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From:'THE NEARLY UNFATHOMABLE DEPTHS OF PENTAGON CORRUPTION, By Bob Chapman, Part I'
June 1, 2009
Cheney's Toasters
The
probable cause for auditing the contracts and purchases of the
Bush-Cheney Regime is the following testimony concerning the $1,900.00
per toaster charged to the taxpayers for 1,000 toasters purchased on
Cheney's watch. Ultimately it turned out that the toasters
were
stolen and were fenced items. How many months or years in
jail
would you do for receiving stolen goods?
From:'THE NEARLY UNFATHOMABLE DEPTHS OF PENTAGON CORRUPTION, By Bob Chapman, Part I'
Reprinted
with kind permissions from THE
INTERNATIONAL FORECASTER
A former high-ranking member of the CIA, now retired, who was a career employee, contacted us this week. Due to our reporting on Halliburton and their corruption we were given 46 pages of testimony on how Halliburton, the CIA, the Pentagon and Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have been stealing billions of dollars. What we were presented will shortly be presented to Congressman Waxman's Oversight and Reform Committee in the House. These pages of step-by-step criminal procedure are only part of a larger body of evidence being presented to Congress. What is presented is astounding in the scope of the crime and the billions of dollars being stolen by these criminals.
Case 6: Toasters, Traitors, and the Criminal's Hideout
Because I did not do a good enough job of explaining the software methods to cover-up how computer can 'cook the books', I find that I have to write down more cases to give you a full understanding. The cases are interesting and relevant, so that is not the problem.
[Note: the first part of this case presentation appears not to be relevant to the corruption cases, but will later be shown to be. So, please bear with me.]
This case came to my attention during about May 2002. At that time, I was overseeing the software development in Case 3 in order to learn how to expose these cases later. I was in my office when "Halliburton's Representative to the CIA", call him HallCIA for short, barged into my office without even knocking. I automatically moved my phone cord out of his easy reach his time. He sat down in a chair and launched into a long rambling semi-incoherent description of his latest Halliburton problem. Frankly, I thought he was on drugs. It was my medical opinion as well. I told him that I would look into the matter and politely asked him to send his head programmer up to give me a 'fuller explanation in technical terms'. He became enraged at the implication that his explanation was unclear and tore my door off its hinges and left a hole in my wall with his fist. Fortunately, I managed to duck and dodge the blows that he rained down in my direction. Had his coordination not been thrown off drugs, he certainly would have managed to have his fists make contact with my body. He made such noise with yelling that the building security people of the CIA showed up promptly. They apologized for him saying "He sometimes gets like this" and "There is nothing we can do about it". I was busy with pressing intelligence matters and it was afternoon before the head programmer came up to my office.
In the meantime I had filed a charge of attempted assault against my Halliburton boss with the CIA security office, told Tenet in person the problem and showed him the considerable damage to my office. The CIA security people took photos of that damage. I had also faxed in a complaint to the nearest FBI station on the attempted assault charge. That had taken up almost all of the intervening time of about 3 hours. Thus, an official from the FBI called me shortly into my discussion with the Head Programmer. The FBI man asked me why I believed that the assailant was on drugs. I listed his dilated pupils, his change in gait and his in-coordination as well as his sudden violent behavior without provocation. The Head programmer then asked to speak to the FBI official and gave many more reasons to believe that his boss was on drugs. Those reasons included seeing him take them by mouth before his "erratic episodes" and brag about his ability to take drugs without it affecting his behavior. The FBI official then mentioned that the assailant had a previous record for assault with a deadly weapon. He warned me to 'stay out of the man's way'. I explained that he was my boss and the FBI official recommended immediately leaving my workplace until the assailant was arrested. He recommended that to the programmer as well since the assailant might retaliate for his giving information to the FBI. Thus it was that we moved our meeting to outside of the CIA and continued it at a local restaurant. It was about 2:30 pm and the restaurant was essentially empty. Our section of it was isolated from prying ears.
The Head programmer then proceeded to lay out the case in a way that I could understand it. One of Halliburton's subsidiaries, in so much as it carried a different name, had made "a big mistake". Instead of overcharging by a factor of 10 like it was supposed to, it had overcharged by a factor of 100. This is similar to other known cases where the Pentagon was charged and paid $200 for a wrench, etc. That "big mistake" had brought it to the attention of an official at the Pentagon responsible for fighting fraud. Halliburton now wanted a 'quick fix', a cooking of the books. They wanted make it look like that product had cost to produce it at least 50% of that charged price. The item was a small appliance, a toaster. It should have cost under $20 dollars on the open market, but Halliburton had charged almost $2,000 for each one. And it was a big number of them in the order so Halliburton had netted about $1.2 million from picking them up cheap at a discount appliance warehouse. They had not even made the item. It was worse than that. They had 'fenced' the items--they were stolen. They had no bill of sale for them and did not even order the parts they went into the manufacturing of them. They had raided the discount appliance warehouse pretending that they were FBI officials and the toasters had to be picked up because "they caused house fires".
Ok, now you begin to see why the first part of the story was relevant. The whole case was like a drug-crazed crime caper.
