Report: DoD Concealed Data from BRAC

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Military.com | By Bryant Jordan | December 13, 2007

High level Pentagon officials -- including Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and deputy Pentagon chief Gordon England -- withheld data from the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission, possibly to ensure that Defense Department research labs would be closed down and their work contracted out, according to a DoD employee whose claims have been posted on the Federation of American Scientists' website.

"This aspect is speculative, but two official DoD documents disclose one compelling motive," the writer, identified by FAS as a whistlelower, argues. "Prior to BRAC's start, both Wynne and Gordon England, DoD's top BRAC policy-makers (and both former General Dynamics executives), called in writing for closing DoD laboratories and outsourcing their workload."

"If [the withheld information] were not withheld, the data would have derailed that political objective," the DoD whisltleblower adds.

Steven Aftergood, director of the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, said he put the 100-plus page report on the website based on the whistleblower's credentials. "He is well-informed and well-intentioned," Aftergood told Military.com Dec. 12.

Also, the allegation that critical information was deliberately withheld from BRAC commissioners is one that FAS made last year in its own report.

"Most of what we posted are DoD source documents," Aftergood said. "To some extent, some aspects [of the process] surpass my understanding. At some point the material is so dense it's hard to follow, but I assume that some people more immersed in BRAC would understand more than I do. Our contribution is to say, this is available if it is useful."

The whistleblwower, however, offers a motive for why the commission did not get all the information in should have had, suggesting that Wynne and England both had a political agenda: to move DoD lab work into the private sector.

DoD has not replied to Military.com's request for comment on the allegations.

England is not identified as an official who actually blocked the information, but Wynne -- at the time acting under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology & logistics - is, along with Under Secretary of the Air Force Ronald Sega, who at the time was director for Defense Research and Engineering; and Alan Shaffer, director of plans and programs for Defense Research and Engineering.

In one example detailed in the report, information that was provided to BRAC resulted in a recommendation to close the laboratory at Fort Monmouth, N.J., and move the work to Aberdeen, N.M.

"Unfortunately, the suppression of vital BRAC data proved effective during the Commission's hearings...and the closure of Fort Monmouth was approved," the whistleblower alleges.

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