Archive for May 3rd, 2008
Pentagon IG Finds Lack of Oversight and Security for Classified Into.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact Nick Schwellenbach, 202-347-1122
Pentagon IG: Joint Strike Fighter Classified Information “May Have Been Compromised”
Due to Lax Contractor Oversight by Pentagon Agency
Washington, D.C. – “The advanced aviation and weapons technology for the JSF [Joint Strike Fighter] program may have been compromised by unauthorized access at facilities and in computers at BAE Systems, and incomplete contractor oversight may have increased the risk of unintended or deliberate release of information to foreign competitors,” states a previously unreleased March 2008 Pentagon watchdog report obtained by the Project On Government Oversight through the Freedom of Information Act (page 12). DOD IG Report: http://pogoarchives.org/m/ns/dod-ig-report-20080306.pdf
The Defense Department Inspector General (DoD IG) report examines the Defense Security Service’s (DSS) lack of oversight of foreign-owned BAE Systems’ work on the Joint Strike Fighter, the world’s most expensive fighter program that utilizes highly classified U.S. technology. The DoD IG found that DSS was deferential to BAE by refusing the U.S. government access to information as required by a security agreement. This access is necessary to determine the security of U.S. government classified information. In addition, DSS often did not analyze BAE reports that had been made available to them.
“How can the Pentagon security agency allow BAE, its contractor, to deny access to these security records? This is government information and BAE is stiff-arming the Pentagon. Systemic problems at DSS mean we cannot be sure if contractors are protecting classified information as well as they should,” stated Nick Schwellenbach, POGO, National Security Investigator.
According to the report’s summary (pages 14-15):
DSS did not properly monitor BAE Systems’ submission of its security reports and appropriately evaluate BAE Systems security. DSS was unable to verify whether BAE Systems submitted the required security audit reports for 2001 through 2003.
BAE Systems stated that all information contained in the internal audits was privileged and not available to the Government, despite the requirement in the SSA [Special Security Agreement] that the contractor submits those reports to DoD for review and appropriate action. DSS did not challenge BAE Systems’ claim that the internal audits are privileged and not subject to Government review. Rather than treating contractors’ audit reports as useful tools to complement the industrial security assessments, DSS classifies all contractor reports as “routine correspondence” and destroys them after two years. DSS also authorizes the contractor to destroy any of its reports older than two years.
DSS has the authority and responsibility to enforce compliance with the National Industrial Security Program. DSS should use its oversight authority to make the contractor comply with security requirements. DSS cannot fulfill its responsibilities to “review and take appropriate action” over contractors if it does not receive those reports or analyze the reports it does receive. DSS needs to obtain and review copies of all independent annual audit reports, internal audit reports, and Government Security Committee annual reports from the contractor and use that information to monitor the contractor’s compliance with the SSA.
DSS’s systemic problems have been cited in two reports in 2004 and 2005 by the Government Accountability Office on the systemic inability of DSS to oversee contractors. In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on April 16, 2008, on DSS and the National Industrial Security Program, DSS Director Kathleen Watson admitted that when she began as director two years ago, DSS was “broken across the board.”
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For additional information:
2004 GAO Report, “Industrial Security: DOD Cannot Provide Adequate Assurances That Its Oversight Ensures the Protection of Classified Information,” link: http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/details.php?rptno=GAO-04-332
2005 GAO Report, “Industrial Security: DOD Cannot Ensure Its Oversight of Contractors under Foreign Influence Is Sufficient,” link: http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/details.php?rptno=GAO-05-681
April 16, 2008, House Armed Services Committee Hearing, “National Industrial Security Program: Addressing the Implications of Globalization and Foreign Ownership for the Defense Industrial Base,” webcast link: http://armedservices.edgeboss.net/wmedia/armedservices/fc041608.wvx
Founded in 1981, the Project On Government Oversight is an independent nonprofit which investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve a more accountable federal government.
Add comment May 3, 2008
Security of F-35 Jet Secrets Questioned
‘Incomplete’ Oversight May Have Allowed Leaks, Report Says
By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 2, 2008; D01
The technology going into the U.S. military’s newest fighter plane may have been compromised by unauthorized access to facilities and computers that belong to BAE Systems, one the aircraft’s builders, according to a report from the Pentagon’s inspector general made public yesterday.
The report did not identify specific leaks, but it said “incomplete” Pentagon oversight may have increased “the risk of unintended or deliberate release of information to foreign competitors.”