I had not known that Halliburton had impersonated FBI officials in another state when I was on the phone to them. But the Head Programmer had and he had decided that he had to report his boss's drug use so that the FBI did not come after him later. That did not quite make sense to me. I felt like I had fallen into Alice in Wonderland. I let it pass for then, hoping to make sense of it shortly. But before that happened the FBI showed up at the restaurant and said that they wanted 'to talk to' the programmer. They led him away in handcuffs as soon as they figured out he was not armed. That was about 20 minutes into my discussion with the programmer. The food had not been served yet. I then offered to tell the FBI everything that I knew. They were not much interested in staying to hear it, thinking that I was the man's girlfriend. When I told them that he had just told me that Halliburton's people had impersonated FBI official to commit grand larceny, they agreed to listen. They insisted that the interview be at the station. I ended up talking to the same man who I had spoken to on the phone about 4 hours before. He said "You sure get around" and "Some crowd you hang out with". I then explained that I worked for the CIA and showed him proof of that. He whistled and called in his boss. They then both listened to me recount what the programmer had told me. They quickly confirmed that the small appliance discount warehouse in the town I mentioned had been 'raided by people who said that they were FBI'. I think that town was in Indiana, if I remember correctly. It took them longer to verify that the FBI had not done that. I got anxious to go back to the CIA to finish up my pressing intelligence work.
Meanwhile, they had set up to arrest my Halliburton boss when he returned to his house. Then suddenly while I was still in their office they got a call to release the programmer and call off their investigations. That included not arresting my Halliburton boss for the attempted assault. They were absolutely floored. I asked them who had ordered them to back off. They said it was the Deputy Director of the FBI. I asked to use their phone. They handed it to me. I then called the Director of the FBI. It was Mueller by then and I knew him well enough to get through. I asked him in a non-judgmental tone why he was calling off the arrest of the man who had assaulted me in the past and tried to do so again that morning. He said he hadn't done that. Then later in the conversation he realized the convergence of the two cases and realized that he had called off all FBI action against that known felon. He also realized that it would look bad if it hit the press. He asked me "Are you going to go to the Press about this?" I replied "It looks like I will have to in order to get justice served." He said, "Give me your number, I will call you right back." I told him at that point that I was sitting in an FBI office and had just explained to two of them that Halliburton impersonated FBI officials to pull a heist of toasters. He laughed. Then he asked the names of the FBI men at my location. He asked for the exact spelling. It appeared that he ran a check on them of some kind. I feared that he was checking to see if they were on the take enough to be able to order their silence in the matter. He called back about 15 minutes later. He said, "Sorry, orders from above. It has to be this way. No arrests of those 2--ever." I was shocked and said, "So, you are just going to let this man kill me next time." He said he would have to call me back. He never did!
I did not go back to my office that day until after hours and after I had verified that HallCIA had already gone home. I had to wait until after 7 pm. That put me seriously behind schedule on an important mole case. That had the strong potential to effect National Security--the mole was inside the CIA from an "unfriendly country". I was not happy about that delay---so many hours of my day had been wasted by Halliburton being inside the CIA where it did not belong and did not behave itself. Really, it was worse than having that unfriendly mole in the CIA. But I needed to work on the mole problem so I got down to work on it.
Shortly thereafter that Head programmer showed up inside my office without knocking. I still had no door. He thanked me for getting him out of jail. I admitted that it wasn't me and it appeared to be the White House. He said "That figures". He then explained to me that the FBI had been after him off and on for about 4 years and that joining Halliburton was the only thing that worked to stop them. He said that he had killed a man and that 'it looked real bad afterwards'. He had apparently dismembered the man and left the pieces laying around at the scene of the crime. He said he asked to be transferred to the CIA's section of Halliburton after he heard it opened. He hoped that he would learn how 'to clean up better next time".
I told him that I was very busy and that he would have to manage the Halliburton mess by himself without me. He left and I got back to work on the mole case. But about an hour later Tenet called and ordered me to go help the programmer. I reminded him of the mole case and how the mole was stealing CIA documents every day as he left the building. He did not care enough to change the order. I reminded him that Halliburton had already eaten up more than 10 hours of my time already that week. He still did not budge. Nothing worked.
I ended up staying up all night and half way into the afternoon down at the Halliburton's creative accounting computer. I procured and fed coffee and donuts to the programmers and made sure that they did not fall asleep. I also had them each give me briefings on what they were doing. In that way I learned a lot and performed my role of overseer up to people's expectations without having to add any illegal advice. It is very hard to keep your nose clean in this business. But with tremendous effort one can do better than most people at it.
The stolen toasters were among the cheapest models in the industry. They did not even have a dial to set how browned you wanted the bread. They did not have a way to adjust the width of the slice it would accept. The slot was big enough but the metal holder for the bread would only accept the thinnest slices. I know because I asked for one to be sent by courier and it arrived in the middle of the night. The programmers groaned when they examined it. They had been trying to justify the cost on "its extra features". I had told them that they had better check the toaster and not Halliburton's product blurb on it before they went down that road. The blurb was stolen from a high-end GE model verbatim. It had nothing to do with the toaster that Halliburton's alias has sold to the Pentagon. Halliburton made aliases to protect the parent company from lawsuits and settlements. Towards morning I was told by another Halliburton bigwig at the main headquarters not to keep the programmers overtime. He was a Vice President, if I remember correctly. He said that 'if it comes to that, we will just close down this company as bankrupt and open another one the same day under another name. I asked him about the cost of moving. He said "No cost, we didn't have 'a factory at a fixed location'". I asked him about the other products of the company. He admitted that they were 'all reclaimed'. He said 'there is a lot of reclaimed stuff in the world' "we just know how to find it'. I teased him to keep the information flowing in a light hearted way and said "Did you go to a second hand FBI shop?" He laughed. He said "We have more of those where those come from--we get them new for a discount." I asked him if he could get one in my size and told him what size that was. He said, "Sure, no problem." I offered to pay him the cost. He said, "No cost." I insisted on paying him the exact amount. He said "Nothing. But you can pay for the shipping, if you like. I said fine. It arrived by FBI courier! It was from the FBI directly, brand new. The wheels in my mind were spinning. I was beginning to put 2 and 2 together to get 4.
