Bombshell Bipartisanship

Bipartisanship isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be – an antidote to congressional bickering that prevents Congress from getting anything done.

Bipartisanship is still alive and well in Congress, despite what pundits say. When it comes to the nation’s security or homeland security, liberals and conservatives often get along famously – joining together to defend the military-industrial complex, even against the Pentagon’s own initiatives to cut waste.

We saw this bipartisanship in sharp focus this month when Republican and Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee – chaired by shameless military-contractor shill Buck McKeon (R-Cal.) -- formed a common defense against the Department of Defense.

What DOD Secretary Robert Gates lambasted as government waste and pork, House members from both parties defended as government subsidies and waste.

Ranking member of the pork-laden Air and Land Forces Subcommittee Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat with a secure seat in El Paso, has joined with his Republican colleagues to resist Pentagon efforts to cut wasteful and outdated spending projects.

Reyes and U.S. Cong. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md) have teamed up to oppose cuts in the president’s 2012 budget and to remove those cuts in the budget markup process. Bartlett is the chair of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee.

The F-35 stealth fighter program is a Pentagon favorite. Manufactured by Lockheed Martin, the F-35 Joint Strike Force program will cost the nation about $1 trillion dollars over the next fifty years, not counting the $385 billion already scheduled to purchase the fighters over the next twenty years.

Lockheed Martin is a top campaign donor to members of the Armed Forces Committee and its various subcommittees. The company, which is the country’s leading security contractor, ranks as the top donor to Reyes.

Following Lockheed Martin on the list of Reyes’ leading donors are SAIC, Raytheon, Honeywell, General Dynamics, Boeing, Hunt Companies, Mantech, Northrop Grumman, and L-3 Communications.

Lockheed Martin is also the leading contributor to Congressman Bartlett, whose top contributions come from the Defense Aerospace sector.

Despite the jaw-dropping price tag, the Pentagon stands behind the F-35 as a worthy (albeit pricey at $113 million each and a third more expensive to operate that existing similar fighters) upgrade and replacement of the F-16 and F-18 fighters.

But the Pentagon thinks it wasteful for Congress to continue its annual funding to develop two different engines for the same aircraft.

The administration’s 2012 budget slashed funding for this duplicative development and ordered work to stop on this duplicative development project that has cost $3 billion over the past 14 years.

YetReyes, along with Republicans on the subcommittee, has included budget markups to sustain the widely discredited alternative engine program, costing a million dollars every day. The duplicative engine is being developed by General Electric and Rolls-Royce, while the main engine project is contracted to Pratt and Whitney.

In May 2010 Gates spoke out against congressional initiatives supported by Reyes and his colleagues to support the second engine project:

The Bush administration opposed this engine. The Obama administration opposes it. We have recommended for several years now against funding this engine, considering it a waste of money. To argue that we should add another $3 billion in what we regard as waste…frankly, I don’t track the logic.

Attempting to find a logic in most military-industrial complex programs is a challenge, if one doesn’t acknowledge the central imperative guiding many congressional members – keep campaign donors happy and keep security dollars flowing to their districts.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, GE spent more on lobbying than any other company in the last decade.

The stated logic of the two-track F-35 engine project is that taxpayers will benefit from having two security contractors competing to develop a new propulsion engine because the competition will eventually bring the price down.

But most observers, other than GE representatives and the congressional members themselves, point out the F-35 program is monumentally expensive and there is no guarantee or reason to believe that the two-tracked engine development project will lead to cost savings. More waste and pork is the common observation.

Fighting to Keep Old Tanks Running

The same type of bipartisanship in support of duplicative engine projects for a trillion dollar fighter is also on display in the Reyes-Bartlett pork-driven markups in support of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the Abrams tank.

This bipartisan deficit-building team is also resisting the Pentagon’s own efforts to cut the funding of these two tanks that date to the early days of the cold war. General Dynamics builds the Abrams tanks, while BAE Systems builds the Bradley Fighting Vehicles – both of which the Pentagon says are outdated and should be replaced by the Army’s high-priority Ground Combat Vehicle program.

It’s not that either Reyes or Bartlett oppose the Army’s GVS. It’s simply that they think we should also keep on producing the old tanks, too. In other words, the more military contracting the better, even though it may be wasteful, opposed by the military itself, and lacks any security justification.

According to Bartlett, echoing the General Dynamics lobbying team,

“The workers and companies in our industrial base supply chains can’t be turned off and on like a light switch….Our country has to maintain the capability to build and field modernized Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles.”

For his part, Reyes long promoted the Pentagon’s controversial Future Combat Systems program, whose main contractor was Boeing, and resisted the Pentagon’s decision two years ago to terminate key FCS components – which directly benefitted the El Paso area through their development and testing at Ft. Bliss.

On May 3, Reyes boasted to his constituents not that he, as the ranking member of the main congressional oversight program for the military’s tactical air and land programs, is playing an instrumental role in cutting waste and pork.

