All Things Whistleblower: A GAP Blog

Katrina Anniversary: OSC Substantiates Allegations of Junk Pumps in New Orleans

The following blog by Jesselyn Radack is cross-posted from her Daily Kos diary.

The mainstream media, including the New York Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, have not covered an independent evaluation released in June by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) that there are serious safety and reliability issues with hydraulic pumps that were installed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  http://www.osc.gov/... (the OSC report is the fifth from the bottom.)  As the OSC told President Obama:

There appears to be little logical justification for: (1) restricting the emergency pumping capability . . . to only the untested hydraulic pump systems, (2) not requiring the installation of areliable pumping system which would adequately protect New Orleans, (3) spending hundreds of millions of dollars to install forty MWI hydraulic pumps which are scheduled to be replaced at a cost of greater than $430 million within 3-5 years. . .  

Letter from OSC to President Obama at http://www.osc.gov/...

It’s the peak of hurricane season and August 29 marks four years since deadly Hurricane Katrina. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is marking the anniversary by pushing an astronomically expensive fix on Congress and the public, which the Corps conjured up to fund its supposed grand master "Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System."  In reality, it’s a grotesque and wasteful maneuver to cover-up its own mistakes since Katrina. 

Three official Project Information Reports that the Corps submitted to Congress to obtain authorization and funding for New Orleans’ hurricane protection repeatedly presented the economic lifespan analysis of water pumps using a 50-year period.  Col. Jeff Bedey, commander of the Corps' Hurricane Protection Office in New Orleans, told the public a year and a half ago that the current pumps "have something around a 50-year lifespan.  These were designed to be there for 50 years." 

Moreover, as  Karen Durham-Aguilera, director of the Corps' Task Force Hope in Louisiana, explained, the interim closure structures with installed pumps were supposed to be incorporated into the permanent hurricane protection solution, not scrapped.

But now, Brigadier General Michael J. Walsh, commander of the Mississippi Valley Division of the Corps, is claiming that today’s pumps were only meant to be "temporary."  The Corps new assertion that pump replacement is required was never part of the original protection plan. Walsh’s assertion that the pumps were built to last just five to seven years,   http://blog.nola.com/..., is repeated by Corps officials as if it were gospel, when in reality, a 50-year lifespan is what the Corps had always contemplated and what Congress approved. Think about it.  Would Congress really have spent over a half billion dollars on something with only a five year lifespan?  This would have a benefit-cost ratio in the negative double digits.

The proposed abandonment of the existing gated closure structures with installed pumps was never part of the original plan submitted to Congress.  This newest plan by the Corps involves rebuilding the same gated structure with installed pumps a few hundred yards further downstream, except this time with "direct drive" pumps instead of the defective hydraulic pumps that will likely fail in the event of a hurricane.  Instead of paying the estimated $275 million to correct the problems with the hydraulic pumps and roughly 200 million to increase the needed pumping capacity, the Army Corps is proposing to abandon the project they have already spent half a billion dollars on, destroy and haul away the "temporary" gated closure structure with installed pumps, and then spend almost $700 million to rebuild everything from scratch.

At the same time, and contradicted by its urgent push for replacement pumps, the Corps is making deceptive and dangerous public pronouncements that the present pumps have been battle-tested by two hurricanes, Gustav and Ike.  The U.S. Office of Special Counsel hired an independent expert to evaluate the pumping system, and the expert criticized this very assertion because it fails to mention that the pumps were run at low operating speeds and pressures, intermittently, and for short periods during the hurricanes. The Special Counsel’s report and the "black box" information (known technically as "SCADA data") prove the hydraulic pumps were not utilized when canal water levels were highest at the beginning of each storm, not allowed to run at full operating speeds and pressures, and not allowed to run for extended periods of time. Instead, they were relegated to an "also pumped" status that was then turned into a straw man for hydraulic pump performance that was offered up to the highest levels of the Army Corps. The recorded storm SCADA data shows clearly that the hydraulic pump runs were not examples of pumping performance that replicate what is seen in a real-life hurricane event, but rather examples of what can charitably be called "demonstration" runs.

This information lies buried many clicks deep on the Office of Special Counsel website, linked in the Intro.  I think the roughly 311,800 people currently living in New Orleans deserve to know where things stand as we mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, rather than being led down the garden path that has already been washed away once.

Gov't Report Shows GAP Whistleblower Correct About Defective New Orleans Pumps

A letter and report from the Office of Special Counsel has determined that there are serious safety and reliability issues with hydraulic pumps that were installed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. These pumps are designed, in case of emergency, to move flood water away from the city to the lake side of the floodgates. Despite repeated internal reports that the pumps were faulty, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and Department of Defense Inspector General (DoDIG) have repeatedly denied inherent flaws in the hydraulic pumps since 2007.