I had insisted that the programmers take the toaster apart and count the number of parts. They had been making up part name and costs for them by the hundreds. There were only about a dozen parts in the whole thing:
1) Cord
2) Plug for cord
3) Crumb pan
4) Metal shell
5) Two sets of slice holders
6) 4 heating wires
7) 4 frames to wrap the wires on
8) A lever to pop the toast up
9) a knob on the lever
10) a bi-metal thermal detector
11) 4 knobs for feet
12) an internal frame and screws
13) the release mechanism
14) springs
They had already named and priced over 200 parts for that toaster. They had already written code to make the fake books for that factory that manufactured that toaster. But it was all a virtual reality that had no reality to it. That was their standard operating procedure! They accused me of trying to sabotage their efforts by making them look at the actual toaster and how it was made!
So, any investigation of the books has to start with real products already delivered and taking one of them apart to count the parts! It also needs to start with a site inspection to ensure that there is a factory making those goods that that company owns.
When I forced them to use the toaster's actual parts in their accounting scam, they then went to claiming that they were made of titanium or even "platinum alloys" to justify the cost. They wrote transactions for buying platinum and for the equipment to make special alloys of it. They knew all about such jargon and the equipment that a factory would have to have to make such alloys. The cost was going to be justified then on how expensive the manufacturing of those special alloys were.
I looked at the toaster and saw only chrome, steel, and some aluminum. I asked them how they were going to justify not just using those ordinary cheap material to make the toaster. One of them said "You don't get it. No one cares. Everyone is already part of this scam. Who is there left to bust us?" Another one said, "We get away with doing this day in and day out because no one checks. If you weren't here we would be done already. We make up the books for about one fake factory a day. That is our normal rate of production and you are slowing us down."
I called Tenet when he normally got up at home and explained to him what they said. I told him "I am just in the way here, let me get back to my regular work." He said "They might check this time. That is why I have you there. I want it to stand up to scrutiny. I said, "And what if someone asks to have an onsite inspection of the factory?" He said he hadn't thought of that. He said that he would call me back. He did, about 30 minutes later. He said that it had never happened before. He said that accountants just looked at the books, not even the products and so were easy to fool. He told me "forget the toaster, just make the books hold up to inspection".
Before I continue I want to backtrack a bit. I checked to see who FBI Director Mueller called while I waited for his answer. He called Cheney. I made a copy of that phone conversation. It was on record at a number of places. I did the same when Tenet said he had to check. He called Cheney and then Cheney had him also double check with a third person, a Halliburton employee. That person's sole job was to deal with investigators. I later went out to visit that man. He had in his files every case of an investigator worrying one of Cheney's companies. He let me look through his files to prove to my satisfaction that no corruption investigator had inspected a factory. He was very proud of his cover-up skills. He bragged that they were better that the CIA's and that he could beat me at this game any day of the week and twice on Sunday. He assumed that I was playing the same game he was since HallCIA and Tenet sent me out to see him. He then spent half a day teaching me "to be a pro at it like me". He said that what he did was a form of psychological warfare when the investigators came. He said "make them pay in their own time for every piece of information that they get out of you". "You have to give them information, it doesn't have to be real." "But make sure to waste as much of their time as possible each time they contact you." Take 2 hours to find each piece of paper. Time yourself at it. Make sure that you don't give them anything faster than that. Keep them on hold while you "look" for the information. Never call them back. Make sure they have to call you. Make them wait 30 minutes just to get you each time. They will get tired of investigating your case and more onto someone else's. They want to make progress and advancements just like anyone else. Make them go elsewhere to do that." At the end of the day I thanked him and he gave me his phone number. I asked him if I would have to wait 30 minutes. He said, "No, that's not the listed number. I always pick up that phone immediately. It could be the President calling me. He calls me for advice, you know. He always does what I recommend." I asked him if Cheney did. He swore briefly and said that he and Cheney "went way back" but that they didn't always see eye-to-eye. He said that Cheney mostly took his advice but sometimes didn't have the patience to do it right.
The software team had decided before I arrived downstairs that the factory would make just one product, this toaster. That simplified their work. They were into production. They did not want any unnecessary complications in making a good set of books. They started with the outer facts the Pentagon had, that 1000 toasters had been bought, each one costing $1,891 dollars. When the numbers were jacked up they were jacked up like in supermarkets, $1.99, $5.99 etc. But they liked to make it look like it reflected real costs a bit, so they would let the last digit be low, or another digit not follow the 9999 pattern.
They then added to the books they were creating on the computer 'ordered parts'. They liked to do that by listing transactions from known suppliers that some of Halliburton's real factories did business with. They had listings of real transactions with those companies for many parts over many years. A part might be listed as a $19.99 dollar appliance rack from General Electric. The programmer added it to their books and changed its title slightly like $19.99 rack for the appliance. That would then morph into one of the 4 slice racks in the toaster to add $79.96 to the cost of the toaster. Then a fake shipping order might be added to move those 4 racks from the actual Halliburton factory to the fake address for this alias. That fake address might be a real factory, even a real Halliburton factory making something else. Since the advent of maps with aerial views it was important to have an address with a big factory already on it.
If doing that was not enough to get the price up they might add 'metal plating' or additional chrome plating "to enhance durability". Then they could claim that that $19.99 single rack cost them $89.52 to make in their factory and $358.08 for 4. They might say the metal plating enhanced its heat resistance or its anti-corrosion properties. It might even make some kind of sense that one would want that in that part. But the fact would remain that it was completely unnecessary and the toaster would work fine without it.
