FOCUS: Charles Pierce | Mick Mulvaney Is Getting Fed to the Wolves on Ukraine

01 January 20

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FOCUS: Charles Pierce | Mick Mulvaney Is Getting Fed to the Wolves on Ukraine

Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "This latest account of how everyone is scrambling for the ratlines down at Camp Runamuck leaves me with two distinct impressions: a) it is beyond foolish to cancel your subscription to The New York Times based on the the fact that a couple of people have set up landfills on the op-ed page; and b) that Nancy Pelosi is playing this whole impeachment thing like a Stradivarius."

Just figuring out how and why this information arrived at the Times at this particular moment is entertaining enough—how long various people had to grapple for the flare gun is worth a long spell of speculation. But, however it got loose, the information is an extraordinary look at how influential people come apart at every nail, to borrow a phrase from Neil Young.

What emerges is the story of how Mr. Trump’s demands sent shock waves through the White House and the Pentagon, created deep rifts within the senior ranks of his administration, left key aides like Mr. Mulvaney under intensifying scrutiny — and ended only after Mr. Trump learned of a damning whistle-blower report and came under pressure from influential Republican lawmakers.

OK, so we all knew that.

Opposition to the order from his top national security advisers was more intense than previously known. In late August, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper joined Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser at the time, for a previously undisclosed Oval Office meeting with the president where they tried but failed to convince him that releasing the aid was in interests of the United States.By late summer, top lawyers at the Office of Management and Budget who had spoken to lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department in the weeks beforehand, were developing an argument — not previously divulged publicly — that Mr. Trump’s role as commander in chief would simply allow him to override Congress on the issue. And Mr. Mulvaney is shown to have been deeply involved as a key conduit for transmitting Mr. Trump’s demands for the freeze across the administration.

Wait. We didn’t know that. Suspected, sure, but now, it seems, people are giving up other people wholesale.

Mr. Mulvaney is said by associates to have stepped out of the room whenever Mr. Trump would talk with Mr. Giuliani to preserve Mr. Trump’s attorney-client privilege, leaving him with limited knowledge about their efforts regarding Ukraine. Mr. Mulvaney has told associates he learned of the substance of Mr. Trump’s July 25 call weeks after the fact.

I’m sorry, but this absolutely is Mob behavior. Send the witness out of the room to preserve the privilege? The president* learned well from all his Mob-adjacent mentors—hello, Roy Cohn—and all his Mob-adjacent businesses. And it looks at the moment like Mick Mulvaney is being fed to the wolves.

On Sept. 10, the day before Mr. Trump changed his mind, a political appointee at the budget office, Michael P. Duffey, wrote a lengthy email to the Pentagon’s top budget official, with whom he had been at odds throughout the summer about how long the agency could withhold the aid. He asserted that the Defense Department had the authority to do more to ensure that the aid could be released to Ukraine by the congressionally mandated deadline of the end of that month, suggesting that responsibility for any failure should not rest with the White House. Forty-three minutes later, the Pentagon official, Elaine McCusker, hit send on a brief but stinging reply. “You can’t be serious,” she wrote. “I am speechless.”

You and me both, Ms. McCusker. But maybe we should be used to this foolishness by now.

Typical of the Trump White House, the inquiry was not born of a rigorous policy process. Aides speculated that someone had shown Mr. Trump a news article about the Ukraine assistance and he demanded to know more. Mr. Vought and his team took to Google, and came upon a piece in the conservative Washington Examiner saying that the Pentagon would pay for weapons and other military equipment for Ukraine, bringing American security aid to the country to $1.5 billion since 2014.

And, when the time to bet comes around again, Madame Speaker checks again. Check, check, check. The rest of the folks at the table start sweating.

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The Pentagon's war on transparency

There are already signs that despite Esper’s touted commitment to openness, he is continuing some of Mattis’s more secretive practices. Across the DOD, basic information is becoming harder to find, forcing journalists and the public to rely on leaks, whistleblowers, and the official narrative.

