How Did DoE Waste Half a $Billion on Carbon Capture? Bob Bauman

This week we meet with Bob Bauman, a veteran government investigator and auditor, to discuss how the Department of Energy (DoE) wasted nearly half a billion dollars on failed carbon capture and storage (CSS) technology demonstration projects.

The failed CSS projects are described in a report released by the Government Accountability Office in December 2021 called CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE: Actions Needed to Improve DOE Management of Demonstration Projects.

Bob uses his 30+ years as a government investigator to explain how this kind of waste occurs, and what it portends for the $3.5 billion the Department of Energy recently announced they're investing on behalf of U.S. taxpayers in CSS projects.

Transcript

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Greg Williams: 0:10

Welcome, everyone to tonight's episode of climate money watchdog want to welcome especially our guest Bob Bauman. And as usual, Dina razor and since Bob and Dina have worked together in the past, as you can see, and I would like to make the introduction to Bob's work history.

Dina Rasor: 0:29

Yes, I've known Bob Baumann a long time. And he, by the way, I met him, he became a source. And then we decided to go in business together. Bob Bauman is worked at the 36 years as a government investigator 12 them as at DCIS, defense Criminal Investigative Service, and then retired from government work in 1992. And we started the Bellman razor group. And what we mainly did, and we and we've pretty much done that for 27 years, and now Bob has actually not retired, but we're not doing that anymore. And Maine during that time, we worked on qui tam false claims acts with whistleblowers. And if you added up the amount of money through the qui tam law, where you sue on behalf of the government and the whistle with the whistleblower, Susanna half a governor. And the cases we worked on, turned, returned over 200 million to the federal government. So if we could have only gotten a percentage of that we would have been well off. And also, and I have written two books, one is called betraying our troops. And it was about the contractor fraud in the Iraq and Afghanistan and wars. And our second one was called shattered mines. And it was about the army Miss missa. No, I shouldn't say Miss badly designed army helmet, the outside and the inside. That was that was and they still use a version of the pads inside. That that caught help did not protect the soldier. And it was for the grunts, that fancier helmet that was better. They gave the special forces. They said we don't want to give that to the grunts because we haven't invested that much education. And yes, that is a quote from your book from a government official. So I have Bob on today, because we're talking about we want to talk about this. D GAO, which is Government Accountability Office, which is a government office that does investigations, do reports and there is a report that they did that was released in December of last year. That was about Denman that they call demonstration projects for carbon capture and and collection. And so carbon capture itself is a questionable thing. The technology isn't quite, ever totally worked. But they they did. They did a bunch of these demonstration projects, eight of them for coal, and four of them for industry. And the industry ones did, okay, three out of the four were actually built. But the cold demonstration, one was completely a disaster. It was a disaster. It was they invested$684 million in six of them in the eight of them. And only one of the eight were actually built. And the rest not ever got out of the design stage. One was actually you know, terminated. And then one made it and then form were never built form or never built. You know, another is you spent all that money. They didn't ever even turn to shovel it was all in the planning. So the one that was operational in 2016, was closed in 2020. And this was money that was given for Obama's rescue at the end of his middle of his administration when they were trying to make jobs but also do climate change work. And we are just like we did with Solyndra, we found this report. And we want to kind of do this as another cautionary tale of look, if you do not if the government does not do its job. Then you're going to have a lot of trouble. So I Both Greg Bob and I have written read a lot of GAO reports in our life. And this is, this is one of the most frustrating ones I've seen. And it's once again, it's just like to lender, the government didn't, the government didn't do his job and waived stuff. And we're gonna get into it with Bob, because Bob has been, there's probably nothing Bob hasn't investigated in his life. And he understands how government works, and he was actually in government. And so we're gonna ask him, Okay, well, that said, let's, let's get started. Bob. I'm really glad you're here and glad you're a board member. Thanks.

