Fraud, Waste and Abuse

NOTE: The following information is aggravating. In an attempt to soften the impact I’ve decided to post some photos of local flowers. These have nothing directly to do with this post. Now that that point is cleared up please read on….

Waste fraud and abuse is the catch phrase for tax payers dollars needlessly squandered. There are mechanisms to report this… or I should say there were mechanisms to report this. Problem is, after seeing what has happened over the past 10 years I have no faith in those processes and procedures. Call me jaded if you will, I think of it as realism.

There is rampant stupidity in command decisions here at all levels. I’m told to wear body armor standing behind six foot thick dirt walls because of an imaginary fence line (the real line is the dirt wall… duhh!). Then I drive home (no body armor) along the perimeter road separated from any would be bad guys by a chain link fence. There are lines of up-armored Freightliner trucks sitting idle because someone forgot to order spare parts. Rather than designate a half dozen trucks for cannibalization should the need arise before the spares arrive they all sit. Up-armored, idle, unable to protect anyone. We have enough living containers and tents inbound in support of the surge to house twice the entire military presence in Afghanistan. These are being flown in rather than using surface transport. What the hell, it’s only US tax dollars.

Speaking of tax dollars, we are about to finish up a brand new facility for uploading and downloading fuel tankers. This project costing millions was engineered in the states. We have come to find out it was designed for stateside tankers as well. Tankers in the US have four inch download fittings and are designed to gravity download. Tankers in Asia use two or three inch fittings and are downloaded using pumps. Given the volume of trucks we process the ability to up and download at the same time is important. It’s too bad then that someone nixed one of the two pipelines between this facility and the fuel farm. The end result is that after spending a huge sum we are about to open a facility we won’t be able to use. Now that is a bit harsh. Allow me to soften the blow. We are about to open a state of the art facility that is less efficient than the ad hoc facility now in use. All of this because the designer ignorantly assumed the world at large was just like America!

The biggest insult here at Bagram is the situation at the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office (DRMO). Now in the states DRMO is where you turn in gear you don’t need or that is worn out. Units can pick up items from DRMO for free. It’s a great place to use as a supply source. I’ve outfitted a warehouse in Calif. with equipment from DRMO. All of it was free issue in great shape, probably saved tax payers $200K. If no one needs it and the equipment has military use DRMO will de-mil it, basically they destroy it. If the item can be sold, vehicles, ovens, tools, etc. they sell it at auction. It the item is scrap they sell that at auction as well. So, you may well ask why is all that a problem. As it goes, here at Bagram things work a bit differently. People in this theater, turn in lots of unused material. They turn in brand new engines, transmissions, tires, tools, pumps, generators, etc. In addition many damaged vehicles get turned in. These are MRAPS and up–armored Hunvees that are battle damaged. While partially destroyed these vehicles still have tons of vital parts in useable condition. Now, given that DRMO’s title contains the word “reutilization” one would think this is a great source for parts to get vehicles back on line for the war effort. You would think that but you would be wrong. The problem is that the contractor hired to run this operation is paid to keep the yard clear of items and to process scrap. So, the other day they took a plasma torch and cut nice little holes in a brand new truck transmission costing over $45,000. The box this tranny was in was still factory sealed (about a $2K box by the way). This was clearly waste, not fraud or abuse though because some idiot wrote the contract that is being executed by Taos, the DRMO contractor. It’s just like our fuel facility. Some bozo without a clue, sitting in the states, without any idea where Afghanistan even is wrote the contract. Does anyone else see a problem here?

The DRMO issue is particularly disturbing because we have also contracted out vehicle maintenance. AMC contracted AECOM to do that. The contractor doing that job is off the hook as long as parts are on order. It doesn’t matter if a vehicle is projected to be down for 400+ days! In many cases the required part is available at DRMO but the mechanic has no reason to go look. After all, why do more work than is required to satisfy the contract? As much as this attitude annoys me I can only get upset with the contracting officer that wrote such a flawed contract.

We have a Navy storekeeper in my office whose job it is to expedite parts. He has successfully identified and placed millions of dollars of parts from DRMO into the hands of units that need them. This isn’t his job. He does it because units need vehicles repaired. From his perspective why wait for a new part from the US if one is a available a half mile away? He is looking at the big picture, get the vehicle repaired no matter the parts source. I see him come into the office at times ready to explode because an item he is trying to get to a customer has already been de-milled. The Taos contractors who run DRMO seem to believe every item they see requires destruction with a plasma torch. Tires, vehicles, computers, there isn’t much that isn’t fun to cut up with a plasma torch!

This is the situation we are in now that we have contracted out so many basic support functions. I’ll put this in perspective, short and sweet. We are paying contractors to destroy items desperately needed by our war fighters. To put it another way, American tax dollars are being spent to degrade the effectiveness of the US military. Does that piss you off?