V

The Pentagon’s War on Transparency On August 28, Mark Esper held the first televised press briefing by a sitting secretary of defense in over a year. His predecessor, James Mattis, had stopped televised press briefings altogether, favoring informal but on the record conversations with reporters. While the reintroduction of press briefings is a welcome development, the reality is that it will take much more than that to pry open doors nailed shut under Mattis. There are already signs that despite Esper’s touted commitment to openness, he is continuing some of Mattis’s more secretive practices. Across the DOD, basic information is becoming harder to find, forcing journalists and the public to rely on leaks, whistleblowers, and the official narrative. Keep Reading

Defense Going Dark: A Timeline of Secrecy Increases at the Pentagon A timeline created by POGO shows that under Mattis and the Trump administration, a wave of increased secrecy swept through the Department of Defense. The timeline documents the changes to Department of Defense and national security policy that may undermine public access to information and harm transparency. Read more

An Acting Director and a Permanent Move It has been more than 1,000 days since the Bureau of Land Management has had a permanent, Senate-confirmed director. In that almost three-year period, four acting directors have cycled through the Bureau of Land Management, including current acting-director William Perry Pendley. Read more

Giving Tuesday
	Thank you so much to everyone who gave to POGO’s Giving Tuesday campaign this week! We are so excited to announce that, thanks to the generosity of all our crucial supporters, we raised over $43,000 on Giving Tuesday.

New Newsletter on Impeachment

Our new e-newsletter on impeachment, Indispensable, has been recognized by The New York Times! James Madison believed that impeachment was "indispensable ... for defending the community against the incapacity, negligence, or perfidy of the chief magistrate." We hope our newsletter is an indispensable companion to help answer your questions about impeachment processes, the pressures on the figures involved, the facts uncovered, and their consequences. Sign up