Greg Williams: 5:40

Well, let me say, words about GAO reports. Before we get started, you know, I think, especially in the last 10 years, people have complained a great deal about the mainstream media and how they don't like their news pre chewed, and you know, how difficult that can be to sort the truth from fiction and propaganda. But the among the most directly elected officials we have are members of Congress. And the General Accounting Office is the investigative body of Congress. Basically, if a member of Congress wants to know more about something, they ring up the GAO and have them do an investigation and write a report. And so I think one can a taxpayer can think of the the General Accounting Office as their private investigators, or, you know, their investigators, and all of their reports are online and available for free for anyone to read. And I think, frankly, if you're interested in good government, they are a spectacularly concise, information rich thing to read. And so if you care about what your government's doing so very directly to be informed about it.

Dina Rasor: 6:51

And sometimes they use because they are always under political. And they're always under political pressure, they sometimes use very soothing language for something that's very bad. And this report sort of has that in it. But you have, but you know, once you see they, they it's kind of like, it's somebody, you thought somebody was yelling at you, because they were saying, really tough stuff, but they're actually saying it in a calm voice. So the GAO tends to have the calm voice. Okay, Bob, give us your first impressions as a longtime government investigator on this report. Did the the government problems in the waste in this report surprising?

Bob Bauman: 7:33

Well, first of all, having experience with audit reports, reports of that nature, like the GAO does. That final report was probably watered down considerably from the original draft report, which was probably considerably worse. But usually what happens is that it goes through layers of bureaucracy. And then it's watered down to like you mentioned, soothing, you know, the language so that it doesn't ruffle a lot of feathers too much. But I will say, though, that I found that in that report, I was kind of surprised that D O E even committed to such a procurement, that most likely was not going to be viable in the first place, having the experience of doing an industrial type of procurement before, and even those didn't really. I mean, they had a couple that were I don't think they they really have lasted or they they may still be online, but I don't think they've really done anything. But yeah, I find I found that it was it was not only that they even committed to such a project. But given that, how complicated such a procurement would be, that they were told that they had to expedite the whole process, which put that whole procurement of hundreds and millions of dollars in significant risk for fraud, waste and abuse. And, of course, they did waste over $600 million in completing that, but yeah, that was it was a good, pretty bad report, given the fact that it was watered down to some degree.

Greg Williams: 9:57

Yeah, I should also mention that the link So this report will be in the the description that we have for this podcast episode. So if you want to pause the podcast as you listen to a download and follow along with us, I encourage you to do that.

Dina Rasor: 10:11

Yes. As I bought asked Bob questions, I'm going to have to read some sections from the report because we're not TV and we can't put it up. But I, so we've been looking at these eight coal demonstrations, DOE put in $684 million, and only one was built, and the dang thing, okay, they were operational, and the one that was operational in 2016, was closed in 2020. The GAO report language generous, generously talks about market forces, such as low oil prices afflicting the economic viability or the demonstration process. What do you think, overall, what did you think went wrong?

Unknown: 10:59

Well, first of all, they made the selection, right on the initial proposals, and usually, I know through the industrial projects, they took at least a year to review the contract or systems and the costs and pricing data and what have you, all the pre pre negotiation types of activities that they needed to do, especially on the technical end, as well as the financial ends. Now, they didn't do any of that. On this more recent one. And I don't see how I mean, it just screams out, you're not going to be successful. Because alone, you have to go through a technical analysis, specially how complicated the technology was, and that it hasn't really function well at all or function at all, that they needed to spend a considerable amount of time reviewing that process. And I didn't notice too, that the budget for these projects were considerably higher than that the industrial projects, which leads me to believe that there is a lot of waste, fat and what have you thrown in, as you normally see in con government contracts. And obviously, on a rapid selection process or a negotiation process, you don't have that time to go over the cost and pricing data and determine whether everything is accurate? And of course, that, again, leads to considerable risk of fraud wasted.

Greg Williams: 13:06

Yeah, and let me take a moment to point out that the factories that we're talking about are essentially called, I forgot to they call burning facilities.

Dina Rasor: 13:17

Burning power plants. Yeah.

