U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

72–288 DTP WASHINGTON : 2001

COMBATING TERRORISM: INDIVIDUAL PROTECTIVE

EQUIPMENT FOR U.S. FORCES, INVENTORY AND

QUALITY CONTROLS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,

VETERANS AFFAIRS, AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JUNE 21, 2000

Serial No. 106–222

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2250

Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

DAVID A. KASS, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian

LISA SMITH ARAFUNE, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, VETERANS AFFAIRS, AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

LAWRENCE J. HALLORAN, Staff Director and Counsel

R. NICHOLAS PALARINO, Senior Policy Analyst

JASON CHUNG, Clerk

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on June 21, 2000 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Johnson-Winegar, Anna, Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense,

Chemical-Biological Defense, Department of Defense; Major General

John Sylvester, Deputy Chief of Staff for Training, U.S. Army Training

and Doctrine Command, Department of Defense; Major General Earnest Robbins, the Civil Engineer, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense; Rear Admiral David M. Stone, Deputy Director, Surface Warfare Division, U.S. Navy, Department of Defense; and Major

General Paul M. Lee, Jr., Commander, Marine Corps Materiel Command, Department of Defense ..................................................................... 89

Mancuso, Donald, Deputy Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense, accompanied by Robert Lieberman, Assistant Inspector General;

Eleanor A. Wills, project manager; Carol L. Levy, Deputy Director;

and Susan T. Lynn, resident agent in charge, New York Resident

Agency, Defense Criminal Investigative Service ........................................ 10

Mongeon, Brigadier General Daniel G., Commander, Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, accompanied by George Allen, Deputy Commander,

Defense Supply Center Philadelphia; and Robert Kinney, Director, Individual Protection Directorate, Natick Soldier Center, U.S. Army Soldier

and Biological Chemical Command ............................................................. 59

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Biggert, Hon. Judy, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Illinois, prepared statement of ..................................................................... 6

Johnson-Winegar, Anna, Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense,

Chemical-Biological Defense, Department of Defense, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 91

Kinney, Robert, Director, Individual Protection Directorate, Natick Soldier Center, U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 72

Lee, Major General Paul M., Jr., Commander, Marine Corps Materiel

Command, Department of Defense, prepared statement of ...................... 126

Mancuso, Donald, Deputy Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense, prepared statement of ........................................................................ 15

Mongeon, Brigadier General Daniel G., Commander, Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, prepared statement of ..................................................... 61

Robbins, Major General Earnest, the Civil Engineer, Headquarters U.S.

Air Force, Department of Defense, prepared statement of ........................ 108

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 3

Stone, Rear Admiral David M., Deputy Director, Surface Warfare Division, U.S. Navy, Department of Defense, prepared statement of ............. 119

Sylvester, Major General John, Deputy Chief of Staff for Training, U.S.

Army Training and Doctrine Command, Department of Defense, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 97

(1)

COMBATING TERRORISM: INDIVIDUAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT FOR U.S. FORCES, INVENTORY AND QUALITY CONTROLS

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, VETERANS

AFFAIRS, AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Shays, Mica, Sanford, Biggert, and

Schakowsky.

Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and counsel;

Nicholas Palarino, senior policy adviser; Jason Chung, clerk; Robert Newman and Thomas Costa, professional staff members; David

Rapallo, minority counsel; and Earley Green, minority assistant

clerk.

Mr. SHAYS. I call this hearing to order. Welcome our witnesses,

welcome our guests.

When deploying United States forces confronted the threat of

chemical and biological weapons in the Persian gulf war, they did

so with inadequate protective gear, insufficient training, unreliable

detectors and the haphazard use of vaccines and other medical

countermeasures.

In 1996, the General Accounting Office [GAO], concluded, that ‘‘equipment, training and medical problems persist’’ and were ‘‘likely to result in needless casualties and degradation of U.S.

warfighting capability.’’ GAO noted that despite, ‘‘increased emphasis on chemical and biological defense, it continued to receive a

lower level of emphasis at all levels of command than other tasks,’’ and many field commanders had accepted a level of chemical and

biological unpreparedness as an operational and fiscal given.

So we continue our oversight of the chemical and biological defense program with these questions. Is the readiness of individual

protective equipment a military priority today? Having placed toplevel emphasis on the need for the anthrax vaccine, so-called ‘‘medical body armor,’’ against one agent, has the Department of Defense

[DOD], been as attentive to the need for reliable masks and suits

that protect against all toxins and agents?

According to the DOD Inspector General, serious problems continue to plague the Pentagon approach to individual protective

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equipment. In short, DOD may not be able to find enough protective clothing when it’s needed on the battlefield, and too many protective masks may not work when they get there. Despite unequivocal findings and recommendations by the IG, these issues

have been consigned to years of bureaucratic quibbling and buckpassing within DOD.

On November 2, 1994, the Inspector General recommended cyclic

testing of all masks to address reported degradation of effectiveness over time in the field. Five years later, the joint service integration group found critical defects in more than half of 19,000

masks tested. But the DOD official in charge of the overall chemical and biological defense program says maintenance problems

with field masks are the responsibility of the service branches. As

of today, with the exception of the Marine Corps, the services have

not undertaken the recommended mask surveillance and testing.

In 1996, the IG cited the Defense Logistics Agency [DLA], for

weak inventory management controls over protective suits. A 1998

consolidation of depots storing protective suits only made matters

worse. The practical impact of those weaknesses became all too

clear when DLA tried to recall 700,000 suits supplied by a fraudulent vendor. Although long suspect, potentially defective suits have

not been segregated from other inventory; it took DLA three times

to find all the suits, some of which had been shipped, by then, to

units in high-threat areas, contrary to previous DOD claims.

If the availability and reliability of individual protective equipment were a military priority, these problems would have been addressed as quickly and as effectively as DOD fixes a rifle that overheats or an ammunitions shortage. The persistence and extent of

protective mask failures suggest the problem and the solution go

beyond training and maintenance by individual service members.

Had the services not spent 6 years in denial, a technological or materiel solution could have been programmed to reduce required

mask maintenance and made it rugged enough for battle.

The threat of chemical and biological warfare is real and it is

changing. U.S. forces must be protected to the maximum extent

possible from a broad and growing list of toxins and agents. In

terms of individual protection, only high-quality masks and suits

will do that job. The current system of chemical and biological defense appears too willing to tolerate preventable equipment failures.

At this time, I’d be happy to call on my colleague from Illinois,

Judy Biggert.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to

welcome those of you in uniform and thank you for the service to

our country.

Certainly, a strong national defense is essential. A strong national defense is the protector of freedom and the guarantor of our

foreign policy. But if our country is to remain strong and relevant

in the 21st century, we must ensure that America’s armed services

are never second best. To do that, we must ensure that our military personnel have the best, the safest and the most up-to-date

equipment in the world.

Despite the best intentions of our military, various reports indicate that, in some instances, our soldiers in the field are receiving

defective or outdated equipment, namely, chemical protective suits.

In fact, the Army recently found thousands of those defective suits

stockpiled in Europe and Korea.

Besides the defective suits, reports authored by the Department

of Defense Inspector General show that the chemical protective

masks also suffer major and critical defects. Should this equipment

ever be used in defending against a chemical or biological attack

our troops, would be at risk for illness, incapacitation or death.

Almost as troubling has been the DOD’s response to this information. It has been slow to implement actions recommended by the

IG to correct the problems relating to the management, distribution

and use of protective equipment.

I’m not really here today to question the integrity or dedication

of those who supply and train our military forces. In fact, I can say

with much confidence that it’s due to their efforts that the United

States has had the best-equipped and best-primed military in the

world. I’m also aware that the Department of Defense feels that

U.S. forces are fully prepared to survive, fight and win a biological

and chemical battle environment, and this is the reason we are

gathered here today.

Today’s hearing presents the DOD with a strong opportunity to

address the concerns that have been raised. So I’m eager to hear

from the witnesses, and I also want to know if the soldiers in the

field are aware of potential problems with this equipment or have

reported faulty gear to the commanders.

And finally, I trust that we will hear if the Department is following through with the IG’s recommendations for improving inventory management, and I’m particularly anxious to know the extent

to which the IG feels that fraud and abuse have permeated these

permanent programs.

So again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for calling this important

oversight hearing and I look forward to working with you and the

individuals testifying today, and my colleagues, to strengthen the

military as well as to ensure its effectiveness in the post-cold war

era. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Judy Biggert follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. I thank the lady.

Our first panel is Mr. Don Mancuso, who is Deputy Inspector

General, Office of the Inspector General, Department of Defense,

accompanied by Mr. Robert Lieberman, Assistant Inspector General, and Ms. Carol L. Levy, Deputy Director, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, also of the Office of the IG. And what we will

do first, let me just get rid of some housekeeping.

I ask unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee

be permitted to place an opening statement in the record and that

the record remain open for 3 days for that purpose. Without objection, so ordered.

I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be permitted

to include their written statements in the record; and without objection, so ordered.

At this time, I would welcome the three of you. And let me ask

you, Mr. Mancuso, is there anyone else that might be providing information who should stand and be sworn in, or is it just the three

of you for this panel?

Mr. MANCUSO. We have two individuals that we may turn to.

Mr. SHAYS. So I’d ask them to stand and be sworn in, and then

if they’re asked to respond to any question, we don’t have to give

it again and then they can give their name to the transcriber.

So if you five would stand, please.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. For the record, all responded in the affirmative.

Thank you.

I just welcome Ms. Schakowsky from Illinois.

And, Mr. Mancuso, what I’m going to do is, I’m going to give you

5 minutes. Then we’re going to roll it over for another 5 minutes

and ask you to conclude in 10 if you can.

STATEMENTS OF DONALD MANCUSO, DEPUTY INSPECTOR

GENERAL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, ACCOMPANIED

BY ROBERT LIEBERMAN, ASSISTANT INSPECTOR GENERAL;

ELEANOR A. WILLS, PROJECT MANAGER; CAROL L. LEVY,

DEPUTY DIRECTOR; AND SUSAN T. LYNN, RESIDENT AGENT

IN CHARGE, NEW YORK RESIDENT AGENCY, DEFENSE

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIVE SERVICE

Mr. MANCUSO. I will certainly try to do that, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for

the opportunity to appear before your subcommittee today. The Inspector General’s Office shares your concerns with respect to the

Department’s inventories, quality controls and serviceability of

equipment intended to protect our military forces from chemical

and biological attacks. As you requested, I’ll briefly summarize our

efforts with respect to five audit reports and a criminal investigation involving chemical warfare suits and masks. My written statement contains considerable detail on each of these items.

Let me begin by discussing our work on inventory management

of chemical protective suits. In 1996, we conducted an audit of inventory records at the Defense Depot in Columbus, OH, and I

would mention that on an annual basis as part of our financial

statement audits we look at inventory, and it was during the

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course of such an audit that we had occasion to look at the inventory in Columbus.

We selected 44 different types of items from a universe of about

268,000 different types of items that are maintained in that location in order to determine whether the inventory records matched

the actual count that we would have observed as part of our audit.

The 44 items included six types of chemical protective suits. Although the depot listed more than 2.1 million such suits in our

sample, the physical count identified major discrepancies; 400,000

fewer suits were on hand than reflected in the inventory records

for locations listed as storing such suits. Conversely, we found

nearly 700,000 additional suits not listed on the inventory records

that were stored in undocumented locations.

Now I’ll take a minute, Mr. Chairman, if you would, to explain

that—a little bit because, to the layman, it doesn’t appear to make

much sense. The depots maintained by the Defense Logistics Agency—and there are approximately 20 of them—contain a huge

amount of materiel, and for that reason, it’s extraordinarily important that they know exactly what they have there and where it

should be located. They are hundreds of thousands of actual locations that are supposed to be very specifically marked, so that

when they look in the inventory and they say they have 50,000

suits in location whatever, in fact those suits are there.

And what we found is that many of the suits that were listed on

inventories as belonging in a particular location did not exist in

those locations; but after a more careful look around the depot,

other suits were found that were in other undocumented locations.

Since suits are such a critical war reserve item and the supply

community must be able to respond rapidly and efficiently to requests for protective suits, we were quite surprised at the discrepancies that we found. Because these suits have a specified shelf life

and require periodic inspections we had expected much-betterthan-average controls. Instead, we found a series of poor inventory

management practices.

In response to our audit, the Defense Logistics Agency took action to regain inventory control for these suits. They advised us

that all the suits had been located, inventoried and posted to inventory records by November 1997 and later transferred to the Defense Depot in Albany, GA. In 1999, however, we had occasion to

conduct an audit, an inventory audit, at the Albany depot; and we

discovered that instead of improving inventory management, the

transfer to Albany had the opposite effect.

The records for the one type of suit we audited were materially

inaccurate. We also determined that during the transfer to Albany,

the quantity of each of the 20 different types of protective suits on

hand was never verified. As a result, we requested that the DLA

conduct a wall-to-wall suit inventory. The DLA has notified us that

that inventory is complete, and they’ll be reporting out with a final

report very shortly.

During the audit, the auditors also determined that DLA had

failed to alert all DOD users and had failed to segregate suits

under contract from a company, called Isratex, where the contractor was under criminal investigation and we had found defects in

these suits. That particular case was begun in 1993 by our invesVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:02 May 30, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\72288.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tigative staff, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. They initiated an investigation of this company, Isratex, and a facility the

company had in Puerto Rico for the company’s production of coveralls and coats for the Department of Defense; and what the investigation uncovered is that the company was routinely substituting

poor and inferior-quality items for those that had been previously

presented to the quality inspectors for their review.

In 1994, late 1994, the investigators also began to look at another Isratex facility in West Virginia, and that facility was producing chemical warfare suits; and in short order, we found the same

types of deficiencies, because the same scheme—relatively the same

scheme—was being perpetrated by Isratex at the West Virginia location, and it involved chemical warfare suits. To put it in perspective, Isratex at that time had two contracts to produce nearly

800,000 suits for the Department of Defense at a cost of approximately $50 million.

I’d also point out—and I’m a career criminal investigator—I have

seen this scheme all too often, especially in the Department of Defense, although it certainly occurs anywhere in government where

large volumes of materiel are purchased. In this case, the company

repeatedly presented high-quality, good items to the government

inspector who accepted those items and, therefore, accepted the lot

for shipment. The company then apparently removed those items,

held them back—in this case, we call them special lots—and intentionally shipped off inferior quality goods with many, many serious

defects.

This type of scheme, as I said, occurs fairly frequently, and

frankly over the last 15 years, we’ve probably prosecuted a few

hundred contractors involved in this same type of scheme. In this

case, though, the investigators, with the cooperation of the DLA

quality inspectors, went into the company—this is—again, I’m talking about the Puerto Rico end of it right now—and marked some

of these goods that were being presented for inspection. They surreptitiously marked them, so that they could be traced through the

inventory chain, and sure enough, we found that the good items did

not make it through the inventory chain, and again the low-quality

items were being substituted. This, together with other evidence

and witness testimony, resulted in the indictment and subsequent

conviction of the company, its principal officers and several of its

employees.

Beginning in 1995, relating to this matter, we began a series of

discussions and correspondence with DLA relative to the defects

that we uncovered with the chemical warfare suits. Nonetheless,

the suits remained in inventory. We were able, after some negotiation, to have DLA remove the suits under the second contract—the

1992 contract, which was the smaller contract—from inventory,

and those items were actually segregated in approximately July

1995.

DLA was reluctant to segregate the 1989 contract items. They

weren’t the specific target of our investigation nor were they eventually the specific items used to support the indictment. The DLA

cited cost and other factors such as readiness factors, as reasons

for not removing those suits from inventory. We also asked that

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they make proper notification to the units to whom defective suit

potentially have been issued.

Nonetheless, the 1989 suits remained in inventory. This is particularly troubling due to the serious nature of the defects, which

included holes and open seams. DLA eventually made full notification to all users, involving all the suits, earlier this year and advised us, as of last month, that the 1989 contract suits have been

fully segregated.

I’d add that much can and has been said as to the failure to take

prompt and aggressive action in this case. Issues such as the cost

of segregation, testing, perceived seriousness of the defects and the

obvious impact on readiness have all been discussed and debated

within the Department. I’d be remiss, however, if I didn’t put it in

some perspective for you. Again, having investigated and supervised this type of investigation over the years, I have worked extensively with DLA and have had occasion to turn to them frequently

for help in segregating items or in conducting testing; and although

this is an egregious situation as far as I’m concerned in the system,

I would note that in the vast majority of instances, right up

through today, DLA is quick to give assistance, is quick to support

us with testing, is quick to segregate the items that we need for

evidence. So I’m hopeful that we’ll continue to be able to work with

them to preclude a situation like this from reoccurring.

