Court backs Musk Against USAF for Ignoring Russian Sanctions

US SPACE PROGRAM: Sole Source Contract to Russia

Click here for related story [Reuters]

Is Iron Man taking on the US Air Force for their corrupt practices?

A US Court of Federal Claims has issued an injunction prohibiting a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing from proceeding with plans to buy Russian-made rocket engines to send US Air Force satellites into space.

This ties to a SOLE SOURCE multi-billion dollar award for 36 Russian boosters to United Launch Alliance whose contract with the USAF partnership with NPO Energomash, a Russian government owned company which manufactures liquid propellant rocket engines.

SOLE SOURCE? to a Russian Government owned company?
WTF happened to competitive bidding -- including US companies!

Last we checked, the US had economic sanctions against Russia.
Last we checked, US companies, such as SpaceX, manufacture engines and rockets to launch [successfully] satellites.

Although LM and Boeing are great contributors to US politicians, we're hoping that some of them will recoil against these companies which dominate our Defense process -- and budget.

Time to drag in the Secretary of the Air Force to explain WHY we are buying rocket engines from Russia while proclaiming economic sanctions against Russia and sending our troops [two battalions] to protect Poland and Ukraine.

Iron Man vs DOD?

Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors is CEO of SpaceX; he was the founder of PayPal, Zip2, and the inventor of Hyperloop [a high speed transportation system].

He is reportedly the role model for Tony Stark {Iron Man}.

Musk has very deep pockets and will enjoy this battle against DOD favorites which pretty much dominate the entire Defense industry.


It appears the Washington Post is defending the USAF, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing in this process
-- perhaps because they are major advertisers.

UPDATE:

Following this court decision against the USAF - Lockheed Martin - Boeing cabal, the Pentagon had the gall to announce that it can't replace the Russian rocket engines -- and thus cannot launch military satellites [implying that national security is at risk!].

Russian Assault on Ukraine  [NDU]

So, we are to interpret from this announcement that US national defense depends almost entirely on Russian products -- although, at the moment, Russia has become our potential adversary against whom we may soon go to war over their invasion of Ukraine/Crimea.

Notably, we have launched two Army battalions to Poland, and, it would appear, Mr obama is intent on creating a war with Russia, perhaps to be a "war-time President" to avoid the heat he is under now due to Benghazi revelations.

Now, in normal times, if such an incongruous event we're to occur, the Secretary of the Air Force and the USAF Chief of Staff would both be fired, along with the heads of USAF and DOD procurement
[actually, they would all be arrested and tried for fraud].



FURTHER UPDATE:

We can only assume that, once again, Mr 0bama and his cronies are involved in this sleazy deal which adds to the evisceration of the Military and makes the US vulnerable to our enemies. Now, to demonstrate that the US is NOT solely dependent on Russia for rocket engines, Evon Musk [CEO of SpaceX] launched his reusable rocket system to an altitude of 1,000 meters, and then precisely returned it via a soft landing to its launch pad -- ready for a new launch.

[Click here for YouTube Video of SpaceX launch]

"This is not SpaceX protesting and saying these launches should be awarded to us.  We're just saying these launches should be competed.  If we compete and lose, that's fine.  But why would they not even compete it?  That doesn't make any sense."


STILL FURTHER UPDATE

Musk's SpaceX successfully launched its rocket carrying a load for the Space Station.
Click here to view video

DHS Corruption Exposed - UPDATE

Competes well with the best of the Obama Administration's Prevaricators

This Post has been updated (10 May 2019) 

due to breaking news on this scandal

{ https://cis.org/North/Hidden-News-One-Obama-Official-Vindicated-Another-Falls]   }

Evidence released during the trial/conviction of Sonai Patel, DHS IT Manager, included the news she had stolen a data-base managing 150,000 internal investigations, including background investigations on 250,000 DHS employees].  Charles K. Edwards [then Inspector General] is accused of using that data in a contract proposal to his former employers.  

Also revealed are Edwards' efforts to undercut the effectiveness of the DHS (the) Director of USCIS [Citizenship and Immigration Services), Alejandro Mayorkas.