Then one might add a "scratch resistant" finish or a finish that wouldn't show a scratch because it was 'brushed'. Of course, that adds nothing to the toast that comes out. Unless one sees the product you don't know if it was added.
If the books were not cooked up to CIA standards for cover-ups, then there would not be a real transaction as a basis for each part at the corresponding GE factory etc. During the time that I was overseeing the efforts of those software programmers about half the time they did not have a real transaction to match the number and type of part. Small and common parts were not hard for them to morph into a part for the toaster. But specific function, like the bimetal thermal detector, and shaped parts, like the toaster's outer shell, were harder for them. Some company's transactions had very vague part descriptions like "Metal Housing" or "Holder" without giving size, shape, or function. Those companies were almost always witting parts of this conspiracy to defraud the taxpayer. It impairs efficiency not to have parts described accurately. So, then there has to be another reason for it that is making them money to do it that way--corruption! So, when you see books where the real transactions, as listed in the part seller's books, are vague parts, then you should suspect that the buyer's books are cooked. You may not be able to tell well by looking at the one set of books. Those could look perfect, especially if you are dealing with a piece of equipment that you have never disassembled or even seen before.
The books that were produced in this instance were inspected. Tenet was correct about that risk to Halliburton. But it was hardly something that should have taken precedence over a national security issue.
They passed that inspection even with the actual toaster Halliburton had sold them on display at the inspection!
I had been intuitively correct that the books had to reflect in this case the actual features and numbers of parts. They did not take the toaster apart but they peered into it from top and bottom with the crumb pan open. Tenet sent me the security camera pictures and an audio of that Pentagon inspection taking place. There were 4 Pentagon Generals doing the inspection and not an engineer among them! They were obviously already bribed and I later proved that with their bank statements. They were just looking for an excuse to pass it. How can anyone justify spending $1,891 on a toaster for 1,000 of them in bulk when one could buy a better one for $19.95 down at the mall without a volume discount?
Since there were no glaring inconsistencies on the fictitious books the 4 generals passed it. There needs to be engineers and cost cutting experts with real veto power to prevent this corruption from going on. All one had to do is set a $19.95 toaster down next to that one and ask the generals to justify the extra cost according to its real function-- making toast. They would not have been able to do that.
I sent all of proof of that scam to that same GAO officer in the previous cases. That included the financial records of the generals, the real transactions and what those parts looked like and were for, and how they were morphed by software into expensive parts He then asked me to send him one of those toasters. I did. I sent the one that I had requested at the CIA and that we had dissembled. He asked me to meet with him again. I told him that it had become too dangerous for me to do so. Shortly, thereafter I drove to Canada to live. I drove there without stopping at a hotel, using a credit card, or making a single call even from a pay phone.
I hoped that corruption would be cleaned up. It was not. I do not fault that GAO officer. He was an honest man of courage and integrity. His boss shut down that investigation, no doubt on orders from the White House or one of their power brokers like the Director of the FBI or Director of CIA.
Now I want to talk more about the mole problem as it relevant to this case. A mole is a person inside an agency who is acting as a traitor to give secrets to a foreign power. The motives can vary and include bribes or blackmail. The CIA knew that it had a mole because one of its bugs at the Russian Embassy in Washington D.C. recorded the news of just delivered CIA documents. I had been assigned by Tenet to investigate who that mole was starting just before I was handed the Halliburton factory problem by HallCIA. I was then required by Tenet to keep working on the Halliburton problem until it was finished about 2 pm. Then I was exhausted and went home to sleep. The next day I got the FBI with a warrant to raid a flat looking for CIA documents. I was present at the raid and we recovered the CIA specifications for the CIA's communication satellite that NASA had just launched into orbit. That included the security codes for the encryption algorithms which were set at the time of launch. The launch was the morning after the FBI did not arrest HallCIA while I was still forced to work on Halliburton's book cooking project. Those security codes meant that someone could change from the ground the encryption codes to their own and listen it to everything the CIA said to its stations overseas. In essence, it was like having a bug into the CIA and all of its stations. It was an extremely serious violation of US National Security, one of the most serious in the history of the CIA had it not been caught. It was later verified that although the documents were recovered, the mole had already faxed those security codes directly to Moscow soon after the launch.
The mole was a Halliburton employee who had never been vetted by the CIA! The Russians had approached him and offered him money. In addition they offered not to expose his criminal background. He was a prime candidate for blackmail by the Russians; keeping his job meant having to hide his felony conviction. The CIA had not run a criminal background check on all of those Halliburton employees but the Russians had!
The CIA has rules that prevent it from hiring drug takers for the same reason; they are too high a blackmail risk, and thus a mole risk. Since the CIA never vetted the Halliburton people they never even asked them if they took drugs under a lie detector test like they normally do. And the CIA never even did drug tests on the Halliburton people.
When I showed Tenet the documents that I recovered from that Halliburton man's flat he was shocked. He immediately called the Director of the FBI and thanked him for his help in recovering them. I asked Tenet to ask the FBI Director to arrest the Halliburton traitor. Tenet sent me out of the room to discuss it. He called Cheney. Cheney told him no, that that man was his friend and that they could never arrest him. The phone was on speaker and I heard everything. I cried for my country that it had been taken over by crooks who were traitors as well.
I could not stand to be in such a corrupt institution and under such a corrupt govt. That was the moment in 2002 that I decided to leave my country.
After the CIA knew that its new satellite's security codes had been stolen, it had to figure out what to. It decided that it could not use that satellite because its security had been too compromised. That satellite cost the US taxpayers over $3.6 billion dollars. It sits in orbit unused.
The man responsible for that was the man I called on these pages HallCIA. I have not used his real name because Cheney threatened to kill me himself if I ever mentioned his name or the name of his partners in crime. I also have not mentioned them because no one is prosecuting these cases, so it makes no sense to risk one's life for nothing. HallCIA and the Head programmer were moved back to Halliburton's main office, just like the priests sexually abusing children were moved to a different parish.
They were never prosecuted.
End of Case 6
(Submitted to the Committee on May 18, 2008)
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A former high-ranking member of the CIA, now retired, who was a career employee, contacted us this week. Due to our reporting on Halliburton and their corruption we were given 46 pages of testimony on how Halliburton, the CIA, the Pentagon and Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have been stealing billions of dollars. What we were presented will shortly be presented to Congressman Waxman's Oversight and Reform Committee in the House. These pages of step-by-step criminal procedure are only part of a larger body of evidence being presented to Congress. What is presented is astounding in the scope of the crime and the billions of dollars being stolen by these criminals.
Case 6: Toasters, Traitors, and the Criminal's Hideout
Because I did not do a good enough job of explaining the software methods to cover-up how computer can 'cook the books', I find that I have to write down more cases to give you a full understanding. The cases are interesting and relevant, so that is not the problem.
[Note: the first part of this case presentation appears not to be relevant to the corruption cases, but will later be shown to be. So, please bear with me.]
This case came to my attention during about May 2002. At that time, I was overseeing the software development in Case 3 in order to learn how to expose these cases later. I was in my office when "Halliburton's Representative to the CIA", call him HallCIA for short, barged into my office without even knocking. I automatically moved my phone cord out of his easy reach his time. He sat down in a chair and launched into a long rambling semi-incoherent description of his latest Halliburton problem. Frankly, I thought he was on drugs. It was my medical opinion as well. I told him that I would look into the matter and politely asked him to send his head programmer up to give me a 'fuller explanation in technical terms'. He became enraged at the implication that his explanation was unclear and tore my door off its hinges and left a hole in my wall with his fist. Fortunately, I managed to duck and dodge the blows that he rained down in my direction. Had his coordination not been thrown off drugs, he certainly would have managed to have his fists make contact with my body. He made such noise with yelling that the building security people of the CIA showed up promptly. They apologized for him saying "He sometimes gets like this" and "There is nothing we can do about it". I was busy with pressing intelligence matters and it was afternoon before the head programmer came up to my office.
In the meantime I had filed a charge of attempted assault against my Halliburton boss with the CIA security office, told Tenet in person the problem and showed him the considerable damage to my office. The CIA security people took photos of that damage. I had also faxed in a complaint to the nearest FBI station on the attempted assault charge. That had taken up almost all of the intervening time of about 3 hours. Thus, an official from the FBI called me shortly into my discussion with the Head Programmer. The FBI man asked me why I believed that the assailant was on drugs. I listed his dilated pupils, his change in gait and his in-coordination as well as his sudden violent behavior without provocation. The Head programmer then asked to speak to the FBI official and gave many more reasons to believe that his boss was on drugs. Those reasons included seeing him take them by mouth before his "erratic episodes" and brag about his ability to take drugs without it affecting his behavior. The FBI official then mentioned that the assailant had a previous record for assault with a deadly weapon. He warned me to 'stay out of the man's way'. I explained that he was my boss and the FBI official recommended immediately leaving my workplace until the assailant was arrested. He recommended that to the programmer as well since the assailant might retaliate for his giving information to the FBI. Thus it was that we moved our meeting to outside of the CIA and continued it at a local restaurant. It was about 2:30 pm and the restaurant was essentially empty. Our section of it was isolated from prying ears.
The Head programmer then proceeded to lay out the case in a way that I could understand it. One of Halliburton's subsidiaries, in so much as it carried a different name, had made "a big mistake". Instead of overcharging by a factor of 10 like it was supposed to, it had overcharged by a factor of 100. This is similar to other known cases where the Pentagon was charged and paid $200 for a wrench, etc. That "big mistake" had brought it to the attention of an official at the Pentagon responsible for fighting fraud. Halliburton now wanted a 'quick fix', a cooking of the books. They wanted make it look like that product had cost to produce it at least 50% of that charged price. The item was a small appliance, a toaster. It should have cost under $20 dollars on the open market, but Halliburton had charged almost $2,000 for each one. And it was a big number of them in the order so Halliburton had netted about $1.2 million from picking them up cheap at a discount appliance warehouse. They had not even made the item. It was worse than that. They had 'fenced' the items--they were stolen. They had no bill of sale for them and did not even order the parts they went into the manufacturing of them. They had raided the discount appliance warehouse pretending that they were FBI officials and the toasters had to be picked up because "they caused house fires".
Ok, now you begin to see why the first part of the story was relevant. The whole case was like a drug-crazed crime caper.
I had not known that Halliburton had impersonated FBI officials in another state when I was on the phone to them. But the Head Programmer had and he had decided that he had to report his boss's drug use so that the FBI did not come after him later. That did not quite make sense to me. I felt like I had fallen into Alice in Wonderland. I let it pass for then, hoping to make sense of it shortly. But before that happened the FBI showed up at the restaurant and said that they wanted 'to talk to' the programmer. They led him away in handcuffs as soon as they figured out he was not armed. That was about 20 minutes into my discussion with the programmer. The food had not been served yet. I then offered to tell the FBI everything that I knew. They were not much interested in staying to hear it, thinking that I was the man's girlfriend. When I told them that he had just told me that Halliburton's people had impersonated FBI official to commit grand larceny, they agreed to listen. They insisted that the interview be at the station. I ended up talking to the same man who I had spoken to on the phone about 4 hours before. He said "You sure get around" and "Some crowd you hang out with". I then explained that I worked for the CIA and showed him proof of that. He whistled and called in his boss. They then both listened to me recount what the programmer had told me. They quickly confirmed that the small appliance discount warehouse in the town I mentioned had been 'raided by people who said that they were FBI'. I think that town was in Indiana, if I remember correctly. It took them longer to verify that the FBI had not done that. I got anxious to go back to the CIA to finish up my pressing intelligence work.