Rather he announced that he been working to in increase the military budget – including a provision in the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that will “impact the El Paso region” through “$425 million in additional funding for the modernization of Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.”

For more information: 

Tom Barry, “Reyes the Rainmaker,” CIP Americas Program, September 2009, at: http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/1858

Bill Hartung, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (New York: Nation Books, 2011).

Cong. Reyes and the Drone Lobby

(In an interview published by El Paso Inc, an El Paso magazine, U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes indicated that he favored the deployment of drones in the U.S.-supported drug war launched in December 2006 by President Felipe Calderón. The following post follows up a Border Lines post on this yesterday.)

U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) is a major recipient of campaign contributions from industries that manufacture and service Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or drones.

Reyes is a member of the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus, whose original name was the UAV Caucus.

Except for the caucus co-chairman Buck McKeon (R-Cal.), no other caucus member has received more campaign contributions from associated industries. In the 2010 election cycle, Reyes received $100,000 in contributions from the UAV industry, while McKeon received $103,000.

 In the 2010 election cycle alone, UAV-related political-action committees donated more than $1.7 million to the caucus’ 42 members, according to an investigative report (Feb. 17, 2011) by the War Is Business website.

Leading contributors to Reyes’ 2010 campaign included General Atomics, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, Boeing, Allion Science & Technology, L-3 Communications, and Raytheon.

All are these industries are members of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (UAVSI).

UAVSI has worked closely with the UAV Caucus and its founder Cong. McKeon. The UAVSI “Advocacy” page provides an overview of all the ways its members can maximize that relationship;In addition to whatever legislation and appropriations, caucus support has manifested in the opportunity to give committee testimony, visits from Congressmen, keynote speeches, meetings with legislators on “AUVSI DAY,” roundtables, and facility tours -- but perhaps most notably, a tech fair sponsored by McKeon’s office at the Rayburn House, as noted by the War Is Business report.

Other UAV Caucus members  who were leading recipients of industry contributions included Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland), Jerry Lewis (R-Cal.), Duncan Hunter (R-Cal.), and Ken Calvert (R-Cal.).

The mission of the little-known Congressional UAV Caucus is to “educate members of Congress and the public on the strategic, tactical, and scientific value of UAVs, actively support further development and acquisition of more capable UAVs, and to more effectively engage the civilian aviation community on UAV use and safety.”

In January 2011 the UAV Caucus changed its name to the Unmanned Systems Caucus.

UAV proponents, including UAV manufacturers and high-tech advocates within DHS, have not been above using the controversy over the border fence created by the Secure Border Fence Act of 2006 to promote UAVs for border security. This was a major theme at the 2008 Global Border Security Conference and Technology Expo in Austin.

Michael Rosenberg of E.J. Krause, the conference organizer, said: "Our goal is to bring together government and industry leaders to consider technology and policy strategies that move beyond the fence. The government's demand for advanced border technology is increasing and we are committed to providing a unique opportunity for government officials in homeland security and law enforcement to see first-hand what solutions are available to them.”

Another conference speaker was Rick Morgan of Aerospace Missions Corporation, the UAV development company surviving on more than $5 million in congressional earmarks by Reyes and other members of Congress in the 2005-2009 period (See Tom Barry, "Reyes the Rainmaker.")

Bring the Drones In: Reyes and Homeland Security

U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) is not your prototypical border security hawk. Representing the El Paso area, Reyes doesn’t tap fears of “spillover violence” and illegal immigrants to promote his own agenda for increased border funding.

This stands in welcome contrast to the border security rhetoric of fellow Texas congressman and leading border security hawk Michael McCaul, a Republican who represents the state’s 10^th congressional district – the nonborder area between Austin and Houston.

Still, the former Border Patrol chief has been a constant cheerleader for increased border security funding – especially high-tech instruments of border management including remote land and air-based surveillance. Like other border security hawks, notably McCaul (see his opening statement this week at the House’s Homeland Security Oversight Subcommittee), Reyes closely associates border security and the drug war in Mexico.

In an interview published by an El Paso magazine this week, Reyes indicated that he supports the U.S. deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to hunt down cartel leaders in Mexico.

“We have to do what we’ve done essentially in Pakistan, and that is start taking out the heads of the cartels,” said Reyes, whose four-year tenure as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee ended in December. Reyes is also a leading member of the House Armed Services Committee and its Air and Land Forces Subcommittee.

According to the congressman’s website:

“As a member of the Air and Land Forces Subcommittee which has jurisdiction over the modernization of equipment used by our military's ground and aviation troops.  With a focus on the Army and Air Force programs, Congressman Reyes' service as a senior member of the Subcommittee allows him be involved in the decisions which affect the future of our national defense.  Specifically, the Subcommittee is responsible for funding key programs of importance to Fort Bliss, White Sands Missile Range, and Holloman Air Force Base include the Future Combat Systems (FCS), F-22 fighter aircraft, the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and all Army aviation programs.”