GAP client Maria Garzino, a USACE mechanical and civil engineer, was the Pump Team Installation Leader who blew the whistle on several problems that render the pumps ineffective. This new report substantiates her allegations.

You can read the full GAP press release here, the USA Today story here, or listen to the first in a very in-depth four-part series about Garzino’s claims and story of blowing the whistle on the faulty pumps of New Orleans from Southern California Public Radio here.

Bush Officials Using Terror for Political Advantage

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge says top Bush administration officials contemplated raising the terror alert days before the 2004 Presidential election, in a move he felt was not related to security, but rather politics (CNN). Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted to raise the threat level following the release of a tape made by Osama Bin Laden criticizing President Bush.

In his new book, Ridge writes:

"We certainly didn't believe the tape alone warranted action, and we weren't seeing any additional intelligence that justified it. In fact, we were incredulous," Ridge said of the push. "... I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?'"

Ridge says he saw no real motivation for raising the threat level because additional security had already been taken in the run-up to Election Day. The threat level was not raised in these days right before the election.

CNN also reported that:

According to 2004 exit polls, one in five voters said terrorism was the most important issue to them. Of those, 86 percent voted for Bush, 14 percent for Democratic candidate John Kerry.

White House Working to Protect FBI Whistleblowers

The White House has now pledged to strengthen FBI whistleblower protections to the Senate version of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2009, according to the Washington Times.

From the article:

Officials from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Government Accountability Project (GAP) and Project on Government Oversight (POGO) said this week that they were given guarantees that protections for FBI whistleblowers - federal employees who uncover fraud and waste - would be restored in a Senate bill when Congress returns in September. 

Furthermore, the White House was adamant that the original language of the bill, which would have damaged current protections for FBI employees, was not the true intention of the language:

"The administration has worked with the Senate to produce bipartisan legislation that would increase the rights and protections available to whistleblowers - legislation that had been stalled in Congress for many years," White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said.

"The legislation was never intended to weaken protections for FBI whistleblowers - it was intended to do just the opposite," Mr. LaBolt said in a statement Wednesday. "The administration will continue to work with the bipartisan group of senators to ensure that the final version of the legislation strengthens protections for FBI whistleblowers and for whistleblowers across the government."

GAP Legal Director Tom Devine articulated the issue:

GAP Legislative Director Tom Devine, who also thinks it was the FBI that pushed the change in the law, said White House attorneys have guaranteed him existing rights for FBI whistleblowers will be fully restored in the final bill. "Nobody's wasting their time on the [FBI whistleblower] issue, because except for the formalities we've won and it doesn't really matter," Mr. Devine said.

HVP Drug Promoted by Medical Associations with Manufacturer's Money

Three medical associations promoted the HPV vaccine Gardasil using money that came directly from the manufacturer Merck, according to the Washington Post. Money given to the medical associations - the American College Health Association, the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology, and the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists - by Merck totaled almost $750,000.

The HPV vaccine is used for fighting a virus that causes cervical cancer. The marketing campaign was an effort to promote the safety of the drug without disclosing its risks. And, the campaigns done by the medical associations were eerily similar to those Merck produced.

More Problems with the FAA

Despite being on the FBI’s list as a domestic terrorist wanted for $50,000, one pilot is still licensed to fly because the Transportation Security Administration has not compared the FBI’s wanted list with the list of pilots licensed by the FAA (New York Times). This raises serious concerns about potential terrorist activity.

Whistle Where You Work covered a similar subject related to the FAA’s ineptitude in preventing possibly terrorist activity. Gabe Bruno, a FAA whistleblower exposed that the FAA lacks a national security screening mechanism for certain mechanics that received fraudulent certificates from a Designated Mechanic Examiner (DME), but have refused to, or failed to fully complete, a recertification program.

Whistle Where You Work Episode 18: Obama's Transparency; Troop Safety

The Obama administration promised a new era in government transparency. After the first six months, have they lived up to their promises? How does it compare to the Bush administration, but more importantly, what should the public have expected? We look at previous administrations, the recent FOIA directive, TARP and bailout transparency, the use of the state secrets privilege, and other indications from the past 180 days that show how the Obama administration is treating this issue.

Then, we chat with Franz Gayl, a veteran of the Marine Corps who, as a civilian official at the Pentagon, chose to expose the bureaucratic holdup of putting MRAP vehicles – which offer significantly greater protection to American troops than Humvees – in the field. Gayl was retaliated against for his actions.

This episode was filmed in early August 2009.

Click here to watch this latest episode.