Meanwhile, they had set up to arrest my Halliburton boss when he returned to his house. Then suddenly while I was still in their office they got a call to release the programmer and call off their investigations. That included not arresting my Halliburton boss for the attempted assault. They were absolutely floored. I asked them who had ordered them to back off. They said it was the Deputy Director of the FBI. I asked to use their phone. They handed it to me. I then called the Director of the FBI. It was Mueller by then and I knew him well enough to get through. I asked him in a non-judgmental tone why he was calling off the arrest of the man who had assaulted me in the past and tried to do so again that morning. He said he hadn't done that. Then later in the conversation he realized the convergence of the two cases and realized that he had called off all FBI action against that known felon. He also realized that it would look bad if it hit the press. He asked me "Are you going to go to the Press about this?" I replied "It looks like I will have to in order to get justice served." He said, "Give me your number, I will call you right back." I told him at that point that I was sitting in an FBI office and had just explained to two of them that Halliburton impersonated FBI officials to pull a heist of toasters. He laughed. Then he asked the names of the FBI men at my location. He asked for the exact spelling. It appeared that he ran a check on them of some kind. I feared that he was checking to see if they were on the take enough to be able to order their silence in the matter. He called back about 15 minutes later. He said, "Sorry, orders from above. It has to be this way. No arrests of those 2--ever." I was shocked and said, "So, you are just going to let this man kill me next time." He said he would have to call me back. He never did!
I did not go back to my office that day until after hours and after I had verified that HallCIA had already gone home. I had to wait until after 7 pm. That put me seriously behind schedule on an important mole case. That had the strong potential to effect National Security--the mole was inside the CIA from an "unfriendly country". I was not happy about that delay---so many hours of my day had been wasted by Halliburton being inside the CIA where it did not belong and did not behave itself. Really, it was worse than having that unfriendly mole in the CIA. But I needed to work on the mole problem so I got down to work on it.
Shortly thereafter that Head programmer showed up inside my office without knocking. I still had no door. He thanked me for getting him out of jail. I admitted that it wasn't me and it appeared to be the White House. He said "That figures". He then explained to me that the FBI had been after him off and on for about 4 years and that joining Halliburton was the only thing that worked to stop them. He said that he had killed a man and that 'it looked real bad afterwards'. He had apparently dismembered the man and left the pieces laying around at the scene of the crime. He said he asked to be transferred to the CIA's section of Halliburton after he heard it opened. He hoped that he would learn how 'to clean up better next time".
I told him that I was very busy and that he would have to manage the Halliburton mess by himself without me. He left and I got back to work on the mole case. But about an hour later Tenet called and ordered me to go help the programmer. I reminded him of the mole case and how the mole was stealing CIA documents every day as he left the building. He did not care enough to change the order. I reminded him that Halliburton had already eaten up more than 10 hours of my time already that week. He still did not budge. Nothing worked.
I ended up staying up all night and half way into the afternoon down at the Halliburton's creative accounting computer. I procured and fed coffee and donuts to the programmers and made sure that they did not fall asleep. I also had them each give me briefings on what they were doing. In that way I learned a lot and performed my role of overseer up to people's expectations without having to add any illegal advice. It is very hard to keep your nose clean in this business. But with tremendous effort one can do better than most people at it.
The stolen toasters were among the cheapest models in the industry. They did not even have a dial to set how browned you wanted the bread. They did not have a way to adjust the width of the slice it would accept. The slot was big enough but the metal holder for the bread would only accept the thinnest slices. I know because I asked for one to be sent by courier and it arrived in the middle of the night. The programmers groaned when they examined it. They had been trying to justify the cost on "its extra features". I had told them that they had better check the toaster and not Halliburton's product blurb on it before they went down that road. The blurb was stolen from a high-end GE model verbatim. It had nothing to do with the toaster that Halliburton's alias has sold to the Pentagon. Halliburton made aliases to protect the parent company from lawsuits and settlements. Towards morning I was told by another Halliburton bigwig at the main headquarters not to keep the programmers overtime. He was a Vice President, if I remember correctly. He said that 'if it comes to that, we will just close down this company as bankrupt and open another one the same day under another name. I asked him about the cost of moving. He said "No cost, we didn't have 'a factory at a fixed location'". I asked him about the other products of the company. He admitted that they were 'all reclaimed'. He said 'there is a lot of reclaimed stuff in the world' "we just know how to find it'. I teased him to keep the information flowing in a light hearted way and said "Did you go to a second hand FBI shop?" He laughed. He said "We have more of those where those come from--we get them new for a discount." I asked him if he could get one in my size and told him what size that was. He said, "Sure, no problem." I offered to pay him the cost. He said, "No cost." I insisted on paying him the exact amount. He said "Nothing. But you can pay for the shipping, if you like. I said fine. It arrived by FBI courier! It was from the FBI directly, brand new. The wheels in my mind were spinning. I was beginning to put 2 and 2 together to get 4.