Reyes has long boasted of his support for the military-industrial complex’s presence in the El Paso area. In 2009, for example, Reyes stated: “As I serve on the House Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee, I have been involved with the development of UAVs and know the importance of the intelligence they provide.” (See Tom Barry, “Reyes the Rainmaker.”)

Like Reyes, McCaul is also in favor of escalating U.S. military involvement in Mexico. At the March 31 hearing on “The U.S. Homeland Security Role in the Mexican War Against Drug Cartels,” subcommittee chair McCaul said that the Zetas’ Feb. 15 attack in Mexico on two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that killed one and severely wounded the other was “a game changer which alters the landscape if the United States’ involvement in Mexico’s war against the drug cartels.”

 “We should explore a joint military and intelligence operation with Mexico, similar to the 1999 Plan Colombia which has succeeded in undermining that country’s cocaine trade, disrupting its cartels and restoring its economic and national security,” asserted McCaul.

“In addition, I have introduced legislation requiring the State Department to classify drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations as a means to limit the groups’ financial, property and financial interests,” stated McCaul.

Reyes also supports such a change, which would open the way for increased U.S. intervention in Mexico by the U.S. military and DHS.

Reyes’ spokesman Vincent Perez said the congressman had proposed designating Mexico’s drug cartels as terrorist organizations to the administration while he headed the House Intelligence Committee.

“They frequently engage in brutal acts of narcoterrorism to undermine democratic institutions and the rule of law, and to incite fear among the people and law enforcement,” Perez told El Paso Inc. “Such a designation would provide additional tools to help combat drug cartels and the threat they pose to the security of the United States, Mexico, and Central and South America.”

In the El Paso Inc interview, Reyes expressed his admiration for President Felipe Calderón at a time of widespread public protests in Mexico against the president’s drug war.

“[Calderón is] probably the most courageous man I have ever met. He and (Colombian President Alvaro) Uribe,” said Reyes.

(Also see: Tom Barry, Fallacies of High-Tech Fixes for Border Security, CIP International Policy Report, April 2010.)

Technical Wish Fulfillment on the Border -- A History of Waste and Deception

Human rights, racial profiling, social costs,and justice are among the leading concerns of the critics of toughening immigration and border enforcement policies. The immense cost of the immigrant crackdown and new border security programs rarely is mentioned as a reason why U.S. citizens should oppose the buildup by the Department of Homeland Security in the budgets of the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Another curious feature of the immigration policy debate is that immigration advocates are generally mum on the advisability of integrated electronic surveillance infrastructure on the border. While speaking out and protesting the border fence, liberal immigration reform advocates tend to give a pass on the so-called “virtual fence” – the $6.7 billion project to deploy cameras and sensors along the southwest border in what the Border Patrol calls SBInet (Secure Border Initiative Net).

It’s a project that has come under repeated harsh criticism by the General Accounting Office and the Inspector General of DHS, It is also generally considered a giant boondoggle by immigration restrictionist groups that prefer a phystical fence.

In contrast, immigrant advocates have been mostly silient during the long history of the Border Patrol’s attempts to mount a technical barrier at the border. As candidates, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton said that they preferred a technical fence to a real one – despite the long and continuing record of failure, waste, and poor management that has plaqued the program since 1997.

SBInet (2006) is the latest iteration of the virtual fence, succeeding the America Shield (2004), which succeeded the Integrated Surveillance Intelligenc System (1998).

In the name of securing the southwestern border, Congress and the U.S. public have been willing to issue blank checks to border security and defense contractors that have repeatedly promised they can install an integrated electronic surveillance system without ever having delivered. Officially, SBInet will cost $6.7 billion but both the GAO and the DHS inspector general have viewed this figure with extreme skepticism – saying that it cost three times that amount or more.

At a congressional hearing this week on SBInet, the GAO’s chief of homeland security issues Richard Stana said that there was no way to estimate how much SBInet would cost because neither the Border Patrol nor SBInet contractor Boeing knows yet – despite having run through $620 million since September 2006.

It’s not as if this is the first time that those promising a technical fix to border control have wasted taxpayer money and filled their own pockets.

To understand the full extent of the virtual fence scandal it’s helpful to review the sordid history of the ISIS project, which, like SBInet, promised that it would secure the border and function as a “force multiplier” for the Border Patrol.

One of the main proponents of ISIS was U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tx), who was the Border Patrol sector chief in El Paso before running for Congress in 1997.

Reyes and High-Tech Border Security

Questions about Reyes’ campaign financing and possibly related contract have surrounded the congressman’s persistent and longtime support for high-tech electronic surveillance along the border, involving two no-bid contracts. Since coming to Washington in January 1997 Reyes has been a key advocate of constructing a “virtual fence” along the southwestern border, despite the all-too-real multibillion dollar price tag and absence of hard data that the billions result in improved border security.

