has used to provide surveillance at air bases, as a tool for property monitoring and pipeline security.

At the Transportation Department, Ellen Engleman, administrator for Research and Special Programs, said she will host a conference on UAVs and transportation security early next year. Her agency began working with NASA nearly four years ago to develop high-altitude sensors, at first to monitor traffic flow and help highway planners but also now to follow trucks carrying hazardous cargo and watch for "irregular activity" at major pipelines, according to her spokesman, James Mitchell.

"UAVs could be very valuable to enhancing security, as long as you can get a real or near-real time look at the pipes with some sensors that can detect irregular activity," Mitchell said. At Engleman's direction last April, the agency solicited research proposals for using UAVs to monitor pipelines but so far has failed to find an acceptable submission, he said.

Last month, the Coast Guard's prime contractor for its $17 billion Deepwater modernization program began formal contract talks with Bell Helicopter Textron to buy the first eight Eagle Eye UAVs, part of a fleet of 69 high-speed drones that would take off vertically from the decks of the service's planned new National Security Cutters. Beginning in 2006, these drones would be used to locate drug runners, illegal migrants or boaters in distress, a Coast Guard spokesman said. Plans also call for the deployment by 2016 of seven Global Hawks for high-altitude maritime surveillance missions.

In August, the Border Patrol, aided by three Pioneer UAVs operated by the U.S. Marines, nabbed about 100 pounds of high-grade marijuana and several people who were trying to smuggle it across the Canadian border into Idaho. Mario Villareal, a Border Patrol spokesman, said an interagency surveillance operation was launched in July after the Forest Service detected illegal entries along the Idaho border. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who observed the Border Patrol operation, asserted recently that the smugglers had been sending their drug proceeds "back to Muslim groups in Canada, and the money is used to finance terrorist activities all over the world."

Since 1999, the Border Patrol and military services occasionally have teamed up for UAV surveillance demonstrations along the Mexican border near Laredo, Texas, according to industry officials. Villareal said his agency had no plans to buy its own surveillance drones, explaining that working with trained military UAV operators along both the southern and northern borders has proven to be effective. Asked if his agency expected to make greater use of UAVs, he replied: "I wouldn't rule it out."

Tancredo is delighted that military UAVs are supporting the Border Patrol's security mission. An outspoken advocate of using military muscle along the border, Tancredo declared, "We have the technology to aid in this. I saw it with my own eyes. It can work."

A spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services research and development subcommittee, offered more conditional support, emphasizing that the technology must work and civilian agencies seeking to buy UAVs must use their own money, not the military's.

Besides money, regulatory and reliability hurdles must be overcome before UAVs can fly homeland security missions, market analysts said. The industry has been talking with the Federal Aviation Administration about simplifying the process for authorizing UAV flights in U.S. civilian airspace, but "it's going to take a while to get there," said Davidson, the trade group executive.

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Panel extends Air Force memorial deadline

Richard H.P. Sia — Thu, 29 Jun 2000 00:00:00 -0400

A House Resources subcommittee voted Tuesday to give the Air Force Memorial Foundation five more years to build a memorial in the Washington area.

The bill (H.R. 4583), which the Subcommittee on National Parks and Public Lands approved by voice vote, amends the 1993 law (P.L. 103-163) authorizing an Air Force memorial to extend its expiration date to Dec. 2, 2005.

During the brief markup session, the bill's sponsor, Subcommittee Chairman James V. Hansen, R-Utah, observed that the measure was "noncontroversial." Indeed, it generated no discussion or debate.

The same could not be said about the memorial itself.

The memorial, a tribute to past, current and future Air Force personnel as well aerospace veterans of the Signal Corps, Air Service, Air Corps and Army Air Forces, has been planned for a site near Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington. But its proximity to the Iwo Jima Memorial, the venerable symbol of the U.S. Marine Corps some 600 yards away, and its placement on a lower elevation along Arlington Ridge has generated protests from within the Air Force community.