Let me now turn to the topic of chemical masks and specifically

to our 1994 and 1998 audit reports. Our 1994 work was completed

in response to defense hotline allegations that related to the design, production serviceability and integrity of chemical protective

masks. Inasmuch—— Mr. SHAYS. You have another 5 minutes.

Mr. MANCUSO. I can finish in that amount of time, sir.

Inasmuch as the 1994 reports are classified secret, they were

classified by the Department, I’ll be limited in the detail that I include in this open hearing.

Mr. SHAYS. This is on the 1994 report?

Mr. MANCUSO. 1994 reports. We randomly selected as part of

that review, M–17 and M–40 protective masks and had them tested

by the Marine Corps Test and Evaluation Unit, using Army-authorized equipment and test criteria. These were Army masks we

were testing. The masks were tested for leaks and fit on a variety

of mask testers. A visual inspection was also performed on all the

masks to identify defects and missing parts.

The problems indicated by our testing and other data collection

were significant. We found deficiencies in mask design, production

issues, acceptance testing, maintenance and also the lack of periodic testing of the fielded masks. While military equipment is what

we call ‘‘ruggedized,’’ it would stand wear and tear and be able to

function in difficult conditions, it is very difficult to design masks

impervious to all environmental and operational forces. For this

reason, it is a major challenge, but it’s a necessary challenge, to address the area of preventive maintenance.

We found that soldiers were simply not following prescribed procedures when performing maintenance nor were they reporting the

requirements as required. As part of our audit, we asked soldiers

to perform maintenance before they submitted their masks to us

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for inspection and testing. But even after this instruction, we

found, through visual review, that many masks were reassembled

improperly or were unserviceable.

We believe that the adequacy of maintenance can best be determined by an aggressive program of periodic surveillance testing,

whether the masks are in the hands of troops or in supply. At the

time of our audit, only the Marines had such a testing program.

As a result of our audits, a Joint Service Mask Technical Working Group was established in 1995 to conduct a full study. The

study results, published in November of last year, included the

testing of nearly 20,000 masks of which more than half were found

to have critical defects.

I believe actually a quarter of the masks passed, a quarter of the

masks had major and minor defects, and half failed with critical

problems. Although this study validated concerns raised in our

1994 audits, the Department rejected the study’s recommendation

for a centralized testing program. As a result, despite general

agreement in the Department and the services as to the need for

consistent testing procedures and criteria, the job of correcting the

problem remains with the individual services.

All services now acknowledge the need for continued mask surveillance and are taking appropriate implementation measures.

Frankly, Congressman, we hear that all the time and I guess we

will be back in a year or two to audit what actually occurs.

Last, the subcommittee requested that I comment on an audit report that we issued in December 1998 relative to the M–41 protective assessment test system capabilities. The report examined

whether a combination of field level maintenance in a mask verified by the M–41 system was sufficient to assure mask readiness.

Our review determined that the M–41 reliability as a combat readiness test is questionable. It does not test masks under realistic battlefield conditions. We also found problems with respect to operator

training, equipment calibration and inconsistent testing criteria.

In response to this report the Department has tasked the Army

to provide input needed to develop new testing criteria. The Army

has indicated as recently as this month that the services have

agreed to new ‘‘fit factor’’ criteria, which is one of the testing criteria. However, we’re still awaiting comments from the Department

in this regard and we remain concerned about the lack of consistent serviceability testing and test criteria.

In closing, I note that chemical and biological defense has long

been a primary focus of IG readiness audits, and given the importance of fully addressing the management challenges in this area,

we have attempted to maintain continuous coverage despite severe

resource constraints.

Thank you for considering the views of my office on these important matters, and that concludes my statement.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mancuso follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much. I note for the record that we

are joined by Mr. Sanford and welcome him.

I am going to read my summation of what I think your testimony

is, and I want to ask if you would agree with—whether you agree

with whether my summation is an accurate summation of what you

think you have said.

Despite the growing threat, the business of protecting our forces

from chemical and biological attacks have not been managed effectively and is vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse. You basically

find there is a lack of inventory control over chemical protective

suits at the Defense Logistics Agency. This is a problem because

protective chemical suits are a critical war reserve item.

The managers of the company, Isratex, Inc., conspired to provide

defective chemical protective suits to the Department of Defense.

Although DLA knew of problems with the company, it took several

years before agreeing to stop shipping potentially defective suits to

our military forces. In 1994, your office uncovered problems with

the serviceability and integrity of chemical protective masks already in use. To some extent the problems are attributable to design and production problems, while other aspects of the problems

are attributed to training and field maintenance checks. Despite

your recommendations for corrective action, these problems persist

today.

Those problems persist in part because the services have resisted

some of your recommendations and no single DOD office has exercised sufficient oversight authority to make the changes you recommended.

Now, that is what we have taken from your oral and written testimony. Is that essentially your testimony?

Mr. MANCUSO. It is essentially correct. I would add, I really don’t

know what the current status is on the inventory of chemical warfare suits. I have not seen their most recent inventory. Theoretically they had an all-encompassing inventory in Albany and have

accounted for the missing suits and determined the location of all

suits. So that may in fact have been corrected. I defer to DLA to

comment on that during their testimony.

Mr. SHAYS. Basically you are not disagreeing with anything that

I summarized other than that?

Mr. MANCUSO. No, I’m not, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. And the only additional—that is your only additional

add-on to what I have said?

Mr. MANCUSO. That is correct.

Mr. SHAYS. Based on your audits, are the problems with protective clothing inventories a matter of dollars or management?

Mr. MANCUSO. Problems as far as the inventory? Is that what

you are saying?

Mr. SHAYS. Yes.

Mr. MANCUSO. It is both. They are management problems. Some

of them are complicated by a lack of money, I’m sure. What we

found during our audits, for instance, in 1999—excuse me, in 1997,

as well as again in 1999—is that cutbacks in the number of employees at the depot, changes in the system, and other logistics improvements that were being pushed through the system, all contributed in some way to the lack of good inventory management.

39

Nonetheless, there is very little that is as important to the Department of Defense as good inventory management. It is directly

tied to readiness. It is directly tied to waste and abuse. Poor inventory management can lead to, for instance, the needless acquisition

of items that you may have sitting right under your nose in another part of the warehouse.

So although I believe that there is some money in the issue,

management is very important, and I think DLA is attempting to

get it under control but this is a problem that goes well beyond

DLA. Inventory as a whole is a major problem for the Department

of Defense and one they are wrestling with and one that in fact remains as an impediment to the Department producing clear, clean

financial statements.

Mr. SHAYS. We thought that one of the things our committee

would do is just focus on our storage of equipment, our maintenance of equipment, and we determined that our committee would

be spending all of our time doing that, it is so massive. But it is

something that we’re very tempted to get into in a very big and

real way. I want you to tell me what systematic flaws or weaknesses allowed DLA to issue potentially defective equipment to

U.S. warfighters.

Mr. MANCUSO. In the case about defective equipment, that we

are talking about here, there is very little, I think, that DLA could

have done to avoid fraud by a group of individuals that were intent

on subverting the system, whatever the system might be. One of

the points I did not make and I probably should have made in my

oral testimony was that it was in fact DLA, back in 1993, that referred the allegations of potential fraud by this company to the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, having to do with the coats

and overalls that the quality people suspected that this company

was somehow subverting their efforts.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s a plus that they did that. It is a minus that

they knew it.

Mr. MANCUSO. I’m certainly not making excuses for them. But

you asked what they could do about stopping items from getting

into the system. If you are talking about the acquisition end, it is

difficult when you have a company intent on defrauding you. If you

are talking about just stopping lower quality that may not be an

intentional fraud, you need the most intense inspection effort that

you can have, and that becomes a money issue. Once the items are

in the system, however, then I believe very strongly that it’s the

people who control the inventory who bear a great responsibility for

ensuring that good decisions are made as to what to do with defective items. If you are going to make a decision to allow something

to stay in inventory or perhaps go out to the troops, at a minimum

the warfighters need to be a participant in the discussions as to

what exactly are you allowing to go out.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m a little troubled here. I’m getting the feeling more

that you are describing to me that the problem happened. I’m uncertain as to what systematic problems occurred that allowed our

soldiers to basically get equipment that, if they had been exposed

to chemicals, they would have died and we wouldn’t have been able

to carry out our mission. And my question to you was what systematic flaws? I gather there is just total carelessness. I mean, are you

40

basically reporting that this happened, or are you making recommendations on how to avoid it in the future?

Mr. MANCUSO. I think I’m having trouble answering your question because I’m not sure if you want me to focus on what happened in the case of Isratex and suits or if you are talking much

more broadly about the acquisition of materiel.

Mr. SHAYS. What bothers me is a lot. This is not a happy day

for me. Mr. Lieberman and I go back a ways. We go back to the

1994 study, and I was a member of this committee and we weren’t

seeing action taken and so one of the staff said I should read this

report. And then I sat down with Mr. Lieberman, sat down with

the people who did it, and then I sat down with the Army, who basically said this report was not done well. So we are going to get

into that.

I am not suggesting that I am in a particularly good mood. But

what I am trying to wrestle with is that we knew that we had defective suits. We cannot deny that we did not know it, because we

prosecuted people and some people were sent to jail. I almost view

it as treasonous because I view as giving defective equipment that

you produce to our military personnel means they are dead men.

If they are exposed to chemicals and it means our mission cannot

be carried out and then it means that other people who are not exposed to chemicals may be exposed to other—their life is threatened because our mission isn’t being able to be carried out successfully. When we have part of the mission not being able to be carried out right, it endangers the rest of the mission.

What I am wrestling with is how in God’s name is it possible for

military personnel to give bad equipment to other military personnel? I just don’t know how it can happen.

So I want to know—I know we purchased it. I know we prosecuted. I want to know was it just carelessness, recklessness, or

was it just simply they did not care? Did they care but there was

a systematic flaw that made this happen? And to what extent you

can answer that question, I’d appreciate it. And if someone else can

answer it, I would appreciate it.

Mr. MANCUSO. I suspect DLA will eventually have to answer that

question.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you this in fairness to you. Have you— are you basically, is your report before us today just documenting

it happened but not documenting why it happened and documenting—and making recommendations on how to prevent it in the future? And so I just want to know what you are prepared to say.

Mr. MANCUSO. We are prepared to testify clearly that it happened and that it happened despite our discussions with DLA, both

oral discussions and correspondence that was exchanged. And it is

my understanding from talking to our people that the rationale

that was eventually given was that it was a business decision, it

was a decision made by the logistics people after they weighed

what they viewed as the seriousness or lack of seriousness of the

defects, the readiness needs, the availability of other suits, etc.

They determined that they would keep those things in inventory.

I certainly question that decision.

Mr. SHAYS. It sounds to me like, you know, you have one bullet

in the chamber and you just keep pulling it and eventually you get

41

killed. Some of those suits—am I misunderstanding the problem?

Were some of the suits defective to the extent that they would not

protect against a chemical or biological exposure?

Mr. MANCUSO. Certainly the charge that we included in our indictment was that they were providing suits that were dangerously

deficient. And the testing that was done, independent testing we

had done by Natick, showed that there was a significant number

of suits that were tested in the samples that had critical defects

and could, therefore, endanger troops.

Mr. SHAYS. Defects like holes.

Mr. MANCUSO. Open seams.

Mr. SHAYS. Open seams. Defects like using different material

than met the specs. Holes, seams that were open and material that

wasn’t—inferior material, material that did not meet the specs that

they were supposed to meet, that this equipment did not work.

And we prosecuted them for that. Isn’t that correct?

Mr. MANCUSO. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. And isn’t it correct that the prosecution was successful?

Mr. MANCUSO. Oh, yes, that’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. And so we cannot deny. Otherwise, you have got to

let them out of jail or we better, you know, not hold the company

accountable.

So that’s happened and that’s not what I’m getting into. I’m trying to understand how military personnel can allow other military

personnel to have defective equipment. You’re not in a position to

tell us how it happened right now. You’re just able to say it happened. I don’t want to suggest just that your research did more

than it did if it did not. So the extent of the research is that it happened. You don’t quite know and you haven’t come up with specific

recommendations on how to prevent it in the future; is that correct?

Mr. MANCUSO. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, let me do this. I want to give—Mr. Lieberman,

you and I will have a little dialog about masks, but Ms.

Schakowsky, you have the floor.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Mancuso, I’m

new to this terrain, so if I am asking questions that you have already testified to or repeating what the chairman has said, please

forgive me because I am struggling to understand how all of this

happened as well.

So we have two batches of suits made by the manufacturer in

1989 and 1992, the larger batch being the 1989; right? About

606,000 suits and 173,000 in 1992.

Mr. MANCUSO. Correct.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Let me focus first on the 1992 batch.

The DLA originally placed a freeze on the suits made in 1992 because of concerns with the manufacturer on a completely separate

contract; is that right?

Mr. MANCUSO. Correct.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Related to cold weather parkas or something?

Mr. MANCUSO. Correct.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. In 1995, you requested a quality inspection of

the suits in question here. Why did you make that request?

42

Mr. MANCUSO. Because the investigators during the course of

their review of the situation involving Isratex found that it seemed

to be a normal business practice for them to attempt to circumvent

the system and to supply inferior, defective and less costly types

of material. They had reason to believe and this is based on witness testimony as well—that this included chemical warfare suits.

For that reason beginning in January 1995, we notified DLA that

we suspected that, in fact, there were problems with the suits and

we suggested to them that a quality audit be done and some segregation of the 1989 and 1992 lots of warfare suits.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. The defects that we are talking about are the

ones that you just went over, open seams, that kind of thing?

Mr. MANCUSO. Correct, although at that point I suspect we were

not as confident as to precisely what the defects were. We were

working on witness testimony. There hadn’t been the testing from

the professional test lab.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. You called them significant defects at the

time, although it is reported elsewhere that these were not critical

defects. But you felt at that point that the entire lot should be

withheld, right?

Mr. MANCUSO. We suggested that the first thing that should happen is that they should do a quality check of these items and it

may be appropriate to segregate items; in other words, put them

aside.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. OK. Again, correct me if I am wrong, but the

DLA concluded the suits were servable anyway; is that correct?

Mr. MANCUSO. DLA eventually concluded that, although they

found defects, they did not feel that those defects rose to the level

that would justify segregation of all of the suits. Yes.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. And at that time did you disagree that the

suits were servable?

Mr. MANCUSO. We disagreed and we continued to investigate.

And then eventually we obtained other independent testing that

showed far more critical defects.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. In 1999 you requested that the suits be tested

again; right? Why did you make that second request?

Mr. MANCUSO. It was primarily in support of the criminal investigation and evidence that would be needed to ensure the successful prosecution.

Mr. SHAYS. Put the mic in front of you a little bit more. It is kind

of on the angle there. Thank you.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. And during this check, the inspectors found

critical flaws in the suits; correct?

Mr. MANCUSO. Yes, many, both through testing and even

through visual inspection. They found things such as open seams.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. So why would the inspections in 1996 and

1999 have different outcomes? They were probably different inspectors, but was there a different standard?

Mr. MANCUSO. I would defer to Ms. Levy on that as to whether

or not there was a different standard.

Ms. LEVY. There were no critical defects found on the first inspection. On the second inspection when Natick did the inspection

they found seven critical defects. Natick used the appropriate version of the specs to test the items. When the items were first tested

43

by DSCP, they used an earlier version of the specs to test the product. Natick used the version that was appropriate to the 1992 contract to conduct the tests. They found seven critical defects. But

DSCP did agree that at least one of the critical defects found by

Natick was indeed a critical defect.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. If we are talking about open seams, you used

the word you could visually observe them. It is hard for me to understand why—and that sounds pretty critical to me, why that

wouldn’t have been discovered in the earlier inspection. I mean, I

understand what you are saying about the different and more appropriate standards. But they seem pretty blatant, even if what

was finally found—— Mr. MANCUSO. I don’t think there is any way to positively ascertain why that difference occurred. One simple reason may be we

weren’t looking at the precise same suits. I don’t believe that

Natick, when they were looking in 1999, were looking at the precise same suits that had been looked at by DLA. They were looking

at a representative sampling drawn from different lots. But because these are such critical items, a very limited number of defects would, in fact, have caused a rejection of the entire lot while

they were still at the contractor. They would not have been accepted by the inspector. That’s what the contract would have required,

that the entire lot be rejected because the representative

sampling—— Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Exactly, which is why I am trying to figure

out why that did not happen.

Mr. MANCUSO. There is no way—I don’t think there is any concrete way—to determine why the two testings came up with different results.