Reyes and family have been involved in promoting virtual fencing since Border Patrol contractors started laying out the first components of the electronic surveillance system in the late 1990s.

But it wasn’t until the Inspector General (OIG) of the federal government’s General Services Administration (GSA) in December 2004 released an audit of the border electronic surveillance project, then-called the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System (ISIS), that the some of the details of the electronic surveillance project were publicly revealed.

The audit focused on the Border Patrol’s relationship with the two ISIS contractors, starting with the Alaska native-based Chugach Development Corp. (headquartered in Virginia) and continuing with its successor International Microwave Corp. Rebecca Reyes, daughter of Rep. Reyes, directed the ISIS project for the two contractors.

According to GSA, the audit review of ISIS encountered serious management issues that undermined the value of the more than $200 million that had been spent on the surveillance project. The GAO inspector general found, among other things, that ISIS suffered from: “lack of competition in the awarding” of the contract, “inappropriate contract for construction services,” “inadequate contract administration and project management,” “providing equipment without contract approval,” and “ineffective management controls.”

The GSA inspector general’s audit concluded that the government had paid for "shoddy work" or "for work that was incomplete or never delivered." Official inattention to the contracted project "placed taxpayers' dollars and . . . national security at risk."

A follow-up investigative report by the Washington Post (April 11, 2005) detailed the chronology of ISIS deployment in which Rep. Reyes and his daughter, Rebecca, played major roles.

The Post recounted how Walter Drabik of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had launched the ISIS project in 1996 shortly after former Border Patrol Chief Reyes arrived in Washington. Reyes came to Congress as a strong proponent of electronic surveillance, while opposing proposals for an extended border fence.

A $2-million contract with the Alaska-based Chugach Development Corp. was soon succeeded by a series of multimillion contracts with International Microwave Corp. From its 1999 beginning ISIS was subject to controversy, intra-agency tensions, and allegations of inside dealings.

According to the Post report:

"Over the objections of Border Patrol officials, INS official Walter Drabik chose cameras distributed by a firm called ISAP. U.S. officials and contractors said IMC International Microwave Corp.] had bought the ISAP firm without disclosing it to INS officials. This allowed IMC to buy cameras from its own subsidiary, substantially increasing profits. Undisclosed self-dealing could be illegal."

Because of escalating concerns about the failed implementation of the project and about failed Border Patrol oversight, Congress was by the end of the decade threatening to eliminate the ISIS project. According to the Washington Post article, IMC then turned to Rep. Reyes and other allies in 2000 to help rescue ISIS. “Within months, INS and GSA officials granted IMC a contract expansion worth $200 million, with no competitive bidding.” The Post described Reyes as “a former Border Patrol official and key backer of the system of 12,000 sensors and several hundred cameras installed for the Border Patrol between 1998 and last year [2004].”

Family connections to shoddy border surveillance project

INS’ Drabik said, according to the Post’s report, that he recommended that first Chugach, then IMC, hire Rebecca Reyes as liaison to the INS. Both did so. Rebecca Reyes, 33, ultimately became IMC's vice president for contracts, and ran the ISIS program. Rebecca is one of three children of the congressman. The others are Silvestre Jr. and Monica.

As the El Paso Times (April 25, 2005) reported: "All three children of U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes worked in some capacity for defense contractors that were criticized by the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. General Services Administration for installing faulty or incomplete equipment for a border security technology system. International Microwave Corp. and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. — through their political action committees and others — also gave Reyes about $17,000 in campaign contributions during the past five years."

In 2001 Silvestre Reyes Jr., a former investigator for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), was hired by IMC as an ISIS technician. According to the congressman, his son helped set up the Border Patrol repair center in New Mexico that employed 19 IMC employees and two Border Patrol agents. The GSA audit found that “little to no work” was done at this center. Silvestre Jr. became a L-3 employee after the company bought IMC.

Monica Reyes, according to her father, was employed by IMC to conduct training.

After International Microwave was purchased in late 2002 by L-3 Communications, a major defense, homeland security, and intelligence contractor, Rebecca Reyes became a vice-president at that corporation, which assumed control of the ISIS project. As vice president for surveillance systems, Reyes described a remote electronic surveillance deployed by L-3 as “a force multiplier.”

Commenting on the involvement of the Reyes children in the border electronic surveillance debacle, Gene Davis, a retired deputy Border Patrol chief for the Blaine sector in Washington state, told the El Paso Times: “I am very concerned when I look at Congressman Reyes and his kids. I don’t like the way it looks. And what really upsets me is the amount of money taxpayers put into a system that wasn’t working, and that put our nation’s security at risk.”