Greg Williams: 13:19

And so, you know, most of us are familiar with coal burning power plants is huge sources of of both greenhouse gases, but also particulate pollution, they are among the dirtiest ways to, to make electricity. And this carbon capture technology is a technological attempt to clean them up in an effort to to make clean I'm sorry, coal, a relatively clean source of power. And, you know, it's a very complicated thing to do. And when the GAO says that, you know, the economic forces made it unviable, what they're really saying is that other ways to make energy that are, by their very nature, much cleaner than coal, turned out to also be less expensive than coal. So why the government is investing, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars and more recently 10s of billions of dollars in this kind of, in this kind of technology. And so while you know, there's no evidence in this report of of any conflict of interest, one has to wonder, you know, why, why is the federal government spending money in this kind of direction, especially when it appears to be so unsuccessful? Well,

Unknown: 14:43

I think it was a political compromise teeny oil in the history of clean energy industry and and they just wanted to try to wedge all that in there to satisfy All those groups? You know, I think the whole idea was, was political. And that's an end doe had to act on that. That's very difficult. I know. Most of my experience has been with the Department of Defense, and which is the most complicated procurement system, there isn't government. And the one thing DOD has that I'm not sure DOD has, because it's not addressed GAO report, because I don't believe DOD has a very big procurement infrastructure, you know, which includes the audit agencies, the technical agencies, the contracting agencies, and you know, everybody, it's a huge bureaucracy sells the handle these massive amounts of contracts and the dollar amounts that are involved. And the technical expertise is needed. I don't see I didn't see in the GAO report. And by the way, I went on the DoD website, and I didn't see any evidence of this. And it doesn't appear that they have that procurement structure at all. Maybe they have some, cuz I don't think they needed one up until recently, because they didn't handle the huge amounts of money they handle. Yeah, all the little fiddly stuff, but but in order to handle the kind of money that they're handling, now, they need an audit service, they need a contracting service that includes this huge, you know, groups of people that handle technical and financial and, and the contractual ends of the whole procurement process. And they don't have that it doesn't appear they have that. And if they go forward without it, and they're going to handle hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars. There's going to be a lot of waste, there's going to be a lot of fraud, because contractors, they knowing DoD contractors away I do. They'll like jump on any weaknesses that the government has in that process in order to take advantage as best they can of the process and to their in their favor, and certainly not the government's favor. And this is where you have problems.

Dina Rasor: 17:41

Yeah, that's, that's, you know, Bob and I both did DOD. And so for a long time, we did other things to medical, Medicare and stuff, fraud, but do you, I, when I look at the do II structure, I have the same feeling. It's like there were or are the people. And believe it or not, Biden hasn't even nominated a chief financial officer yet. All this money is going out the door. I mean, this is an older report, but we're talking about it, because they're starting to do more. And then I also wanted to say about carbon capture. Carbon capture, some people say it works. But there's there was a $7 billion private plant in the south, started by one of the you know, with one of the investors being the former doe secretary for carbon capture. And it ran for a few years, and it completely failed. The call concept completely failed $7 billion of private money. So you've got this problem too, by putting it on coal plants, it is you may say you do capture the carbon, which you know, I mean, how much carbon are you going to be able to capture they you know, they want to it's very dubious to a lot of climate change people, this carbon capture now they're saying, Oh, we got to do it. And it's being pushed by being fossil fuel because if you're capturing the carbon, we can burn some more carbon. And that the other problem with a coal plant, you may be capturing some of the carbon but you're not capturing the fine particulate matter that gives the you know, that kills people. And you're also have the side of the side effect of having coal ash as a residue, which you build into huge mountains and pollute streams and whatever. So the whole carbon capture thing. Carbon Capture and Storage, I mean, think about it, you're gonna capture all this carbon and you're gonna put it in big thing, storage salt mines, that they talk about capturing this carbon and putting it in different places and they're even talking about the ocean being a carbon sink. You know, how's that going to work out? You know, let's, let's put a lot of let's put a lot of co2 in the ocean and see how that changes. It just goes on and on. So What bothers me about this program, and we'll talk about this later is that, you know, this is a cautionary tale that it all failed. Partially, I think, through government acquiescence and not being toughened up, but partially because it just, it really isn't proven. And now we're going to invest billions more. So let me read from the report and then have Bob and Bob, explain I'm sorry, I have to read from the report. But like I said, we don't have graphics. It says do E's process for selecting coal products, projects and negotiating funding agreements increases the risk that the DLP would fund projects unlikely to succeed? Specifically, Doa fully committed to cold projects at their initial selection, as opposed to allowing time for further review, as Bob been talking about, as it did for selective industrial, CCS, carbon capture and storage projects. Additionally, according to DOD officials, the Gup department use the expedited timeframes for coal project negotiations, less than three months as opposed to a year based on do E's desire to begin spending the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 funds quickly. These actions reduce do E's ability to identify and mitigate technical and financial risks, at principal cited in doe guidance. Now, I do want to also say, yes, they were trying to get done quickly, because they were worried about climate, climate, but they're also worried about jobs. Well, this is one of the big things that Greg and I, since we've started, climate money watch the watchdog is we're so worried about is it's this terrible thing of brain, almost everything they're doing is brand new. And it has to be cutting edge, everything we're doing to try to save the planet, all these different new technologies. And then of governments shoving huge amounts of money at it, and we have to move quickly. But sometimes when you move quickly, like in this sample, you blow the whole thing. And then the enemies of climate change money. So see it doesn't work. So we talked about that with cylinder. So Bob, you had mentioned it before, but talk again about how these practices of, you know, only three months and the initial selections, how that comes around to opening them up to a lot of a lot of waste. But also, there wasn't any evidence of fraud here. But how would that open it up to fraud?

Unknown: 22:47

Okay, well, in the negotiation process, which is what one of the other is that they kind of skipped over and did it very quickly. There's a, an act that I didn't see referred to in the record is called the truth in negotiations act, Tina, this way as fondly called it requires a contractor in negotiations to certify that all the costs and pricing data they submit to the government use as a basis for negotiation is accurate. And that is up to date. And of course, if it isn't, it's false or whatever. And then it's subject to to be prosecuted that contract subject to be prosecuted under that. The title 101 is the federal code which is essentially fraud against the government submitting false information. That is probably an under the category of defective pricing. Defective pricing is a huge area that we see in negotiations where the contractor submits false cost and pricing data. and is and is used as a basis for negotiating a price. And I would see in this situation that there's not enough time for the government or for DOD in this case, to really sit down and audit this information that's cost and pricing data to determine whether it's accurate or it's not. And as such, they're at risk for defective pricing. These are types of cases I've seen a lot of between that and Miss charging, which is later on during the actual contract. But defector pricing I would see as a is probably the biggest risk in this process of expediting negotiation process,

Greg Williams: 25:21

so there were a number of projects described in this report, in which the government's share of the overall cost kept on increasing as the, as the industrial partner negotiated, more investment from from the government. How does that affect the the the, the this system of cause and effect that you just described?

Unknown: 25:50

Well, you're talking about after the contracts been signed, and negotiations, I guess, moving on and they make, they make these changes. Just which is is really the name of the game, in government contracting, and how you, you know, you put in a bid a low bid to get the contract, we submit maybe for cost pricing data show though I can do this for this low price. And then you make it up by these changes as you go along. Which you see it in his big contract, just tons of these changes, that keeps raising the price each time. And by the time you get to the other contract. It's way over what the original bid was for the contract. But that's how they do it. Yeah, and in this

Dina Rasor: 26:51

in this case, I'll go ahead and sorry, Bobby didn't mean

Unknown: 26:55

to is that it's up to the contracting officer to approve these changes. And, you know, if you don't have the type of internet infrastructure that you need, you know, what are you going to how are you going to evaluate these changes, and in very often, they're rubber stamped. Because they just don't want to take the time, or they don't have the expertise. So they don't want to take the have the expertise. They just want to get it moving. And so they just keep upping the price. So that's

