Oversight Committee suggests US embassy involvement in 22-year-old’s sham weapons deal

Source: Nick Juliano, The Raw Story.

The US Embassy in Albania approved an effort to conceal the illegal Chinese origin of ammunition provided to troops in Afghanistan under a Pentagon contract by a just-indicted 22-year-old Florida man, according to an investigation by the House Oversight Committee.

In a 10-page letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Chairman Henry Waxman reviewed the committee’s findings in its investigation of AEY Inc., a start-up contractor that received up to $300 million in Pentagon contracts.

“The Oversight Committee has received information that the U.S. Ambassador to Albania held a late-night meeting with the Albanian Defense Minister at which the Ambassador approved removing evidence of the illegal Chinese origins of ammunition being shipped from Albania to Afghanistan by a U.S. contractor,” Waxman wrote. “The Committee has also received information that State Department officials tried to conceal this information from the Committee.”

The committee announced its investigation in March after a report revealed that AEY’s 22-year-old CEO, Efraim E. Diveroli, was selling shoddy, decades old, Chinese manufactured munitions to US and Afghan forces.

Waxman’s letter laid out the results of the investigation:

On June 9, 2008, Committee staff interviewed Major Larry Harrison, the Chief of the Office of Defense Cooperation at the U.S. Embassy in Albania. According to Major Harrison:

Moreover, it appears that Embassy officials sought to keep this information from the Committee. The Committee asked the State Department to provide any information concerning meetings between Embassy officials and the Albanian Defense Ministry, as well as any information about interventions into AEY’s repackaging operation. Although Major Harrison urged Embassy officials to inform the Committee of the November 19,2007, meeting, Embassy officials omitted any reference to the meeting in their response.

• On November 19,2007, the U.S. Ambassador to Albania and his top aides met with the Albanian Defense Minister to discuss how to respond to a request by the New York Times to visit a site in Albania where a U.S. arms contractor, AEY, Inc., was removing Chinese ammunition from its original packaging before sending it to Afghanistan.

• As a result of discussions that went late into the night, the Albanian Defense Minister ordered one of his top generals to remove all evidence of Chinese packaging before the site was inspected the following day. Major Harrison told the Committee: “the Ambassador agreed that this would alleviate the suspicion of wrongdoing.”

• At the time of this meeting, AEY was under investigation for illegal arms trafficking involving Chinese ammunition. Major Harrison told the Committee that he did not agree with the decision to remove the Chinese markings and felt “very uncomfortable” during the meeting.

Copies of Waxman’s letter to Rice and further evidence are available on the Committee’s Web site.

The Oversight Committee initially invited Diveroli and other AEY representatives to testify at a hearing in March, soon after their conduct was exposed, but that hearing was postponed at the time. Waxman’s letter, released Monday, is the first new development in the committee’s investigation since then.

In March, RAW STORY also revealed Diveroli’s connection to a separate business catering to civilians, known as AmmoWorks. After initially taking down its Web site after this site and others began raising questions, AmmoWorks appears to be back in business.

UPDATE: The Oversight Committee announced it would convene a hearing on the AEY contracts Tuesday at 10 a.m. Witnesses include:

· Brigadier General William N. Phillips, U.S. Army, Commanding General, Picatinny Arsenal, Commander, Joint Munitions and Lethality Life Cycle Management Command

· Mitchell A. Howell, Executive Director, Ground Systems and Munitions Division, Defense Contract Management Agency, U.S. Department of Defense

· Stephen D. Mull, Acting Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Political Military Affairs, U.S. Department of State

America’s Military Machine Gearing Up for Total WAR

Yay America.

Source: Michael T. Bucci, The Market Oracle.

The news items this week point to a severe international crisis point ahead (maybe within months of now). Sweden has enabled new surveillance measures on the heels of Germany. The Treasury’s man Paulson thinks procedures for future bank failures should be erected. The Bank of England is warning the British (like my friend Bev who wouldn’t listen to anyone but his financial advisor, and my New Age friends Sharon and Jo who are busy “Ascending”) that tough times are ahead and to downplay union strikes to protect against upward wage pressures.

