ROCKET RACKET: HOW THE NEW MISSILE DEFENSE SCAM IS SCREWING THE PUBLIC, AGAIN. Whistleblower fired. Part 1
CONTRACTORS: COLSA Corp., Boeing, SY Technology,
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Rocket Racket: Biff Baker blew the whistle on abuse in the U.S. missile-defense program. Then, he got fired for it.
by Terje Langeland
The national missile-defense system is supposed to protect America against a nuclear attack. Biff Baker's job was to protect American taxpayers against getting ripped off by the agencies and contractors developing the system.
When he did his job too well, he says, he was fired.
Now, federal investigators are looking into Baker's allegations that agencies working on the missile-defense program are engaging in fraud, waste and abuse.
Baker of Colorado Springs, claims the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency and the Army Space and Missile Defense Command have been awarding sole-source contracts to a defense contracting company run by a retired high-ranking general, who at one point served as assistant vice chief of staff for the Army.
This, Baker maintains, not only raises questions about business dealings between current and retired command staff, but also violates federal regulations that require contracts to be awarded through a competitive bid process.
Baker, himself a former Army Space Command lieutenant colonel, says he discovered the questionable practices in late 2001 and early this year while working as a civilian employee on the missile-defense program. When he brought his concerns to the attention of a high-ranking missile-defense official in March, slanderous rumors about his personal character began circulating within days, he says.
Eight days later, he was fired.
At the very least, Baker maintains, the Department of Defense violated federal whistleblower laws, which prohibit retaliation against government employees who report official wrongdoing.
At worst, he claims, current and former military officers have conspired to misappropriate tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money.
Two U.S. senators have expressed strong interest in Baker's allegations, including Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., who has asked for inquiries into the matter by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress; and the Department of Defense's Office of the Inspector General.
"Obviously, we think it's very serious," Allard said.
Bang for the buck
A West Point graduate, Baker spent 22 years as an Army officer before retiring in August 2000. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and, in his last assignment, served as director of plans for the Army Space Command in Colorado Springs, one of the main agencies involved in developing a future missile-defense system.
After retiring, Baker went to work on a doctoral degree and began teaching at Colorado Technical University in the Springs.
Last fall, he received an offer to return to the missile-defense program, this time as an employee of Huntsville, Alabama-based COLSA Corp., a subcontractor working for the Department of Defense.
Baker's work was with COLSA's Independent Assessment Team, whose job was to inspect the work being done on a major segment of the missile-defense program, called Ground-based Midcourse Defense. The work on the GMD program is performed by Chicago-based defense giant Boeing under a $1.6-billion umbrella contract, and by numerous subcontractors.
Baker says his job was to make sure contractors did the work right, on time and on budget, and that taxpayers were getting the most bang for their bucks.
"I joined that job because I thought I could make a difference," Baker said. "I wanted the best system for the taxpayers."
For the most part, Baker found that work was being done by the book. But he would eventually discover a handful of contract arrangements that "smelled of shenanigans." Each of them involved work being performed by SY Technology, a California-based defense contractor with offices in several locations, including Colorado Springs.
Another thing the arrangements had in common was that each involved a contract being negotiated on a sole-source basis, rather than through competitive bidding.
SY Technology is run by retired three-star Gen. Jay Garner, who from 1994 to 1996 served as commander of the Space and Missile Defense Command outside Washington, D.C. The command does much of its missile-defense development work in Huntsville, Ala. and Colorado Springs.
Garner subsequently served as assistant vice chief of staff for the Army until his retirement in August 1997, after which he went to work as president of SY Technology.
SY Technology declined to discuss the contracts and work that Baker claims were improperly awarded to the company. "SY Technology is, for any number of reasons ... uninterested in debating legal and somewhat complicated issues in the newspapers," said Mike Fees, a Huntsville attorney representing the firm.
Double dipping
Baker says he was first alerted to the questionable contract arrangements in late December of 2001.
That month, the Space and Missile Defense Command announced that it intended to award SY Technology a five-year contract in the amount of $48 million for work on a portion of the missile-defense program known as the Site Activation Command, which will be responsible for the physical deployment of missile-defense systems.
The Space and Missile Defense Command indicated the contract was being negotiated on a sole-source basis because SY Technology was uniquely qualified to do the work. Baker disputes the notion, saying dozens of other contractors were equally qualified. By law, the work should have been put out for competitive bidding, Baker maintains.