I had insisted that the programmers take the toaster apart and count the number of parts. They had been making up part name and costs for them by the hundreds. There were only about a dozen parts in the whole thing:
1) Cord
2) Plug for cord
3) Crumb pan
4) Metal shell
5) Two sets of slice holders
6) 4 heating wires
7) 4 frames to wrap the wires on
8) A lever to pop the toast up
9) a knob on the lever
10) a bi-metal thermal detector
11) 4 knobs for feet
12) an internal frame and screws
13) the release mechanism
14) springs
They had already named and priced over 200 parts for that toaster. They had already written code to make the fake books for that factory that manufactured that toaster. But it was all a virtual reality that had no reality to it. That was their standard operating procedure! They accused me of trying to sabotage their efforts by making them look at the actual toaster and how it was made!
So, any investigation of the books has to start with real products already delivered and taking one of them apart to count the parts! It also needs to start with a site inspection to ensure that there is a factory making those goods that that company owns.
When I forced them to use the toaster's actual parts in their accounting scam, they then went to claiming that they were made of titanium or even "platinum alloys" to justify the cost. They wrote transactions for buying platinum and for the equipment to make special alloys of it. They knew all about such jargon and the equipment that a factory would have to have to make such alloys. The cost was going to be justified then on how expensive the manufacturing of those special alloys were.
I looked at the toaster and saw only chrome, steel, and some aluminum. I asked them how they were going to justify not just using those ordinary cheap material to make the toaster. One of them said "You don't get it. No one cares. Everyone is already part of this scam. Who is there left to bust us?" Another one said, "We get away with doing this day in and day out because no one checks. If you weren't here we would be done already. We make up the books for about one fake factory a day. That is our normal rate of production and you are slowing us down."
I called Tenet when he normally got up at home and explained to him what they said. I told him "I am just in the way here, let me get back to my regular work." He said "They might check this time. That is why I have you there. I want it to stand up to scrutiny. I said, "And what if someone asks to have an onsite inspection of the factory?" He said he hadn't thought of that. He said that he would call me back. He did, about 30 minutes later. He said that it had never happened before. He said that accountants just looked at the books, not even the products and so were easy to fool. He told me "forget the toaster, just make the books hold up to inspection".
Before I continue I want to backtrack a bit. I checked to see who FBI Director Mueller called while I waited for his answer. He called Cheney. I made a copy of that phone conversation. It was on record at a number of places. I did the same when Tenet said he had to check. He called Cheney and then Cheney had him also double check with a third person, a Halliburton employee. That person's sole job was to deal with investigators. I later went out to visit that man. He had in his files every case of an investigator worrying one of Cheney's companies. He let me look through his files to prove to my satisfaction that no corruption investigator had inspected a factory. He was very proud of his cover-up skills. He bragged that they were better that the CIA's and that he could beat me at this game any day of the week and twice on Sunday. He assumed that I was playing the same game he was since HallCIA and Tenet sent me out to see him. He then spent half a day teaching me "to be a pro at it like me". He said that what he did was a form of psychological warfare when the investigators came. He said "make them pay in their own time for every piece of information that they get out of you". "You have to give them information, it doesn't have to be real." "But make sure to waste as much of their time as possible each time they contact you." Take 2 hours to find each piece of paper. Time yourself at it. Make sure that you don't give them anything faster than that. Keep them on hold while you "look" for the information. Never call them back. Make sure they have to call you. Make them wait 30 minutes just to get you each time. They will get tired of investigating your case and more onto someone else's. They want to make progress and advancements just like anyone else. Make them go elsewhere to do that." At the end of the day I thanked him and he gave me his phone number. I asked him if I would have to wait 30 minutes. He said, "No, that's not the listed number. I always pick up that phone immediately. It could be the President calling me. He calls me for advice, you know. He always does what I recommend." I asked him if Cheney did. He swore briefly and said that he and Cheney "went way back" but that they didn't always see eye-to-eye. He said that Cheney mostly took his advice but sometimes didn't have the patience to do it right.
The software team had decided before I arrived downstairs that the factory would make just one product, this toaster. That simplified their work. They were into production. They did not want any unnecessary complications in making a good set of books. They started with the outer facts the Pentagon had, that 1000 toasters had been bought, each one costing $1,891 dollars. When the numbers were jacked up they were jacked up like in supermarkets, $1.99, $5.99 etc. But they liked to make it look like it reflected real costs a bit, so they would let the last digit be low, or another digit not follow the 9999 pattern.
They then added to the books they were creating on the computer 'ordered parts'. They liked to do that by listing transactions from known suppliers that some of Halliburton's real factories did business with. They had listings of real transactions with those companies for many parts over many years. A part might be listed as a $19.99 dollar appliance rack from General Electric. The programmer added it to their books and changed its title slightly like $19.99 rack for the appliance. That would then morph into one of the 4 slice racks in the toaster to add $79.96 to the cost of the toaster. Then a fake shipping order might be added to move those 4 racks from the actual Halliburton factory to the fake address for this alias. That fake address might be a real factory, even a real Halliburton factory making something else. Since the advent of maps with aerial views it was important to have an address with a big factory already on it.
If doing that was not enough to get the price up they might add 'metal plating' or additional chrome plating "to enhance durability". Then they could claim that that $19.99 single rack cost them $89.52 to make in their factory and $358.08 for 4. They might say the metal plating enhanced its heat resistance or its anti-corrosion properties. It might even make some kind of sense that one would want that in that part. But the fact would remain that it was completely unnecessary and the toaster would work fine without it.
Then one might add a "scratch resistant" finish or a finish that wouldn't show a scratch because it was 'brushed'. Of course, that adds nothing to the toast that comes out. Unless one sees the product you don't know if it was added.
