AEY hearings in the House

The New York Times reports:

Arms Dealer Had Troubled History

By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — When the Army last year awarded a contract worth up to nearly $300 million to a tiny Miami Beach munitions dealer to supply ammunition to Afghanistan’s security forces, it overlooked a very checkered past.

A Congressional committee revealed Tuesday that by the time the Army awarded the bid, State and Defense Department officials had canceled or delayed at least six earlier contracts with the company, AEY Inc., for poor quality or late deliveries.

But that record, including a botched $5.6 million order for 10,000 Beretta pistols for Iraq’s security forces, was either ignored or omitted from databases that American military contracting officials have used to weed out companies suspected of involvement in suspect arms deals.

Congressional investigators also determined that the Afghanistan ammunition contract, which the company is also accused of mishandling, may have been unnecessary: Bosnia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Albania, the Eastern European countries from which AEY bought its ammunition, had offered to donate the type of Soviet-style rifle and machine-gun cartridges that the Afghan Army and police forces use. …

House investigators have also gathered testimony that the American ambassador to Albania, John L. Withers II, helped cover up the illegal Chinese origins of ammunition that AEY was shipping from Albania to Afghanistan under the Army contract. …

Lawmakers also criticized the government officials for failing to review several AEY contracts that had been canceled or delayed, many of which never raised red flags with contracting officials because they fell under the $5 million contract value that was the warning threshold.

In October 2005, the committee report found, AEY delivered a shipment of damaged helmets to the American training command in Iraq. One American inspector said in an e-mail message obtained by the committee: “The helmets came to Abu Ghraib by mistake. They are not very good. They have peeling paint and a few appear to have been damaged such as having been dropped.”

About the same time, AEY failed to deliver more than 10,000 Beretta pistols under contract to Iraqi security forces.

According to the contracting officer, Mr. Diveroli blamed the delays in part on a plane crash that had destroyed important documents and a hurricane that hit Miami. …

Back when he worked for his uncle's Botach Tactical weapons dealership in Los Angeles and angry customers would call up wondering where the M-16 clips they had paid for were, Diveroli probably blamed delays on an earthquake that hit LA.

House investigators determined that Melanie A. Johnson, a contracting officer with the Army Sustainment Command, had overruled a contracting team that raised concerns about AEY’s inexperience and had concluded that there was “substantial doubt” that the company could fulfill the contract.

Investigators said Ms. Johnson had later acknowledged to them that she was unaware of the poor past performance of AEY, including the Beretta contract, when she awarded the company the Afghan bid.

In case you're wondering why federal bureaucrats would fall for an obvious New York camera store-style bait-and-switch operator like Diveroli, keep in mind that Jimmy Carter threw out the federal civil service exam back in January 1981 for "disparate impact" and it's never been fully replaced.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer