[BretLudwig]

AEY hearings in the House

"The New York Times reports:

Arms Dealer Had Troubled History

By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON €” When the Army last year awarded a contract worth up to
nearly $300 million to a tiny Miami Beach munitions dealer to supply
ammunition to Afghanistans security forces, it overlooked a very
checkered past.

A Congressional committee revealed Tuesday that by the time the Army
awarded the bid, State and Defense Department officials had canceled or
delayed at least six earlier contracts with the company, AEY Inc., for
poor quality or late deliveries.

But that record, including a botched $5.6 million order for 10,000
Beretta pistols for Iraqs security forces, was either ignored or
omitted from databases that American military contracting officials have
used to weed out companies suspected of involvement in suspect arms
deals.

Congressional investigators also determined that the Afghanistan
ammunition contract, which the company is also accused of mishandling, may
have been unnecessary: Bosnia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Albania, the Eastern
European countries from which AEY bought its ammunition, had offered to
donate the type of Soviet-style rifle and machine-gun cartridges that the
Afghan Army and police forces use. €¦

House investigators have also gathered testimony that the American
ambassador to Albania, John L. Withers II, helped cover up the illegal
Chinese origins of ammunition that AEY was shipping from Albania to
Afghanistan under the Army contract. €¦

Lawmakers also criticized the government officials for failing to
review several AEY contracts that had been canceled or delayed, many of
which never raised red flags with contracting officials because they fell
under the $5 million contract value that was the warning threshold.

In October 2005, the committee report found, AEY delivered a shipment
of damaged helmets to the American training command in Iraq. One American
inspector said in an e-mail message obtained by the committee: €œThe
helmets came to Abu Ghraib by mistake. They are not very good. They have
peeling paint and a few appear to have been damaged such as having been
dropped.€�

About the same time, AEY failed to deliver more than 10,000 Beretta
pistols under contract to Iraqi security forces.

According to the contracting officer, Mr. Diveroli blamed the delays
in part on a plane crash that had destroyed important documents and a
hurricane that hit Miami. €¦

Back when he worked for his uncle's Botach Tactical weapons dealership in
Los Angeles and angry customers would call up wondering where the M-16
clips they had paid for were, Diveroli probably blamed delays on an
earthquake that hit LA.

House investigators determined that Melanie A. Johnson, a contracting
officer with the Army Sustainment Command, had overruled a contracting
team that raised concerns about AEYs inexperience and had concluded
that there was €œsubstantial doubt€� that the company could fulfill the
contract.

Investigators said Ms. Johnson had later acknowledged to them that she
was unaware of the poor past performance of AEY, including the Beretta
contract, when she awarded the company the Afghan bid.

In case you're wondering why federal bureaucrats would fall for an obvious
New York camera store-style bait-and-switch operator like Diveroli, keep in
mind that Jimmy Carter threw out the federal civil service exam back in
January 1981 for "disparate impact" and it's never been fully
replaced."

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/06/a...-in-house.html

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