At an annual Air Force Memorial Foundation dinner in March, Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Ryan defended the site by saying that the planned memorial "is a fitting tribute to the sacrifices made by airmen throughout history. It is also fitting this particular memorial be erected close to Arlington National Cemetery and to Ft. Myer, [Va.] the location of the first military flight, and close to the resting place of the first military aviation casualty."

The memorial is an abstract sculpture based on the Air Force star and designed to evoke the idea of air and space to embrace and include all air personnel, according to Chuck Link, Air Force Memorial Foundation president. The foundation has raised at least $20 million, two-thirds of the project's estimated $30 million cost. Groundbreaking is tentatively set for December, with completion expected in 2002.

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Bill to merge management reports approved

Richard H.P. Sia — Thu, 15 Jun 2000 00:00:00 -0400

Federal agency heads would have the authority to consolidate an assortment of legally-required financial and performance management reports under a bill that cleared the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday.

The bill, S. 2712, which would take effect in fiscal year 2002, would affect such reports as the audited financial statements required under the Chief Financial Officers Act and performance reports under the Government Performance and Results Act. Deadlines for submitting single consolidated reports would be set at 150 days after the end of an agency's fiscal year, generally March 1.

Under the bill, an agency head could consolidate various legally-required reports into one annual report to the President if this "will enhance the usefulness of the reported information to decision-makers." The agency head would have to consult first with the Office of Management and Budget and the relevant Congressional committees.

Committee Chairman Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., and Ranking Member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., introduced the measure only two days ago.

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Senators seek to jump-start presidential transitions

Richard H.P. Sia — Thu, 15 Jun 2000 00:00:00 -0400

A bill designed to help newly-elected Presidents and their senior appointees "hit the ground running" upon taking office passed the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday.

The bill, S. 2705, which the committee approved by voice vote, amends the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 to help members of the incoming administration quickly familiarize themselves with their new responsibilities and surroundings during the transition period before inauguration. This would be done with briefings and orientations for individuals in line for senior executive branch appointments.

Although similar to a House-passed measure, H.R. 3137, sponsors of the Senate bill-Committee Chairman Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., and Ranking Member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.-went further by including a requirement that a "transitions directory" be compiled to give top White House aides and prospective appointees key agency and administrative information.

"There are only 73 days from Election Day to Inauguration Day, Thompson said. "The President-elect must have the ability to immediately put a new team in place and that team should have access to the critical information it needs to be ready to take over the management of the federal government on Inauguration Day.

The Senate bill also requires the Office of Government Ethics to prepare a report suggesting ways of "streamlining, standardizing and coordinating the financial disclosure process." Proposals in this report should "ease the burden of financial disclosure on executive branch nominees," according to a committee news release distributed to reporters during the meeting.

A policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank, seized on this provision in hailing the bill. "The nomination process is grueling," said Virginia L. Thomas, a Heritage senior fellow in government studies.

"Along with the paperwork, potential appointees must undergo a complete background check and fill out additional forms when the nomination reaches the Senate committee," she said. "A nominee may also be required to provide further information to specific agencies or departments. Attracting committed and qualified people to serve in government will become less of a task if this bill becomes law."

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Senate panel votes to allow TSP rollovers

Richard H.P. Sia — Thu, 15 Jun 2000 00:00:00 -0400

Legislation designed to enhance the ability of federal employees to save for their retirement by bolstering the Thrift Savings Plan cleared the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs Wednesday.

The bill, H.R. 208, aims to bring the savings plan more in line with 401(k) plans offered by private companies by allowing new employees to roll over any savings accumulated as part of a retirement plan under their previous employer into the plan. Current law allows those transfers for 401(k) programs but not for the savings plan.

The legislation also would allow new and re-hired employees to join the savings plan and contribute funds as soon as they begin work, eliminating the current six to twelve month wait.

Bill supporters cite an increasing insecurity among federal employees about their retirement, in part because of the downsizing that has occurred in recent years. They also note that about one-half of all heads-of-households in their late 50s have less than $10,000 in net financial assets.