Dina Rasor: 27:34

in this is this situation. You know, it was, I think there was enormous pressure for it to succeed. And by having Norman's pressure to succeed, it turns around and like the government was supposed to be so I think at some of these started out, like 5050, and then they come to them and said, increasing the price, but they did increase the price. But if on top of it, they just kept saying, Okay, well, the government says well, we'll pay 6040 You know, we get we'll pay the 6040 because they know they fail they're gonna be called on the table. So once they sign a contract with a with a company to do something, people think well, yeah, they're the government they're going to overlook see it and really make sure it's done right for the taxpayer. No, they their career really counts this these procurement people, their career and government council on the fact that these program managers that this thing works, and, you know, son, and everything, and they don't want to get hauled up to Congress with, you know, with trouble of it not working and all this kind of stuff. And they only have to stay in for a short period of time for their Inspiron anyway. But the problem is, and this kind of thing is the government has kept acquiescing and saying, Okay, I think it ended up being 9010 on one project, so please, please don't die and we got to have something built, you know, so that was a, that was a real shocker to me. Okay, let's go on to the next one. Let me read it again. And I'm sorry, I have to read this stuff, but I can't explain it better than the than the GAO. It says doe at the direction of senior leadership did not adhere to cost controls designed to limit the financial exposure on funding agreements for coal projects that deemed OE to ultimately terminated. As a result. The agency spent Merril nearly 472 million on the depth on the definition and design of four unbuilt facilities, almost 300 million more than planned for those project phases. According to the DOE documentation and officials, senior leadership directed action to support projects even though they were not meeting the required milestones. And let me stop there. I'm not done reading but I want to tell people milestones you know, Just like with your boss, you set goals and you got to meet these goals. Milestones are the things they use to see are you making the progress before we pay you more money? Do any documentation also indicates that had the Congress authorized an extension on the use of the funds DoD might have continued funding some of these projects. By managing future CCS projects against established scopes, budgets, schedules and budgets, DOE would be better positioned to mitigate the financial exposure if the project struggle. Additionally, absent a congressional mechanism to provide greater oversight and accountability, such as requiring regular DoD reporting on project status and funding. Doa may risk expect expending significant taxpayers funds on CCS demonstrations that have little likelihood of success. So this is like beat spending money and meeting milestones, or what I used to say progress. They used to call it progress payments in the Pentagon, but they didn't ever based it on progress. Just the fact it's time to get paid. So by once you give me some give you my ideas on why that's so destructive.

Unknown: 31:22

Well, apparently the interjection of senior management I know that's a little disturbing, because the fine right on this the Secretary of Energy and assistant secretaries all the senior group, they're appointed if I read it on that. So these political positions, right. Oh, they're interjecting? You know, as far as I'm concerned, they're injecting politics into the procurement process. In other words, they're under pressure from senior people are from Congress or whoever, the administration to move this money along and get it spent, and get it moving, to get these projects moving. And without, I don't know who they talk to about this. But they obviously say, Okay, do it you expedited. Without even knowing what the heck they're doing. I mean, it's, it's a matter of, they're doomed to failure in this respect. But I think it's all they're concerned about is they want to spend the money, they don't care what happens, I kiss at the end, but that was their job to spend money, so they put it on the procurement people. Oh, you got to do it this way, even though they know they can't do it that way. Well, expediting the negotiation, and expediting, you know, neglecting the milestones and all the other stuff. And forgetting about cost controls, no cost control. So yeah, I I just think it's a real disturbing type of process where you have the senior people telling the procurement the other way, like the, the politicians, so to speak. Tallinn, the there was a the the bureaucrats, the career bureaucrats to do a certain type of job that they know they can't do. And I don't know if there was any discussion about this, but there was obviously nobody in between.

Dina Rasor: 33:50

Well, the, the problem was, is that the money was required to be spent, it was passed in 2009, as required to re re spent by 2015. And I think they just decided to shovel it out the door. And, you know, once again, it comes down to why did the senior leadership intervene like this? Well, probably pressure from members of Congress pressure from the states where there's being done or whatever, and, and pressure to succeed. And, you know, they want they they don't want this kind of thing. But you know, nobody really knows about this GAO report. I it was rarely published anywhere. And Greg and I found it, and it is horrible, but it was done back in the end of the Obama administration. I mean, you know, well, enormous amount of waste.

