Will a Botched Coast Guard Contract Come Back to Bite FBI's James Comey? R
As general counsel of Lockheed Martin, Comey rejected a whistleblower’s claim that a $24 billion Coast Guard project was riddled with problems. The whistleblower was right—and Comey was wrong.
When the ten Democrats and eight Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned James Comey in his hearing on July 9 for confirmation as director of the FBI, the words “Lockheed Martin,” where Comey was general counsel and senior vice president between 2005 and 2010, were mentioned only twice. The first was when Chairman Patrick Leahy reviewed his career highlights. The second was when Senator Chuck Grassley noted that the FBI had cancelled Lockheed’s contract to build its next-generation case-management system for their poor performance and asked if Comey had any involvement the case. “None,” Comey replied. And that was that. The committee then unanimously voted to send his nomination on to the full Senate. Had the feckless solons the wit to ask the right questions about Comey’s role in another disastrous Lockheed contract, they might have concluded he isn’t fit for federal office at all.
In 2002, the Coast Guard retained Integrated Coast Guard Systems, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman, for a $24 billion project called Deepwater, the largest in Coast Guard history. The contract included building a new fleet of forty-nine 123-foot patrol boats. Soon, though, the lead engineer, Michael DeKort, discovered that there were environmental concerns with much of the ship’s equipment, including radios that were not waterproof and hulls that buckled on the high seas. He tried to persuade his superiors to address the problems, but they weren’t interested. Then, when he couldn’t interest the press, he posted a 2006 cri de coeur on YouTube; he did so after receiving a letter from Lockheed’s board of directors reporting that they had “determined that the Corporation’s responses to those issues, beginning in October 2004 and continuing to the present, were appropriate and no further action is warranted. Each of the issues has been disclosed to the Coast Guard and the resolution of each issue was coordinated with and was or is being resolved to the satisfaction of the Coast Guard customer.”
That letter was signed by Lockheed’s senior vice president and general counsel, James Comey [PDF].
But Comey’s claim in the letter was remarkable, given that the Coast Guard had already pulled the first eight of the completed ships from service because of their buckled hulls. In April 2007, the commandant of the Coast Guard, according to Corporate Counsel magazine, “tacitly acknowledged mistakes by reorganizing the program,” reverting management of Deepwater directly to the Coast Guard and taking it away from Integrated Coast Guard Systems. Then, eleven months after Comey’s claim that all was hunky-dory, the Coast Guard delivered a formal “revocation of acceptance” to ICGS for the eight vessels, citing many of the problems DeKort specified.
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I don't think it will the system is corrupt and incestuous.