The Brevious
17-08-2007, 05:53
New information came to light recently about certain entanglements of privilege regarding Ted "The Hulk" Stevens and Veco.
http://www.adn.com/news/politics/veco/story/9225372p-9140312c.html
What makes such a significant fuss of the situation are these parts:
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.
...
Unsolicited, Stevens put $25 million into the commission's budget without ever explaining why an advisory panel instead of the National Science Foundation would get the money. The funds were later shifted to the NSF.
...
Hancock, now a University of Nebraska assistant vice president for academic affairs, said she drafted a protest letter when Veco won the contract, but her bosses decided not to send it. Among other things, she complained that Simon Stephenson, the National Science Foundation's contract manager, "had developed long-term personal relationships" with the former Antarctica field workers who were hired by Veco.
ARCTIC OIL FIELD WORK A FACTOR
The NSF declined to make Stephenson or anyone else available for an interview.
Hancock also noted that, when potential bidders were invited to send personnel to Greenland to tour the main site of the research in June 2000, two Antarctica workers missed a sign-up deadline. She said NSF officials then asked her office to escort the two, who Hancock said, "were provided personal, extensive and special access to all aspects of our operation."
"We learned in the middle of December, after the contract was awarded, that the two individuals we accommodated went to work for Veco Rocky Mountain Inc., on their contract," she wrote.
Veco had no previous government logistics contracts of such scope, but the company's work on North Slope oil fields gave it experience operating under harsh Arctic conditions. The entity set up by Veco to manage the NSF logistics contract, Veco Polar Resources, was formed after its parent company landed the work in 1999.
... interestingly enough, since Alaska only has The Hulk, Don "Kiss My Ear" Young, and Lisa "Nepotism" Murkowski to represent the state, it has managed to reach an "unprecedented" cloud of ethical suspicion and corruption, since all three are currently under investigation for ethical lapses or outright abuses.
While in an interview about "Iraq" and "staying the course" that was printed all of yesterday, Stevens had this to say:
Q. I wanted to touch just briefly on your own situation and legal controversies.
A. You're not going to touch it at all or I'm going to leave. We had the understanding it was not going to come up.
Q. I understood the investigation wouldn't come up.
A. It's not going to come up at all. ( :D )
Q. Ok. What about your ability to be effective in Congress?
A. What about it? You're destroying it. More people are repeating what you're writing in your paper than anything else in the country. ( :p )
This paper has caused me more difficulty, and I've told you that before, than anything else. You've created me as the senator-for-life (longest serving senator). You've been hanging me weekly.
You read any paper, the information - most of it is not true ( :D )- started right here. And your guys just yesterday, they taunt me. They taunt me with statements that really no respectable reporter would ask a senator. It was already said I'm not going to answer your questions. They say, don't you have any concerns for your own integrity? Don't you have any conscience? That's what your reporters do to me.
I've spent hours here with you here in the past, and I've never seen any result of it at all ... This paper has done nothing but try to assassinate me.
Level-headed words from a guy who claimed "clinical depression" because he couldn't pass an ANWR bill.
Thoughts/comments, other than it being a "regional" issue?
http://www.adn.com/news/politics/veco/story/9225372p-9140312c.html
What makes such a significant fuss of the situation are these parts:
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.
...
Unsolicited, Stevens put $25 million into the commission's budget without ever explaining why an advisory panel instead of the National Science Foundation would get the money. The funds were later shifted to the NSF.
...
Hancock, now a University of Nebraska assistant vice president for academic affairs, said she drafted a protest letter when Veco won the contract, but her bosses decided not to send it. Among other things, she complained that Simon Stephenson, the National Science Foundation's contract manager, "had developed long-term personal relationships" with the former Antarctica field workers who were hired by Veco.
ARCTIC OIL FIELD WORK A FACTOR
The NSF declined to make Stephenson or anyone else available for an interview.
Hancock also noted that, when potential bidders were invited to send personnel to Greenland to tour the main site of the research in June 2000, two Antarctica workers missed a sign-up deadline. She said NSF officials then asked her office to escort the two, who Hancock said, "were provided personal, extensive and special access to all aspects of our operation."
"We learned in the middle of December, after the contract was awarded, that the two individuals we accommodated went to work for Veco Rocky Mountain Inc., on their contract," she wrote.
Veco had no previous government logistics contracts of such scope, but the company's work on North Slope oil fields gave it experience operating under harsh Arctic conditions. The entity set up by Veco to manage the NSF logistics contract, Veco Polar Resources, was formed after its parent company landed the work in 1999.
... interestingly enough, since Alaska only has The Hulk, Don "Kiss My Ear" Young, and Lisa "Nepotism" Murkowski to represent the state, it has managed to reach an "unprecedented" cloud of ethical suspicion and corruption, since all three are currently under investigation for ethical lapses or outright abuses.
While in an interview about "Iraq" and "staying the course" that was printed all of yesterday, Stevens had this to say:
Q. I wanted to touch just briefly on your own situation and legal controversies.
A. You're not going to touch it at all or I'm going to leave. We had the understanding it was not going to come up.
Q. I understood the investigation wouldn't come up.
A. It's not going to come up at all. ( :D )
Q. Ok. What about your ability to be effective in Congress?
A. What about it? You're destroying it. More people are repeating what you're writing in your paper than anything else in the country. ( :p )
This paper has caused me more difficulty, and I've told you that before, than anything else. You've created me as the senator-for-life (longest serving senator). You've been hanging me weekly.
You read any paper, the information - most of it is not true ( :D )- started right here. And your guys just yesterday, they taunt me. They taunt me with statements that really no respectable reporter would ask a senator. It was already said I'm not going to answer your questions. They say, don't you have any concerns for your own integrity? Don't you have any conscience? That's what your reporters do to me.
I've spent hours here with you here in the past, and I've never seen any result of it at all ... This paper has done nothing but try to assassinate me.
Level-headed words from a guy who claimed "clinical depression" because he couldn't pass an ANWR bill.
Thoughts/comments, other than it being a "regional" issue?