Unknown: 34:51

Yeah, but yeah, that's the problem. You just somehow don't See this. I've never seen this where people in it senior president, that'd be like the Secretary of Defense down some procurement guy down in, you know, 20 layers down below that he has to expedite. But the problem is it's a jobs issue, right? And they want to be able to shovel this money out, get these projects going, and then you've got God. But what's the point, if they all fail, you don't have the jobs?

Greg Williams: 35:35

Well, I would argue that, number one, you don't have the jobs. Number two, you know, if you spend the money wisely, you You not only have the jobs, you have the jobs of people doing things that are worthwhile, that will generate economic benefit. You know, hiring 1000 people to dance, dancing jig in the middle of the street, is not as good as you know, hiring 1000 people to build, you know, flood abatement dikes and things that have actual value.

Unknown: 36:08

But are we going to see more of these innovative, innovative type of projects coming up, that are bound to fail, because they don't do the right kind of procurement to make sure that they're viable in the first place. And then you've got jobs. Because, as you

Dina Rasor: 36:30

say, as you say that Bob that Rob zoomed right into the next thing. You know, the GAO asked for suggested changes. One is, Congress needs to get more involved in, you know, the, they knew need to have better doe and DOE said, Oh, we just started a new bureaucracy just to do this, just to do clean energy demonstrations. And my attitude is, when you start a new bureaucracy, it takes a long time for it to work. And so by starting it, you kind of you it's kind of like saying, Well, we're going to solve the problem by starting a new bureaucracy. And when you're sort of like, oh, okay, that sounds good. Well,

Unknown: 37:09

you don't get it,

Dina Rasor: 37:13

going to start spending money. And I was just gonna say is, do do E. And I just sent both of you the press release on this deal. We just launched another $3.5 billion on carbon capture, capture and storage from the infrastructure bill. And it's, it's not just for coal, but it's like for for hubs across the country and carbon capture. And there, there is no, as far as we can tell, apparently no major changes, as Gao suggested. So here we are walking into, it's not cold. And it's but it's still brand new technology, and they're going to try to store it underground. And all these things they hadn't done before. And it's $3.5 billion. That's more than their, their, that's more than they're paying to put 5000 electric vehicle chargers across the country. It is an enormous amount of money. I should also put in, I'm just going to throw this out here. And when you were talking about what, why would you know, why would the coal get so much more money and stuff? They the big fossil is, of course, lobbying, but the head of the Natural Resources Committee in the Senate is Joe Manchin. And he is a coal broker, he and his son are coal brokers. So Joe Manchin was the linchpin to getting the infrastructure bill done. So I'm sure that there was a lot of pressure to put in the carbon capture, which is the favorite of the big fossil. So it was$3.5 billion. And apparently no major changes. That's one of the reasons we wanted to look at this older report. What do you think's going to happen, but

Greg Williams: 39:03

let me point out that the GAO report itself includes the the Department of Energy's response to these, these criticisms, and one of the things DoD said that it would do was that it would establish a new office of clean energy demonstrations to provide better oversight for these these kinds of projects, and it indeed did, but that agency or that that Bureau is still working under an acting Bureau head you know, brand new organization, and they don't even have a permanent leader but and they've, you know, stepped up their investment to you know, this much larger figure for these similarly unproven technologies.

Dina Rasor: 39:51

This, this, this new program has just they call it the initial getting the initial, you know, bids and stuff. This New Program. It just started they're shoving shoving it out the door starting within a week from now than the past week. And so here we are talking about Norman's disaster the first time around. Well, that was, you know, that was little over half a billion dollars. This is 3.5 billion. And it's just an astounding number.

Unknown: 40:24

Well, I just, from my perspective, you know, I think we're looking at possibilities, a lot of fraud, waste, and abuse. And even though it may never be investigated, unless you have a whistleblower come out and talk about how these facilities are ripping the government off. Probably never seen anything like any kind of a prosecution or investigation into what was going what's going on. But I could see at least there's going to be a lot of wasted money. And we're going to see a lot of failures again, unless they change the way they look at these projects, and spend some time with experts figuring out, you know, how to make these projects viable. And this be able to negotiate a reasonable price.