Ms. LEVY. There is some explanation as to why they came up

with different results with regard to the critical defects because

some of the critical defects that were identified as critical during

the second testing were classified as major under the specs that

were used for the initial test. They were not considered critical defects. Then Natick updates their specs, now some of those items

that were first classified as major are now considered critical.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Well, in the end though we did find that the

activity on the part of the manufacturer was intentional and they

have been, as we pointed out, they have now been prosecuted and

convicted; right?

Mr. MANCUSO. That’s correct.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Let me ask about the 1989 suits. So there was

not, then, a DLA freeze put on any suits? Or were they—was there

a DLA freeze put on 1992 suits?

Mr. MANCUSO. The 1992 suits I believe were segregated in 1995.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Do we mean the same thing when I say freeze

and you say segregated?

Mr. MANCUSO. We are talking about segregated, moved, taken

out of active inventory—identified not for normal distribution. For

the 1992 suits. The 1989 suits were never segregated until about

a month ago.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Right. That’s what I want to get at. So when

the United States was entering Bosnia, for instance, the 1989 suits

were in circulation?

44

Mr. MANCUSO. That’s correct.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. And when the suits were tested in 1996, were

tests conducted on all the suits or just the 1992?

Mr. MANCUSO. Just the 1992 suits.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. OK. And the 1999 inspection, that focused on

the 1992 suits only too?

Mr. MANCUSO. No, that focused on, I believe, both sets of suits.

Ms. LEVY. No. May 2000.

Mr. MANCUSO. It’s the most recent ones, the final testing in the

last few months included the 1989 suits and also resulted in the

full segregation of the 1989 suits.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Wasn’t there a 1999? There were three opportunities for the DLA to focus also on the 1989 suits and it did not.

Isn’t that true?

Ms. LEVY. Natick conducted a test of the 1992 suits in September

1999 and that is when they identified the critical defects.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. And not the 1989 suits.

Ms. LEVY. That’s correct.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. So now we are up to 1989 and the 1989 suits

three times in a row were not inspected.

Ms. LEVY. That’s correct.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. And they were made by the same manufacturer with the same now conviction and suspicion—well, anyway;

right?

Ms. LEVY. Indeed it was a continuous production, yes.

Mr. MANCUSO. It would be useful, I think, to mention that when

we talk in the Department of Defense about a 1989 contract, conceivably they could be manufacturing today under a 1989 contract.

Sometimes they overlap with other contracts. So throughout a period of time they were producing under the 1989 contracts, then

producing extensively under the 1992 contract. So it goes on. The

reason——

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. OK. Let me, let me go on. What I’m trying to

understand is it would have made just as much sense to segregate,

it seems to me, the 1989 suits too under the same rationale, just

to be safe, from a questionable manufacturer.

Mr. MANCUSO. That was certainly our position.

Ms. LEVY. Could I just correct something? You said there were

three tests where the 1989s could have been tested. There were

two tests and on the third test the 1989 suits were tested. May

2000.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. That was 2000?

Ms. LEVY. Yes.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. OK. OK. That was in May. So it turns out

though that the 1989 suits were just as flawed as the 1992 suits;

is that right?

Ms. LEVY. There were defects identified, two of which were critical when they were tested in May 2000.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. And yet there were three our four times as

many suits produced and in circulation. So I’m having trouble figuring out why the 1989 suits were excluded from consideration or

scrutiny when they had the same manufacturer, same quality problems, when there were many more of them. When you requested

45

the inspections in 1995, did you explicitly request that inspections

be done of the 1989 suits as well?

Mr. MANCUSO. Yes, we did, and that resulted in a series of discussions and negotiations with DLA as to having this accomplished.

DLA cited a figure that I believe was about a quarter of a million

dollars that it would cost them to do the appropriate sampling and

testing for what we were looking for under both of those contracts

and noted that they frankly could not afford to do that. And we actually negotiated for one contract and it cost them about $70,000

to conduct the testing.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. But beyond that, and I’m curious how you felt

about it when General Glisson had a press conference, a DLA official, said quote: The 1989 lot has never been questioned. They

never had a single quality control problem identified on the 1989

lot. That was not correct; right?

Mr. MANCUSO. That was not correct.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me thank the gentlewoman for her questions and

go to Mrs. Biggert.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Mancuso, in your testimony you talk about—I’m switching

now to the protective masks—that out of the 19,218 masks that

were tested there were found to be 10,322 that had critical defects.

And in your statement, you talk about the Deputy Assistant for

Chemical Biological Defense, Dr. Anna Johnson-Winegar, informed

the IG that it was not her job to construct readiness oversight. Do

you see a problem with that and who is in charge for oversight of

these?

Mr. MANCUSO. We had hoped that her office would take the initiative and attempt to take control of the situation, recognizing this

is not an easy thing to do in the Department of Defense with the

various military services. But we have seen success in other areas.

We had hoped in this area that that office would have again taken

the initiative to get that done. She apparently felt that this was not

something that needed to be done by her office.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Well, you talked, I note, at the last hearing this

subcommittee had on chemical and biological defense, again nobody

wanted to be in charge. And today you mentioned about centralized

testing. We still don’t even have centralized testing between the

services, do we?

Mr. MANCUSO. No, we do not. And, in fact, just to be fair, the

area that we are primarily concerned about is standardized maintenance testing. Her office is certainly involved in trying to get some

consensus with the services on criteria and things like that. They

are certainly involved. But they fell short of what we would have

liked to have seen coming out of the Office of Secretary of Defense,

which would be a strong leadership and control in ensuring that

there was uniform testing across the board with the services.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Well, if—has this been a recommendation that

you have made to the Department of Defense to have centralized

testing and to have somebody in charge?

Mr. MANCUSO. We’ve supported that concept—we were involved

in the joint study and we supported that recommendation and it

46

is out there and our representative was one of the teams that formulated it.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Have any of the service branches been responsive

and been willing to have somebody that will have oversight in

that?

Mr. MANCUSO. Mr. Lieberman has been directly involved in that.

I will let him answer.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. We made the recommendation for a centralized

test program in our 1994 reports. The Department nonconcurred

and we have been negotiating ever since.

Centralization is not as important as standardization. What

we’ve been after now for 6 years is to make sure that adequate

testing is going on. Whether it is done all in one place by one organization or not is really not the key factor. That is one way to make

it happen. Otherwise, you’re fighting four different sets of priorities

in four different military services. So that’s why we initially went

to the idea of a centralized program.

It is conceivable that four different test programs can fulfill the

same objective, as long as there is coordination and oversight of

what is going on and someone is able to identify any of the services

that is not really stepping up to the challenge. So if it’s going to

be a decentralized testing operation, we would say that strong oversight is absolutely necessary to make that work.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Well, if there is four different services that are

doing this testing, and maybe they find very similar problems, and

yet there is no one that says, oh, maybe there is really something

inherently wrong with those masks because it is not brought back

together for a centralized report.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes, we do see a lack in terms of a way, as you

say, of bringing these things back together. The Army is the executive agent in the Department for individual protective equipment.

And that’s fine because the Army has a lot of technical expertise

in chemical matters.

But there is sort of a conflict of interest if you are talking about

one of the services in essence oversighting itself here. And we really think there is a crying need for strong leadership from both OSD

and the Joint Staff in this area.

Mrs. BIGGERT. So you could only recommend that and then it’s

up to the Department of Defense to make that decision?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes, ma’am.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Do you think that the Department of Defense is

unresponsive to this—to the request? Or to the recommendation?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I think the response from the Department candidly has been disappointing. We made those recommendations in

1994 and it’s only within the last year that the services have started the types of mask surveillance testing programs that we have

been recommending since 1994.

Mrs. BIGGERT. In looking at these protective masks and the critical defects, were most of these defects because of poor maintenance

by the servicemen and women or were there inherent defects when

they were purchased or delivered?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. There were some production problems, but by

and large, the bulk of the problem here is a maintenance problem.

The designs of the masks today are good. It is good equipment, but

47

it is not soldier-proof by any means. And apparently the masks

really suffer once they’re in the hands of the users. The maintenance routine is either too difficult or not well enough understood

by the troops and you have got to have proper maintenance for this

equipment to work.

Mrs. BIGGERT. If they don’t receive the training or if it’s not— they don’t care for them properly, is that again because there is no

standardized training or standardized maintenance that is given to

the four services to train their personnel on how to maintain those

masks?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. It is a leadership problem reaching all the way

down to the smallest-sized units of the services. You are not going

to have exact standardized training because there are some differences in the models of mask that the different services are

using. And there are real environmental differences between shipboard use of masks by the Navy and masks that an infantry unit

has out in the field some place, for example.

But this is essentially a leadership problem. It is a command

problem. It’s no different from the soldier’s weapon not being able

to fire because it’s not properly maintained. So we have to find a

way to get every single user of a mask, which is down to the

lowliest PFC in Army terms, to maintain these masks properly.

The only way to know whether that is happening or not is to

bring in technical experts with equipment to test the masks to find

out whether they are still serviceable or not.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Is that what you talked about your carry-on or

testing equipment, or I forget what you called it, but something

that is mobile?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes. Nowadays the good news is that there is

better test equipment on the market. Much better test equipment.

There’s a new device that basically takes a semi-trailer’s worth of

equipment and puts it in a suitcase and you don’t lose any capability. So obviously this should make it much easier logistically to

take the equipment to where the users are and do onsite testing.

Mrs. BIGGERT. And with leadership that would be accomplished.

Just one quick thing, could you just define what ‘‘critical defects’’ are?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Critical defects are defects that have potential

life-threatening consequences.

Mrs. BIGGERT. And an example would be?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. An open seam that allows leakage through the

seam.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Or broken eyeglass or whatever?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentlewoman. And the gentleman from

North Carolina.

Mr. SANFORD. South Carolina. Come on, be nice.

Mr. SHAYS. Is that a critical mistake?

Mr. SANFORD. It’s huge. Huge.

Mr. SHAYS. Huge. I love your basketball teams.

Mr. SANFORD. Exactly. I’ve just got one quick question, and that

is when I look at inventory accuracy, as I read through the pages

of your testimony, I mean it just struck me as an incredibly odd

48

story. And that is you begin with the defense depot in Columbus,

OH, supposedly there are around 2 million suits. The audit finds— I guess this is the 1997 audit finds that there are major discrepancies, was your wording. They adjust for $46 million worth of basically lost equipment,

and they find that basically there are a half million fewer protective suits than they thought were the case. Then it turns out in 728

other locations, they basically find another almost 700,000 suits

that they did not know were over there worth about $51 million.

The audit says, quote, a series of poor inventory management practices. It is believed that this can be cleared up by moving this stuff

to the defense depot in Albany, GA. The stuff is moved down to

Georgia, but in fact there is the opposite effect in terms of inventory problem and of the 225,000 protective suits that are supposed

to be there, it turns out there are 31,000 suits not there. And at

this point, people are not even worried about quality. It says quality was never verified, but they begin a wall-to-wall inventory. It

is completed January 2000 and it turns out 23,000 of the missing

suits were found in like completely different storage areas. And, essentially, as I read this, the other 7,000 protective suits were basically written off.

Is that normal?

Mr. MANCUSO. I would add that was one type of suit, when you

gave those last few numbers. We’re not certain about the other 19

types of suits. We’re waiting for the inventory.

Is that normal? We have seen this type of problem before involving other types of commodities, to the extent where, as I mentioned

earlier, it has a significant impact on the overall DOD financial

statement. There is a huge amount of money involved and the

records are simply not right and not reliable.

It is a problem. And there are many ongoing initiatives in the

Department to help correct that problem. Part of the issue is the

tying in of inventory with financial records, trying to have some

joint accountability there.

Mr. SANFORD. But it kind of strikes me as odd that you can get

on the Internet now and call up a place called Amazon.com and you

can order some book from some strange inventory that they’ve got

in another State and somehow the book ends up in your house 2

days later. And I am not saying that DOD should ever be tied to

that level of technology, but in other words clearly structurally

there is something wrong if you are looking at that kind of

misplacement of assets owned by the taxpayer.

If you were to look at structure, what is wrong with structure

that allows something like that to happen? I mean, I think there

was an allegation, well, that too many inventory type folks have

been cut from the budget and therefore that was the root. Is that

the root problem? Or, no, they’ve just got really faulty inventory

practices and not at all concurrent with what you would see in

business today? I mean, what is it? If you look at root causes for

how something like that happens, what’s the root cause from your

perspective?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Sir, there are a number of causes. One is inaccurate data in computerized data bases. These records are all automated. Since we are talking about each depot trying to manage

49

hundreds of thousands of different types of items, they are heavily

dependent on the accuracy of computer records. Unfortunately, in

the Department of Defense——

Mr. SANFORD. If I go down that logic essentially I think that

many of the people doing data entry at Amazon.com are paid less

than people are paid in the military. And yet I mean last time I

checked, when I had ordered one of those books I mean it doesn’t

go to North Carolina. Shays would like to send me to North Carolina. But in other words, it comes to South Carolina. So I don’t understand.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Well, my point is the inventory management

systems just are not good enough. They are full of bad data. This

is one of the reasons why the GAO has designated DOD inventory

management as a high-risk area, going back to the original list of

Federal Government management high-risk areas. And there is

really no prospect of it coming off that list any time soon because

we need to field a whole generation of systems that are more capable of cleaning out bad data.

Once you get a data base that is full of inaccurate information,

it is really hard to ever recover. It is particularly frustrating in the

DLA situation because DLA is using a reasonably new, reasonably

modern system, the distribution standard system for its basic inventory recordkeeping. So we are not talking about some ancient

system that you could say is just plain outmoded. But still it is

chronically inaccurate. The inventory counts that are done by the

depots are not up to snuff either and this is one thing the auditors

have observed as we assess their inventory methods.

GAO issued a report last winter saying that DLA had the poorest

inventory accuracy record of any of the components that store large

quantities of supplies in the Department. It was down in the low

80’s, which for logisticians is really terrible. So they know they

have that problem.

In the annual financial statement audits, as Mr. Mancuso mentioned, one of the reasons why we have declared the DOD financial

records unauditable every year now since the Chief Financial Officers Act was passed is the inability to demonstrate that we have

accurate inventory.

So it is a real problem. A lot of effort is being made to correct

it. But, unfortunately, there are a lot of stories like the chemical

suits out there.

Mr. SANFORD. If you were to pick two things that would be most

helpful in fixing that problem, what would they be?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Better automated systems, and an objective look

at the staffing requirements at these depots rather than just cutting the work force arbitrarily.

Mr. SANFORD. Say that again. I was interrupted. The second sentence again was what?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. An objective look at the staffing requirements at

the depots rather than just reducing their rolls arbitrarily to meet

work force reduction goals.

Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I will ask one other question. Can

I ask one other question, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. SHAYS. You have the floor.

50

Mr. SANFORD. And this is not directly related but it is related to

defense logistics, and that is the current, quote, surplus program.

Give me your take on that just for a few minutes. In other words,

the numbers I have seen suggest that out of the back-door of DOD

goes somewhere between $350 million and $3.5 billion worth of

stuff every year that is given to other Federal agencies, State or

local government.

Are there these kinds of inequities or inaccuracies possible in

that program as well? Because I for one believe that that stuff

ought to go on a market basis, sold at auction if you will on a market basis to those other agencies, State or local government, as opposed to being given, which I think would prop DOD up to the tune

of $3.5 billion that could be used in other functions of defense.

Are the same kind of inefficiencies existing there that I see here?

Mr. MANCUSO. It is certainly related. And in fact the better your

inventory system is, the less surplus should be pushed out the

door. One of the things that we were concerned about but I don’t

believe we found in the case of the chemical warfare suits, for instance, is did the fact that there were all of these suits that they

did not even know they had, cause them to go out and buy even

more suits that they did not need? And if that were the case, eventually somebody is going to have to dispose of them. Because these

have a shelf life, eventually they go out in surplus. It did not happen in this case, but we see it in other cases.

Poor inventory controls result in wasteful acquisitions and frequently result in an excess of items being pushed out into the surplus chain.

As far as giving things away to charities or whatever, we have

seen gross inequities in some of those cases. We have seen individuals conspire. In one case involving a local fire department in some

small State, received 27 fire trucks in a few-year period. In another

instance, somebody who held themselves out as a Native American

received literally hundreds of thousands of blankets and then

opened a blanket business. These things happen and there are

issues—they are not necessarily the fault of the people in the surplus chain but there are inventory issues. Things can only have a

useful life for so long.

You also have the problem that the more you store, the more it

costs you to store it. So things end up going out in surplus on that

end as well. They are certainly tied together.

Mr. SANFORD. I thank the gentleman, and I thank the chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman and thank Mr. Mica for his

patience. You have the floor.

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Who would be the most familiar with this Isratex case? Mr. Mancuso, would you be familiar

with the case?