POGO in the News The New York Times The Impeachment News Industry Is Here to Help (Overwhelm You Even More) Many major news organizations offer impeachment newsletters, including CNN, PBS, The Washington Post and, of course, The New York Times. But there are also those created by less traditional news publishers, like the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight or Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of American history at Boston College who offers her take on Facebook and in a newsletter titled “Letters From an American.” NBC News Democrats question why DOJ inspector general isn't investigating Trump's attorneys general "Horowitz has done a great job of navigating politically fraught and complicated issues. But if it’s true, that would be an interesting imbalance if the preponderance of their work is what the executive branch is asking them to look into rather than what Congress is looking into," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan independent government watchdog. "I think it is as important for any IG to be tending to congressional requests. They're as important a constituent of his as the executive is." Quartz The US Navy doesn’t have enough spare parts to keep its fighter jets in the air “The business of the Pentagon is not actually fighting and winning the nation’s wars, it is spending vast sums of taxpayer money buying big, expensive glitzy hardware,” Dan Grazier, a military analyst at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, told Quartz. “And so that almost always takes priority over maintaining the older stuff.” Grazier, who served as a captain in the US Marine Corps, said the Navy has invested tens of billions of dollars developing new, unproven systems while proven systems like the Super Hornet can’t get all the parts they need to keep operating. He pointed to the DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer, a defect-riddled money pit that was canceled by the Navy after just three were built, as one example. Another, the Navy’s highly anticipated Littoral Combat Ship, has been called a “complete failure.” That program, which has also been curtailed, cost the Navy some $30 billion. But the program perhaps most directly connected to the Navy’s current spare parts problem is the F-35, said Grazier. The military’s next-gen fighter jet is its most expensive ever, yet has suffered from delays, cost overruns, and underperformance. The Navy canceled various contracts to continue purchasing spare parts for the Super Hornet in the late 1990s and early 2000s, expecting to have an operational F-35 in the 2010-2012 timeframe. That, of course, hasn’t happened. “The plan and the promises that were made about the F-35, its capabilities and its original cost estimates were wildly wrong and hugely unrealistic,” said Grazier. “They’re now suffering the consequences of that because the F-35 still isn’t ready to go.” [...] “Defense contractors want to be able to maintain control of their products, because where they make their real money is on the back-end, after we purchase it, in long-term sustainment contracts,” explained Grazier. “The issue of intellectual property rights is a really, really big deal. It sounds really mundane, but it has enormous consequences to the military.” When a defense contractor retains the intellectual property rights to something like a fighter jet, it becomes the only firm that can perform long-term sustainment and maintenance for the aircraft. “The only way that you can upgrade the aircraft, the only way that you can handle a lot of the basic maintenance functions of it, is having access to all that data,” Grazier continued. “And so the government can’t go out and do a competitive bid each year for the sustainment of a system, because only one firm has the necessary information. It means that [defense contractors] have the American people over a barrel. They can basically charge whatever they want for the sustainment contracts because there’s nowhere else that we can go to get the services done.” In a response to the DODIG report, the Navy says it is taking steps to rectify the spare parts situation plaguing the Super Hornet. “It’s definitely an issue,” said Grazier. “And it’s one that the service needs to address sooner rather than later. Roll Call The perils of positive thinking The Pentagon tends to be overly ambitious when it comes to new technologies, going for a great leap forward rather than incremental progress, said Mark Thompson, who spent decades covering defense as a journalist before becoming a national security analyst for the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight. Instead of an exquisite solution that accomplishes 95 percent of the desired capabilities, accept something less risky that meets 80 percent of the criteria, Thompson recommends. The results will be vastly cheaper and still get most jobs done. “That’s where the Congress, increasingly bereft of veterans, doesn’t have the gumption, the courage or the knowledge, to say, ‘OK, that’s good enough.’ That’s how we end up with these boondoggles,” he said. It has become increasingly hard for Congress to conduct oversight of the way the Defense Department buys weapons, Thompson said. “You cannot say anything against military procurement without being viewed as either a defeatist or someone who doesn’t care about the troops.” The American Conservative Media Looks Away As House Quietly Approves Warrantless Spying “For privacy advocates, this is such an obvious choice,” Jake Laperruque, senior counsel for the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, said in an interview with The American Conservative. Because the CDR program vacuums up all the phone call records of anyone within “two hops” of a “specific selection term,” a few dozen FISA warrants can lead to the phone call records of millions of Americans. “It’s incredibly privacy invasive,” said Laperruque. “There’s tens of millions of phone records that are caught up in this. There’s hundreds of thousands of Americans that are caught when they have a warrant for one person.” The Daily Illini Illinois accounting must hold itself accountable Is this industry-standard acceptable? Deloitte seems to think so, at least for itself. Deloitte has the lowest failure rate in the Big Four between 2009 and 2017 of 27.6%. While other Big Four firms have kept silent, Deloitte has boasted about its “positive trajectory” in audit quality. Analysts at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) would disagree. They reported the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has been empowered to be a watchdog for audit firms but is not doing its job. They calculated the PCAOB had fined the Big Four only $6.5 million out of the $1.6 billion they could have for performing defective audits. Delaware News Journal Here's why the Deleware Senate won't open an ethics investigation after the DE Turf bill "A reasonable person could believe that he (Sen. Paradee) did, in fact, do something nefarious and shady, and did misuse his position of power in a way that would benefit his brother." and "It's understandable why some might view it as a little bit of a conflict of interest in and of itself." CalWatchdog .com ICE seeks to defy intent of state law on detention centers In their letter to DHS and other agencies, the California Democratic lawmakers asked for information on how ICE crafted its solicitation for detention center bids. Their chances of getting a quick response are unclear. ICE has long faced criticism over its handling of public record requests, which it is supposed to respond to in 20 days or less. The agency was sued earlier this month by the Project on Government Oversight for allegedly withholding information over how it used facial recognition and other technology in surveillance and data collection programs.

Project On Government Oversight (POGO) 1100 G Street NW Suite 500, Washington, DC

Quit Saying That Bernie Sanders Can't Win - He May Be the Most Electable Democrat Running in 2020

26 November 19

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25 November 19

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ALMOST EVERYONE HERE CAN AFFORD TO CHIP-IN - There may be some people who come to Reader Supported News who literally cannot afford to donate anything at all, but in truth, not too many. We are not a “for-profit” organization. We are a, “for-the-people organization.” We raise money to fund the services and keep the lights on. We do a damn good job. In peace and solidarity. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Quit Saying That Bernie Sanders Can't Win - He May Be the Most Electable Democrat Running in 2020

Matthew Rozsa, Salon
Rozsa writes: "Too many of Sanders' opponents are running on an unproven narrative that he's not 'electable.' Do better, Democrats."
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Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper demanded the resignation of the Navy secretary, Richard V. Spencer, on Sunday. (photo: Lisa Ferdinando/Department of Defense/Reuters)

Pentagon Chief Says He Was 'Flabbergasted' by Navy Secretary's Attempt to Make a Private Deal With Trump
Dan Lamothe, The Washington Post
Lamothe writes: "Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said on Monday he was 'flabbergasted' that his Navy secretary tried to make a secret deal with the White House in which a Navy SEAL accused of war crimes could retire as a member of the elite force if President Trump stayed out of the case."
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Leonard Cohen photographed in Oslo in 1993. (photo: Antonio Olmos/The Observer)

Adam Cohen on Leonard: 'It Was Daunting Finishing My Dad's Last Music'
Sean O'Hagan, Guardian UK
O'Hagan writes: "Leonard Cohen's final songs can now be heard on the album Thanks for the Dance. Here his son Adam talks about their emotionally complex relationship."





