Sunday, May 20, 2007
Coast Guard May Be In Deep-something Over Deepwater [W. Thomas Smith Jr.]
Earlier tonight on
60 Minutes, Steve Kroft reported on a $24-billion project to rebuild much of the U.S. Coast Guard — post-9-11 — that he contends is "a fiasco that has set new standards for incompetence." According to Kroft:
After 9/11 few government entities were as poorly prepared to take on an expanded role as the U.S. Coast Guard. Already charged with sea rescues, drug interdictions, and immigration enforcement, the Coast Guard became the primary maritime force for Homeland Security: tasked with protecting 95,000 miles of coastline and 361 ports with an old and antiquated fleet.
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So five years ago, the Coast Guard undertook a massive modernization program called Deepwater, and it ended up way over its head ... [and has since] triggered a Justice Department investigation.
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... the biggest project the Coast Guard had ever undertaken looked impressive enough, Deepwater would include 91 new ships and 124 smaller boats, plus new planes and helicopters.
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But five years into the program, the Coast Guard has fewer boats and ships now than it did before it started.
Deepwater, says Kroft, started out by "spending nearly $100 million to ruin eight boats."
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The Coast Guard, he adds, didn't have the resources to run the project, so it outsourced its rebuilding program to a civilian defense contractor, Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS), which was a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. But since ICGS was responsible for both the construction work and the "day-to-day management of the contract," Lockheed and NG ended up getting most of the work.
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According to Capt. Kevin Jarvis (USCG, ret.), the former head of USCG Engineering and Logistics:
People say that this is like the fox watching the henhouse and it’s worse than that. It’s where the government asked the fox to develop the security system for the henhouse, then told them ‘By the way, we’ll give you the security code to the system and we’ll tell you when we’re on vacation.’
In addition to Jarvis, Kroft sat down with Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD), who said the Deepwater project was "a mess."
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60 Minutes was unable to get the Coast Guard or ICGS to comment (unless the USCG would be allowed to comment live and unedited, which 60 Minutes declined).
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More to come.
Editor’s note: Please see this note.
05/20 08:46 PM
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