When the bill worked its way through the House last year, House Civil Service Subcommittee Chairman Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., called the measure "noncontroversial" and noted that the President's fiscal year 2000 budget contained a similar proposal. Past versions of the same measure, he said, had twice passed muster with congressional committees, but they included features that made them more costly and did not ultimately get enacted.

The House bill includes a provision requiring federal agencies to provide offsets within their budgets to compensate for the decrease in tax revenue that will result from their employees taking advantage of the bill's new investment opportunities. But the bill also prohibits agencies from dipping into salary and benefits accounts to pay for the costs of the program.

The Senate committee agreed by voice vote to an amendment by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, who sought to resolve problems involving refunds of retirement contributions, especially during divorce proceedings. Under current law, an individual in the middle of divorce proceedings can withdraw his or her retirement contributions and effectively terminate any right to an annuity based on service.

"State courts often do not realize that merely awarding a survivor annuity or a portion of an employee's annuity, without also issuing a specific order barring payment of a refund, will not prevent payment of a refund that will terminate those annuity rights," Akaka said in a prepared statement.

His amendment would block payment of a lump-sum refund if the Office of Personnel Management has received a notice that a court order bars payment of the refund in order to preserve the court's ability to award retirement benefits to the former spouse, or if payment of the refund ends any entitlement to the benefits.

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Bill on long-term care, retirement errors advances

Richard H.P. Sia — Thu, 15 Jun 2000 00:00:00 -0400

A bill that would let the federal government use its purchasing power to negotiate discounts on long-term care insurance for federal employees won approval by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday.

The bill, S. 2420, which has strong bipartisan support and passed easily by voice vote, would create a benefit program in which one or more insurance carriers would offer private long-term care coverage to federal workers, active-duty military personnel and both civilian and military retirees. It also permits policyholders to extend coverage to their spouses and children, including adopted children, stepchildren and stepparents.

As in a similar noncontroversial House bill, H.R. 4040, which passed the House on a rules suspension May 9, federal workers would pay the full premium and the insurance would be fully portable.

On a voice vote, the committee adopted an amendment offered by Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., that essentially added the text of the proposed Federal Erroneous Retirement Coverage Corrections Act, S. 1232, a bill providing relief to federal employees and their families who, through no fault of their own, became victims of retirement coverage mistakes.

The corrections bill, which had passed the full Senate last Nov. 3, addresses problems that arose after the federal government made a transition from the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) to the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) in 1984.

"As government agencies carried out the complex job of applying two sets of transition rules, errors occurred, and thousands of employees were placed in the wrong retirement system-many learning that their pensions would be less than expected," a Senate committee report on S. 1232 said.

In addition, since most of the retirement coverage errors have involved employees wrongfully placed in the CSRS or a third retirement system called the CSRS-Offset system, employees whose coverage is corrected often have not participated in the Thrift Savings Plan, part of the three-tiered FERS that allows employee contributions similar to those made to 401 (k) plans in the private sector. Current law requiring the automatic correction of a retirement coverage error can have a harmful impact on an employee's financial ability to plan for retirement, the Senate report said.

The Senate committee's addition of the corrections bill is expected to give victims of the retirement errors the chance to maintain their expected level of retirement benefits without a change in their retirement savings and planning. For employees who do not have the financial resources to make the retroactive savings plan contributions necessary to maintain their expected level of retirement benefits under FERS, the legislation would give them equitable relief, according to the committee. These workers would have the option of remaining in the CSRS-Offset system and receiving the retirement benefits they expected.

In addition, the legislation would provide certain employees who missed an opportunity to contribute to the Thrift Savings Plan due to a coverage error the opportunity to receive interest on their TSP make-up contributions.

The provisions for long-term care coverage call for the Office of Personnel Management to negotiate with insurance carriers in a competitive bidding process, with group discounts expected to come from that competition and the huge scale of the anticipated seven-year contracts.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced the long-term care bill in April as part of a legislative campaign to help consumers cope with the cost of long-term care. Committee documents assert that federal workers want the option to buy long-term care insurance, citing a "random survey" by OPM in 1997 showing that 86 percent of workers surveyed were interest in obtaining long-term care coverage.

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