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Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh attend the State of the Union address at the Capitol on February 5, 2019, in Washington, DC. (photo: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)

The Supreme Court Is About to Hear the Biggest Guns Case in Over a Decade

Ian Millhiser, Vox

Millhiser writes: "New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York, the biggest guns case to reach the Supreme Court in more than a decade, began with a tiny dispute."

EXCERPT:

They sued for a small expansion of the rights afforded to people with premises licenses. And indeed, last July, the state acquiesced: It passed a law permitting people with premises licenses to do the very thing that these plaintiffs wish to do. That renders the case moot — or so one would think. 

Yet the Supreme Court has so far refused to dismiss the case as moot. And if the plaintiffs have their way, the Court will wind up deciding a much bigger question than the one it originally agreed to hear.

Paul Clement, the prominent conservative lawyer representing the plaintiffs, submitted a brief that presents the case as a grand fight over “draconian restrictions on the possession and transport of handguns.” Even though his clients already won with New York City and State changing its laws to accommodate them, Clement wants to proceed. And he’s urging the Court to see this case as a much bigger challenge than the one his clients raised in the lower courts.

That’s a highly unusual move. The Supreme Court’s rules instruct lawyers that merits briefs “may not raise additional questions or change the substance of the questions” originally presented to the Court. 

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Sarah Palin and AOC. (image: VICE)

How This Decade Broke American Politics, in 10 Easy Steps
Harry Cheadle and Matt Taylor, VICE
Excerpt: "Ideological differences, once a defining line between parties, have widened into a gaping abyss."
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People at the Great Siege Square call for the resignation of Joseph Muscat following the investigation into the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, in Valletta, Malta November 20, 2019. (photo: Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters)

Police Sources: Malta Grants Pardon to Suspected Middleman in Journalist Murder
Chris Scicluna, Reuters
Scicluna writes: "A man suspected of being the middleman in the murder of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has been granted a presidential pardon, police sources said on Monday."
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A commuter walks through thick smog in New Delhi on Nov. 14, 2019. (photo: Manish Swarup/AP)

Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Atmosphere Reaches Record High, Researchers Say
Denise Chow, NBC News
Chow writes: "The concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere has reached a record high, according to a report released Monday by the World Meteorological Organization."

Carbon dioxide traps heat from the sun and can linger in the atmosphere for centuries.

he concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has reached a record high, according to a report released Monday by the World Meteorological Organization.

In 2018, global average concentrations of the greenhouse gas, which is a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, reached 407.8 parts per million, which means for every 1 million molecules of gas in the atmosphere, nearly 408 were carbon dioxide. This level is up from the global average of 405.5 parts per million in 2017. The findings follow a trend that shows the planet is continuing to warm at an alarming pace.

“There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline, in greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere despite all the commitments under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

Carbon dioxide traps heat from the sun and can linger in the atmosphere for centuries. High levels of the greenhouse gas are associated with higher global temperatures and other effects of climate change, such as melting polar ice and rising seas.

The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen sharply as a result of human activities, with the 2018 global average representing a 147 percent increase over the pre-industrial level in 1750, according to the WMO.

The organization’s report found that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 2017 to 2018 was above the average growth rate over the past decade, which was just over 2 parts per million per year.

On May 14, the daily concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit the highest level ever recorded in human history, at 415 parts per million.

Though global levels haven’t reached that benchmark yet, Taalas said the record is still troubling.

“It is worth recalling that the last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5 million years ago,” he said of the 407.8 parts per million milestone. “Back then, the temperature was 2-3 [degrees Celsius] warmer, sea level was 10-20 meters higher than now.”

The WMO report also found that concentrations of two other greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxide, have also seen an uptick over the past decade.

Methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas and global average concentrations of methane in 2018 reached 1,869 parts per billion, a 259 percent increase over pre-industrial levels.

It’s estimated that about 60 percent of methane emissions come from human activities, such as from landfills, cattle breeding and certain types of agriculture, while the other 40 percent comes from natural sources.