If the books were not cooked up to CIA standards for cover-ups, then there would not be a real transaction as a basis for each part at the corresponding GE factory etc. During the time that I was overseeing the efforts of those software programmers about half the time they did not have a real transaction to match the number and type of part. Small and common parts were not hard for them to morph into a part for the toaster. But specific function, like the bimetal thermal detector, and shaped parts, like the toaster's outer shell, were harder for them. Some company's transactions had very vague part descriptions like "Metal Housing" or "Holder" without giving size, shape, or function. Those companies were almost always witting parts of this conspiracy to defraud the taxpayer. It impairs efficiency not to have parts described accurately. So, then there has to be another reason for it that is making them money to do it that way--corruption! So, when you see books where the real transactions, as listed in the part seller's books, are vague parts, then you should suspect that the buyer's books are cooked. You may not be able to tell well by looking at the one set of books. Those could look perfect, especially if you are dealing with a piece of equipment that you have never disassembled or even seen before.
The books that were produced in this instance were inspected. Tenet was correct about that risk to Halliburton. But it was hardly something that should have taken precedence over a national security issue.
They passed that inspection even with the actual toaster Halliburton had sold them on display at the inspection!
I had been intuitively correct that the books had to reflect in this case the actual features and numbers of parts. They did not take the toaster apart but they peered into it from top and bottom with the crumb pan open. Tenet sent me the security camera pictures and an audio of that Pentagon inspection taking place. There were 4 Pentagon Generals doing the inspection and not an engineer among them! They were obviously already bribed and I later proved that with their bank statements. They were just looking for an excuse to pass it. How can anyone justify spending $1,891 on a toaster for 1,000 of them in bulk when one could buy a better one for $19.95 down at the mall without a volume discount?
Since there were no glaring inconsistencies on the fictitious books the 4 generals passed it. There needs to be engineers and cost cutting experts with real veto power to prevent this corruption from going on. All one had to do is set a $19.95 toaster down next to that one and ask the generals to justify the extra cost according to its real function-- making toast. They would not have been able to do that.
I sent all of proof of that scam to that same GAO officer in the previous cases. That included the financial records of the generals, the real transactions and what those parts looked like and were for, and how they were morphed by software into expensive parts He then asked me to send him one of those toasters. I did. I sent the one that I had requested at the CIA and that we had dissembled. He asked me to meet with him again. I told him that it had become too dangerous for me to do so. Shortly, thereafter I drove to Canada to live. I drove there without stopping at a hotel, using a credit card, or making a single call even from a pay phone.
I hoped that corruption would be cleaned up. It was not. I do not fault that GAO officer. He was an honest man of courage and integrity. His boss shut down that investigation, no doubt on orders from the White House or one of their power brokers like the Director of the FBI or Director of CIA.
Now I want to talk more about the mole problem as it relevant to this case. A mole is a person inside an agency who is acting as a traitor to give secrets to a foreign power. The motives can vary and include bribes or blackmail. The CIA knew that it had a mole because one of its bugs at the Russian Embassy in Washington D.C. recorded the news of just delivered CIA documents. I had been assigned by Tenet to investigate who that mole was starting just before I was handed the Halliburton factory problem by HallCIA. I was then required by Tenet to keep working on the Halliburton problem until it was finished about 2 pm. Then I was exhausted and went home to sleep. The next day I got the FBI with a warrant to raid a flat looking for CIA documents. I was present at the raid and we recovered the CIA specifications for the CIA's communication satellite that NASA had just launched into orbit. That included the security codes for the encryption algorithms which were set at the time of launch. The launch was the morning after the FBI did not arrest HallCIA while I was still forced to work on Halliburton's book cooking project. Those security codes meant that someone could change from the ground the encryption codes to their own and listen it to everything the CIA said to its stations overseas. In essence, it was like having a bug into the CIA and all of its stations. It was an extremely serious violation of US National Security, one of the most serious in the history of the CIA had it not been caught. It was later verified that although the documents were recovered, the mole had already faxed those security codes directly to Moscow soon after the launch.
The mole was a Halliburton employee who had never been vetted by the CIA! The Russians had approached him and offered him money. In addition they offered not to expose his criminal background. He was a prime candidate for blackmail by the Russians; keeping his job meant having to hide his felony conviction. The CIA had not run a criminal background check on all of those Halliburton employees but the Russians had!
The CIA has rules that prevent it from hiring drug takers for the same reason; they are too high a blackmail risk, and thus a mole risk. Since the CIA never vetted the Halliburton people they never even asked them if they took drugs under a lie detector test like they normally do. And the CIA never even did drug tests on the Halliburton people.
When I showed Tenet the documents that I recovered from that Halliburton man's flat he was shocked. He immediately called the Director of the FBI and thanked him for his help in recovering them. I asked Tenet to ask the FBI Director to arrest the Halliburton traitor. Tenet sent me out of the room to discuss it. He called Cheney. Cheney told him no, that that man was his friend and that they could never arrest him. The phone was on speaker and I heard everything. I cried for my country that it had been taken over by crooks who were traitors as well.
I could not stand to be in such a corrupt institution and under such a corrupt govt. That was the moment in 2002 that I decided to leave my country.
After the CIA knew that its new satellite's security codes had been stolen, it had to figure out what to. It decided that it could not use that satellite because its security had been too compromised. That satellite cost the US taxpayers over $3.6 billion dollars. It sits in orbit unused.
The man responsible for that was the man I called on these pages HallCIA. I have not used his real name because Cheney threatened to kill me himself if I ever mentioned his name or the name of his partners in crime. I also have not mentioned them because no one is prosecuting these cases, so it makes no sense to risk one's life for nothing. HallCIA and the Head programmer were moved back to Halliburton's main office, just like the priests sexually abusing children were moved to a different parish.
They were never prosecuted.
End of Case 6
(Submitted to the Committee on May 18, 2008)
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