The unanswered question here is what data was passed over during the "telecommuting" between Edwards wife in India and Patel, and how much of that data was transferred to Chinese Intelligence.  Would that have included the numerous FOIA requests -- and data provided regarding on-going investigations regarding Illegals, Child Sex Trafficking, ATF files, Coast Guard intelligence, etc.

Finally, we are reminded of the fact that DHS then had 250,000 employees!
How is it we are short on Border Patrol Police.

OUR ORIGINAL POST APPEARS BELOW.
---------------------------
Click here for related article [Washington Post (Carol D Leonnig)]

It appears there is a spark of journalistic integrity left at the Post.  The referenced article is a masterpiece of investigative journalism, and we trust Congress will begin reading the Post again for such stories rather than using it for litter box filler as they did while Katherine Weymouth controlled the editorial process.

This investigative story reveals corruption at the highest levels of the Department of Homeland Security [DHS], the federal agency charged with pulling all federal law enforcement and intelligence activities into one information sharing and enforcement basket [albeit a bureaucratic goat-rope] with a mere 240,000 employees -- most of whom cannot define their job description.

Charles K Edwards served as the acting Inspector General of DHS from 2011 - 13, but, instead of investigating unethical behavior, became the target of Senate investigators as a result of his own unethical behavior, which included joining the subjects of his investigations for drinks and dinners, and sharing with them confidential reports from whistle-blowers and his investigators.

Ultimately, he asked the targets of these investigations how he should handle the disclosures of their unethical and in some cases, illegal behavior -- after which he altered reports to Congress to the benefit of those being investigated.

Edwards also came under fire for
1) Requiring his staffers to drive him on personal errands
2) Using government personnel to help him write his PhD dissertation
3) Hiring his wife to work for his office -- and to telecommute from India for seven months
4) Retaliating against DHS whistle-blowers.

All these illicit activities occurred while Edwards was Mr obama's nominee for the permanent position of Inspector General.

Putting it mildly, Senator Ron Johnson [R-WI] advised:
"We found that Mr Edwards was a compromised Inspector General.  
Any report generated out of his office would be suspect."

Notably, Edwards resigned his position three days prior to his scheduled appearance before the Senate to respond to their inquiries into his activities.

The Senate bipartisan investigation was initiated following the scandal in Colombia in which Secret Service agents were compromised by hiring prostitutes and revealing sensitive information to them. "Whistle-blowers alleged Edwards ordered them to remove derogatory information implicating a White House staff member; more staff members came forward to allege deletions and delays in other reports."

Three DHS employees who questioned the deletions were put on Administrative Leave; among those was the General Counsel who was forced into another position after being placed on paid Administrative leave for EIGHT MONTHS!

DHS "declined" to provide the emails which related to those reports.
[Note to Senate:  Use a subpoena -- not a request!]

DHS General Counsel John Sandweg

At the request of a DHS official [then-DHS General Counsel John Sandweg], Edwards is alleged to have ordered changes to and delayed release of a report on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] which disclosed complaints that DHS had misled Congress and the public about Secure Communities -- a new program to identify illegal immigrants which has come under considerable scrutiny and criticism.

Edwards repeatedly consulted with Sandweg, then DHS-Director Janet Napolitano's top political advisor and General Counsel, on how to respond to Congressional Committee questions.

One of Edwards' emails to Sandweg included this quote:


"I really need some legal help.  Please help me for the next four months."

[This is the equivalent of a criminal prosecutor asking the defendant for assistance on how to handle the criminal's prosecution.]

Sandweg, according to Fox News, came under Congressional criticism since he had "zero law enforcement experience."  He is a former criminal defense attorney whose clients included murderers, sex offenders, and pedophiles.
His clients included
  1) a man convicted of strangling his girlfriend in front of her 4-year-old child,
  2) an identity theft ring, violent felons who had violated their parole, and
  3) a man accused of multiple counts of sexual assault on a minor.
[This guy made the character of "Just Call Saul" look like a saint!]

Why, former Democratic Presidential nominee, John Edwards who was caught in a series of lies, would have been proud to have had Sandweg as his running mate.

You remember John Edwards.