Nitrous oxide, which is emitted from agricultural and industrial activities, is the third-most potent greenhouse gas and depletes the ozone layer that shields the planet from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation.

Atmospheric concentrations of nitrous oxide — a chemical compound commonly known as laughing gas — in 2018 reached an average of 331.1 parts per billion, which was a 123 percent increase over pre-industrial levels.

The WMO report was released ahead of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference, which is being held Dec. 2 to 13 in Madrid, where government representatives will gather to assess commitments made to fight climate change under the Paris Agreement.

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NEW: Indispensable, and other impeachment resources

processes, the pressures on the figures involved, the facts uncovered, and their consequences.

NEW: Newsletter on Impeachment, "Indispensable." We've launched a new e-newsletter on impeachment, Indispensable. Sign up today! James Madison believed that impeachment was "indispensable ... for defending the community against the incapacity, negligence, or perfidy of the chief magistrate." We hope our newsletter is an indispensable companion to help answer your questions about impeachment processes, the pressures on the figures involved, the facts uncovered, and their consequences. Sign up

Impeachment: Frequently Asked Questions What is impeachment, how does it work, and what’s going to happen? Check out our live roundup of frequently asked questions, updated regularly. Learn more

This Week at POGO

Our reporting sparks legislation to curb ICE's use of solitary Citing our reporting, Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Kamala Harris (D-CA) today introduced legislation to combat the rampant and unnecessary overuse of solitary confinement in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operated and ICE contract facilities. Read our investigation or read the press release

POGO & Whistleblowers POGO has a long history of working with whistleblowers and protecting their rights. We believe that whistleblowers are our first line of defense against corruption and abuse by the federal government. We’ve spent years protecting these truth-tellers and the mechanisms to hold government accountable, and today we’re seeing why all of that work matters.

Caught Between Conscience and Career It is possible to fight wrongdoing from within without sacrificing your career. This survival guide, intended to help and empower conscientious government employees when they encounter wrongdoing in the workplace, covers what federal sector employees should know before blowing the whistle. Read the survival guide

Free E-Course: Another Way to Learn We distilled our survival guide into this e-course, delivering key lessons and tips to your inbox each week. Sign up

POGO in the News

The Washington Post Despite Trump’s taunting and harassment, whistleblowers remain undaunted Outing the Ukraine whistleblower “who followed the law completely undermines the process Congress created to ensure members of the intelligence community disclose wrongdoing through legal channels,” said Liz Hempowicz, director of public policy at the Project On Government Oversight, a nonpartisan independent federal watchdog organization. Calls to expose the whistleblower amount to a double smokescreen. They distract from the main issue regarding Trump’s push for a Ukrainian investigation into the son of former vice president Joe Biden and divert attention from the numerous officials who have corroborated the initial information.

Foreign Policy The Pentagon’s Invisible Man Is Winning Washington’s Power Game

When Warren pressed him, Esper commented that he thought the exchange was “a good debate.” Warren cut him off: “I’m not trying to have a debate,” she snapped. For the analysts Mandy Smithberger and William D. Hartung, the Esper appointment was more of the same: “During the Trump administration,” they wrote during the confirmation process, “the post of secretary of defense has been passed from one former defense industry figure to another, as if it were literally reserved only for key officials from major weapons makers.” Esper did ultimately recuse himself from the Pentagon’s cloud computing contract because his son is employed by IBM, which was one of the initial bidders. “It was a good decision,” Smithberger told me. “It shows that the secretary knows the rules.”

Politico Federal health contract funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump allies

But the agency’s heavy reliance on contractors — spanning nearly two years and drawing on multiple political operatives — alarmed current and former CMS officials and government ethics experts, who questioned the appearance and justification for outsourcing a substantial portion of the agency's communications duties. By early 2019, CMS also had hired multiple political appointees to help manage Verma’s communications. “It's the classic revolving door,” said Scott Amey, who leads investigations into government contracts for the Project on Government Oversight. Amey added that the number of consultants with ties to the White House or the Trump campaign raises further concerns. “If there's pressure from the top of the agency to hire these people, you worry about whether this is payoff for old friends.” [...] Government ethics experts said that the consultants’ work still deserved additional scrutiny. “There are real questions about the need for these services and are these services duplicative of what PR people inside the agency are already doing,” said POGO’s Amey. “There are quite a few red flags that go up here, in terms of the services that are being outsourced, the rates that are being paid and the connections of the people being hired that are worth an HHS inspector general investigation.”

