If Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the Film They Don't Want You to See, the New Edition of Sheryl Tappan's "Shock and Awe in Fort Worth" is the Book They Don't Want You to Read
In April, ex-Bechtel consultant, Sheryl Tappan published the first hard evidence of political cronyism by the Bush administration. She showed how Pentagon officials, up and down the chain of command, are guilty of conspiracy, corruption, and procurement fraud in a courageous new book, "Shock and Awe in Fort Worth: How the U.S. Army Rigged the 'Free and Open Competition' to Replace Halliburton's Sole-Source Oil Field Contract in Iraq." The focus of the book is the "Sons of RIO" competition, which the Pentagon promised to give other contractors a chance at the billions of dollars of Restore Iraqi Oil (RIO) work secretly awarded to Halliburton KBR. The irony is the competition turned out to be far more corrupt than the sole-source "Mother RIO" award, but administration critics have continued to focus on Mother RIO and KBR overcharges. They have yet to turn their attention to the corruption in the Sons of RIO competition. The Iraq contracting debacle has continued to evolve, and information has come to light since April that corroborates Tappans account of the Sons of RIO conspiracy, as documented in a new edition of her book to be published next Monday. It includes an easy-to-follow timeline of events to supplement the text that guides the reader quickly and easily through the key evidentiary documents. Together, the text and new timeline present a compelling case for indicting two generals and several high-level political appointees, as well as lower-level contracting staff at the Corps of Engineers' Fort Worth District.
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) July 14, 2004 -- Last summer, Sheryl Tappan led Bechtel's proposal team in the competition for two new contracts to replace the $7 billion/2-year Restore Iraqi Oil (RIO) contract secretly awarded March 8, 2003, to the Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) subsidiary of Halliburton, where Vice President Cheney had been CEO. The "Sons of RIO" competition, the focus of Tappan's book, was conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers' Fort Worth District. She led the Bechtel team in that competition until discovering it was a sham and recommending Bechtel withdraw, which it did. "Bidders who know what happened have never complained for fear of jeopardizing their chances of winning future government work," she says, "but as an independent consultant, I'm not bound by the code of silence to which federal contractors adhere." Earlier last year, Tappan was responsible for the proposal that won Bechtel the Iraq civil infrastructure reconstruction contract from USAID.
Administration critics in Congress, at government and corporate watchdog organizations, and in the media have continued to focus on the sole-source "Mother RIO" contract, as well as KBR's overcharging for delivering fuel, serving meals, supplying towels, and other logistics support in Iraq. They have yet to turn their attention to what followed, the Sons of RIO competition, which the Pentagon began promising on April 8, 2003, even before the vast scope and value of the Mother RIO contract were finally revealed. The Pentagon promised to conduct a "free and open competition" as quickly as possible, in order to give other contractors a chance to bid on the billions of dollars of RIO work. The irony is the competition turned out to be far more corrupt than the original sole-source award (the big winner, announced nearly 10 months later, was no surprise — KBR). "Shock and Awe in Fort Worth" guides the reader quickly and easily through the key evidence of conspiracy, false claims, and procurement fraud by Pentagon officials, not Halliburton, and in so doing, presents a compelling case. The new edition includes an easy-to-follow timeline that juxtaposes information and events kept secret when they occurred with those made public at the time, and the effect is astounding.
The legality of the sole-source Mother RIO contract depends on one's partisan bias in interpreting a grey area of federal contracting law, Tappan believes, but the evidence of conspiracy, corruption, and procurement fraud in the Sons of RIO competition is unequivocal and is found in official procurement documents posted on the Web by the Fort Worth Corps last year. Why these documents and the evidence they contain have never made the news remains a mystery. "The Bush administration has made a mockery of our federal procurement laws and the procedures that normally ensure fair play," the author says. "Two generals and several high-ranking political appointees were willing to violate federal law to ensure Halliburton got virtually all of the oil field work. They should be prosecuted for conspiracy, corruption, and fraud to the full extent of the law, along with the lower-level contracting staff and legal counsel in Fort Worth. They lied and cheated Halliburton's competitors and committed procurement fraud more openly and arrogantly than I've ever seen."
The Iraq contracting debacle is just the tip of the iceberg of federal procurement problems, problems that are only going to get worse, especially at the Pentagon. The U.S. Government depends on private contractors to perform hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of work every year. Due to the war in Iraq, Bush's outsourcing initiative, and other factors, that dependency and those contract dollars have been increasing at a dramatic rate. At the same time, the number of federal personnel who select the contractors and oversee their performance has been decreasing at an even faster rate — more than 50% in the Defense Department in the last decade alone, and half of the remaining procurement staff are due to retire by 2007. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that these two trends are on a collision course, and the fallout will be devastating to government operations, both at war and at home," says Tappan.
While bestsellers have been attacking the Bush administration from the left or defending it from the right, "Shock and Awe in Fort Worth" is the first book to present a constructive, nonpartisan examination of the Iraq contracting debacle and to identify a path forward out of the quagmire of financial waste and abuse that the government's large, cost-reimbursable contracts have become. Tappan presents a tough three-point plan to achieve the level of transparency and accountability required on these contracts, but her proposal will undoubtedly be controversial because it will rock the status quo that the government's "paper tigers" and its large private contractors have achieved. "Government contracting officers and staff have been using contractors, including Halliburton KBR, as scapegoats for their own management and oversight failures, knowing the contractors wont complain until really pressed against the wall," she says. "I fear that without a radical reassessment and redesign of the contracting system, the government will apply its usual solutions to contracting overhauls, which just don't work; they're all smoke and mirrors, as I explain in my book."
As to why the administration's critics in Congress and the press have given "Shock and Awe in Fort Worth" little attention since the first edition was published in April, "I can only speculate," the author says. "Although I have solid credentials, I'm not famous like Bob Woodward, Richard Clarke, and the other authors of the past years bestselling political books. I don't have a major publishing house behind me, and I cant afford a PR firm." It has proven much more difficult than she imagined to get media attention. "I'm sure the journalists and Congresspersons to whom Ive sent my book are deluged with material, and many of the 100 copies I sent out may still be working their way to the top of in-boxes," she says optimistically. "Others have shown up in the used book listings on Amazon.com and elsewhere, which was a bit disconcerting at first. But it's turned out okay because those listings and other links have increased my websites search engine rankings significantly; a few months ago, I didnt even know what that meant!"
As the presidential campaign heats up this summer, Sheryl Tappan's book could very well turn out to be the sleeper hit of this election year, according to one advertising industry insider. The new edition of "Shock and Awe in Fort Worth" ($19.95, Pourquoi Press) is available from BookRegime.com, Amazon.com, and other online booksellers and bookstores worldwide.
Contact information:
Sheryl Tappan
Phone: 650-222-0628
Fax: 650-348-3425
E-mail: TappanConsulting@msn.com
Website: http://www.BookRegime.com
# # #
Bookmark -
Del.icio.us |
Digg |
Furl It |
Spurl |
RawSugar |
Simpy |
Shadows |
Blink It |
My Web
|