Mr. MANCUSO. Yes. Yes, I would be.

Mr. MICA. I noticed in the testimony here that the criminal investigation was initiated in May 1993. It appears though, that action really wasn’t taken against them until just recently. Some of

the—looks like October 1998 indictment was superseded in 1999 by

a 23-count indictment.

Mr. MANCUSO. Uh-huh.

Mr. MICA. What took so long in going after these folks?

51

Mr. MANCUSO. The case was a fairly complex case. It moved from

an investigation of a facility in Puerto Rico having to do with coveralls and coats in the 1993 and 1994 timeframe to eventually——

Mr. MICA. Into fraud in another area, supplying other fraudulent

goods——

Mr. MANCUSO. And then moved this into the protective suits in

1995. But that’s not a terribly long time for a complex fraud case.

Typically, from the time that the case is initiated and to a conviction it would not at all be unusual——

Mr. MICA. This company looks like it had several operations, one

in West Virginia, one in Puerto Rico, and also cited a headquarters

or some offices in New York.

Mr. MANCUSO. Correct.

Mr. MICA. Do they still do business with us?

Mr. MANCUSO. No, they are in bankruptcy and they have been

suspended and debarred by the Defense Logistics Agency.

Mr. MICA. And I guess we won’t recover anything. It seems almost like a minuscule fine of $266,000 and $96,000, and we did $47

million worth of business on those two contracts.

Mr. MANCUSO. I asked that same question, Congressman. In

cases where the fraud is so dramatic one might expect heavier penalties. However, in this case virtually the entire corporate leadership structure, as well as the company, were penalized. I mean this

guaranteed we put them out of business. Putting them out of business eliminates, as far as the Justice Department is concerned,

much of a possibility of a successful civil suit. These criminal fines

were actually quite significant.

Mr. MICA. Are we able to go after them and recover money? Because I would imagine some of these guys have some deep pockets

probably as a result of pass-through money from these contracts.

Mr. MANCUSO. That’s a consideration for the Justice Department,

and usually that would be occurring——

Mr. MICA. They don’t seem to be shy to go after legitimate businesses.

Has this been referred to them?

Mr. MANCUSO. Most certainly.

Mr. MICA. And have they done anything?

Mr. MANCUSO. They have completed the criminal prosecution and

they have made some preliminary decisions——

Mr. MICA. Versus civil recovery?

Mr. MANCUSO. They have made some preliminary decisions that

they will not pursue civil recovery based on the lack of apparent

wealth that’s available.

Mr. MICA. We might look into that in my subcommittee. I oversee Department of Justice and we have some questions about some

of the things that they’re doing. It seems astounding to me, too,

that you can also have—I’m skipping now to masks—19,218 masks

that were tested and 10,322 had critical defects. And this is just

in one batch?

Mr. MANCUSO. It is not a batch. That was a sampling, a very

broad sampling across the services of masks.

Mr. MICA. OK. So it was a sampling of the larger——

Mr. MANCUSO. Right.

52

Mr. MICA. And I guess you have maybe three phases to your testing these masks or making certain that there’s quality involved.

One would be sort of a prepurchase, and then I guess on delivery

there must be some inspection and then shelf life. Would those be

the three major checks?

Mr. MANCUSO. And the individual soldier and maintenance check

in the field as well.

Mr. MICA. And do you feel we have adequate—they have now instituted adequate procedures to make certain that we catch defects

in all of these stages?

Mr. MANCUSO. No, no, I wouldn’t agree with that. We certainly

feel that there’s need to be more standardized as far as how testing

is completed and the criteria that’s used. We don’t have any reason

to question——

Mr. MICA. Is this a problem of lack of funds to accomplish this,

is this something the Congress hasn’t provided, military short on

resources, or is this a problem of not having proper administrative

procedures and controls in place?

Mr. MANCUSO. To my knowledge there is no monetary issue here.

We are really talking about leadership within the services and a

recognition as to the importance of this problem and a followthrough with the maintenance reviews. The Marine Corps has

shown it can be done.

Mr. MICA. There was a working group that put in recommendations for a centralized mask surveillance testing program. It says

the Deputy Assistant rejected the working group’s recommendation. Who was that Deputy Assistant?

Mr. MANCUSO. I believe that’s Dr. Winegar.

Mr. MICA. Is he still around?

Mr. MANCUSO. She.

Mr. MICA. She.

Mr. MANCUSO. I believe she is with us here today and will be testifying today.

Mr. MICA. But then it goes on, I guess that was at some step in

the process that she rejected that, and now I think they have recanted; is that correct or no? Has she changed her opinion?

Mr. MANCUSO. No, not to my knowledge.

Mr. MICA. And you are still of the strong belief that the working

group’s recommendations should be instituted?

Mr. MANCUSO. At least this area of the recommendation involving strong oversight by OSD to ensure standardization.

Mr. MICA. All right. I think that answers my questions, Mr.

Chairman. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman. In your statement on page 9,

Mr. Mancuso, you say the Defense Logistic Agency initially segregated the BDOs, that’s the battle dress outfits that had been delivered under the 1992 contract preventing operational distribution.

However, 3 months later, they concluded that the BDOs were serviceable and returned them to regular stock, leading to the audit

finding that I discussed previously. Do you know why they felt

comfortable? I mean, basically, the reason is they felt they were

serviceable? Do you know under what basis they felt they were

serviceable?

53

Mr. MANCUSO. They conducted their own review. I am not

sure—— Mr. SHAYS. DLA did their own review?

Mr. MANCUSO. The DLA inspection staff conducted their own review at that time. I am not sure what criteria they used, but they

made that decision unilaterally.

Mr. SHAYS. On page 16 as it relates to—Mr. Lieberman, we go

back a ways I think, correct?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes, we do, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. This is a report, quick reaction report, reliability of

the M 17 series and M 40 chemical protective masks. It’s report

94–154, June 30th, 1994. It’s secret, but there’s a redacted version

in the gulf war register under gulf link, and so what’s in the redacted is everything that is not considered a secret. And there’s

also the November 2nd, 1994 report, Defense hotline allegations regarding fielding of chemical protective masks. This is also secret,

except that there’s a redacted version under gulf link.

Now, these two reports were brought to me sometime, I guess,

in 1995 by staff of this committee, which I was a member but not

chairman, in the minority, I believe—actually, it was before 1995.

I was actually in the minority. And I found what I read in these

so alarming that I went to Mr. Regal on the Senate side, who I

know had been involved because I didn’t know who I should speak

to about information that became secret about the condition of our

masks, and I am asking you this question: Is there, in your judgment, is there a logical reason why 6 years later, these should be

secret and why the information in its entirety shouldn’t be made

public? Can you think of any reason why it shouldn’t be?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I would have to go through the report line by

line and discuss with whoever thought it was classified what their

rationale was. I believe at the time the main thrust of the thinking—and as you know, it was the Department of the Army that did

the classification, not my office—but I believe the main concern related to details of readiness deficiencies.

Mr. SHAYS. This is about the Department of the Army’s performance as it related to the masks, correct?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Largely, yes. Although, the other services were

involved, also.

Mr. SHAYS. They took the greatest exception to your report, correct?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes. But we don’t have classification authority.

Our authority is derivative.

Mr. SHAYS. I’ll take your answer this way. You would have to go

through it to see if there would be—continue to be a need for this

to be secret.

But Mr. Mancuso, I’m going to read your statement on 16. So we

have a dispute with the Army, the Army didn’t agree with these

reports. That’s correct, isn’t it, Mr. Lieberman?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. And the bottom line is there was some logic that if

this report was not accurate, why do we want information out for

public consumption that would lead people to come to a conclusion

that might not be an accurate one. I could see the logic then. So

we ended up with disputes with the Army as to whether they were

54

going to conform to this report or whether they agreed to it, and

they took strong exception to the report. That’s not a secret, that’s

a fact.

Now, in your report, in your statement, that is an attempt to resolve the question of whether these reports and your investigation

were done properly and that the findings therefore are valid, and

you say, Mr. Mancuso, in your statement, to resolve the outstanding issues, in June 1995, the Department agreed to initial pilot retail chemical mask surveillance studies. A joint service mask technical working group was established to conduct the study under the

auspices of the joint service materiel group. The IG, DOD worked

closely with the working group to formulate the sampling plans for

the study and we also had a representative on the working group.

In other words, DOD has come together, the service branches are

coming together, you’re cooperating and you’re saying OK, let’s

redo this, correct?

Mr. MANCUSO. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. The results of the study were presented in a final

mask surveillance pilot program report of November 15, 1999. Now

let me just tell you, I had a big problem that it took so long, but

now you can continue to say, in brief results of the study released

in November 1999 validated the concerns that we had reported in

1994.

Now this is for public record. This is your statement. I am not

disclosing anything that’s not—that I’m not allowed to you, and let

me say to you, I would never disclose secret information, and I

have felt it’s my moral obligation to always honor that, even if I

disagree with the classification as you do.

Now you said, in brief results of the study released in November

1999 validated the concerns that we had reported in 1994. Of the

19,218 masks that were tested, 10,322 had critical defects; is that

accurate?

Mr. MANCUSO. That is accurate.

Mr. SHAYS. Now, the Joint Service Integration Group, final report, mask surveillance, process action team, November 5th, 1999.

If I go through this report, ‘‘minor’’ is defined as a defect that does

not hinder the use of the item as it was originally intended.

‘‘Major,’’ a defect that severely restricts operational or serviceability

of the mask, but is unlikely to compromise protection of the mask,

i.e., cause a leak. And then critical, a defect that has the potential

to result in mask leakage and may impact on the protection of the

wearer. So that’s the definition. You didn’t invent this definition.

This is in the report.

Mr. MANCUSO. Correct.

Mr. SHAYS. So if I turn over to page 3, and this is not a classified

document, is it?

Mr. MANCUSO. No, it is not.

Mr. SHAYS. Of the 19,218 tested, a total of 4,898 passed without

a minor, major or critical notation. Minor, 2,549; major, 1,449; critical, 10,322. Do you believe that the Joint Service Integration Group

final report mask surveillance, process action team, of November

15th, 1999, validated the findings that are still secret in this report?

Mr. MANCUSO. Yes, I do.

55

Mr. SHAYS. Ms. Schakowsky.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I just wanted to quickly finish up a line of

questioning. You had said that the DLA felt that inspecting the

1989 lot would have cost $250,000, and for that reason they decided not to do it, and then I quoted from General Glisson, who actually went further and said that they never had a single quality

control problem identified on the 1989 lot. So was it a financial decision or was it, in fact, that they were somehow convinced that

there was no problem?

Mr. MANCUSO. I would argue it was primarily a financial decision.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Well, if it were a financial decision originally,

why weren’t inspections ordered immediately once company officials were charged with fraud?

Mr. MANCUSO. They were charged on the, among other things,

they were charged with fraud involving the 1992 contract. I don’t

believe there were any specific counts in the indictment relating to

the 1989 contract. That would be the rationale.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Do we know whether the 1989 suits were used

in the gulf war?

Mr. MANCUSO. My office, and we’ve had discussion as recently as

this morning about it, we are unaware as to the precise distribution, if any, of the warfare suits. We would rely on DLA to tell us

the answer to that question. We’ve been told that there was no

such distribution, although certainly we are as aware as anyone

else as some of the news articles in citing of units who purport to

have received those items. The answer is no, I am not aware of

items that actually went out, but we’re in—— Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Do you have confidence in their assurances

that they were not used? Do you have confidence?

Mr. MANCUSO. I have confidence that as of a month ago when

they told me they were segregated, that they will not be distributed. I have no reason to have confidence in the statement that

they were or were not issued out of inventory before they were segregated last month.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Last month. We are talking about the gulf

war. So it’s possible that service members going back to the gulf

war, and since then, may have been using defective suits the whole

time they were there, and that those suits could have been useless

against a chemical or biological attack.

Mr. MANCUSO. If items are not segregated, well, that possibility

would exist.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. What would the cost have been—what was the

value of the 1989 lot, the 1989 suits, do you know, if they would

have had to recall all 600,000.

Mr. MANCUSO. About $38 million of the total approximately $50

million.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. And was that a factor as well, do you think?

Mr. MANCUSO. I’d be guessing. From what I understand, what’s

important to DLA is how much do they have on hand. Will they

be able to meet the services’ needs? What’s the cost for segregation? What’s the cost for testing? All of those are considerations for

them when they make a decision as to what, if anything, they need

to do.

56

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. But what we do know is maybe $38 million

worth of suits maybe were being used by our service personnel and

putting them at risk.

Mr. MANCUSO. I defer to DLA on that. I suspect some may well

have gotten out, but I have no reason to believe there was any

great volume of them. I just don’t know.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. I just have one other line. I just want to followup on

what I previously asked. The bottom line is both these reports have

been validated in a very significant way by the process action team.

This wasn’t the IG redoing its investigation. It was a team effort

in which you basically had to come to some agreement about the

testing criteria and the process in which you would test the masks;

is that correct, Mr. Lieberman?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes, sir. This was the Department’s tests. We

were just participants.

Mr. SHAYS. You were kind of just honest brokers in a sense to

make sure it was being handled properly, but they did the tests of

their equipment.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Correct. We helped them put together a sampling plan, for example.

Mr. SHAYS. And if, in fact, they had determined there were very

few critical masks, you would have been there to say the tests have

shown that somehow we had—an earlier study was not validated.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. Now, after I said of the 19,218 masks—after you said

of the 19,218 masks that were tested, 10,322 were critical defects,

and we defined critical defects as being a defect that has the potential result in a mask leakage and may impact on protection of the

wearer, examples, outlet valve, dirty slash leaks, external drain

tube quickly disconnects, leaks, side voicemitter gasket missing,

etc. After you made this statement of the 19,218 masks that were

tested, 10,322 had critical defects, then you said, however, the Deputy Assistant for Chemical Biological Defense informed us in

March 2000 that—you know what, let me even, before I go into

what she said, let me just come back and say that Larry R. Ellis,

Lieutenant General, G.S. Deputy Chief of Staff of Operations and

Planning in the Army, said in response to the PAT, and the process

action team, final reports that the data presented in the PAT final

report regarding the quality of defects found by the U.S. Marine

Corps, NBC equipment surveillance unit should be interpreted

with care. The purpose of the 2-year surveillance effort was to see

if masks over time were developing systematic problems. The mask

surveillance project found that there is no indication of extensive

degradation over time or through field usage other than through

wear and tear, which is exacerbated by a lack of field/fleet maintenance.

That statement, however, is the same as—however, the Deputy

Assistant for Chemical Biological Defense informed us in March

2000 that, ‘‘there is no indication of extensive mask degradation

over time or through field usage other than through wear and tear,

which is exacerbated by a lack of field/fleet maintenance.’’

Is it possible that you misquoted the Deputy Assistant for Chemical and Biological Defense and you meant Mr. Ellis?

57

Mr. LIEBERMAN. No, sir. They both used the same language. In

fact, I believe the General was quoting the Deputy Assistant. The

Deputy Assistant’s words are taken from a March 27th, 2000 memo

that she sent me.

Mr. SHAYS. I just have to find out which happened first. It’s not

all that important, trust me.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. They were within a few weeks of each other.

Mr. SHAYS. The bottom line is they both were saying the same

thing?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. What does it mean?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. The point that—— Mr. SHAYS. It means that they still insist that—— Mr. LIEBERMAN. That the test results showed no deterioration— well, there is a glimmer of good news in the test results. That is,

the masks are not deteriorating over time because of such things

as materiel degradation. The bad news, though, and I think the

compelling result of the test, is that the masks leak. They’re not

sufficiently serviceable.

Mr. SHAYS. But 50 percent of the masks you tested had a critical

failure; is that correct?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Is the Army still resisting, are they still maintaining

that these reports aren’t valid? Are they still maintaining that the

masks do the job that are required?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Sir, you will have to ask the Army. The latest

communication from them is a description of what they are doing

to generate a viable training and masks surveillance effort. We

found that very welcome. It is basically a reversal of their position

after 6 years.

Mr. SHAYS. So the bottom line is 6 years after the fact, they’re

now doing what you would have liked to see them do in 1994, 1995

when your first report came out.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes, that’s a very fair characterization. In fact,

in our very first 1994 report, we talked about the need for better

maintenance, and the Army specifically said they would take measures to improve mask maintenance. That was in mid 1994. The

tests, the DOD tests that we’ve just finished talking about, tested

masks during fiscal years 1997 and 1998. The failure rates experienced or detected in 1998 show that after 4 years of whatever the

better maintenance program was, it was still not working. That’s

the bad news that came out of that report. Very startling.