What the British are reading now about credit, housing, inflation and employment projections are what Americans heard in January and February. The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets. So far, it is a carefully programmed and artfully implemented design.

Bush’s European tour put other Western players into orientation – England and Germany, especially – to what is ahead. But it will be more than financial shocks, it will be an invasion of the Middle East and subsequent Arab retaliation. The Arabs defeated the British Empire in the last Century and may defeat the American Empire in these decades. The world’s people will be poor, starving and helpless to change matters.

The Democrats have handed Bush the money for continued war after posturing against it for two years. Obama is the man of the financial and power elite and is wearing the costume necessary to convince Liberals, Blacks and those Left-of-Center that there really is a two-party system. The Socialists and “Comrades” of a more revolutionary sort are mounting an incursion into the minds of Europeans (they will never convince the American worker of Marxism, however, though they think they can).

America is gearing for total war, feeding its military machine and may starve people unaligned with the Pentagon, if necessary, as it does other nations. The people have no political candidates and options remaining to stop the bloodbath they are conducting in the Middle East , not to mention the worldwide dislocations produced from their hegemonic megalomania and lawless rogues on Wall Street. The Beast grows in destructive capacity when sensing death approaching. But this bloodbath and these actions may return to America in the forms of Marshall Law, mass hunger, crushed revolts and civil war – as they are returning now in forms of economic disintegration.

What may lie ahead is America ’s Karma, which it builds upon and sentences itself to with each passing day. Induction says the body count will be high here after the stakes are finally realized by those who will decide to join in battle for the American Dream of world domination through “any means possible”, and those who will resist or remain neutral. For the uncooperative nations of the world, it can only be a future of America against it; and for Americans, an international “endless war” together with a domestic one of Brother against Brother.

While there will be banking collapses, rampant unemployment and homelessness, hunger, social malaise, civil disobedience and revolts, there will be no shortage of funding for the Pentagon and its megalithic welfare system of transnational corporations, soldiers, mercenaries and veterans. Will Gold Bullion be used to buy bread in such a military state, or buy one’s freedom instead, I ask the Ron Paul devotees?

In all probability, Western governments will find it necessary to initiate internet censorship and periodic periods of total blackout in the foreseeable future. This is a logical certainty for anyone still using their powers of reason. Though this leaves the question: What substitute alternatives have been established to ensure continued communications between parties? The answer is none. And that was and is in the blueprint behind this technology built by the Pentagon, that it be totalitarian.

What new forms of economic exchange and bartering will take the place of worthless paper money and Gold that is not redeemable by the local grocer, farmer or landlord? These and more questions remain to be answered in the turbulent years ahead.

In this past week, Thursday, June 19 was a benchmark day for those in America who are political benchsitters. Obama revealed yet another reversal and inconsistency, and Pelosi’s Democrat House yet again rubber-stamped the President by granting immunity to Telecom spying and, after two years of faux battles, endorsed the continuation of war funding.

It is no surprise that Senator Obama is freeing himself from Federal monies to insure his campaign coffers are not limited. After all, he is the chosen one of Warren Buffett, George Soros and others. Need I say more? The Obama cult and image were finely tuned to insure that his “cover” (populism) did not reveal all that he is and stands for (and must stand for to be elected). But can anyone see? Can he see?

The Liberals have worked and will work hard to rationalize the Obama reversals, contradictions and double standards, if only to protect their euphoria from deflating into despair. Rest assured, though, whoever wins in November will deliver the same package to the same door: Militarism, Poverty and Depression; it is after-all a one-party system in America . In truth, Mssrs Obama (Mr Teflon II) and McCain (George Bush III) were chosen some time ago for this hour, and make no mistake about it, this “hour” was chosen too.

By now, it should be perfectly clear that Americans live with a one-party system that represents money and war, period! Whoever so-called “wins” in November will deliver the same grueling package: Militarism, Poverty, Depression and – quite possibly – civil war. The system is broken along with the banks. Democracy is dead. Corruption is systemic. “The People” have no options left. It is as simple as that.

Michael T Bucci is a retired public relations executive from New Jersey now residing in Maine. He has authored nine books on practical spirituality including “White Book: Cerithous”