The Post also noted that David Watters, the Border Patrol officer overseeing the much-criticized ISIS repair center in New Mexico, had a daughter and a niece working at the center.

“What we have here, plain and simple, is a case of gross mismanagement of a multimillion dollar contract,” said Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.). “This agreement has violated federal contracting rules. And it has wasted taxpayers’ dollars. Worst of all, it has seriously weakened our border security.” Rogers, then-chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Management, Integration and Oversight, conducted a hearing on June 16, 2005 to determine why the L-3 subsidiary failed to execute the border security project.

L-3’s then-CEO Frank Lanza said that the Rebecca Reyes was cleared of any wrongdoing by the GSA investigation.

Reyes made her way to a vice-presidency at L-3 Communications from Chugach, where she worked as a technical writer, and then to IMC (which acquired a part of Chugach), where she directed the ISIS project, and then to L-3 in late 20002, when L-3 acquired IMC. At L-3 Reyes first served as vice president of surveillance systems.

Reyes later became director of policy, procedures and administration at L-3 subsidiary MPRI (Military Professional Resource Inc.), according to a report on intelligence outsourcing by CorpWatch and Amnesty International. Essentially, MPRI is an employment service for mercenaries, and has, for example, a major Army contract to supply interrogators, translators, and private intelligence agents for Iraq operations. MPRI says it maintains a “database of select former military (or military related), DOD civilians, Homeland Security and law enforcement professionals who would like to be considered for MPRI requirements.”

When asked as part of the research for this article about his children’s work for government contractors, Reyes’ aide Vince Perez said that "None of the Congressman's children work or have ever worked for companies that receive funding from a project requested by the Congressman. Nor do any of the Congressman’s children work for entities that have contributed to his campaign."

The current places of employment of Monica Reyes and Silvestre Reyes Jr. could not be determined. L-3 Communications is a longtime source of contributions to the Reyes campaign committee.

L-3 Communications denied that its newly acquired subsidiary IMC overcharged or failed to install the surveillance technology for which the government had paid. However, Joe Samprano, chief of the company’s subsidiary Government Services Incorporated, said that ISIS had grown too quickly for IMC to effectively manage – a problem that was rectified by the takeover of the project by the much larger L-3 Communications team in November 2002. Government Services Incorporated is the parent of MPRI, which it bought in 2000, and outsources interrogators and intelligence agents throughout the world but primarily in the Middle East.

Rep. Reyes and IMC’s Acri

Anthony Acri, IMC’s president, defended his firm’s work, saying the system was well-built and was a good investment for taxpayers. Acri said the halt in work on the system "is very dangerous for our country."

The OIG report prodded L-3 Communications to repair the faulty work of International Microwave, and L-3 fired Acri.

In addition to the charges of nepotism that surrounded the ISIS project, IMC and Reyes were linked by campaign contributions from IMC’s president and his family. In 1999-2001, IMC President Anthony Acri, Ann Acri, and Anthony Acri Jr. from Bramford, Conn. (home of IMC’s corporate headquarters) gave Reyes’ campaign committee $9,500 in ten separate donations.

Responding to the charges about the surveillance project, Rep. Reyes said:

"I had no role in whatever way of anyone getting these contracts. These contracts, whether they're bid or no-bid or whatever, that's done by the different government) agencies. My job, as I see it, since I used systems like this and since I know how important they are to Border Patrol agents in those situations, is to make sure we're out there funding them so that we can get these systems installed throughout the border.”

A continuing record of failure and poor oversight

A year after the GSA issued its audit review DHS’ own Office of Inspector General (OIG)issued its own scathing report on border electronic surveillance operations. The DHS concluded that Border Patrol oversight of the project’s contracting was “ineffective.” Rather than checking invoices from contractors, the Border Patrol simply approved them and certified them after the contractors had been paid.

As to the effectiveness of ISIS remote electronic surveillance, the OIG stated:

“We determined that more than 90 percent of the responses to sensor alerts resulted in ‘false alarms’ - something other than illegal alien activity, such as local traffic, outbound traffic, a train, or animals. On the southwest border, only two percent of sensor alerts resulted in apprehensions; on the northern border, less than one percent of sensor alerts resulted in apprehensions. “Lack of defined, stabilized, validated requirements increases likelihood of program changes, interoperability problems, equitable adjustments, and cost overruns. A broadly defined Statement of Objectives approach coupled with undefined requirements leaves programs vulnerable to failure and cost overruns."

The Border Patrol claims that electronic surveillance is a “force multiplier,” meaning that the technological barrier increases the efficiency and impact of individual agents. But the DHS report of December 2005 found the Border Patrol was “unable to quantify force-multiplication benefits” and what is more found that one of the many flaws of ISIS was that the project was badly undermanned, especially in monitoring the output of the surveillance system.

A new GAO report this week – the fourth in a series of blistering critiques of SBInet – show that the virtual fence appears to be based on a badly mistaken and very expensive belief in technical fixes for a complicated social and international issue.