The good news is, as I said, the Army is obviously making a concerted effort right now to improve training, maintenance and testing. We are still unsure of how deep the commitment is. There’s

language in the Army response that says all this will be done if

funds are available, and I don’t know how big a loophole that is.

Mr. SHAYS. Make that last comment again, please.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. The Army response to us said they will execute

an annual surveillance testing program as originally recommended

and as now promised, if funds are available, and I don’t know

whether funds are available or not.

Mr. SHAYS. So the bottom line for this is basically half of the

masks had critical defects that could result in their not being operVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:02 May 30, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\72288.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
58

ational, and that half of the potential soldiers who use them would

find potentially that the equipment they’re wearing would be useless, that’s the bottom line, and the sense I get from you is that

this is still not a high priority for the Army. That’s the sense I get.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Well, I can’t put myself in the heads of the

Army and tell you——

Mr. SHAYS. I know you can’t, but I can react to a statement that

says if they get the money, they will do the job. If I ever suggested

to any military personnel that they send our troops in harm’s way

with defective equipment, I don’t think they would do that.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. We agree.

Mr. SHAYS. Is there any question that you would have liked any

of us to ask? Is there any answer that you would have liked to

have made to a question that you wish we had asked?

Mr. MANCUSO. Not from me, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I don’t want you to come to me later and say if only

you had asked this question. So if I didn’t ask it you need to ask

yourself. Is there anything you think needs to be part of the record,

for the good of our country, that’s not already part of the record?

Mr. MANCUSO. No.

Ms. LEVY. No, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. And I just want to thank the staff that worked on

this original report because in my office, I felt that the DOD personnel were extraordinarily condescending to your staff, and I felt

they were condescending to me as well. I felt that they acted like

they knew and you didn’t, and you were willing to have all of this

be retested, and the reports are very valid. And you have said, in

a sense, that it reaffirms in some way your earlier report and I

agree with you. Thank you very much.

I’d like to call our next panel and ask them to remain standing

so I can swear them in. Brigadier General Daniel Mongeon, Commander, Defense Supply Center, Philadelphia; accompanied by Mr.

George Allen, Deputy Commander, Defense Supply Center, Philadelphia. We also will hear testimony from Mr. Robert Kinney, Individual Protection Director at Natick Soldier Center, U.S. Army soldier and Biological Chemical Command.

And is there anyone else that you believe you may turn to, I

would like to ask them to stand so we can swear them in as well.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Let me thank all of you. I have strong

feelings about this aspect of what the military is doing but I know

all of you to be very devoted Americans and very competent individuals, and we’ll see what we learn from your statements and our

questions, but we do appreciate your service to our country and I

mean that sincerely.

General Mongeon.

59

STATEMENTS OF BRIGADIER GENERAL DANIEL G. MONGEON,

COMMANDER, DEFENSE SUPPLY CENTER PHILADELPHIA,

ACCOMPANIED BY GEORGE ALLEN, DEPUTY COMMANDER,

DEFENSE SUPPLY CENTER PHILADELPHIA; AND ROBERT

KINNEY, DIRECTOR, INDIVIDUAL PROTECTION DIRECTORATE, NATICK SOLDIER CENTER, U.S. ARMY SOLDIER

AND BIOLOGICAL CHEMICAL COMMAND

General MONGEON. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and distinguished members. I’m Brigadier General Dan Mongeon, Commander of the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, and I am accompanied by my Deputy, Mr. George Allen. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this subcommittee and address questions

concerning individual protective equipment. I am here representing

the Defense Logistics Agency, because of the role the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia plays in managing individual protective

equipment for the agency and the Department of Defense.

In carrying out our mission, we work closely with the Defense

Distribution Center which receives, ships and stores individual protective equipment as well as many other products on our behalf. In

its invitation to testify, the subcommittee requested that we address four specific questions. The first question was whether the

Defense Logistics Agency is complying with the recommendations

made by the DOD Inspector General in two specific audit reports.

The Inspector General issued two audit reports, one in 1997 and

one this year, which found discrepancies in the inventory records

for battle dress overgarments and recommended that these discrepancies be corrected.

In the second report, the Inspector General also found that chemical protective suits manufactured under two Isratex contracts contained major defects and recommended that the Defense Logistics

Agency complete efforts to identify potentially defective suits and

remove them from inventory and alert other DOD activities. The

recommended inventory was completed in January 2000, and all

chemical suits that were known to be potentially defective were

physically segregated. The Defense Supply Center Philadelphia

alerted its customers of potentially defective suits in December

1999, and again in February 2000, advising the suits should be

used only for training purposes. In addition, worldwide clothing

alerts were issued in March of this year and May of this year.

With regard to the suits produced by Isratex, it is evident that

with the requisite motivation, our quality control system can be

subverted. A criminal investigation into Isratex’s business operations revealed that the company did, in fact, engage in illegal activities to get around the quality assurance protections and we

know that these suits did not meet contractual requirements.

Clearly, this experience demonstrates that there is room for improvement. We have taken steps to effect that improvement.

In summary, Mr. Chairman, I believe that the actions that we

have taken fully address the issues raised in these two reports and

demonstrate our commitment to ensuring that the service member

is provided with the equipment that affords the intended level of

protection.

The second question asked us to specify what types of individual

protective equipment are in DLA’s inventory and where they are loVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:02 May 30, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\72288.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cated. We manage a wide range of individual protective equipment

items. Chief among those are battle dress overgarments, black

vinyl overshoes, chemical protective gloves and the joint service

lightweight integrated suit technology chemical protective suit,

which is the replacement for the battle dress overgarment. These

items are stored principally at the Defense depots in Albany, Mechanicsburg, and San Joaquin.

The third question asked what quality control procedures are in

place for acceptance of individual protective equipment from vendors. On our behalf, the Defense Contract Management Agency

sends its quality assurance representatives into our manufacturing

plants to evaluate the contractor’s quality systems; identify and

evaluate all key high risk processes; perform production audits on

the outputs of high and moderate risk processes; perform data

analyses; verify all key contractor processes, and finally, authorize

shipment of the completed items.

In addition, these critical items are subject to specialized testing

involving subjecting them either to actual chemical agents or

simulants designed to test their protective capabilities. In addition,

based on our experience with the Isratex suits, we have issued a

letter of instruction to quality assurance representatives in the

plants requiring visual and dimensional inspections of each lot

prior to shipment while calling out specific defects that must be

emphasized during that inspection.

The fourth question asked us how DLA tracks shelf life of individual protective equipment. Shelf life surveillance is the responsibility of the military service which is the proponent for each item.

I would like to defer to Mr. Kinney on specific questions you may

have with regard to shelf life surveillance on battle dress overgarments.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that the Defense

Logistics Agency takes very seriously its responsibility to provide

military services with individual protective equipment that affords

them the best available protection. In our efforts to do so, we work

closely with the services and the Defense Contract Management

Agency to ensure that we take delivery of only product that meets

the need fully and that the level of protection provided by the

equipment retained in inventory is carefully monitored over time.

Thank you, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much, General.

[The prepared statement of General Mongeon follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Kinney.

Mr. KINNEY. Yes, thank you. Good morning Mr. Chairman, members. I am Robert Kinney, the Director of Individual Protection at

the Natick Soldier Center, U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command. I truly appreciate your invitation to appear here

today and express my gratitude to the members of this committee

for your interest in the welfare and protection of our armed forces

from chemical and biological attacks.

I am here representing the Natick Soldier Center because of my

personal technical background and responsibilities, as well as the

role Natick has with respect to individual protection. As the Director of Individual Protection, my role is to lead the science and technology programs and provide technical expertise for the research

development and engineering support of individual survivability

technology and products to include chemical and biological

percutaneous personal protection.

I am intimately familiar with the battle dress overgarment and

have had related personal technical responsibilities dating back to

the garment’s inception. Natick was responsible for the development of the battle dress overgarment, as well as the generation of

its specification. We are the engineering support activity for this

product for the Army, execute the stockpile surveillance program

and provide technical recommendations to the product manager,

soldier equipment, who is the life cycle manager.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Kinney, if you would just move that mic a little

closer to you, I’m sorry. Thank you very much.

Mr. KINNEY. In June 1999, we were contacted by agents from the

Defense Criminal Investigation Service concerning garments manufactured by Isratex under contract DLA 100–92-C–0427. We were

requested to perform a quality inspection on a lot of 500 garments

held in custody. We recommended that audit and recommended to

the product manager that these garments be set aside for training

purposes.

In March 2000, Natick and the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia agreed to jointly conduct a quality audit on garments manufactured under a separate contract, DLA 100–89-C–0429, and the

audit was conducted in May 2000. We jointly concluded that garments manufactured under this contract be removed from service

and set aside for training purposes. The specific results of these audits are contained in my recorded testimony.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I would like to emphasize the Natick

Soldier Center’s commitment to the individual war fighter. We are

the technical experts which are part of a crucial acquisition team

providing the best technology for our armed forces. And I welcome

any questions you may have.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Kinney.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kinney follows:]

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General, I want to one more time go back to this press conference

that happened in February and General Glisson’s remarks that

were made at that time and ask you a couple of questions. Again,

he said the 1989 lot had never been questioned, there never was— they never had a single quality control problem identified on the

1989 lot.

Another question, and how do you respond to the criticism that

the Army didn’t move fast enough to remove these potentially defective suits from the inventory to prevent them from being issued?

Lieutenant General Glisson: I guess I would respond by saying

if we had any indication, any indication that we had suits out there

that would have potentially—that would have been potentially dangerous to anyone in the Department of Defense, we would have

done that. We had none.

Now, I am just curious what ‘‘any indication’’ means because in

1993, a criminal case was brought against the manufacturer of

these suits. I realize a formal inspection wasn’t requested at all for

either of the 1992 or 1989 until 1995, but would not that have been

an alert for such a large batch of critical suits for our service personnel?

General MONGEON. If I could answer in a number of ways, the

first piece I would say is that with reference to the 1993 investigation that was ongoing, that investigation was centered on the

Isratex manufacturer that was in Puerto Rico and that had to do

with coveralls.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I understand.

General MONGEON. In 1993, there was no indication whatsoever

that there was any problem with anything that was being manufactured in West Virginia. In fact, up until the 1990’s, Isratex had

an outstanding record of producing numerous items, technical

items, complicated items for the Department of Defense that I

know had a very strong track record.

With regard to General Glisson’s comments, he was referring to

the information that DSCP had provided him relative to the analysis that was done in 1996 at the request of DCIS, where we went

in and did a grand lot sample of the 1992 Isratex BDOs. At that

time, again, there was no indication that there were any issues

with the 1989 BDOs. As a matter of fact, in 1991——

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. What would those indications have been?

What made you assume that there were no problems with 1989, especially my understanding is that the DLA had expressed concern

over those and that a decision was made not to, for it sounds like

reasons of $250,000, to inspect the 1989 batch.

General MONGEON. The inspection of the—first of all, what

would indicate any reasons, I’d like to go back to that. In 1991,

DCIS came to us and said there are some potential allegations

against Isratex and the 1989 lots. We conducted a full investigation

of the 1989s with DCIS and looked at them to include completely

tearing apart the garments and cutting them apart to look at within the seams to find out if there were any issues. We went through

that. DCIS was 100 percent with us on inspection in 1991 of the

1989 contract. No major deficiencies were found, no critical deficiencies were found, and in fact, one minor deficiency was found

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and they were cleared from that investigation, and that information we have provided in the notebooks that we have provided to

the committee.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. So your testimony is that there was a complete inspection of that 1989 batch earlier?

General MONGEON. There was sample done based on the batch— on the lots that were identified by DCIS in 1991, and that sample

was done and no deficiencies were found. So General Glisson was

basing his comments on the track record that we had with the 1989

BDOs up until a point of when he was interviewed, and he was

talking about specifically the ones that were suspect were the

1992s, and in fact, that’s the ones that had the grand lot sample.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. So when the DLA decided to set aside the

safety concerns that were raised by the IG in its request to inspect

the 1989 suits, what you’re saying it wasn’t just about money, $250,000, it was because you felt that you had already done that

and that they were fine?

General MONGEON. Yes, ma’am. Not only had we already done

that, but when we, in discussions and in items that had been provided to the committee, clearly in those discussions and in the investigation, the investigation focused in on activities of the Isratex

that happened in 1992 and 1993 predominantly. The 1989s were

completely out of production by that time. That was another aspect

of when we could talk with DCIS about what should be done. They

eventually asked us to do a grand lot sample of 1992s and we did

the grand lot sample of 1992s. The money that was referred to was

for the grand lot sample of 1992. It was not a part of—anything

to do with the 1989 sample. The sample that was requested was

for 1992s, and that was the grand lot sample that was conducted,

and in fact, the numbers that were quoted, the initial estimate was

$250,000. Eventually it cost about $70,000.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. So you’re on record, what you’re saying is that

despite what we have later concluded, that there were problems

with the 1989 batch, that you rejected doing any further investigation in 1995 because you had confidence that you had done it and

that they were fine?

General MONGEON. In 1995, based on all the information we had,

based on any information that we would receive from the field for

quality deficiencies, we had no record of any deficiencies for the

1989 suits.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Now you know that to not be true, right?

Don’t we as of, what month is it—the May 2000 conclusion is quite

different.

General MONGEON. It is not quite different. In the May 2000,

what we agreed with Natick was to do a joint effort to look at the

1989s. Through that joint effort we looked at those and determined

that there, in fact, were some critical defects and that we recommended that they be used for training only. So that is correct.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. So what’s the difference? Why did you pass up

these critical defects and potentially sent our armed personnel into

pretty dangerous situations wearing them? And now we find that

there were critical problems.

General MONGEON. Again, back at the time, in reference to General Glisson’s comment, back in the time of 1996, that assessment

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that was made on those uniforms by the standards that were applied at that time—— Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. You said the 1989 batch was inspected earlier

than that, I thought.

General MONGEON. The 1989 batch on certain lots was inspected

in 1991 and were fully inspected and passed.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. And now that same batch was inspected and

found to have critical—— General MONGEON. Not the same batch, in the total aggregate,

which was about 600,000. That is not necessarily the same lot. It

is not necessarily—— Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Do we have reason to believe that those same

suits which you gave a passing grade to and therefore they were

distributed were found now to be—to have critical defects?

General MONGEON. The 1989s, in terms of the review that we did

with Natick, found critical defects, and we agreed with that finding

and we recommended they be used for training purposes only, that

is correct.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. So there was a mistake made?

General MONGEON. I would not categorize—in 1996, I can only

speculate to say that there was a mistake made in 1996. I cannot

say there was a mistake made with the information that was available and the tests that were done.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. My understanding is that both the 1989 suits

and the 1992 suits were supposed to go—undergo annual inspections after they had aged 5 years; is that right?

General MONGEON. Yes, ma’am, that’s correct, and they did.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. And they were annual inspections for what?

General MONGEON. Annual surveillance, and I would defer that

question to Mr. Kinney because they do the annual surveillance,

but those annual surveillances were done and those suits were included.

Mr. KINNEY. The Stockpile Surveillance Program is a program

that was initiated to investigate whether or not we could extend

the shelf life of the garments. We have extensive knowledge of the

types of materials that these uniforms have been made out of. The

predecessor to the battle dress overgarment was the chemical protective overgarment, which was manufactured out of the same

types of materials.

The 5-year shelf life, we were very confident that the garments

would meet the 5-year shelf life, and the extent of the testing conducted is very different from the types of testing that you would

see in a quality assurance audit. The focus of it is to look at whether or not there’s any advanced degradation due to aging, advanced

aging while the product is sitting in storage. So you’re looking for

things like fungus, rot, mildew, the deterioration as a result of

something like that.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. So this would have nothing to do with looking

for critical defects in the suits?

Mr. KINNEY. As part of that investigation, there is a minimal visual inspection looking for effects of shelf life, whether or not there

is fungus or rot, and in so doing, if there are any obvious defects

that are noted, that that would be taken into account, but the assumption was that the government bought quality products in acVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:02 May 30, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00084 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\72288.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cordance with the specification, and so the inspection really was focusing on shelf life.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. So if you saw open seams or—— Mr. KINNEY. If we saw open seams, we would obviously report

it, and in the case of the inspections to date, I am not aware of any

critical manufacturing defects that we have identified as a result

of the surveillance program.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. And yet when your team, just a few weeks

ago, looked at those, you didn’t even get through 25 percent of the

samples before you found enough defects to terminate the inspection; is that correct?

Mr. KINNEY. You’re referring to the 1989—— Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. No. I’m talking about the—— Mr. KINNEY. The inspection that we just conducted in May of

this year?

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Yes.