The Intercept The U.S. military in monitoring interfaith group opposed to child separation, leaked document reveals Jake Laperruque, senior counsel for the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, said of the document: “The ‘threat estimates’ focused on protesters are highly disturbing. Cataloging individuals protesting government policy creates serious risk of abuse, and even without misconduct, monitoring protesters is likely to chill the exercise of First Amendment rights.” “‘Make America Great Again’ shouldn’t mean returning to J. Edgar Hoover-style surveillance,” Laperruque wrote in an email. [...] Laperruque said of the data, “I don’t know why some of this information is needed – some of the activities (where protesters are coming from, sponsors, other activities outside the border, etc) have no connection to ensuring safe interactions. I can’t think of any reason for cataloging that information other than to monitor protesters activities more broadly, and potentially identify them.”

Vox Trump is reportedly planning to promote Ken Cuccinelli to a top position at DHS There will likely be legal challenges to the legitimacy of Wolf’s appointment and Cuccinelli’s expected promotion, Rebecca Jones, policy counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, said. To appoint Wolf as acting secretary, she said that McAleenan would have likely had to rearrange the line of succession at DHS, but it’s not clear that he had the power to do so since he was not Senate-confirmed.

The National Interest Flak Cannons Could Pose A Huge Threat To The F-35

Significantly, while the text of the research solicitation doesn't mention the F-35, the acquisition program that the project is intended is listed as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. In addition, the F-22 is included in the list of keywords at the bottom of the solicitation. "I'm sure it isn't a coincidence," says Dan Grazier at defense watchdog Project on Government Oversight. "The F-35 is quite vulnerable to ground fire, especially since the designers decided not to include self-sealing fuel tanks." [...] Some experts question whether the Air Force should even be putting its aircraft in harm's way. "The interesting thing to me is they still think in terms of sending the delivery vehicle, whether manned or unmanned, into contested air space," Grazier says. "With all the discussion of standoff weapons, AAA shouldn't be that much of a concern anymore."

National Journal (login required) Inside Trump’s Gambit To Install Another Acting DHS Secretary

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told reporters earlier this month that Wolf would replace McAleenan as acting secretary as soon as this week. But the Trump administration will likely once again have to change the succession order to install Wolf as the department s acting head. Three Senate-confirmed officials Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Christopher Krebs, Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis David Glawe, and Transportation Security Administration Administrator David Pekoske rank above the undersecretary for strategy, policy, and plans. That change would be implemented by McAleenan, who, unlike Nielsen, leads the agency in an acting capacity. Legal scholars were split over whether that wrinkle could provoke a successful legal challenge. "For me, in order for them to now designate Chad Wolf s position ... as acting [secretary], then there would have to be a confirmed secretary to make that switch," said Rebecca Jones, policy counsel at the Project on Government Oversight.

The National Interest Is the Littoral Combat Ship One of the Worst Warships Ever?

“The Littoral Combat Ship program has been unnecessarily complicated from the beginning,” the Project on Government Oversight explained in 2016. “Initially the Navy aimed for each ship to cost $220 million, but the Government Accountability Office estimates procurement costs for the first 32 ships is currently about $21 billion, or about $655 million per ship—nearly triple what they were supposed to cost.” “The program’s three mission packages, according to the latest select acquisition report, add about $7.6 billion.” In the decade and a half since the program was first sold to Congress, the LCS has already been forced into multiple major program changes, initially driven by large cost overruns, the lack of combat survivability and lethality discovered during operational testing and deployments, the almost crippling technical failures and schedule delays in each of the three mission modules. Now the Navy has announced it is abandoning the two fundamental concepts behind the program: a multi-mission ship with swappable mission modules and a radically new way of manning it. Instead, each LCS hull will have a single mission and a significantly larger crew assigned a single primary skill set.

The Daily Beast House Dems Deal Death Blow to Domestic NSA Phone Spying

“Ending the [Call Data Records] authority is absolutely necessary, but Congress needs to do much more than ending a dysfunctional system that the NSA can’t provide any justification for,” said Jake Laperruque of the Project on Government Oversight. “Any reauthorization bill has to include a broad set of serious reforms. You don't get a five star restaurant review just by taking arsenic off the menu.”