Border Congressman's Record on Intelligence

Earmark and campaign funding scandals continue to tarnish Silver’s image an independent-thinking moderate. Since becoming chair of the intelligence committee, he has adopted positions that caused consternation, particularly for liberal Democrats.

Reyes’ vote against the October 2002 resolution authorizing military force in Iraq, his support for immigration reform, and his opposition to the border fence have given Reyes a base of support among liberals.

But his strong support for increased budgetary allocations for Iraq and Afghanistan, prominent role in support of missile and star war defense systems, continuing advocacy of increased border security including the so-called virtual defense and expanded Border Patrol presence, and close ties with the military and military contractors have burnished his reputation as a national security hawk.

While named chairman of the House Permanent Intelligence Committee by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi because of willingness to buck the Bush administration (initially, at least) on the Iraq war and because of his credentials as a Democratic Party team player, Reyes has in his new position not distinguished himself as a independent voice in national security and intelligence issues.

One indicator of his hardliner approach to intelligence was his surprising recommendation that president-elect Obama retain President Bush’s directors of the CIA and the National Security Agency. In December 2008, Reyes told CongressDaily (Dec. 10) that he recommended to the Obama transition team that then-Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and then-CIA Director Michael Hayden should be kept in their posts at least six months. Despite a widespread conviction about Democrats that it was time to turn the page on the intelligence and domestic surveillance practices of the Bush administration, Reyes said, "There's got to be some continuity, and the leadership of both the CIA and the DNI is going to be pivotal to keeping us safe and secure," Reyes said. Hayden had come under sharp criticism in Congress for having been in charge of the National Security Agency when it started conducting widespread electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens after the Sept. 11 attacks. While McConnell wasn’t tied directly to the warrantless wiretapping, there was growing concern in Congress that CIA wasn’t adequately briefing it on its operations, and he also drew criticism from many Democrats for his role in crafting and pressing for the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 2008, which gave the intelligence community for some domestic surveillance. Reyes’s position on torture has been overly nuanced, according to critics. According to the CongressDaily report, Reyes recommended that the incoming administration continue parts of the CIA’s alternative interrogation program. While critics, including some within the intelligence community, have charged that the CIA’s interrogation practices included routine use of torture, Reyes told the transition team that it needed to find the right balance, which would not include torture but would allow the CIA to extract valuable information from suspected terrorists. But he was typically vague about his own convictions about torture. "There are those that believe that this particular issue has to be dealt with very carefully because there are beliefs that there are some options that need to be available," Reyes said. In a formulation that sounded much like that of the Bush administration, Reyes said, ‘We don't want to be known for torturing people. At the same time we don't want to limit our ability to get information that's vital and critical to our national security.” Reyes also came down on the side of the Bush administration when he opposed adding language to the fiscal 2009 authorization bill prohibiting intelligence agencies from using any interrogation methods not authorized by the Field Manual. Another controversial vote was his June 2008 vote in favor a bill that would grant retroactive immunity to telecom companies like AT&T that participated in warrantless surveillance on U.S. citizens. Reyes has continued to disappoint in his unwillingness to exercise strong congressional oversight of the intelligence community. While Reyes has not publicly opposed the decision of Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate CIA interrogation practices in the wake of the release of a report by the Office of Inspector General on torture, neither did he support it, politically positioning himself in the middle. In a typically bland statement, Reyes said, "In nearly every case, the men and women at the CIA were following what they believed to be lawful guidance. Rather than point fingers and assign blame, we need to carefully examine the mechanisms that allowed this guidance to be developed and implemented and enact reforms that will guard against such institutional failures." The office of the Inspector General was created by Congress in wake of the Iran-Contra scandal in which CIA operatives independently mounted clandestine operations. After serving four years, OIG director John Helgerson stepped down in early February 2009. His independence alarmed the Bush administration and CIA director Michael Hayden launched an executive investigation of the agency’s own inspector general. The Obama administration has been content to leave the office vacant these last seven months, thereby substantially reducing any oversight of the agency. The failure of Reyes and Sen. Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to insist that the OIG directorship be filled has sparked criticism among intelligence reformers. Melvin Goodman, author of The Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA, wrote: “The weakening of the OIG by CIA leadership is an affront to Congress, particularly to Feinstein and Reyes; they are demonstrating a dereliction of duty.”

Image: El Paso Newspaper Tree

The Virtual Fence's History of Incompetence

(An excerpt from the third part in the Reyes the Rainmaker series.) Although a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tx.)is a major force in Congress for more border security. But unlike many border security advocates, Reyes opposed building border fences along open, nonurban stretches of the border. He has won praise from immigrant rights advocates for both his support for immigration reform and his opposition to the border wall part of DHS’ Secure Border Initiative.

