The New York Times reports that a former investigator with Congress’ Government Accountability Office (G.A.O) is blowing the whistle on his own office, as well as the Bush administration’s oversight of the contracters building elements of the national missile defense shield:
A senior Congressional investigator has accused his agency of covering up a scientific fraud among builders of a $26 billion system meant to shield the nation from nuclear attack. The disputed weapon is the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s antimissile plan, which is expected to cost more than $250 billion over the next two decades.
The investigator, Subrata Ghoshroy of the Government Accountability Office, led technical analyses of a prototype warhead for the antimissile weapon in an 18-month study, winning awards for his “great care” and “tremendous skill and patience.”
Mr. Ghoshroy now says his agency ignored evidence that the two main contractors had doctored data, skewed test results and made false statements in a 2002 report that credited the contractors with revealing the warhead’s failings to the government.
The agency strongly denied his accusations, insisting that its antimissile report was impartial and that it was right to exonerate the contractors of a coverup… And Mr. Ghoshroy’s assertions raise new questions about the Boeing Company’s military arm, the main contractor for the troubled $26 billion system of interceptor rockets now being installed in Alaska and California. The system’s “kill vehicles” are to zoom into space and destroy enemy warheads by force of impact. [Link]
Mr. Ghoshroy seems to have a strong background in defense weaponry and is currently at Harvard’s Kennedy School:
Until his arrival at the Belfer Center, Mr. Ghoshroy was a Senior Defense Analyst at the U.S. General Accounting Office, which he joined in 1998. Mr. Ghoshroy’s primary responsibility has been to provide independent technical advice to GAO staff and managers on GAO evaluation of weapons systems that employ sophisticated technology. In this capacity, Mr. Ghoshroy has contributed among others to reviews of National Missile Defense, Airborne Laser, Land Warrior, and Joint Tactical Radio. [Link]
As you would expect, the GAO is calling Ghoshroy a “disgruntled employee,” despite the same issues being previously raised by what must have been other disgruntled employees:
The dispute over its reliability began a decade ago. Nira Schwartz, a senior engineer in 1995 and 1996 at the military contractor TRW, told her superiors that the company had falsified research findings meant to help kill vehicles differentiate incoming warheads from clouds of decoys.
In April 1996, Dr. Schwartz filed a suit under the False Claims Act, a federal law that allows heavy fines against contractors who lie about their government work. TRW strongly denied her accusations.
She subsequently singled out the prototype kill vehicle’s first flight test, in June 1997, arguing that the contractors falsified data from it. The flight cost $100 million.
TRW was a Boeing subcontractor. Boeing, in turn, was competing against other companies to build the overall kill vehicle. Both denied any impropriety.
In 2000, Senator Grassley and Representative Berman asked the G.A.O. to examine Dr. Schwartz’s charges.
Mr. Ghoshroy became the main technical analyst. Born in India, he earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering at Northeastern University in 1973. He worked at Princeton, for military contractors and for the House National Security Committee in Washington before joining the accountability office in 1998 as a senior defense analyst.
Almost immediately, Mr. Ghoshroy recalled, the G.A.O. team found signs of a coverup — for instance, disturbing charts buried at the back of an upbeat report.
The stakes rose in January 2001 as George W. Bush took office, having pledged to deploy antimissile arms “at the earliest possible date.” [Link]