Washington Examiner Pentagon: The F-35 breaks down too often and takes too long to repair

“Despite the confirmation that the program achieved initial operational capability, the F-35 basic design still remains a prototype,” Dan Grazier, a military fellow at the Project for Government Oversight, told the Washington Examiner. “It’s very concerning to me that the services have prematurely pressed these into a combat role when the basic design hasn’t been proven yet.”

Reason If He Thinks It's Such a Good Idea, Why Won't Rand Paul Name the Whistleblower Himself?

The Project on Government Oversight is suing for the release of records related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data collection, facial recognition programs, and other surveillance.

Just Security Public Document Clearinghouse: Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Project on Government Oversight (POGO) Hatch Act complaint Against Mulvaney and Sondland (October 30, 2019)

Standard-Examiner Government watchdog wants more accountability from defense department on F-35 The Project on Government Oversight had previously sent Congress a letter, asking the body to investigate why the Pentagon cannot properly account for F-35 spare parts and who is responsible. POGO says issue has implications on other current and future acquisition programs.

The Week How the law barely protects whistleblowers What's a whistleblower? It's a government employee who reports fraud, waste, crimes, or threats to public safety. The origin of the term is uncertain, but it's probably a reference to policemen or referees who blow whistles when they see a crime or foul play. As far back as 1778, the Founding Fathers called reporting official misconduct a "duty," commending 10 sailors and Marines for alerting Congress to the Navy's abuse of British prisoners. But the term "whistleblower" wasn't applied to this kind of truth telling until the 1970s. It was during that tumultuous decade that military analyst Daniel Ellsberg disclosed the Pentagon Papers, which revealed the Vietnam War's false premises. A year later, The Washington Post broke the Watergate scandal, thanks to leaks from "Deep Throat" (who turned out to be disgruntled FBI Associate Director Mark Felt). To encourage such truth tellers to come forward, Congress passed the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, which outlined a process for federal employees to report misconduct and challenge retaliation they might face for doing so. Despite that law, whistleblowers often pay a steep price for reporting misdeeds by superiors, said Mandy Smithberger of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan organization. "One has to go in with the assumption," she said, "that it's career suicide."

Federal News Network Pentagon announces agreement with Lockheed Martin for hi-tech planes The Pentagon’s F-35 program office recently announced an agreement with Lockheed Martin for the next batch of nearly 500 of the hi-tech planes. The unit price will be under $80 million — a record low. But Dan Grazier argues the real cost of that next batch is quite a bit higher. He is military fellow at the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, and he joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to talk more. Listen to the broadcast

Mercury News Feds sued over lack of transparency about facial recognition Facial recognition technology concerns public advocacy groups, policymakers and others so much that its use by police and other public agencies has been banned in three Bay Area cities and one in Massachusetts. But federal government agencies use it, and they're not being forthcoming about how, according to a couple of lawsuits filed in the past couple of weeks. The Project on Government Oversight sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thursday over what it says is the agency's inadequate response to the group's request for information about its use of facial recognition. That follows a lawsuit filed by the ACLU last week against the FBI, the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration over the same thing. Both groups submitted Freedom of Information Act requests because they want to know how the federal agencies are using the technology, and what safeguards they're employing to prevent abuse. The records would be likely to contribute to public understanding of ICE’s system for collecting data absent knowledge of consent of citizens, as well as civil rights and civil liberties complaints, said the POGO complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C [...] The ACLU and POGO are asking the courts to force the federal agencies to comply with their requests for information. ICE and the Department of Justice have not returned requests for comment.

WHYY - Radio Times Sally Field LIZ HEMPOWICZ of the Project on Government Oversight joins us to talk about the whistleblower law and its protections. Listen to the broadcast

Delaware Online (login required) Want to know more about legislators' financial reports? This News Journal database will tell you For years, government transparency advocates have called for a more rigorous reporting process, partly because the statements offer little detail on monetary amounts. Moreau said that the disclosures are meant to focus on who a public official does business with, not the amount of money involved. But the amount is relevant to a public official's motives, said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, a policy analyst with the Project On Government Oversight, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C. that advocates for federal government transparency. "When you’re talking about large sums of money, you have more incentives for people to do things that may not be strictly ethical or may not abide by conflict of interest rules," Hedtler-Gaudette said. "If you don’t know the amounts we’re talking about, then you don’t really know where there could be entanglements.”

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