Dina Rasor: 41:21

And this Yeah, this is not just, you know, something like we build a bunch of fighters and they didn't work. So we put them in Arizona, and they sit there. This is, you know, the planet. This is we are on everyone's pulling their hair out. And we're on a you know, we're on a execution schedule here, we got to do something about it. And when they money is spent badly, everybody who doesn't want to spend the money on climate is going to use this right now. Yeah, go ahead. But what did you say I'm sorry?

Unknown: 41:56

Hey, I think Solyndra with us, as an example, by those enemies of climate change, as a way it doesn't work. throw money out there, and it doesn't work. Well, you know, you may see something on the result is GAO report on the same lines?

Dina Rasor: 42:17

Well, I did the sad part about it to the listeners is should know, there are hundreds reports like this sitting in the government that nobody does anything about. And this one's just popped out at me as being exceptionally egregious. But, you know, a lot the people who write these reports are very frustrated, because, you know, this is a lot of money. And everyone's sort of like, you know, but but I was mentioning about bringing out whistleblowers, and for as I mentioned earlier, Bob and I worked for, you know, decades on qui tam False Claims Act. cases. And what that is, is that there's a law that started by Abraham Lincoln, that if you if you have original knowledge of someone defrauding the government, you can sue on behalf of the government and get a percentage of the money that they get back. And that's Bob and I worked on that a long time. And our biggest enemy of trying to do these cases is what you call a government acquiescence. In other words, the government did. You can't sue for government meant stupidity or neglect, because if the company comes back and says, Well, you know, gee, the government said it was okay. You know, and so based on this report, how hard was it? You know, let's say in this report in this GAO report that somebody does find fraud in this 2015 It ended 2015 program and decide if he wants to file a qui tam report and how we jam lawyers won't take it if there's a whiff of government acquiescence. And so Bob explained to us how government acquiescence in this case would make it almost impossible to do a quick Campese

Unknown: 44:13

waivers, if the contracting officer waives. All these changes that come about for price increases? or for any other issue that seems a little bit weird. That alone if they act as they can, the DOJ considered that act was that acquiescence and they won't even look at the case. Twice. If it's if there's actual essence. They'll drop it immediately. Even though there are Ways can be overcome, but it's rare. But in the end a week, I know we kept saying that a contracting officer does not have a warrant, to acquiesce to fraud. And very often what happens is these contracting officers are duped into waving some issue some contractor or some change that maybe technically that accepting maybe bad product, as opposed to what should have been a much better product. And it just frustrating. Whatever we I don't know how many cases we've had, where this happened. But there's been a bunch where we've had good evidence of fraud, and then the case was down the rabbit hole because of acquiescence as a very, very hard bar to overcome, if that exists in a situation, and I see this and dop, that they apparently have waived a lot of different kinds of contract changes and what have you. So I'm afraid that if there's even a whistleblower that comes forward with fraud, we're gonna find that it's going to be acquiescence involved. And that's a killer.

Dina Rasor: 46:48

Okay, well, Greg, you have something you'd like to add, because I'm gonna ask the final question.

Greg Williams: 46:55

Um, so I just have some comments make as we wrap up about other ways, voters and taxpayers can, can react to these GAO reports. So why don't you go ahead.

Dina Rasor: 47:07

Okay. All right. Well, basically, Bob, I just want to say that after all this thing on this mismanagement, this is just plain mismanagement, that, you know, this is what the fraud, waste and abuse, this is the waste, a little bit of abuse, too, but it's the waste. What else would you like to say, when you, you know, you're you come on to the board of this organization, and because we're dedicated to doing this, and, you know, we're the, we're the flea on the elephants, but but we're here. And we're going to, we're going to determined to try to put some kind of fiscal discipline into the spending of money, because it is, it is such a bigger crisis than whether the Pentagon gets enough Navy ships, you know. So, in that, in that point of view, I'd like to hear what you what you what you think is going to be the big problem. On this based on the little that you've seen? Well, I think