Moreover, the announcement, posted on an official government contracting Web site, stated that SY Technology was being selected for the work as a "small business," under a set-aside provision in federal contracting laws. While it was technically a small business at the time, SY Technology was in the process of being acquired by a large New York-based holding company, L-3 Communications.
The proposed contract award has subsequently been contested by a rival defense contractor, DESE Research of Huntsville, which has threatened to take the matter to court.
Baker says he made his next discovery in January, when Boeing employees complained to him that SY Technology was also performing work that was supposed to be done by Boeing under its "umbrella" contract.
The employees told him both companies were being paid for the same work, consisting of training soldiers on how to use the computers and software that will eventually be the "brains" of the missile-defense system -- which, if it is ever deployed, will track and attempt to shoot down enemy ballistic missiles.
"The Department of Defense was being double-billed," Baker said. SY technology, he claims, was "double-dipping."
Waste to taxpayers
According to Baker, the work was subsequently taken away from Boeing entirely and given to SY Technology. Though he couldn't get a copy of SY Technology's contract, Baker says he believes it's valued at $20 million annually.
A spokeswoman for Boeing, Linda James, refused to comment on any aspect of Baker's allegations.
"If indeed this is under investigation, Boeing's policy would be not to discuss it with the press," James said.
However, a Boeing employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed part of Baker's account. "It's a fact that there was some training work that Boeing was under contract to do, and that was given to SY Technology to do, and our contract was changed," the employee said.
Baker says the contract was awarded by the Missile Defense Agency, a Pentagon office that serves as an "executive agent" for the missile-defense program by channeling funds to various commands working on the program. The agency -- which supplied only limited written answers to questions about Baker's claims -- said it's not correct that all work on the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program is to be done through Boeing. The government uses multiple contractors who sometimes do "parallel" work, it said.
U.S. Army General John W. Holly
"Boeing is not the only contractor working on this program," the agency maintained in a written statement.
However, in a previous telephone interview, agency spokesman Col. Rick Lehner said, "Boeing's responsible for doing all the work on GMD."
Baker also raised questions about the facility where soldiers were trained to use missile-defense computers and software, a place called the User Lab, located at SY Technology's Colorado Springs offices.
The User Lab opened its doors in January 2000 with an annual budget that Baker estimates at $3 million. It has since grown to perhaps $10 million, he believes. All of this is a waste to taxpayers, because Army Space Command already had a facility that served the same purposes, which it operated for about $150,000 per year, Baker maintains. And again, no one besides SY Technology was allowed to bid on the User Lab, he says.
The details of Baker's allegations could not be confirmed due to SY Technology's refusal to comment on them, and the failure of Space and Missile Defense Command officials to respond to most questions from the Independent. The command provided only a one-sentence, written reply in which it denied any intention to contract with SY Technology on the Site Activation Command work.
"The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command has not issued a contract, nor do we intend to issue one, for 'development, deployment, operation and sustainment of the Site Activation Command,'" the agency said in its written statement.
While agency officials did not make themselves available to explain what that means, the government's contracting Web site now states that "funds are not currently available" for the contract and that "no contract award will be made until appropriated funds are made available."
"Just totally shocked."
Baker says he passed along his concerns, and other minor findings, in regular reports to the Missile Defense Agency's Washington headquarters. However, he never heard back about his concerns.
"I was shocked that I wasn't getting a response," Baker said. "Just totally shocked."
He began to suspect that his reports weren't making it to the top levels of the agency.
On March 7, Baker seized an opportunity to speak with Gen. John W. Holly, a one-star general in charge of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program office at the agency. Baker attended a speech that Holly was giving at Schriever Air Force Base. Afterward, Baker, who had prepared a letter to Holly that described his concerns about improper contracting practices, approached the general, struck up a conversation and handed him the letter.
He recalls that Holly praised him for his work and promised him that his job would not be in jeopardy for blowing the whistle.
But shortly after, strange things began to happen. On March 11, Ken Grant, who was Baker's boss at the COLSA subcontracting company, called him to inquire about rumors that Baker had harassed a female employee working for one of the contractors in the program. Baker says he had "no clue" what Grant was talking about.
The female employee in question, Jennifer Brittenham, also told the Independent that Baker had never harassed her. "The truth is, he did not harass me in any way," she said.
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