Time to go shopping.

[Guest guest]

http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2006/07/26/pentagon-sells-excess-military-gear-t\

o-anybody/

 

 

 

 

Would you like to start your own army, or perhaps

terrorist organization, but can’t quite get hold of

all the materials you need?

Looking to build weapons of mass destruction but the

parts for your chemical factory are too hard to find?

 

Not to worry, for now you can buy just about

everything you need.

 

From the U.S. Department of Defense.

 

At pennies on the dollar.

 

Auditors from the Government Accountability Office,

posing as private citizens, were able to purchase from

the DoD sensitive military equipment such as “ceramic

body armor inserts currently used by deployed troops,

a time selector unit used to ensure the accuracy of

computer-based equipment,

such as global positioning systems and system-level

clocks, a universal frequency counter used to ensure

that the frequency of communication gear is running at

the expected rate, two guided missile radar test sets,

at least 12 digital microcircuits used in F-14 Tomcat

fighter aircraft, and numerous other sensitive

electronic parts.”

 

And if that’s not enough,

DoD will just give away its excess inventory to

government contractors. For free.

 

Which means you, like the auditors, could just walk

into a warehouse, say you’re with some contractor or

other, and walk out with “two launcher mounts for

shoulder-fired guided missiles, several types of body

armor, a digital signal converter used in naval

electronic surveillance, an all-band antenna used to

track aircraft, six circuit cards used in computerized

Navy systems, and several other items in use by the

military services.”

That’s $1.1 million worth of stuff absolutely free for

the asking.

 

Oh, and some of this stuff is brand new. In testimony

before Congress Tuesday, Gregory D. Kutz, GAO’s

Managing Director of Forensic Audits and Special

Investigations, told of how auditors purchased for

pennies on the dollar brand new, unused equipment that

military units had to pay full price for.

 

We also made several undercover purchases of new,

unused A-condition excess DOD items, including

wet-weather parkas, cold-weather desert camouflage

parkas, a portable field x-ray processing enclosure,

high-security locks used to secure the back bay of

logistics trucks, a gasoline engine,

and a refrigerant recovery system used for servicing

automotive vehicles.

 

The items we purchased at DOD liquidation sales were

being ordered from supply inventory by military units

at or near the time of our purchases and for one

supply depot stocked item — the portable x-ray

enclosure — no items were in stock when we made our

purchase.

At the time of our purchase, DOD’s liquidation

contractor sold 40 of these x-ray enclosures with a

total reported acquisition cost of $289,400 for a

liquidation sales price of $2,914 — about a penny on

the dollar. In another example, we purchased a

gasoline engine in March 2006 for $355. The Marine

Corps ordered 4 of these gas engines from DLA supply

inventory in June 2006 and paid $3,119 each for them.

 

At the time of our undercover purchase, 20 identical

gasoline engines with a reported acquisition cost of

$62,380 were sold to the public for a total

liquidation sales price of $6,221. — DOD Excess

Property: Control Breakdowns Present Significant

Security Risk and Continuing Waste and Inefficiency

(PDF)

 

In a separate report (PDF) released Tuesday, GAO

documented many other purchases it made from DoD

excess inventory, something anyone can do by finding

the Web site where the inventory is sold.

It said that poor security at Defense Reutilization

and Marketing Office warehouses allowed anyone to walk

out with free stuff by claiming to be a government

contractor and that poor internal controls allowed

sensitive military equipment to make it onto

liquidation Web sites where anyone could buy it.

 

Needless to say, Congress hit the roof.

Rep. Christopher Shays, chairman of the House

Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats

and International Relations, called it “an outrage” at

Tuesday’s hearing.

 

But a 2003 GAO report not made available to the public

was even more explicit about the ongoing problem,

according to the Project on Government Oversight.

 

According to the report (PDF): “Many items needed to

establish a laboratory for making biological warfare

agents were being sold on the Internet to the public

from DOD’s excess property inventory for pennies on

the dollar, making them both easy and economical to

obtain. Although production of biological warfare

agents requires a high degree of expertise, public

sales of these DOD excess items increase the risk that

terrorists could obtain and use them to produce and

deliver biological agents within the U.S.” — Project

on Government Oversight

 

Yes, this really has been a problem for that long —

even longer, in fact.

I think it’s time to go shopping.