Mr. KINNEY. We executed in conjunction with Defense, DSCP, we

executed the evaluation and we decided to stop the evaluation after

we looked at the first 125 suits because we had reached the failure

criteria, I believe it was a total of 2 critical, 73 major and 289

minor defects.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. And that’s because you were looking for something entirely different than you look at on your annual inspection?

Mr. KINNEY. Let me explain. A quality inspection is a very detailed inspection, and a lot of these critical defects, for instance, an

open seam, they’re not easy to find. It takes a trained inspector to

look for these types of defects. You have a detailed table of operations within the specification that is many pages long, and it can

take—it can take between an hour and 2 hours to actually inspect

one suit utilizing these procedures. In the case of open seams that

we saw, the critical defects that we saw in this inspection, they

were on the inside of the garment on the foam liner which is a

hung liner inside of the garment. So it takes—it is not something

that is readily apparent. You don’t see a big gaping hole that you

can spot immediately.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you very much.

Mr. SHAYS. General Mongeon, what can you tell me that will

build confidence that there are adequate procedures being applied

to all protective equipment in DLA inventory?

General MONGEON. In terms of the—in terms of the quality assurance, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. SHAYS. You know, where they are and so on.

General MONGEON. In terms of what we are doing with the quality assurance as the new suits are coming on line, we’re working

that very closely with the PM, which is the Marines. We have

issued letters to the quality assurance individuals in the manufacturing plants, very specifically detailing that no lots are to be

passed until they have visual and end item inspection. In addition

to that, we have sent teams out to the manufacturing plants to

work with quality assurance people, that they look for specific

things that potentially could be major defects.

In addition to that, there is product testing that is done by the

manufacturer, and we do separate manufacturing testing verifying

those findings. If there are any differences between the two, we

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refer those back to the program manager of the Marines and they

take a comprehensive look at that.

Finally, the Marines on their own have an independent lab that

do inspection of all of the new uniforms of the JS list that are coming on board, and this is done by an independent lab, and those

inspections are done, and that is also for the chemical simulant

testing, and then, in addition to that, they are pulling individual

samples from individual lots so that every lot will be controlled and

can be tested on a periodic basis to ensure their viability.

Mr. SHAYS. I was expecting you, given that the Inspector General

said you’ve already done the wall-to-wall inventory, to tell us the

results of that. So let me, since you didn’t do it voluntarily, let me

ask you the results.

General MONGEON. In terms of the wall-to-wall inventories, those

have been completed. All of the defective BDOs have been accounted for. They are segregated, they are shrink-wrapped, they

are clearly marked with safety and placard and they are—every

measure has been taken that those will not be issued.

Mr. SHAYS. And how many suits are we talking about?

General MONGEON. Approximately 334,000 suits in the depots.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you this question: How specifically will

you strengthen acceptance standards to avoid corrupt vendors to

like Isratex in the future? What are you going to be doing about

that?

General MONGEON. The comments that I just made about the

quality assurance that we are working with the Marines covers all

of those areas and have been significantly strengthened. Again, the

first one being the letter we have issued out to the representatives

of the Defense Contract Management Agency telling them specifically that no items will be approved unless there is end item inspection, and then we gave them a specific list of what to look for.

We’re sending a team out to all of those manufacturers to work

with those quality assurance representatives to make sure that

they know what to look for with those deficiencies.

Again, the manufacturer is required to do quality assurance inspections and testing. We are also doing that independently. If

there are any disconnects between those two, we refer that to the

PM, to the Marines.

And finally, the Marines are doing testing by an independent lab

for the chemical protection and also pulling from each lot to ensure

that they have a capability to go back and test any one of those

lots, and they’re doing random tests, extensive testing and examination of those lots, even after they have been issued.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me, even though Ms. Schakowsky has made reference to this, and I want to ask you specifically, the IG in page

9 said the Defense Logistics Agency initially segregated the BDOs

that have been delivered under the 1992 contract preventing operational distribution. However, 3 months later they concluded the

BDOs were serviceable and returned them to regular stock, leading

to the audit find that I discussed previously. Just explain that to

me in simple terms.

General MONGEON. In approximately 1995, DCIS came to us and

asked us to conduct a grand lot audit. We agreed to do that at that

time and we went out and did the grand lot audit.

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Mr. SHAYS. And the grand lot audit means——

General MONGEON. It means we took—by standard, we took a

large sampling, in this case, 500 BDOs, that was statistically sound

for the total number of items that were in the inventory, and that’s

why we took a grand lot as opposed to a smaller sample, and we

did that sample. There’s no question that deficiencies were found,

major and minor, but no critical deficiencies were found, and at the

time when they went through and did that analysis, they made the

decision to release those from segregation and hold, which is condition code L to condition code A, and to put those BDOs back in

stock. That decision was made then.

Mr. SHAYS. And you used the term ‘‘critical’’ like I would use

‘‘minor,’’ ‘‘major,’’ ‘‘critical’’ under the PAT?

General MONGEON. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Now, under what basis could you make a determination that there weren’t any critical? I mean, what testing did you

do to come to that conclusion?

General MONGEON. We tested that. We went through and they

did all the examinations by standard. In addition to that, we also

did chemical simulant testing on them, and they passed the chemical simulant testing.

Mr. SHAYS. On every one?

General MONGEON. No, on a sample.

Mr. SHAYS. And so, explain to me why did you get different results?

General MONGEON. Different results from?

Mr. SHAYS. The Natick guy.

General MONGEON. Sir, I cannot explain the difference in results.

What I can tell you is that recognizing that we had a difference of

opinion and different results, today, anytime an issue comes up

with BDOs, we work that collectively with Natick.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m sorry, when you were talking, I was beginning to

get lost here a second, so I don’t mind if you would respond again

to my question.

General MONGEON. Yes, sir. I cannot specifically——

Mr. SHAYS. I’m asking why Natick came to a different result

than you all did. Is it that they used a tougher standard?

General MONGEON. I think in terms—it is a judgment. It is a

view of the two different inspectors 3 years later. I really would

only be speculating to tell you what the reason was. The only thing

I can tell you is that from that difference that we do joint inspections now, so we do not have that problem in the future, as was

indicated by the 1989 Isratex inspection that we did jointly to avoid

this problem of having two different views of the BDOs.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Kinney, could you add anything here?

Mr. KINNEY. I think if you take a look at the results from all of

the inspections of the Isratex garments, one thing comes out loud

and clear is that they—there are much too many defects that these

products are representative of inferior quality, and I think that is

consistent, and if you look at the numbers of defects, I can’t explain

why we found critical defects and DSCP didn’t in their 1996 inspection. I was not there. I just can’t explain it.

Mr. SHAYS. But you found a lot of critical defects.

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Mr. KINNEY. We found 7 critical defects out of approximately 96

suits in our inspection in 1999.

Mr. SHAYS. It used to be if a manufacturer was making a car,

they anticipated the suppliers would give them so many defective

products, and they used to have large inventories. I mean, we had

our practices and then we tried to do what Japan, with their best

businesses practices, they had no inventory, and they demanded

100 percent. They allowed no defect, and if a supplier gave them

defect, they didn’t get the product. And what amazes me is that

that’s a car. Here we’re talking about protective gear, and it seems

like we’re in the dark ages.

And so when I first got involved in the mask issue and we were

looking at high numbers, it was so high I couldn’t even contemplate

it, and it’s obviously with the defect and the criminality that existed here, it boggles the mind. I was reading what the defects

were. Some of them were visual, and they were quite extensive and

quite serious. I am not even going to read them because the terms,

I’ll blow them in the reading of them.

But I would just want to conclude and invite Ms. Levy up.

Ms. Levy, you have been sworn in, if you would just come up and

sit next to Mr. Kinney. It’s not my practice to have a debate here,

but I do want to make sure that the record is accurate, because we

depend on this record for recommendations and so on, and when

Ms. Schakowsky was asking General Mongeon some questions, I

want to make sure that you, in your capacity as Defense Criminal

Investigative Service of the Office of IG, whether you would just

want to clarify any point or put any point on the record.

Ms. LEVY. Well, I would like to clarify that in January 1995, we

did notify DSCP that we had concerns about both the 1989 and the

1992 contract, and at that time we made an oral request that

both—that the goods from both contracts be segregated in code L,

meaning that they would not be distributed.

Mr. SHAYS. And that’s January 1995?

Ms. LEVY. January 1995, that’s correct, and originally DSCP did

contact the Columbus depot and ask that the items from both contracts be segregated. At that time the Defense Distribution Depot

in Columbus came back with an estimated cost of $245,500 to segregate the goods, and we made three additional written requests

concerning the audit. And in all of these requests, we identified

both the 1992 contract and the 1989 contract being of some concern. In fact, we identified what some of the concerns were based

upon witness testimony from having interviewed people like

Isratex in West Virginia.

Mr. SHAYS. So the first was an oral request in January 1995, and

then there were written requests that were that same year?

Ms. LEVY. There were written requests, oh, spanning from August 1995 until September 1995.

Mr. SHAYS. And what were the concerns requested in those written documents?

Ms. LEVY. I’d have to refer to them.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. But the bottom line is that in your oral statement is you suspected criminality and defective suits, correct?

Ms. LEVY. Yes, on both contracts, that’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. And did the letters make those same points?

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Ms. LEVY. It referred—our letters referred to both contracts

being concerned that defective materials were being provided under

the contract.

Mr. SHAYS. And this is in January 1995?

Ms. LEVY. 1995 and subsequent to that.

Mr. SHAYS. General, is there anything—— Brigadier General MONGEON. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. What would you disagree—— General MONGEON. I would just respectfully disagree. As a matter of fact, we provided for the committee, we provided those letters. You can read those letters. On October 12, 1995, DCIS’ letter

requested specifically that the 1992 Isratex BDOs be included in

the grand lot. Those letters are readily available. You have those

letters, sir, and I would just ask you to read the letters.

Mr. SHAYS. So your recollection is this, did this conversation in

January, do you recall or anyone in your organization recall the

January conversation?

General MONGEON. Sir, I would totally agree that in the timeframe of August 1995, that there was dialog between DCIS and

some of the people in Philadelphia with regard to the ongoing investigation in the West Virginia plant and that during that time

references were made to both contracts but in further detail as was

developed. When employees were asked, as an example, when were

these critical events happening, they were saying that these events

were happening in 1992, 1993 timeframe, the 1989s were completely delivered by that timeframe. It was our understanding that

DCIS was focusing in on the 1992 lots because those are where the

information was coming for what they potentially saw as criminal

activity.

Mr. SHAYS. Yeah, but we’re dealing with corrupt people. I mean,

how would you characterize an organization and employees of an

organization that would deliver knowingly defective equipment?

How would you characterize that?

General MONGEON. Sir, I would characterize that as totally unacceptable.

Mr. SHAYS. Unacceptable as that’s the limit to it? I mean unacceptable, please don’t do it again?

General MONGEON. No. Unacceptable in terms of that’s fraudulent activity and we would not do business with them.

Mr. SHAYS. But, see, I view it differently. I view it as risking the

lives of the men and women who might wear those suits and then

risking the mission of the men and women who are wearing those

suits and then risking the outcome of any potential engagement

and so, you know, that to me is like telling your enemies your secrets. It’s extraordinarily serious that that is more than unacceptable, and therefore, I have a hard time understanding how you

could have a comfort level that fraudulent people should be believed.

General MONGEON. I was not indicating that fraudulent people

should be believed, sir. What I had said earlier was that up until

that time we had no indication that the 1989 suits were defective.

Mr. SHAYS. I guess what I would wonder is even if you thought

that a company had—that if the IG was suspecting that there was

some fraudulent delivery of goods by a company, I guess in my own

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mind I’d say, well, should we feel comfortable with previous deliveries? I mean that’s the way my mind would work. So, all of a sudden it became crooked?

But at any rate, Ms. Levy, is there anything that you would just

want to add? I mean I am not expecting to resolve, because, General, you said look at the letters and we’ll look at the letters. We’re

not going to resolve it today but I just want to make sure that before we go to the next panel that we have put on the record what

we need to.

Ms. LEVY. Well, one thing that’s a bit confusing is that these contracts, production is run under these contracts concurrently. So

given that the 1989 contract was being produced during the same

time the 1992 contract was, we had no reason to believe that

Isratex was handling the contracts differently.

Mr. SHAYS. Just to be clear, so in my foolish mind here I was assuming that these contracts were in 1989 delivered in 1989. These

1989 contracts were still being delivered in subsequent years?

Ms. LEVY. The contracts overlapped.

Mr. SHAYS. Right. In other words, I said—— Ms. LEVY. Delivery was still being made on the 1989 contract

during the time of the 1992.

Mr. SHAYS. So we’re not talking about a 1989 batch, we’re talking about 1989 contract?

Ms. LEVY. That’s correct. And we did throughout our investigation maintain that we had—we suspected that the same thing was

happening on the 1992 contract as was happening on the 1989 contract, and we questioned the integrity of all chem suits being produced by Isratex.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. General, your comment is you thought it was

one and not the other and that’s what the record states. So we’ll

just followup on that. It’s just—if you’re telling me that a product

is still being made, it’s not a 1989 batch but the product is still

being made by a corrupt company with corrupt employees, you

know, I don’t know if my mind would work to say, well, they’re

going to be honest with one batch but dishonest with another. This

wasn’t, General, in my view, this wasn’t that they had defective

machinery and so there’s machinery in one line-up. This was a

company ethic that was willing to cheat the government and risk

the lives of our soldiers.

So we’ll check the documents and we’ll just try to sort that out.

But General, your comment is on the record and that’s what you

believe to be true, and so that’s what the record will state.

Mr. Allen, do you have any comments that you want to make?

Mr. ALLEN. No, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. General, is there any closing questions you wish we

had asked or any comments you would like to make?

General MONGEON. No, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Thank you. Mr. Kinney.

Mr. KINNEY. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I do have one point. Comments

have been made with respect to the defective products where our

soldiers were going to die, and from a technical perspective the

NBC, nuclear, biological and chemical, arena with respect to personal protection specifically in products like the BDO, the approach, this is my opinion, the approach is very conservative from

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the risk, which is a very severe threat, to the types of engineering

and research and development that are utilized all the way up to

the types of testing and the quality assurance. Because of the severe nature of the threat and of chemical and biological warfare,

we take a very conservative approach.

And the issue with respect to the garments from Isratex, they

were inferior quality products and the government should clearly

have not procured them, but as far as whether or not they should

be issued to troops, I think it’s clear that they still—these garments still provide a significant level of protection. And when you

take into account things such as the severe nature of the threat,

those garments would probably have provided a significant level of

protection in most threat environments. The severest environments, I think you would probably have problems, but—— Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Kinney, I wish you hadn’t said that, and I wish

I had the ability to take it off the record. In one sense, I like your

candidness and I like witnesses to say what they think, but it just

opens up another whole line of questioning that you really don’t— what is your expertise?

Mr. KINNEY. I am a chemical engineer by training.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. So we purchase suits and equipment that were

supposed to meet certain requirements. Aside from the fraud issue,

which is, I could agree, and the fraud issue, in other words, they

were able in essence to bid on a contract, and because they didn’t

make it the way they had to according to specs, they could cheat

the government, but they also cheated other companies that might

have wanted to bid on this that knew that they were going to be

honest and weren’t going to cut corners and probably had to bid

higher. I am making the assumption there were other companies

that could make the product. I could be wrong.

But what I am uncomfortable with is that I guess you want me

to know that even if they were defective they probably did some

good. But my mind works and says that’s like, you know, saying

we’re going to put a clip in a gun and instead of it having 10 bullets, it’s going to have 3 and this person is being attacked and

they’re going to get three shots and three shots is better than no

shots. If that’s your point, yes, but there were three shots they

didn’t get to fire and in the meantime he could have been killed

or she could have been killed. So that is why I’m uncomfortable

with your logic.

Mr. KINNEY. That was the point I was trying to make. Under

normal circumstances I would not recommend using those products—that product, but if you were in a situation, and program

managers, product managers have to deal with issues of risk every

day on what type of product go to the field, and if the question

came up whether or not I issue this product or not because I don’t

have anything to issue, my recommendation——

Mr. SHAYS. Was that the issue? Did we not have anything to

issue?

Mr. KINNEY. I’m not aware. I was just trying to make the point

with respect to the fact that—— Mr. SHAYS. It’s an uncomfortable feeling thinking that you might

be in a circumstance or somebody be in the circumstance where

they would have risked the lives of our men and women, and I can

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understand why you wouldn’t want that hanging on your shoulders, but I just am uncomfortable with your point. The bottom line

is we paid for a certain quality, and the men and women who get

those equipment need to know that they work.

Mr. KINNEY. Absolutely.