BAE, based in Farnborough, England, is one of two main subcontractors working on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and is building some of the plane’s electronic and weapons systems and parts of its body. Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin is the lead contractor on the roughly $300 billion program, which is being developed by the United States and eight foreign partners, including Britain. Northrop Grumman of Los Angeles is the project’s other main subcontractor.
In working on major aircraft, contractors have to share sensitive and classified information, and the government has safeguards in place for the use of it.
The Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a watchdog group, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the inspector general’s report, which was done to ensure that controls over classified technology and information on the F-35 were adequate and were being followed by the Defense Department. The report, which was completed in March, looked at selected data that related to the F-35 and found that the “government and its contractors appropriately controlled the export of classified [Joint Strike Fighter] technology to foreign companies.”
But the report criticized the Defense Department, saying it “did not always employ sufficient controls to evaluate potential unauthorized access to classified U.S. technology” on the F-35 program. The department’s Defense Security Service, which is supposed to help oversee the program, didn’t monitor BAE or evaluate its security systems, according to the report.
The DSS also couldn’t verify whether BAE had submitted required security audit reports for 2001 to 2003, the report said. As a result, the Defense Department’s “advanced aviation and weapons technology in the [Joint Strike Fighter] program may have been compromised by unauthorized access at facilities and in computers at BAE Systems,” according to the 55-page report, which had 16 pages blacked out.
In addition, the report said, BAE maintained that information in its internal audits was “privileged and not available” to the government, although there was a “special security agreement” that the contractor was to submit such reports to the Defense Department for review. The DSS did not question BAE’s assertion that the reports were off-limits to the government.
“This is government information, and BAE is stiff-arming the Pentagon,” said Nick Schwellenbach, national security investigator for POGO. “DSS failed in its oversight role to ensure that security improved. It is unknown if classified information was compromised, but it may have been, and if it was, weak Pentagon oversight was a contributing factor.”
Greg Caires, a spokesman for BAE, said the report “explicitly found no instances of unauthorized access to classified or export control information on the [Joint Strike Fighter] program.” He continued: “We strongly disagree with the IG’s suggestion that nonetheless, such information may have been compromised in some unidentified way by unauthorized access at BAE Systems.”
Cheryl Amerine, a Lockheed Martin spokeswoman, said, “The F-35 program, along with the Joint Strike Fighter program office, has put stringent measures in place with our partner companies and global supply chain to keep program information safe.”
The F-35 program is one of the most highly audited programs on record,” Amerine said, “and we know of no sensitive information that has been compromised as a result of findings in the referenced report.”
Add comment May 3, 2008
Boeing Machinist Elections Fraught with Improprieties and Questions
Spying, intrigue surround election of machinists at Boeing
Seattle Times aerospace reporter
Someone furtively shoots secret surveillance photos as a well-connected political lobbyist arrives for a meeting.
Inside, a mole takes notes and snaps quickly with a cellphone camera.
A third person drops documents and photos at a newspaper office.
No, it’s not a John le Carré spy novel. It’s election time at the Machinists union, representing 25,000 Boeing workers in the Puget Sound area and 2,500 more in Portland and Wichita, Kan.
This month’s contentious internal elections precede crucial contract negotiations that open May 9.
The president of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) District 751, Tom Wroblewski, is the successor to the leadership that in 2005 staged a monthlong Boeing strike.
Ronnie Behnke, a 30-year veteran machine-parts inspector in Auburn, leads an opposition slate called the Unity Coalition that seeks a less acrimonious relationship with Boeing.
Primary-like local lodge elections begin today and continues through May 14. Behnke hopes to challenge Wroblewski in the final June districtwide election.
Claims of election-law violations are routine in union contests. This time, supporters of the incumbent union leadership resorted to cloak-and-dagger tactics in an attempt to prove a violation by the other side.
The evening of April 22, their surreptitious efforts climaxed at a union council meeting where the mole came out from undercover and denounced the Unity slate for receiving guidance from Linda Lanham, a longtime Machinists union lobbyist who jumped ship in January 2006 to lead the state’s aerospace-industry organization, the Aerospace Futures Alliance (AFA).
Boeing provides about half of the AFA’s funding.
Son on ticket
Lanham’s son, Rick Humiston, is a union steward who is running on the Unity ticket. Lanham admits to attending Unity Coalition strategy meetings but insists, “I’m just supporting my son.”
Union leaders don’t buy that and bitterly object to Lanham’s involvement in an internal union election.
“She’s a corporate lobbyist,” Wroblewski said. “It’s totally inappropriate.”
Lanham spent 26 years as the IAM’s political director, becoming the powerful union’s voice in Olympia and gaining the ear of the state’s political elite.