Liz Edwards; died in 2010

He ran as a Democrat for President on the basis of good teeth, good hair, and the sympathy vote since his wife [Elizabeth Edwards] was dying of cancer; we learned during the campaign that he was cheating on his dying wife with Rielle Hunter [aka: Lisa Jo Druck],  who bore him a child.
 

But, we digress.

Now, Sandweg is a piece of work, but, hold on, there's still more to this story.

The Senate report noted that Charles Edwards conferred on a regular basis with not only Sandweg, but also with Janet Napolitiano's Chief of Staff, Noah Kroloff during the period he was investigating the Secret Service scandal.

Kroloff resigned his position with Napolitano, and is a Partner of Global Security and Intelligence Strategies [GSIS] -- a consulting and advisory firm.
-- Should we ask how many contracts GSIS has with DHS?
-- Would there be a conflict of interest there?
--  Is the Pope Catholic?

The Senate report also disclosed that DHS IG Charles Edwards reclassified a Transportation Security Administration [TSA] report critical of "imaging screening".

The classification was bumped up - inexplicably - from SECRET to TSC [TOP SECRET/SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION] - an egregious breach of classification authority to prevent almost all but a few in Congress access to the report.

[TS/C is a classification restricted to only the most sensitive intelligence relating to highly technical or restricted methods and sources, and NEVER for a routine report on procedural effectiveness. The SCI access generally requires that an individual undergo a polygraph exam; access requires a lengthy procedure due to the sensitivity of the materials, meaning that only a few Senators and Congresspersons would be eligible for access. (Then-senator obama was never granted a security clearance at all due to the absence of legitimate documents in his personal history).]

Some of you may be uncertain as to the role of an Inspector General [IG].

In essence, the IG is a government [or military] watchdog whose mission is to ensure integrity within the organization.  The IG investigates using special agents/professional investigators and auditors to pursue allegations of wrong-doing, and is expected to provide reports to higher headquarters of his/her findings prior to or during investigations and possibly consequent criminal proceedings.  The President appoints IGs for HUD and the Agency for International Development; all the rest are appointed by the heads of the agencies they serve -- but are essentially approved by the President.

Notably, in this [OBAMA] Administration, most of the IG positions are vacant -- leaving little or no internal review process for whistle-blowers or corruption monitoring.  This vacuum could explain the extraordinary levels of corruption in government agencies in this Administration.

To set your mind at ease with respect to the reports of extraordinary corruption in the DHS, you'll be gratified to know that the new Inspector General is John Roth, whom the Senate confirmed last month [by a simple majority].  He responded to the Senate report of DHS corruption with the words:

"... this report contains valuable insights that my office will be taking into account 

as we move forward with our oversight mission."

Now, for you denizens of California [who gave the US Pelosi, Waters Boxer, and Feinstein], we want to remind you that Janet Napolitino, who headed the DHS during so much of this corruption, is now President of the University of California, and is routinely the subject of protests when she visits the various campuses [to be fair, in one instance at Berkeley, two students did launch a "counter-protest"]. In her new role, controlling your college kids' education, do you feel safer, and aren't you happy your tax dollars are paying her salary?

Counter-Intelligence - Obama-Style

Think of me as your Big Brother - I Protect You from the Truth  [InfoWars.com]

Click here for related post [Federation of American Scientists (FAS)]

The Administration's War of Terror has stepped up a notch.  Mr obama has created a "counter-intelligence" directive, which in effect, counters the collection and accurate analysis of professional intelligence by adding a new step -- the Fear Factor -- to the Intelligence Community.  Meet with a  journalist and risk your career and a jail sentence.

Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) 119 effectively prohibits intelligence personnel from contact with the Media/journalists -- unless they have specific authorization to do so
"... to mitigate risks of unauthorized disclosures of intelligence-related matters that may result from such contacts."

[ICDs replace the old DCIDs -- which older Intelligence professionals may remember]

Since the new regulation "does not distinguish between classified and unclassified intelligence information", traditional interaction between intelligence analysts and operatives with journalists to informally trade information will now become a thing of the past.

Some eons ago, in our Spook and Analyst days, we routinely met with professional journalists who were notable for their areas of areas of expertise to pick their brains on who was who in political, economic, and military hierarchies, who controlled key financial instruments, who controlled the Media, and who within a foreign government might be amenable to giving up "Open Source" or even "Classified" information.