Mr. SHAYS. And there are some of the men and women who

would have gotten it would have found that their equipment

wouldn’t have worked, and they have to have faith in the military,

that the military has the quality control to make sure that they

have the equipment that will do the job. And so I think that’s a

dangerous attitude to have frankly.

Your point, and I’ll take it from the best side, your point is that

that equipment is better than nothing. We’ll leave it at that.

OK. Is there any other comment that anybody would like to

make on the panel? Well, we will get to the third panel. I thank

you very much.

Our next panel is comprised of five members—participants who

will testify, Dr. Anna Johnson-Winegar, Deputy Assistant to the

Secretary of Defense, Chemical-Biological Defense, Department of

Defense; Major General John Sylvester, Deputy Chief of Staff for

Training, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command; Major General Ernest Robbins, Civil Engineer, Headquarters, the U.S. Air

Force; Rear Admiral David Stone, Deputy Director of Surface Warfare Division, U.S. Navy; Major General Paul M. Lee, Commander

of Marine Corps Materiel Command. I’d ask you to all stay standing just so we can swear you in.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Note for the record that all of our witnesses have responded in the affirmative. I think that we want to

try to—I know we want to try to accommodate you, General Robbins. I believe that you need to be out of here by 1:30; is that correct?

General ROBBINS. If possible.

Mr. SHAYS. That will happen. And let me say to all of you, Dr.

Winegar, you’re a civilian working in the Defense Department, correct? The rest of you have served your country in the military, and

in many cases heroically, but certainly in every case gallantly. And

I am a Peace Corps volunteer. I’m not in the military but I have

a job to do here and I just hope you understand my job, and in the

end we’ll come to what we need to come to. So we’ll get a good result out of this hearing and we will move forward.

I think given that we still have about 40 minutes until you have

to leave, General Robbins, we’ll just go down the order that we

have, and given that we have five witnesses, we’ll try to stick to

the 5 minutes but I truly will roll over another 5, and you use it,

and General Robbins, if we have a problem I’ll just let you go early.

So we’ll be able to accommodate you.

Dr. Winegar. The thing you have on these gentlemen here is that

you are a doctor and you should take great pride in that, too.

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Thank you, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Aside from your wonderful service to the DOD.

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STATEMENTS OF ANNA JOHNSON-WINEGAR, DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, CHEMICAL-BIOLOGICAL DEFENSE, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; MAJOR GENERAL JOHN SYLVESTER, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR

TRAINING, U.S. ARMY TRAINING AND DOCTRINE COMMAND,

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; MAJOR GENERAL EARNEST

ROBBINS, THE CIVIL ENGINEER, HEADQUARTERS U.S. AIR

FORCE, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; REAR ADMIRAL DAVID

M. STONE, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, SURFACE WARFARE DIVISION, U.S. NAVY, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; AND MAJOR

GENERAL PAUL M. LEE, JR., COMMANDER, MARINE CORPS

MATERIEL COMMAND, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Dr.

Anna Johnson-Winegar, the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of

Defense for Chemical and Biological Defense. I appreciate the opportunity to present my testimony today and answer your questions on this very important topic.

Let me begin by emphasizing that the Department of Defense

takes the threat of chemical and biological warfare very seriously,

and I believe that it is incumbent upon all of us to focus our resources and our energies toward developing the very best defenses

against chemical-biological agents so that our military can perform

their mission in any kind of an environment, including a potentially contaminated one.

As you know, in accordance with Public Law 130–160 my office

is designated as the focal point for coordination and integration of

the Department’s chemical and biological research, development

and acquisition programs. Since implementation of the law, we

have submitted a single consolidated budget request for these research, development and acquisition efforts, and we feel that this

has led to improved effectiveness, better execution and significantly

improved jointness across the services.

However, consumable chemical-biological defense items and

maintenance of these fielded items are managed by the individual

services in accordance with their Title X responsibilities and the

services’ desire to manage their own operation and maintenance

funds. No defensewide funding exists for chemical-biological defense logistics and maintenance. OSD is, therefore, limited to tracking the status of chemical-biological defense logistics readiness and

sustainment programs in the individual services.

As you are also probably aware, there are a number of other offices within the Department that have some oversight responsibilities for some aspects of chemical-biological defense. These include,

to name a few, the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Science

and Technology, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Civil Support,

the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the Joint Staff and others.

With specific regard to the DOD IG report and testimony that I

was unable to provide details of the services’ actions and felt that

my responsibility is limited to equipment acquisition, I would like

to summarize some actions that have been taken by my office. You

have already referred to the fact that the Joint Service Materiel

Group established a Joint Service Mask Technical Working Group

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to evaluate issues in the hotline audit reports. They recommended

that the services conduct a 2-year retail mask surveillance pilot

study. Based on the potential severity of these findings, the Joint

Service Integration Group was tasked by my office to examine the

findings from the user perspective.

The Joint Service Integration Groups PAT, Process Action Team,

reviewed the pilot program and provided their final report in November 1999. I have subsequently forwarded copies of that report

to the Joint NBC Defense Board for distribution to senior operational personnel in each of the services. Per my direction, the results of this report will be incorporated into the NBC Defense Logistics Support Plan, again with distribution and participation from

senior logistics commanders in each of the services.

I have furthermore directed a validation of current field protective mask fit factor criteria. I plan to review detailed plans provided by each of the services which will address their individual actions to address the test rate failures seen in the masks. As was

reported last week to the Deputy Secretary at the

Counterproliferation Review Council, the global status of resources

and training systems and a joint monthly readiness review have

assessed that compliance in the aggregate is high and noted that

ongoing initiatives within the services will continue to strengthen

unit level chemical-biological defense reporting. However, they did

conclude that chemical-biological defense reporting occurs through

readiness channels rather than functional channels within the Department.

Currently the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Readiness

and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy,

Strategy and Threat Reduction, along with the Joint Staff, have

primary oversight for chemical-biological readiness. However, with

the recently approved new positions in my office, I am prepared to

take a more active, more aggressive role in assuring chemical-biological defense readiness, in addition to maintaining my primary

responsibilities, which are those in the research, development and

acquisition arena.

I look forward to continuing improvements in this critical program of chemical-biological defense.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Johnson-Winegar follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you for your statement.

General.

General SYLVESTER. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee,

I am Major General John B. Sylvester. I am the Deputy Chief of

Staff for Training in the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command [TRADOC], from Fort Monroe, VA. I appreciate the opportunity to represent TRADOC and the U.S. Army and provide testimony on this important subject.

TRADOC has two primary missions: To prepare the Army for

war and to be the architect of its future. TRADOC ensures synchronization of doctrine, training, leader development, organizational

structure and materiel readiness and ensures the Army is the best

that it can be and that our soldiers are trained and ready for any

operation anywhere any time.

TRADOC, therefore myself representing TRADOC, am responsible for institutional, unit and self-developmental training programs for all soldiers, leaders, civilians and units across our service. We provide a progressive, developmental and lifelong learning

experience for leaders and soldiers that complements and enhances

and supports their experiences in the field. My direct scope of responsibility is staff supervision of all of our schools, to include the

U.S. Army Chemical School at Fort Leonard Wood, MO, as well as

individual training of active duty, reserve component and international military student personnel as well as providing support to

units in the field through training support doctrine and also our

capstone training program, known as the combat training centers,

which provide support across our force.

I’m a combat veteran. I’ve been deployed into combat in combat

zones on four different times in almost 33 years of continuous active duty. I’ve commanded at every level from platoon through assistant division command, and I have operated as an operations officer up through theater level command, and, sir, I stand ready to

answer your questions.

[The prepared statement of General Sylvester follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

General.

General ROBBINS. Mr. Chairman, good afternoon. I appreciate

the opportunity to come before you today and discuss the Department of the Air Force’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Passive

Defense Program. I thank you for your continued support of the

NBC defense program. I have a brief oral statement and with your

permission I will submit the complete statement for the record.

First, I want to explain the Air Force organizational structure

which supports our NBC defense program. The Deputy Chief of

Staff for Air and Space Operations, referred to as our XO, is responsible for the Air Force’s Counterproliferation Program. Nuclear, biological and chemical passive defense is one of the four pillars of our counterproliferation policy. So the XO is the principal

Air Force officer responsible for our participation in the OSD

Chemical and Biological Defense Program. The XO is the Air Force

representative on the Joint NBC Defense Board.

As the Air Force Civil Engineer, I support the XO. I am the Air

Force representative on the Joint Service Integration Group and I

am responsible for the nonmedical training and equipment aspects

of the Air Force NBC Passive Defense Program. I represent the Air

Force in joint NBC training doctrine and requirements development. I’m supported in this effort by the Director of Supply, who

is responsible for individual protective equipment management as

part of the overall Air Force supply system, including shelf life

management.

The Defense Planning Guidance recently described the NBC

threat as a likely condition of future wars, and the Air Force is

committed to ensuring that our forces can and will survive to conduct sustained mission operations in such an NBC environment. In

order to accomplish this we have established a comprehensive program.

The Air Force participates with OSD and the Joint NBC Defense

Board for research, development and initial acquisition of avoidance and detection, decontamination, collective protection and individual protection equipment. We work with the other services and

OSD to identify joint requirements to meet future threats and to

ensure the safety of all DOD forces. With congressional support we

have seen funding for these programs increase in recent years to

meet the growing threat.

Each service is responsible for sustainment and maintenance of

their equipment as well as for training our respective personnel.

Within available resources we prioritize our requirements to reduce

risks and to ensure we provide protection to our personnel in high

and medium threat locations.

The Air Force’s NBC Defense Sustainment Program provides operation and maintenance funding for protective ensembles and

masks, protection and decontamination equipment, medical supplies, collective protection systems and training. Like the other

services, we are currently transitioning from older equipment to

newer, lighter, more effective equipment and are adjusting our

training as we bring this new equipment into the inventory.

The Air Force requires all military and emergency essential civilian personnel stationed in or deployable to high and medium threat

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locations to receive annual NBC defense training. This training includes classroom and hands on instruction on detection and decontamination equipment and procedures, protective clothing, mask

component familiarization, inspection and wear.

The Air Force enhanced the protective mask portion of training

in 1998 by implementing the mask fit test, which improves survivability and increases the individual airman’s confidence. The Air

Force established a robust training course of instruction on mask

fit test operations at our technical school with the Army at Fort

Leonard Wood, MO and at Brooks Air Force Base, TX. Technicians

there provide instruction and perform fit test training for unit level

personnel.

Equipment maintenance checks and services are critical elements of our NBC defense program, especially for individual protective equipment. Frequent inspections and maintenance of masks

are required to ensure their reliability. Maintenance and inspections are conducted on Air Force protective masks every 6 months

during peacetime and every 7 days during contingency operations.

Except for visual procedures outlined in the mask technical orders,

the Air Force has no inherent capability to perform detailed quantitative masks inspections.

The need for this capability led us to participate in a Joint Service Mask Program sponsored by the Marines. Based on the Joint

Service Mask Working Group’s recommendations and its review of

the 1994 DOD IG report focusing on mask maintenance, the Air

Force initiated a rewrite of our technical orders. This rewrite,

which is scheduled for completion in August of this summer, enhances procedures to tighten loose front voicemitters and to clean

the mask, it increases emphasis on individual inspections and clarifies the responsibility for mask care and maintenance. The Air

Force is also reviewing and updating various instructions and lesson plans to improve procedures for mask maintenance and inspection.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for your strong

support of the overall OSD and Air Force NBC Passive Defense

Program. We believe it is an aggressive program that capitalizes on

cooperation among the services to develop and procure new hightech protective equipment. We believe our sustainment and training programs are meeting the most pressing needs of our forces

and that we carefully balance fiscal reality, equipment shortfalls

and risks. Our goal, like yours, is to ensure Air Force men and

women are protected with the very best equipment.

I’ll be happy to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of General Robbins follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much, General.

Admiral stone.

Admiral STONE. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, distinguished

members of the subcommittee. On behalf of Secretary Danzig, I

would like to thank you for the opportunity to appear here today

to discuss the Navy’s efforts to provide, maintain and train with

specialized individual protective equipment. Unquestionably, the

integrated performances of these items are essential to ensure we

can successfully operate in contaminated chemical and biological

environments.

As a matter of background, I am surface warfare officer, having

commanded the Spruance class destroyer the USS John Hancock

from 1991 to 1993. I was stationed overseas from 1994 to 1999,

with at sea assignments as Commander of the United States Middle East Force and Commander of Destroyer Squadron 50, home

ported in Manama, Bahrain; later as the Chief of Staff/Commander

of the Sixth Fleet, located in Gaeta, Italy; and most recently have

served as the Commander of NATO’s Immediate Reaction Force,

Standing Naval Force, Mediterranean, during Operation Allied

Force in the Adriatic. My current office, which is the Surface Warfare Directorate on the Navy staff, serves as the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Agent for Chem-Bio Defense, and in that capacity, we coordinate relevant Navy programmatic and operational

issues.

As you are well aware, this is a complex effort involving multiple

warfare areas and claimants that directly impact fleet operational

readiness and warfighting sustainability. The unique aspects posed

by the myriad of chem-bio threats presents us with incredible challenges, both ashore and afloat.

As a proactive partner in the Joint Chem-Bio Defense Program,

we’ve made significant progress and continue to work closely with

the other services and OSD on a broad front.

I’m submitting a more detailed written response to your committee as formal testimony.

Today I plan to provide you details on the status of important

personnel protection initiatives and related efforts in support of the

Joint Service Chem-Bio Defense Program. In particular I will address individual protective equipment and associated testing, training and maintenance evolutions used to verify equipment will perform as advertised without compromising personal safety.

The goal of the Navy Chem-Bio Defense Program is to deter the

use of chemical and biological weapons used against U.S. allies and

coalition forces by utilizing capabilities to deny an adversary significant military advantage from their use. From a deterrence perspective, essential capabilities need to include the requirement to

survive an initial attack and continue operations in a contaminated

environment.

The mission of our Navy is to conduct prompt and sustained combat operations from the sea in support of national objectives. The

Navy ensures that deployed units are outfitted with appropriate individual protective equipment.

Based on the concerns expressed by your committee, we acknowledge the importance of inventory management and materiel condition of our chem-bio equipment. Since the first DOD IG reports reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:02 May 30, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00120 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\72288.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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garding the deficiencies in the inventory process were issued in

1994, the Navy has consistently reviewed its procedures for inventory control, requisitions and organizational functions to ensure

that we are on track.

As a follow on to various IG reports, the Navy has addressed the

mask surveillance issue with Commander Destroyer Squadron 28,

conducting surveillance of the ships earlier this year in Norfolk,

VA. The fleet is also preparing to release an updated message that

provides important guidance and reinforces the requirement for

conducting proper periodic maintenance. Additionally, since February of this year, a pilot program has been under development by

CINCLANTFLT with the goal of assisting ships in their

predeployment mask testing.

The Navy agrees that mask inspection and fit testing is an integral part of operational readiness. Studies have been conducted

over the past several years to ascertain materiel problems with the

MCU mask series. Random surveillance has taken place to assess

the conditions of the masks. We are satisfied that our surveillance

efforts have provided us good confidence of the materiel integrity

of the masks. However, increased emphasis on individual protection equipment maintenance is essential to ensure that these items

will function as advertised.

With regard to shipboard stowage of individual protective equipment, we have reviewed previous Joint Service Integration Group

recommendations and have directed operational units to ensure

compliance with existing stowage procedures.

On the training side, it is critical that all forces, afloat and

ashore, be intimately familiar with the use of individual protective

equipment. Fleet units conduct chem-bio drills and exercises to

train and evaluate sailors in the use of our protective gear. Ultimately, commanding officers are responsible for chem-bio readiness

of their commands. Navy units conduct basic, intermediate and advanced training exercises as part of the training and readiness

cycle prior to deployment.

During the basic training phase, CBR-D training exercises are

often overseen by the appropriate type commander staff and may

involve additional unit training by specialists from an afloat training group. During the intermediate and advanced phases of the

training cycles, combat readiness is reinforced through composite

training units and numbered fleet exercises. The exercises conducted by deploying battle groups and amphibious readiness

groups during these predeployment periods are designed to meet

fleet commander in chief training requirements for forces in the

area that they will be deployed.

I have recently released a Chief of Naval Operations message to

Navy commands reiterating the vital importance of proper maintenance, training and readiness of all chem-bio individual protective

equipment, particularly protective masks. This message lays the

groundwork for follow-on discussions at our upcoming damage control chem-bio defense conference, which is scheduled for September

of this year in the Norfolk area.