But as AFA director, Lanham successfully lobbied in Olympia this year to kill legislation driven by the Machinists that would have limited anti-organizing activities by employers.
The union leadership sees her now as an opponent.
“We’re appalled we have to go down to Olympia to fight against Linda Lanham,” said Larry Brown, her successor as IAM political director.
“I cannot imagine that a majority of our members would want a group of candidates directed by … an industry lobbyist, to be running their union.”
In an interview, Lanham said she would like the Machinists union to join AFA to help promote jobs here, and she dismissed the idea she is working on Boeing’s behalf.
Lanham said she attended meetings of the Unity candidates but does not direct their strategy.
“If they ask me, I tell them what I think,” she said.
Behnke said she leads the opposition group, not Lanham.
“If I ask her, she’ll help me,” Behnke said. “I bounce ideas off her. She’s a good political strategist.”
“Neanderthal stance”
One of those ideas, Behnke said, is changing what she described as the incumbent leadership’s confrontational, “Neanderthal” stance toward Boeing.
“Threatening the company, in my opinion, is not a very smart business move,” Behnke said.
At last week’s meeting of the union’s district council at its South Park headquarters, Matt Moeller, a jet-engine inspector and union steward who was on the Unity Coalition ticket, asked to speak to the audience of about 150 Machinists.
Moeller rose and nervously read a statement revealing himself as a spy.
He said he had joined Behnke’s ticket only to investigate the extent of Lanham’s rumored involvement in the union election.
Moeller said that at three Unity candidate meetings he attended in March and April, Lanham took a leading role in discussions of the group’s election strategy, and urged them to be less confrontational with Boeing.
Snapping photos
As evidence, he snapped a cellphone photo of Behnke and Lanham sitting alone together at the front of the room, addressing the gathering.
Moeller’s revelation was greeted with raucous cheers and a standing ovation from supporters of the current leadership.
His erstwhile colleagues on the Unity slate were totally blind-sided, Behnke said.
In an interview the next day, Moeller said it had been difficult to stay undercover. Some Machinist friends of his from high school cold-shouldered him as a turncoat. And he didn’t feel good about the spying.
“It’s shady, I know,” he said. “I didn’t like doing that.”
Nevertheless, he said, he carried out the undercover effort because he thought Lanham was attempting to influence the election in a year of sensitive contract negotiations.
In an interview, Lanham called that idea “ridiculous.”
“The only reason I’m doing this is because my son is running,” Lanham said. “The rest is just garbage.”
Behnke called Moeller’s subterfuge “sad.”
“It’s a diversionary tactic by [the incumbent leadership] to try to sway this election.”
Moeller was not alone in spying on the Unity group.
Ed Lutgen, a union official who heads the steward program, took some 300 surreptitious photos of Lanham and others arriving at Unity Coalition meetings.
Another IAM staffer, union organizer Jesse Cote, who is a friend of Lutgen, also participated in the surveillance.
The morning before Moeller’s announcement at the council meeting, Cote delivered to a reporter some of Lutgen’s photos as well as an excerpt from federal labor law that bars officials of any “employer or association of employers” from providing “money or any other thing of value” to union members.
“I don’t want a corporate entity involved with our union politics,” Cote said. “They have no place there.”
When informed of the surveillance by Cote and Lutgen, Behnke was incensed.
“Who do they think they are, the CIA?” she said. “That’s pathetic.”
The federal agency charged with ensuring that union elections comply with labor law is the Office of Labor Management Standards.
Dennis Eckert, acting regional director of the agency, confirmed that employers and their agents are barred from supporting candidates in a union election, either with money, resources or even work on company time.
He declined to comment on Lanham’s involvement with the Machinists slate.
Eckert’s predecessor, John Heaney, did offer an assessment. Heaney retired from the agency two months ago and now works with a company called BallotPoint that helps unions ensure compliance with labor laws.
“If she is advising them as an individual citizen, she certainly can do that,” Heaney said.
“If she’s advising them in her capacity as a representative of an employer, that certainly raises some questions.”
Heaney said it would be a violation of the law if Lanham were using her AFA position to mold “a union that would be more palatable to Boeing.”
The key, he said, would be whether she used any AFA resources. Lanham insisted she’s been careful not to do so.
Union officials Cote and Lutgen said they, too, were careful to do what they did on their own time and not use union resources, which would also be illegal under federal labor law.
Both of them, as well as Moeller, insist they acted without direction from union leaders.
Boeing in a statement said the company is “neutral” in the union’s election.
“We’ll respect the choice of our employees and work with whomever they choose to represent them,” spokesman Tim Healy said.
Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com
Add comment May 3, 2008