Those were the days of both professional journalists and professional intelligence officers.

We recall discussing, some decades back, political and military events in a Latin American country in order to get a feel for the progress of a rumored coup.  After reading CIA TD-FIRs, DIA IIRs, Attache reports, DIRNSA intercepts, we were still not certain of who was doing what to whom, when or where.

After discussions with two journalists who specialized in the region, we were able to put all the pieces [unclassified and classified] together and created an assessment for the Pentagon Black Book in which we predicted the coup down to the day and even the hour [10:00 am local time], naming and assessing the key players in the coup, and detailing the composition of the succeeding junta -- and their commercial supporters.

That analysis drew guffaws from the senior Pentagon officers reading it, and the reigning IC powers of the era announced their scorn for such an amateurish analysis.

Our lead line, on the day the coup actually took place was
"As predicted, ......"

This led to a meeting of the heads of each segment of the IC as it was structured then, all demanding to know how it was that we had such precise information, and accusing us of keeping classified information from the IC.

We responded that we had used the classified reports which their operatives and analysts had provided the IC, but we felt no obligation to direct those same personnel to "Open Source" materials which they could have found in the US and foreign Press reports.  We provided each agency with copies of their reports which we had used, and then supplemented that material with Media reports we had assembled which filled in the gaps of the classified material.

Although we made few friends that day [as the IC directors and analysts were forced to eat humble pie], we did catch the attention of the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) who felt that our precise coup prediction was not an aberration since we had a previous solid string of such accurate assessments.  Thus, we were gratified when the DCI blessed us with the DCI Exceptional Intelligence Analyst Award, a graduate fellowship to Georgetown and Oxford, a bag of money to travel throughout the world and interview diplomats and intelligence officers, and an assignment to provide special intelligence assessments to the Secretary of State and to write State inputs to National Intelligence Estimates.

But, we digress.

If you can't eavesdrop, it's not Intelligence

The point of this blog post is that the Director of National Intelligence [JimmyBob Clapper] is neutering the Intelligence Community by blocking their access to some of the most lucrative sources of information and leads.  In the absence of interaction with professional journalists, the Intelligence analysts and operatives lose a valuable resource.

Clapper has traditionally opposed Human Intelligence [HUMINT], and regards human espionage with disdain. Why, it's almost immoral!

Now, we've known Mr Clapper for several decades, and recognize his intellectual limitations, particularly where they relate to the various components and capabilities of the Intelligence Community.

Mr Clapper, like little Keith Alexander, kept his understanding of Intelligence collection to only electronic collection means -- a process which he promotes based on his experience and stock holdings in those Defense contractor companies which support electronic surveillance, be it SIGINT, IMINT, ELINT, or, anything but HUMINT!

The coup takes place tomorrow at 10:00 am

You see, even though HUMINT is generally the most reliable source of intelligence, augmented by the other INTs, it is far too inexpensive.

Our annual budget for running a global DCS amounted to the cost of a single satellite pass over a target.

Now, how, you ask, is a Defense Contractor like Boeing, Lockheed, or General Dynamics to make a billion dollar profit from a DCS operation, the total cost of which will likely be less than $200,000.

On the other hand, building and launching a satellite requires billions of dollars in support equipment and monitoring personnel -- not to speak of hundreds of IT servers and equipment processing thousands of yottaflops, and hundreds of hardware and software subcontractors.  Why, it's the American Way!

Now, to be fair, JimmyBob did claim credit for creating DOD HUMINT, and in particular, the DOD HUMINT Clandestine Service [DCS], until we reminded him over dinner one evening that we had built the DCS back in 1984 [about 16 years prior to his claim] -- while he was a mere two-star at CincPAC -- notable for his blockage of HUMINT operations.

But, we would not want to accuse JimmyBob of prevarication in such matters; we'll leave that to Congress when they charge him with perjury for his more egregious transgressions.  We may even blow him kisses as he is marched off to jail in a perp-walk in an orange jump-suit and cuffs.

We grieve that Mr Clapper has been given control over national intelligence collection since he has degraded the process which was designed to deliver to national decision-makers accurate assessments of threats to the United States.

Of course, today, the greatest threat to the US comes from within.