But Reyes has been a longtime supporter of electronic surveillance projects, despite their high cost, history of failed government oversight, and persistent technical failures. At a July 20, 2006 homeland security hearing, Reyes said:

“That is why I have consistently lobbied my colleagues for greater resources for border security, including additional Border Patrol agents, equipment, and technology; more immigration inspectors and judges; and thousands of new detention beds.”

Declaring his opposition to the then-proposed 700-mile border fence, Reyes argued instead for a virtual fence:

“In these more remote areas our limited border security resources would be much better spent on additional personnel, equipment, and technology such as sensors to create what is often referred to as a ‘virtual fence.’ A virtual fence could also be implemented more quickly and therefore could help us gain operational control of our borders sooner.”

The July 20, 2006 statement by Rep. Reyes is prefaced on the Reyes blog with this assertion of his strong border security credentials: “As usual, the Congressman grapped [sic] everybody's attention with his rock-solid, common sense border vision and his sweeping command of policy and facts.”

The virtual fence has been part a favored project of the Border Patrol and homeland security contractors since 1997. But its 12-year history gives little assurance that it is a rock-solid, common sense approach to border control.

A series of OIG reports continuing into 2009 have offered blistering criticisms of the succession of electronic surveillance projects undertaken by the Border Patrol. Yet the plans for the virtual fence have not only continued but have continually expanded in ambition scope – with scant evident of impact.

After having spent $239 million in the ISIS project, the Border Patrol in 2004 launched a new electronic surveillance project called America’s Shield, which received strong congressional and Bush administration support. By 2006 another $200 million had been spent on federal contractors with homeland security firms – still without any documented impact.

In December 2005 SBInet became the latest iteration of the electronic border surveillance project. In fiscal year 2007 alone, prior to any deployment of the system, the virtual fence project cost the U.S. taxpayer $219 million in contracts with Boeing. SBInet subcontractors include many leading homeland security firms, including L-3 Communications, Unisys, DRS Technologies, Lucent Technologies, and USIS.

DHS estimates that SBInet will cost $6.7 billion to fully deploy SBInet, but DHS’ own inspector general said that the final cost may triple the current estimates.

Because of the repeated Border Patrol management failures since 2006 in the planning and implementation of SBInet, the House Homeland Security Committee charged CBP, through a provision in FY 2009 appropriations, with meeting 12 legislative conditions for the release of further appropriated funding ($400 million).

A new GAO report (April 2009), building on a series of critical reports about SBInet management, found that CBP met only three of the dozen conditions. A year earlier, GAO had concluded: "Important aspects of SBInet remain ambiguous and in a continued state of flux, making it unclear and uncertain what technology capabilities will be delivered, when.”

A June 2009 report on SBInet from DHS’ inspector general concluded that the Border Patrol lacked sufficient control over the project – whose short-term costs are estimated to exceed $8 billion. "With continued heavy reliance on contractor support services, CBP risks losing control of program decisions while remaining accountable for mission results," DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner wrote in the latest OIG report slamming the virtual fence.

El Paso: Where Homeland Security Meets National Security

(This is an excerpt from the second of a three-part series titled “Reyes the Rainmaker,” focusing on the power and influence of U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes in national security, homeland security, border security, and intelligence operations, how those programs have been integrated into regional economic development efforts, and how Reyes has drawn increasing support from the military contracting sector.

The entire second part is found at: http://newspapertree.com/politics/4235-reyes-the-rainmaker-contributions-and-contracts )

Previously: Building the Paso del Norte security system, from academics to economics

U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) has enjoyed an increasing stream of campaign contributions from government defense, security, and intelligence contractors. Contributions from these firms are now among his largest sources of campaign funds.

Reyes and his staff have repeatedly denied that there is any connection between contributions and his congressional actions. But the appearances of “pay-to-play” activity continue to follow the congressman.

One of the first cases surfaced in 2004 as part of a federal GSA investigation of shoddy work by International Microwave Corporation on an electronic surveillance program on the border. The president of the company had made several large contributions to the Reyes campaign committee, and Rebecca Reyes, the congressman’s daughter, was director of the project. Reyes has said that he had nothing to do with her employment.

In the summer of 2006, just after Reyes became chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, media reports associated contributions by The PMA Group, the defense lobbying giant, to favored treatment by Reyes of PMA clients in the form of earmarks and contracts. Over the past four years, the defense companies that have received earmarks have also been the source of generous campaign contributions.

The opening this summer of a congressional review of the lobbying and campaign operations of The PMA Group by the House ethics panel and a parallel Justice Department investigation have sparked new media reports about the now-defunct PMA.

Military-Industrial Complex Comes to Congress

It may be that there are no direct links between the contributions that Rep. Reyes received for his campaign or for his PAC and the defense and intelligence appropriations that benefited these donors. The current House review and Justice Department investigation may shed light on the campaign and PAC contributions from the defense and security industry and the shaping of the defense appropriations bills.