Unknown: 48:03

we've already seen in a sense that first of all, there's going to be this huge amount of money. He talked about the 3.5. Bill, billion that's already been allocated, I guess for sure for a future projects. But unless DoD comes up with an infrastructure, procurement infrastructure, we're going to see enormous problems. We're going to see the kinds of things as GAO report comes up with where they don't adequately review contractor systems where they don't adequately audit, pre negotiation. Really audit the cost and pricing data, looking at the taking a hard look at contract changes, we're going to see an enormous amount of waste, fraud and abuse, probably a lot of waste and abuse. But if you get any area of mismanagement, then everything is considered mismanagement. That's another killer far as qui tam or any type of fraud prosecution goes

Dina Rasor: 49:11

or even for the Justice Department by themselves to go after it. If they just use false claims act that they can go after. After the fraud. They they just won't touch this. If they're if they can see that the government's in on the gun and on the gag.

Unknown: 49:28

Well, it sounds like that's gonna be a big issue. And, but it still doesn't prevent organizations like yours that to report on these that there is waste. There's mismanagement. There's all this taxpayer money that's going down the drain because they don't properly vet these or do their due diligence on these projects. And that's I think we're gonna see a lot of in the future, because there's a lot of new technologies for clean energy that's coming out. And it's just like in DOD, when they come up with a new fighter, it's a whole new design, and they got to go through all the technical aspects of it that determine whether it is even viable, that will even stay in the air. We're seeing that with the F 35, by the way. So, you know, it's, we're going to see that on the DoD end, you know, with all this new technology, and maybe they don't have the expertise to really evaluate whether it's going to be viable. And this is where you guys come in, is to really look at these and maybe get some expertise, technically, and or financially and look at this even deeper. Once these projects come out and look for these reports, not only the GAO report, but the IG reports, you know, that deal does have an IG. So they're supposed to look at management and how they operate and all that so

Dina Rasor: 51:16

well, I'm I'm hoping with anybody who's, you know, these things haven't gotten started yet. And this is why we're doing these podcasts is to try to get the climate community climate advocacy community to understand, hey, this is a big problem, you're going to politically run into trouble on this. And so what I'm hoping is all these people are so young people that are joining these companies and doing everything and so excited and wants to save the planet. If you see something, call us, we have a whole page on how you can contact us without getting caught. I've never had a whistleblower caught and fired ever. And so if you contact us, and if you know about some kind of thing that you think it looks hanky, it might not even be fraud, it might be wasted abuse, and the government's going along with this, call us and we can protect you we know how to, and don't try to do it on your own. Don't try to do it. You don't want to go public if you don't have to. And that's what this organization eventually I hope will be involved. Now. We're just in the education process, because we've all had experience. Okay, now I'll turn it over to Greg. What he had say.

Unknown: 52:31

Greg, you're muted.

Greg Williams: 52:34

Here we go. Last time I checked, I wanted to say a few words in defense of the F 35. Just since it was brought up as far as I know, it now remains in the air reliably it no longer spontaneously catches fire on the ground, or burns a hole in the carrier deck or trips over its own arresting wire, you know, we're past those things. And the next step is to be able to get the software to work to be able to fire its cannon,

Dina Rasor: 53:00

so we can't can't afford the spare parts. Yeah, they're all they're grounded hanger.

Unknown: 53:09

Billions of dollars have been spent to get to the point where it is right now.

Dina Rasor: 53:15

It makes 3.5 billion we're talking about right now look like the toilet paper budget for the Pentagon. I'm sorry. It's just amazing how much that plane has wasted. But I think

Greg Williams: 53:26

the overall point is, that's what happens when you've got a big agency that does have mature large contract auditing agencies, working hard to prevent things like that. Doe has much less of that infrastructure in place. So finally, I wanted to thank you, Bob, for for joining us tonight and thank our listeners for tuning in again. And we hope to see you all in future episodes of climate money washed up. All right. Thank you. Thank you