Investigators using false identities were able to obtain more than $1m of sensitive military equipment from the US department of defence, according to a government report released on Tuesday.
The equipment included body armour, launcher mounts for shoulder-fired guided missiles, components for F-14 fighter aircraft, biochemical weapons protection suits, guided missile radar test sets and various sensitive surveillance technologies. Many of those items have applications that could be “useful to terrorists”, the report from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) says.
The defence department routinely disposes of excess military equipment either through cut-rate sales to the public or to government contractors. Any item that has a possible military application is supposed to be destroyed. But investigators from the GAO, disguising themselves as private citizens or defence contractors, obtained the sensitive equipment. Some of the body armour and the F-14 parts, which included circuit boards, were obtained over the internet, they said.
I only wish the GAO investigators included some price comparisons between what taxpayers fronted for this stuff — and how much was charged when it went out the side door?
I’ve attended surplus auctions, and what I’ve seen is mostly junk or items in bulk that would only sell to a Army/Navy type store. Other US agencies and state agencies gets first pick of many items, like vehicles. Firearms are tightly controlled. Usually the newest US military weapons you see available to the public are WWII and Korean era M1 carbines and Garrands. Military armorers keep weapons in service for quite a while. Before the sidearm change to Berretta, some of the old 1911 45 frames had been around 4 decades. The military stores vast amounts of these weapons, and shifts older ones to lower need issue.
One million dollars worth of stuff? Including F-14 parts? Wow… that must have been a pretty small pile of junk.
They could buy body armor? Did we already forget the news that the families of military members were buying and shipping body armor because the military itself was not providing it?
Should we ban or control the sales of GPS units? They are definitely potentially more useful than some old radar circuit boards for an airplane that is no longer even in active duty.
RT — so, uh, what were you shopping for?
Awake — I imagine that was all of their budget. Bad enough, they had to waste more tax dollars buying back stuff we already paid for — that wasn’t supposed to be accessible in the 2nd place!
But, that’s one of the things GAO inspectors do to prove the crap that goes on!
You should see what you can buy at the Black Hole up in Los Alamos!
I think if the terrs are spending their time and money trying to assemble an F-14 from spare parts, we should lower the threat board to Green.
I think that the GOA is full of it–they are wasting 100’s of manhours and hundreds of thousands of dollars investigating themselves, when they should be investigating the serial rapes of children (a 13 year old girl, and her mother) in and around El Paso, Texas.
Don’t worry about a 20+ year old jet, I have F-14 parts myself, what you need to worry about is why a man in El Paso wearing a Homeland Security uniform and a badge and getting $50,000 a year raped a child, and kept his job for almost 2 years after that incident, and why when the women came forward to complain that they were intimidated and threatened by DHS employees; and why, absurdly, he was allowed to keep raping!
A woman from Honduras was raped 7 months after the child and her mother, and the only listed charges are 2 very minor charges for a sexual imposition, and 2 felony counts for lying.
He’s a rapist named Pablo Rosario, he worked as a federal officer, he raped, the victims complained, and nothing was done–for 2 years.
Another rapist is Javier Castaneda, of Brownsville, Texas.
Why doesn’t the GOA investigate DHS? Why, because one fascist doesn’t get into another’s dirty deeds; they gang up and work in lockstep to the detriment of the American public–and now we are spoon-fed this dross about ancient fighter parts that Grandmom could use for a coffee table.
You’d have a better chance of getting a 4-post bedframe into the air than one of those old planes, even if the Flying Nun was your co-pilot and God was in a good mood that day.
Forget about old junky uniforms and armor that would fall into pieces if little Sammy shot a pea-shooter at it at a long oblique angle, investigate the damn rapists and Gestapo monsters working for homeland security, and put that in your report–you never will, because you’re corrupt, and besides you can’t film because of national security, so I will, then I’ll show the American people, then you can explain the Abu Ghraib that is happening right here on US soil.
In the Florida prisons, people are only beaten to death, but at the border to Juarez, they try to take your soul and blacken it, and then scream at you that they are doing you a favor.
Leash the DHS Nazis and put them in the same bottle the WWII boys did 60 years ago.