Although neither the House ethics panel nor DOJ has released any details about their investigations, it’s likely that the targets of the investigation are the senior members of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, where the Pentagon’s defense budget is reshaped and approved, rather then the members of the Armed Services Committee, where Reyes sits.

The investigations apparently do not target the House Intelligence Committee, which came under intense scrutiny several years ago, when one of its members, former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Ca.), came under judicial scrutiny for accepting bribes in exchange for favors as part of his work on the intelligence committee. Cunningham, who used his House position to channel millions of dollars to defense and intelligence contractors, began an eight-year sentence in 2006 for accepting bribes bribes and evading taxes.

When Reyes became chairman of the committee, he drew criticism when he opposed releasing an internal review, saying in a statement at the time that "my view was that the report was an internal review, principally of staff activity, and that the full report — with all of the names of staff — was not intended for dissemination beyond the committee.” [2007 article from The Hill]

At stake is not just the rule of law, but the quality of governance. The dominance of campaign and PAC contributions from defense, security, and intelligence contractors that depend on government appropriations for virtually of their revenues raises issues about undue influence. It’s a concern that President Dwight Eisenhower raised in his farewell address:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of nwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.”

In the past five decades the influence of this sector has expanded as the defense budget has grown, and it’s a sector that now comprises not only defense contractors but private contractors for the Department of Homeland Security and all intelligence community agencies, where outsourcing is even more prevalent than at the Pentagon.

Photo: Thaad missile defense system supported by Rep. Reyes

Fostering a "Homeland Security" Culture

(Excerpted from "Reyes the Rainmaker," a three-part series on Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tx) and his role in promoting military, homeland security, and intelligence operations in the the El Paso area. For the entire article, see: http://www.newspapertree.com/politics/4230-reyes-the-rainmaker-building-the-paso-del-norte-security-system-from-academics-to-economics ) Working in close coordination with CDSR is UTEP’s new National Center for Border Security and Immigration, which was created in 2008 by a $6-million grant from DHS. The University of Arizona is UTEP’s partner in the new homeland security research center. NCBSI was launched at UTEP’s 2005 Border Security Conference. NCBSI aims to: “Stimulate, coordinate, leverage, and utilize the unique intellectual capital in the academic community to address current and future homeland security challenges, and educate and inspire the next generation homeland security workforce.” Additionally, the DHS-sponsored and financed center will “foster a homeland security culture within the academic community through research and educational programs.” NCBSI , according to DHS, is “developing technologies, tools, and advanced methods to balance immigration and commerce with effective border security, as well as assess threats and vulnerabilities, improve surveillance and screening, analyze immigration trends, and enhance policy and law enforcement efforts.” Even before the March 2003 opening of the DHS plans were underway to involve universities in homeland security. Congress, as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, authorized the new department to “designate a university-based system for several university-based centers for homeland security.” Today, there is a network of universities that receives DHS funding to collaborate with the government to, as the act stipulated, “enhance the Nation’s homeland security.” It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement, with universities benefiting from large grants from a rapidly expanding part of the federal government and with the government benefiting from the sponsored research of hundreds of university scholars. The new DHS-academy condominium includes an expanding national network of “centers of excellence.” Today, there are 13 DHS university-based centers of excellence. Through DHS’s Science & Technology Directorate and the department’s Office of University Programs, DHS aims “to leverage the independent thinking and ground-breaking capabilities of the Nation's colleges and universities” with its centers of excellence. The newest DHS university research institute is the Center of Excellence in Command, Control and Interoperability (C2I), which is led by Purdue University and Rutgers University. According to DHS, this center will “create the scientific basis and enduring technologies needed to analyze massive amounts of information from multiple sources to more reliably detect threats to the security of the nation and its infrastructures, and to the health and welfare of its populace.” There has been no overall evaluation of how this DHS-academy cooperative venture -– now six years old -– has contributed to improving homeland security. Since the creation of DHS there have been rising questions and concerns by DHS’ own inspector general and by congressional oversight committees about departmental operations, including issues of waste, over-reliance on private contractors, and widespread abuses and excesses in immigration enforcement and border control. Given the failures and controversies surrounding the department’s Secure Border Initiative -– including the border fence and high-tech surveillance systems (“virtual fence”) -– there is good cause to question the involvement of universities in the support and development of DHS border security infrastructure and strategies. The huge sums of DHS funds flowing to private contractors such as Boeing also raise questions about the degree to which research and education about border issues is shaped by monetary incentives. Also located at UTEP is another government-funded center of excellence -– focusing on intelligence. It’s the Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence, which is one of a network of university centers funded by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Backed by a multimillion dollar grant from the Director of National Intelligence, this center of academic excellence aims to “build a workforce prepared for 21st Century challenges” and to “broaden the base of diverse talent pools to achieve Intelligence Community mission effectiveness.”