In summary, I believe the Navy has a chem-bio defense program

in place to protect our warfighters. As my partners on this panel

have indicated, our mutual efforts form an integral part of this NaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:02 May 30, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00121 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\72288.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tion’s chem-bio defense posture. Of paramount importance is my

commitment to you to provide our sailors the best individual protective gear available as well as the aggressive leadership and

training and monitoring necessary for meeting the difficult mission

challenges ahead.

Thank you, sir, for this opportunity to present the Navy’s position on this very important topic. I look forward to addressing any

questions you may have at this time.

[The prepared statement of Admiral Stone follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much, Admiral.

General.

General LEE. Good morning, distinguished members of the committee.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just make sure that mic is on. You want to

tap it. Yeah, it’s dead. Why don’t you see if Admiral Stone’s mic

is working.

General LEE. Let me start again. Is that better, sir?

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

General LEE. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee. My name is Major General Paul Lee. I am

the Commanding General of the Marine Corps’s Materiel Command. My job is readiness. My job is in the equipment of the U.S.

Marine Corps. I have been designated by the Commandant as the

responsible agent for life cycle management of all ground combat

equipment and in particular, with the subject equipment of this

particular committee, the individual equipment, the nuclear-biological equipment that is issued to our Marines, both ground and

air. This means that I have the responsibility for the reliability and

the maintainability of all equipment and for any new acquisitions

that the U.S. Marine Corps may be doing in its joint environment

for all of the services.

As well, I am concerned about the training because that’s all part

of it and the kinds of training manuals and maintenance manuals

and their adequacy for all of our forces. My job is to maintain continuous surveillance and to make sure that that gear remains

ready, that the Marines who handle it know how to handle it, and

that those maintenance specialists can make that happen. We have

placed responsibility in materiel command and we have provided it

with the sufficient tools to maintain that oversight throughout the

Corps, to make things happen quickly as they need to happen.

There are five areas that I will be able to answer questions and

I welcome questions in areas of concern with NBC. I mentioned

very briefly about training manuals and our training—and our tables of organization, the people that do the work, and we—I am

here to report to you that we have taken giant strides toward the

improvement of those training manuals, providing up to the date

manuals which are easy to understand for our individual Marines,

soldiers, sailors or airmen who can pick these up and know what

it is they have to do to preserve the integrity of their masks. We

are providing videos, and they will be out this summer, which will

engage our people in something that is easy to view and easy to

understand.

We have reviewed all of our tables of organizations in for NBC

specialists. We are manned at over 100 percent of our table of organization, and I am satisfied that we have a sufficient number of

Marines dedicated down to the unit level, that is down to the battalion level, to accommodate the charges and responsibilities and

execute those responsibilities.

We have reemphasized training. In fact, as we speak today, our

training command at Quantico, VA, there is a group looking at

training one more time, is it adequate across the board from the

beginning when they come in, officer and enlisted alike, and then

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that continuous training which keeps them all current up until the

day they walk out the door.

We have looked at leadership. I feel that that’s where it all

starts, emphasis from our commanders, the guys in charge, and as

you can see from my earlier statements, the Commandant has put

a great deal on this by saying I have got one belly button to push

and that belly button is my materiel commander who is going to

ensure that it gets taken care of.

We have instituted reporting, surveillance and accountability

procedures with the hope to gain total asset visibility throughout

the Marine Corps through an automated system that will be Web

based by August of this year.

And finally, on the way ahead, my program managers in the Marine Corps Systems Command are purchasing the best gear. We

have built in reliability and maintainability as primary. We have

taken all these reports that have been given to us and have talked

about here this morning on what kind of gear we need to put in

their hands, and that’s being incorporated and these buys made.

I thank you for this opportunity here, sir. I’m a 31-year logistician in the U.S. Marine Corps. I have seen the good, the bad and

the ugly, quite frankly, in this area of NBC. I think we’re on the

right road. I know we are. It has the emphasis I can assure you

in the U.S. Marine Corps of protecting our Marines and all service

people from the dangers that NBC presents to them and while at

the same time ensuring the readiness of all forces, and I’m ready

to answer any specific questions you may have.

[The prepared statement of General Lee follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much. I thank all of you. I appreciate

the general tone of all your comments. My wife’s uncle is a colonel

in the Army, and he sometimes expressed his differences with the

Marines. So I don’t want to get in the battle in terms of who’s

doing it better or not, but to say that in the research that we’ve

done, it appears the Marines have started a little earlier on this

project of trying to get their act together and that we can learn

some—the other services can learn some very beneficial things

from what the Marines have done. So I do want to say that for the

record.

I also want to say that I care frankly less about the past than

the future. I did want to put on the record the IG’s report of 1994

and to at least acknowledge that their study had been validated because I think it’s important when it has, it should be in, and frankly if the PAT had come up with another conclusion I would have

been happy to say the reverse.

I just need to know from each of you whether you accept the final

report of the Mask Surveillance Process Action Team of November

15th both in terms of its findings and recommendations, and I’m

going the start with you, Dr. Winegar.

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Yes, I do accept the report from the Process Action Team in terms of its findings. In terms of its recommendations, we are not ready at this point to make a final determination on how the individual services will be able to implement those. As I mentioned in my opening comments, I’m at this

point awaiting the specifics from each of the services, and at that

time I’ll be able to comment on that.

Mr. SHAYS. General Sylvester.

General SYLVESTER. Sir, I would say that being a General of

course I accept the findings wherein they talk about the lack of

maintenance and lack of leadership, etc. There are two areas where

I believe that we have some disconnect. The first is in the area of

the M–41 PATS device and whether or not——

Mr. SHAYS. Talk a little slower.

General SYLVESTER. And whether or not that device provides us

the ability along with preventive maintenance checks and services,

conducted properly and supervised properly, provides us a degree

of comfort that the protective masks will protect the soldier should

he or she be introduced into an environment where there is a requirement to be protected. Their findings suggests that that is,

quote, questionable, and we say indeed it is. We believe that the

combination of PMCS and that device used by an appropriately

trained individual gives us a degree of assurance that that protective mask will indeed work in conditions of a hazardous environment. An example of that is that those two devices; i.e., properly

conducted PMCS, preventive maintenance checks and services, and

the M–PATS patch device are the two means by which all protective masks are checked prior to soldiers going into the chemical defense training facility, the live agent training facility located out at

Fort Leonard Wood. 54,000 soldiers have gone through that facility

protected by the protective masks that we have issued today and

those two means of checking that protective mask without failure,

without anyone being affected in any way by chemical agent. I was

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told the only accident that has ever occurred out there was when

someone slipped in the shower and hurt themselves.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m not anticipating we have to be here a long time,

but I am going to want to be clear. I’m assuming that all of you

have the final report. Do you have it all in front of you? General

Robbins? I am interested to know—well, I think I erred, General

Sylvester, in—first off, do you all concur that this was a proper

study?

General ROBBINS. Yes, sir.

General SYLVESTER. Yes.

Admiral STONE. Yes, sir.

General LEE. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. So we are not going to get a dispute with the validity

of the finding, and I’m going to make an assumption that in a report—in an investigation of the conditions of the masks that to find

out of 19,218 that 10,322 were found critical, critically defective,

that that is totally unacceptable, and I’m going to make an assumption that we all agree on that so we don’t have to debate that

issue.

So some of what you said to me, it’s not your fault, General Sylvester, it went over my head a little bit and I don’t want to get

back to it. It’s not your fault, mine. But there are specific recommendations, in some cases some best business practices by one

service that could help the others, but there are specific recommendations, and I’m interested to know if the recommendations

that affect each and every one of the branches here, whether we

can agree that you agree that you need to follow these recommendations, and if you don’t, I want you to cite the specific page

of the recommendation that you disagree with and don’t intend to

follow. Otherwise I’m going to make the assumption that you agree

with every recommendation and that you intend to do what the

recommendations say.

Now, there could be another caveat, you agree with the recommendations but you don’t feel you have the capability of fulfilling them, and then I need to know. The committee needs to know.

In other words, I never appreciate someone from the executive

branch or the military, whatever, who says everything’s fine and

then I find out later they didn’t have the personnel, the equipment,

the money to do the job. If you don’t have the financial resources

or the personnel to carry out these recommendations but you agree

with them, then I want to know that, too.

So let me just say, I’ll throw it open in general. I’m going to assume that all of you agree with the recommendations as it pertains

to your service unless you specifically point out a recommendation

you disagree with, and after we’ve done that I’m going to then say,

I’m going to ask a question about whether you would be able to

carry out the recommendation. Is there any you would like to question, verify, qualify in any way? Take a look.

General ROBBINS. I’m comfortable with it.

Mr. SHAYS. Admiral.

Admiral STONE. Sir, comfortable.

Mr. SHAYS. General Lee.

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General LEE. I’m comfortable with it with the exception of the

recommendation that we add an NBC specialist to our FASMO

teams.

Mr. SHAYS. And that recommendation, can you cite the recommendation?

General LEE. It’s near the end. It’s on page 7, sir. The problem

it says is that the headquarters for USMC staff each FASMO team

with an NBC defense specialist staff NCO or officer.

Mr. SHAYS. And you don’t feel that it is necessary, and the recommendation there is what?

General LEE. Well, each one of our—they recommend that we assign one but each one of our FASMOs are located at every one of

our major installations, our fleet stock, our field supports units

analysis office, and when—at each one of the battalions and each

one of the divisions and the wings, etc. They all have one officer

and three staff NCOs, and every time they go down to look at a

unit, they take that team down with them. So they’re already there

and these folks already are assigned when we do the individual

and yearly inspections. So it seemed to us to be redundant and

extra structure that’s unnecessary.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. But that’s the only one that you take—— General LEE. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Admiral, you said fine. General Robbins.

General SYLVESTER. Sir, I have only one and that is the recommendation on page 9 of the study wherein it recommends that

centralized storage and maintenance and maintenance NBC—— Mr. SHAYS. I don’t have page 9.

General SYLVESTER. Oh, sorry, sir.

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. The last page, page 8.

General SYLVESTER. My page 9, your page 8, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Sure. Start over again, please.

General SYLVESTER. Under paragraph D, service specific problems, subparagraph—— Mr. SHAYS. Believe it or not, I don’t have that. I don’t know why.

General SYLVESTER. Sir, there is a recommendation which states, ‘‘that centralized storage and maintenance and maintenance NBC

rooms be reestablished in the United States Army.’’ Mr. SHAYS. I have a D on page 7, the identification and maintenance management shortfalls. That’s not what you’re referring to.

Oh, I’m sorry. OK. So recommendation of centralized storage and

maintenance.

General SYLVESTER. So with respect to the recommendation that

we reestablish centralized storage maintenance facilities for masks,

we believe that that is not a measure which we care necessarily to

take across the board of the U.S. Army. There is application in certain organizations for that. There is certainly not application in

others, and it takes away the responsibility of the individual soldier, his immediate supervisor and the chain of command for ensuring that the proper preventive maintenance checks and services

of the individual’s protective gear is maintained in the same manner as it would be were it his rifle or any other element of personal

equipment.

Mr. SHAYS. Is there any of these—so that’s one qualification from

you, General Sylvester, and you as well, General Lee, and let me

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say, in dialog with your comrades, if you need to qualify or look at

any other recommendation, we’d like to give you like 3 days to go

through that and get back to us. If we don’t hear from you in 3

days, then we’ll assume that everything we said here is the final

word.

Is there any recommendation—I’m going to get—Doctor, yes,

what would you like to say?

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. I have one recommendation that I don’t

agree with if it is my turn.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes, it is.

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. On the general recommendations—— Mr. SHAYS. On page?

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. The last page, paragraph E, general recommendations. The second recommendation suggests that the Office of the Secretary of Defense establish a separate funding line

for mask surveillance, and I would respectfully disagree with that

recommendation maintaining that it is appropriate for the services

to maintain individual funding with my office providing the requisite oversight that they do so.

Mr. SHAYS. We’ll so note that. Is there any recommendation that

you do not have the capability of carrying out or you have the capability and either lack of personnel or financial that you need to let

us know, while you agree with the recommendation, you’re just not

sure you could carry it out? General Robbins.

General ROBBINS. Sir, there’s only one Air Force.

Mr. SHAYS. Air Force is a tiny planet and you’re looking at the

clock.

General ROBBINS. That’s OK, sir. But we have met the direction

given by the Joint Chiefs on that one item. So we’re very comfortable with it. I would add to what was just stated that it’s the— it’s not the surveillance system in terms of the procedures of mask

surveillance that concerns us. It is the equipment. As I stated in

my statement, we rely on the Marine Corps to help us test masks

and there is an item in the unfunded portion of the program for

a Joint Service Mask Leak Detector. As I understand, it’s totally

unfunded. So until we get that, we’re going to continue to rely on

the Marines to assist us.

Mr. SHAYS. In my travels to all four services in the last 2 years

plus, I have appreciated the cooperation that exists among the

services, which is encouraging me as a civilian to see that and as

a Member of Congress.

Dr. Winegar, you have something in your statement that obviously pleased me to death. It wasn’t in your original statement. It

talked about coordination, and I’d like you to just make that point

again. I was trying to find it as you were reading, and it talked

about a greater effort to coordinate, and can you just go over that

statement again with me. It is not in my own.

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Yes, sir. That was in addition to my written statement that I had provided, and the comment that I was

making was that there are a number of offices within the OSD, the

Secretary of Defense level, that have an interest and primary responsibility for some aspect of chemical-biological defense, and I

wanted to emphasize that I think there’s a great deal of effort

being put in by all of those individuals to assure coordination

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across the various areas of responsibility and as well with the Joint

Staff and the individual services.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes. You didn’t say it as succinctly this time as last

time. I liked the way you said it better last time.

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. I read it the first time. So if you can tell

me whether it was near the beginning, the middle or end.

Mr. SHAYS. It was near the end. It talked about your adding to

staff to improve coordination. Wouldn’t you have known that that

would have pleased me a bit?

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. And I don’t mean please me, but the bottom line

is——

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. It sends a positive message.

Mr. SHAYS. You have said in previous testimony ‘‘I have responsibility for coordinating the Department’s chemical and biological

defense program. My job is to bring all these disparate groups together so they can have a coordinated effort.’’ You have in the past

tried to emphasize that if you don’t have budgetary control you

don’t have control, and our concern is that there be someone from

DOD that can help coordinate the response to chemical and biological, and I kind of felt that you were having a greater emphasis on

this role that I think all the services obviously would benefit from,

and so if you would just make that point.

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Yes, sir. I wanted to emphasize that the

primary responsibility from my office is in the area of research, development and acquisition of programs. But, with the relatively recent approval of some new positions, and I have recruited some

new staff to come into my office, I’m prepared to take a more active, aggressive role in assuring chemical-biological defense readiness in addition to other components of chemical-biological defense

issues.

Mr. SHAYS. And that has the approval of those—your superiors

and so on?

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Yes, sir. Those were the people that authorized me to hire additional people into my office and I think

that that attests also to their interest and support in this area.

Mr. SHAYS. This committee has responsibility for terrorism at

home and abroad. We don’t authorize legislation, we don’t appropriate money but we are the only committee, obviously the Intelligence Committee, but we are the only standing committee that

basically has the responsibility of looking at terrorism at home and

abroad, and we’re spending a lot of our time looking at biological,

chemical and in some cases nuclear response, and the thing that

obviously is of course is that there is a disjointed effort where we

don’t maximize the benefits of all the services and coordinate, and

I think it’s absolutely imperative, Dr. Winegar, that you accept that

role, and I’m pleased that you have support from your superiors to

be more forceful in that effort.

Let me say this, there’s only one comment, and I’m almost inclined not to bring it up, other than to say that if you give me permission, General Sylvester, I’ll not be concerned by this comment

and we can leave it at that, and that is—actually it’s your comment, Dr. Winegar, and it is also General Ellis’ and that is this

comment, there is no indication of extensive mask degradation over

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time or through field usage other than through wear and tear,

which is exacerbated by the lack of field and fleet maintenance. I

just want to know that I don’t have to interpret this as trying to

minimize, and we can leave it at that, the study, the significance

of the study of the final Mask Surveillance Process Action Team.

Dr. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. You’re correct in your assumption.

Mr. SHAYS. We will leave it at that. General Sylvester, could I

just get rather than a visual response, could I—you’re familiar with

this comment. I just want to put it in proper perspective. I should

not interpret that—I shouldn’t interpret General Ellis’ statement

that is identical to Dr. Winegar’s that that is in any effort to minimize the serious findings of the study?

General SYLVESTER. Absolutely not, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. We will leave it at that. Is there any comment that

any of you would like to make. General, I’m getting you out a little

later, but I thought I could let you go with the crowd. Is there any

comment that any of you would like to make in closing? I thank

you all for your cooperation, and we look forward to seeing some

great improvement in this area. Thank you very much.

[Whereupon, at 1:35 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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