FBI investigates $170M NSF contracts awarded to Veco, link to Sen. Steven's Home Remodel

[L. Coyote]

FBI investigates science contracts awarded Veco
ARCTIC: $170 million in research contracts coincided with support for polar funding by Sen. Stevens.
By ERIKA BOLSTAD and GREG GORDON
McClatchy Newspapers August 16, 2007
http://www.adn.com/news/politics/veco/story/9225372p-9140312c.html


WASHINGTON -- The FBI is investigating the National Science Foundation's award of $170 million in contracts to the oil field services company that oversaw renovations on U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens' home.

The firm, Veco Corp., captured a lucrative five-year NSF contract in 1999 to provide logistics and support for polar research, although it had no previous experience in that field. During the same time period, Veco's top executive managed renovations that doubled the size of the longtime Republican senator's Girdwood home -- the scene of a July 30 FBI raid.

NSF spokesman Dana Cruikshank told McClatchy Newspapers that the FBI has made inquiries into the 1999 award, worth up to $70 million, and a 2004 follow-up contract for as many as seven years that the company values at up to $100 million. Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra and spokeswoman Deborah Weierman of the FBI's Washington field office, which is leading the investigation, declined comment on the NSF contracts.

Veco's founder and CEO, Bill Allen, pleaded guilty this spring to making $400,000 in illegal payments to Alaska lawmakers, including Stevens' son, Ben, who until last year was president of the Alaska Senate. Allen is cooperating in a sweeping FBI corruption investigation that also has led to the conviction of a former Alaska state representative and guilty pleas from a second Veco executive and a prison-industry lobbyist.

Three other state lawmakers are awaiting trial ........................

[merh]

1. Richardson was on Veco's board of directors after

he left his post as Energy Secretary, wasn't he?

Just saying, the corporatists in our party may have just as dirty hands as the corporatists in the RNC.

[L. Coyote]

2. This was not a Board action, I expect.

[napi21]

3. Can we make the assumption that the FBI is one of the only

non political department left in this Gov't?

[L. Coyote]

4. More like FBI offices are not politicized with political appointees

The WH does not appoint political appointees to run the local FBI offices.

But, the FBI is not the prosecutorial arm of USG, the USA offices are, and they are all run by Bush political apointees.

[L. Coyote]

5. Sen. Ted Stevens Says Anchorage Paper Is Trying to "Assassinate" Him

Sen. Ted Stevens Says Anchorage Paper Is Trying to "Assassinate" Him
By E&P Staff - August 16, 2007 11:40 AM ET
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003626909


NEW YORK Sen. Ted Stevens, the embattled Republican from Alaska, met with the editorial board of the Anchorage Daily News (including its publisher and editorial cartoonist) last week, largely defending his views on Iraq -- but also, as a transcript the paper released today makes clear, attacking the paper for "hanging me weekly" and doing "nothing but try to assassinate me."

Here is an excerpt from the transcript. ..........

[L. Coyote]

6. In Alaska, scandal flows like crude = investigations lead to oilman Bill J. Allen

In Alaska, scandal flows like crude
By Scott Martelle, Times Staff Writer
August 17, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-stevens17aug17,1,764958.story?coll=la-news-a_section


Many of the investigations lead to oilman Bill J. Allen. The scope of corruption threatens to reshape the state's political landscape and touch Sen. Stevens.

There are generally two views here about the career trajectory of Bill J. Allen, an oilman and political wheeler-dealer who over four decades built his VECO Corp. into one of the state's largest and most influential companies.

He was driven by greed, or by a thirst for political power.

How Allen wielded his considerable influence is a major strand in a knot of political scandals that have touched both of Alaska's U.S. senators -- including longtime powerhouse Republican Ted Stevens -- its sole congressman and at least six members of the Legislature.

And the scandals -- some overlapping, some stand-alone -- have shaken the state's small political world to its core.

Allen's relationship with Stevens is key to some of the inquiries................

[Blue_In_AK]

7. Thank you, L.Coyote, for posting this again

I posted a link yesterday but nobody seemed to notice. :shrug: